Katy Deepwell has contributed more to feminist art criticism than any other critic I know.She published the journal n.paradoxa for 19 years. She has edited and published collections of feminist writing like De-/Anti-/Post-colonial Feminisms in Contemporary Art and Textile Crafts and 50 Feminist Art Manifestos. She has received many awards,organized conferances, online courses available on her website. She has a Ph.D, taught in universties. It is hard to overstate her importance.
And yet Katy has always stayed accessible. She has not sunk into deep theory. She has interpreted feminism in art according to the artists she writes about, not her own imposed ideas.
Her most recent collection Converstions on art, artworks and feminism demonstrates her deep knowledge of feminist artists. The book is drawn from her various interviews published in n.paradox.
It is organized with various approaches: major projects, individual artworks, feminist strategies for curating, and histories of feminism and feminist organizations.
It is clear that Katy has travelled and read extensively. The shows are in many far flung places ranging from Istanbul to Dak’Art in Senegal Poland, Denmark and more. She thoughtfully frames questions for the artists and curators clearly based on a lot of preparation, but she digs into the meanings and intents of the artist she is interviewing.
It is very rare for an art critic to stay with one focus – in her case faminism- and yet allow that focus to expand and change and reach in many different directions. She acknowleges the complexity of each artist. Even the title of her new book,Converstions on art, artworks and feminism acknowledges that. The cover is a series of questions that she posed to the differnt artists
In the first section ” major projects and exhibitions” she chooses a fascinating selection including Ida Applebroog, Karen Finley, Mary Kelly, Suzanne Lacy and Marina Abramovic among others. In the next section focusing on indivudual artists she asked artists such as Sue Williamson, Zineb Sedira, and Maureen Connor to make statements. There was also a “cyber knitting” event that she partipated in.
In the” feminist strategies for curating,” she asked short questsions that triggered long responses. In “histories of feminist organizations” her questions were sometimes much longer, demonstrating her own knowledge.
The varied approaches adapting to the artist themselves give us a clear voice directly from the artist.
In short, this book is a set of primary source essays, that Katy edited, rather than a book of her own opinons.
As such it is an invaluable resource for all of us.
We are all mourning the passing of our beloved mentor and teacher
I first connected with Tomur Atagök in 1997 through her collaborations with Katy Deepwell in n.paradoxa.
Tomur had just published in the first volume of Katy’s amazing magaine, an essay on “Contemporary Turkish Women Artists”. ( She went on to publish a second essay in n paradoxa in 2003, “Tomur Atagök in Conversation with Gulsun Karamustafa, Inci Eviner, and Nur Kocak Turkish women Artists and Feminism.”
When I told Katy I was going to Turkey for a trip in she gave me Tomur’s name and contact number. When we arrived at our hotel in Istanbul I called her and she immediately invited me over to her office!
Tomur suggested I apply for a Fulbright Fellowship and offered to be a sponsor. She had just been on a Fulbright in the US in 1996 so she knew the ropes. It had never occurred to me. So I went home and I did apply and I got it for 1999-2000 to teach American Art History at her university, Yildiz Technical University.
Right after we arrived there was a big earthquake! Since we had just arrived , we felt we couldn’t do much to help (although later I did teach a workshop with some children who had lost their homes)
We retreated to Lycia on the Southwest coast of Turkey for two weeks ( two fruitful weeks for my husband Henry Matthews who later wrote two books about the Greek ruins on that coast) Then we went back to Istanbul
Tomur settled us into a comfortable apartment in Tesvikye, an upscale neighborhood of Istanbul.
The big catch I discovered when I started was that her students did not understand English!. This was not the usual University that Fulbright sent scholars – Boğaziçi University- where English was the stamdard language of instruction
Well, I did have a translator at least.
I was mainly teaching twentieth century American art history, with an emphasis on post 1945. So Tomur began to take me to meet various contemporary artists in Istanbul. At that time in 1999-2000 there was no modern art museum although one of Tomur’s ongoing projects was promoting Turkish art both contemporary and historical.
