Watching the Satellite

As Yoko Ott settles into her role as director of Bellevue’s forward-looking contemporary art gallery, she admits the future is murky. Her resolve is not.

Photography by Young Lee for City Arts.

Yoko Ott won’t BS you.

Go ahead, bring your list of questions about the viability of Open Satellite, the contemporary art space in downtown Bellevue that Ott became director of last September. You won’t get to ask them; Ott beats you to it: “Is there a demand for something like Open Satellite?” she says. “Is the community going to embrace [contemporary art] the way we need it to in order for it to be a thriving successful organization?”

Ott admits she doesn’t know the answers yet. But if they turn out to be “yes,” Ott believes that Open Satellite could provide a national model for art spaces. Will she succeed? You should know more about her before you decide.

First off, you should know that Ott’s candid style isn’t a recent development. In fact, her curatorial career began because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. As an entry-level peon with the production company One Reel, Ott was supposed to just organize applications for Bumbershoot’s visual arts program. But when her bosses started picking artists Ott felt were undeserving, she spoke up. “I was extremely opinionated,” Ott remembers. “I just couldn’t help myself.” Either impressed by Ott’s eye for artistic talent, or perhaps just sick of arguing with her, Ott’s bosses eventually let her pick the artists and organize the show.

A reputation for straight talk makes Ott a “valued colleague,” according to Robin Held, chief curator and director of exhibitions and collections at the Frye Art Museum, where Ott worked after leaving One Reel. “She’s a sounding board for me when I want someone smart to bounce ideas off of,” says Held.

At the Frye, Ott organized innovative education programs that linked teens with local artists, as well as events that included collaborations between writers, restaurateurs, dancers and slam poets. “We brought her in to think outside the box about what education in a museum could be,” says Held. “She created innovative, risky, smart programming.” But when the economy tanked in the summer of ’08, the Frye faced a six-figure budget shortfall. Ott was laid off and her programs canceled.

Happily, budget shortfalls aren’t an imminent threat at Open Satellite. Bellevue real estate developer John Su foots the bill for the glass-walled exhibition area that occupies the ground floor of his 989 Elements luxury condominium complex.

Su founded Open Satellite in 2007 as an effort to pour a shot of culture into the cocktail of shopping and dining that is downtown Bellevue. “Bellevue is a young city … an art district won’t just appear,” says architect Annie Han of Lead Pencil Studios, who, along with her business partner Daniel Mihalyo, has advised Su on the project since its inception. “You need to make an effort to be creative about how to have cultural outlets.” Artists are invited to live in the condo building. They work, then show, in the art space.

“One of the reasons I went there is that I was inspired by [Su’s] vision and his curiosity,” Ott says. “Can this work? He says, ‘Let’s give it a try.’ I love that.” Still, she knows Su’s deep pockets aren’t bottomless. “Having a single funder is not a sustainable model,” Ott says. “For the long haul, you need a much larger pool of support to make it thrive.”

Open Satellite’s potential pool of support is split into two quite different groups. First, there are the denizens of downtown Bellevue, Open Satellite’s “community by proximity,” as Ott calls them. They are wealthy, mobile and educated, but they are also more likely to seek out high-end clothing boutiques than challenging contemporary art. Second, there are those enlightened Puget Sound residents who do seek out challenging contemporary art, many of them living on the other side of Lake Washington.

Open Satellite can’t succeed without the support of the existing contemporary arts community, so Ott must develop programs that compel a trip across I-90. But the organization also can’t succeed without support from the locals. Downtown Bellevue residents don’t have as far to travel geographically, but they may be traveling a considerable cultural distance to go see (to take one example from a recent Open Satellite show) an architectural model titled “The Supermall Destroyer.”

“Talking to one group requires you to use art speak that is perhaps intimidating to the other group,” says Ott. “How do you present work that both groups can appreciate? Not that we need to be all ‘Kumbaya’ and hold hands.”

For Daniel Mihalyo, Ott’s potential to “bridge Seattle and Bellevue” helped convince him she was right for the job. “We really needed someone who could talk to people at all levels,” he says. “She has that experience in spades.” Also working in Ott’s favor was her commitment to Open Satellite’s mission. “She was really excited about the importance of having a private developer kick-start a cultural community in an urban area,” says Mihalyo. “And really excited about being part of the proselytizing of this idea.”

That idea isn’t one that will necessarily stop at the Cascade foothills. “Su’s vision can be a replicable one nationwide,” Ott says.

Ott was already scheduled to curate a show at Open Satellite before taking the position as director. The Corner of Sweet and Bitter, by Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi, ran in December and January in conjunction with a Koizumi retrospective at the Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University, which Ott also curates. The architectural modeling competition Supermodel, which ran in February, was previously planned, as was the selection of a resident artist this spring. Ott will have more freedom after that. So as the weather warms up, so will Ott’s creative mind.

Five months after starting at Open Satellite, Ott says her basic philosophy upon taking the job hasn’t changed. But one surprise has opened up her thinking about the future of the organization’s residency programs. 

“I’ve learned Bellevue is significantly more ethnically diverse than I was aware of before working here,” she says. “This has made me realize the potential our residency program has when it comes to working with international artists who can make community connections.” Ott also intends to have more evening events in addition to the gallery’s normal daytime hours, and to work more with Eastside teens. 

“I’m going to play around this summer and be a little more experimental,” Ott says. It seems appropriate for Open Satellite, an experiment in itself. •