That meant that I met the artists in their homes or studios if it was a different place ( rarely); almost all of the artists I met then were showing internationally in Europe. but were unknown in the US. Their work was completely different in media and topic than I had seen before, so it took me a while to write about them. I wrote a few short reviews and eventually a longer essay which was published in Frontiers magazine and is now included as the first chapter of my most recent book Around the World in 25 years, Provcative Art From Europe,thte Middle east, Asia and the Americas
All of these artists are now very well known, Gülsün Karamustafa, just was the artist in the Turkish Pavillion at the Venice Biennale
has been showing brilliant installations since the early 1990s
Her work in the 3rd Istanbul Biennial was censored
and Inci Eviner.who represented Turkey at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
During my year in Istanbul and after, Tomur and I collaborated on writing an essay for Third Text, “The Digestible Other” speaking about the history of the Istanbul Biennial and how artists “fit” into the international scene. Ironically Tomur herself was never included in a Biennial, she refused to be digestible. This,in spite of the fact that she created the seeds for the creation of the Istanbul Biennale
with earlier exhibitions, as we explained in the article.
We also wrote a review of a the 8th Istanbul Biennial “Poetic Justice ( these essays are also reprinted in my new book.) I also wrote short essays to introduce exhibtions she curated. My essay on the “Anatolian Goddess Series” appears in my last book, Setting Our Hearts on Fire
Tomur and I went to London to speak at an art historian’s conferance
and to Macedonia invited to participate in giving lectures by Suzana Milevska, curator.
Later, when I returned to Seattle, Wa, I also invited her to give a lecture at the University of Washington.
The last time I visited her was in 2015 when I stayed with her for several days after the Biennial. I wrote a blog post about the art in her home at that time. Here she is in 2015
Here is an overview that I wrote a few years ago with additions.
Tomur Atagök,a leading feminist artist from Turkey, was born in Istanbul. After graduating from Robert College in Istanbul, she trained in the United States from 1960-1973, first at Oklahoma State University where she immersed herself in abstract painting and earned a BFA. She then went on to the California College of Arts and Crafts and the University of California, Berkeley for an MA. During her years in Berkeley, she experienced the Free Speech movement, then the civil rights uprisings, and third, protests by feminist artists .
After returning to Turkey in 1973, she pioneered, first of all as a painter, then as a teacher, curator, and historian. In the 1980s her painting focused on contemporary women, often painting on a metallic surface. Above you see one of her paintings featuring Madonna . The three graces appear on the right.
I remember seeing it in the hall of our department where we passed it everyday
Her work follows several intersecting themes although feminism is a central focus throughout her career. In her works of the 1980s, we see her assertion of the figurative in the midst of dynamic abstract expressionist brushstrokes. these dynamic paintings exude incredible energy of the brushstrokes and the figures.
At this time she began to paint on metal.
She explains: “The pictorial reality and space on a metallic surface contains the hints the artist gets from the environment, the symbols and the descriptions she uses in making references to the outside world, the different realities of the materials and the techniques, the images reflected from the environment and the perceiver on the surface of the metallic work, and finally the interpretation of the perceiver each time create different subjective and materialistic realities of art.
On the other hand pictorial reality and real space, change physically with the reflections from the environment and the perceiver himself, and join with the physical environment and movement, creating a connection of life with art.”
In 1990 the critic William Zimmer asked about her frequent use of the color pink “It’s a color which she confided in me she cannot abide, but which also stands for humanity from a feminist perspective. Pink which traditionally connotes softness is applied to metal, meaning toughness.”
During these same years she was the Assistant Director of Mimar Sinan University Museum of Painting and Sculpture , where she also earned a Ph.D. in Museology. She then moved to Yildiz Technical University where she founded and chaired the first Museum Studies Program in Turkey in 1989. Atagok has trained many of the current museum professionals in Turkey.
At the same time she began collaborating on ground breaking exhibitions of contemporary Turkish artists and historical studies
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1993, she co organized the first exhibition of the history of women artists in Turkey and Anadolu’da Yasamakta Olan Ilkel Comlekcilik |(Ancient Pottery-making Still Practiced in Anatolia) by Gungor Guner as well as “Contemporary Turkish Women Artists, organized by the Ministry of Culture, Istanbul Archaelogical Museum
Tomur had a Fulbright Fellowship at the American University in DC. in 1996 where she met some powerful feminist artists who suggested she look a the Anatolian goddess tradition. When she got back to Turkey she did just that. She took those small statues amd blew them up to an enormous size. Here is an installation of the entire series
Dominating this series is the great Anatolian Mother Goddess from Çatalhöyük. That twenty centimeter statuette, excavated from the oldest city in the world, dates from around 5700 BC.
The small figure has enormous power: she is seated comfortably between subdued leopards as she gives birth. Her breasts, hips and buttocks swell to enormous proportions, further increasing her power. Far removed from the slender, even emaciated, ideal for a female body that is now common for some contemporary societies (notably the United States), this goddess proclaims her physical presence and her authority at the same time.
In the paintings the Goddess assumes much larger dimensions as she joins our world as a life size figure who stands as a guardian. Rather than a fertility symbol, she is now a symbol simply of the power of women. She is an affirmation of women’s energy and authority. On her head she wears a type of mechanical diadem/crown in one painting, and sits in front of a golden shower of sun in another. These two large goddesses frame a third panel that makes reference to the interior of woman, specifically here, the vertebrae and ovaries. The woman’s interior, so often altered today by contemporary medical science, is here protected by powerful traditional forces.
Another of these grand paintings is based on Artemis of Ephesus. Artemis, later changed to a slender virgin hunter by the Romans, is here seen in her guise as Cybele. Her many breasts carry the power of nurturing and life.
In place of the animals under her protection on the traditional statues, Tomur put guns tanks and other references to military warfare. Artemis also has black gloves and a contemporary face with bold red lipstick and blond hair. It was done in response to the violation of sacred lands by military weapons, particularly during the Gulf War. This powerful statement could be about any war and its destructive effect on life as a whole
The collective presence of these goddesses is a powerful commentary on contemporary women and their connection to historical traditions. Painted in a technique that has its roots in abstract expressionism, they are major examples of contemporary art in Turkey. She has created versions for hanging in shopping malls with a strong
statement against war written on the back
Say no to war
Games, Toys, Childrean, War, Love 1999- 2000
dedicated to Uğur Mumcu
One of her most famous seriers is an homage to Uğur Mumcu an investigative journalist researching terrorism in Turkey who was murdered in 1993. In her homage Tomur wrote on the painting in Turkish a quote from the journalist:
Translated into English it said:
There are those who have preferred a lifestyle of silence
pulling inward as a personal symbol.
Their freedom and weapons do not speak
Every injustice takes strength in a way from their passivity.
A complete heart in another offers a brighter tone.
The heart is only partially visible as a double or single curve in some works.
Against that motif emerge silhouettes of guns, toy soldiers, bones, paper doll cutouts, hands, dots, crosses, and crescents. In addition the artist uses stones, sticks, feathers, and glossy advertising images of beautiful people. Scattered throughout many of the works are poetic phrases, of various moods, hopeful, sad, cynical.
The theme is a belieft in humanity’s ability to survive though poetry and creativity in spite of the many ways leading to war. She saw the children’s toys coming from cereal boxes turned into violence and yet she aso saw love.
The series as a whole is an homage to Mumcu, but also a response to him. Atagök has decided not to remain passively silent in the face of her own distress at his death and her support for his ideas.
Doğanin çağrısı Nature’s Call
Another theme that intersects with both politics and women is nature. It takes many forms. Her home is filled with examples of recreating nature in the midst of her life–she even created a forest in her basement and had an exhibition in 2011 that featured an installation of branches, paintings, diaries and other pieces.
Her commitment to calling attention to the small details of branches or bones and repositioning them on the surface of her painting results in a subtle relationship between abstraction and realism. In other works she takes random trash found in the woods and creates constructions. When asked what is most important to her at this time in her life (she turned 82 in May), she answered her nature installations.
In addition to all of these major works, Tomur has made hundreds of small works, part of her ongoing Diaries. Each one is composed of a the detritus of everyday life, a candy wrapper, a ticket to an exhibition framed in a small format with her signature expressionist gestures added. These small diaries tell the story of her life in collage. They have been exhibited on their own and in connection with larger works (such as perched on top of the goddess series). They tell us as much about who this prolific artist is, as do the large scale works.
Here is one diary postcard:
A Miro exhibition we went to when she came to US in 2014
As the Elgiz Museum described the Diaries in 2006 :
“a collage of over 1000 post card sized mixed media works produced between 1990 and 2006. Journeys through France, Germany, Italy, USA, UK, Macedonia, Greece, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Yugoslavia and Turkey represent the subjects for the artist’s reflection; instead of following the conventional literary format of a diary where passages are added simultaneously with the event, Atagok chooses to reflect on each event after a period of time has passed; this allows her to effectively fuse the past with the present. She chooses not to focus on isolated moments but on a collection of memories illustrated through everyday items such as tickets, wrappings and photos.
‘The Diaries’ do not function as a commentary on life but is intended as an accumulation of recycled materials intercepted by art. These works are personal, informal and social
Tomur Atagok as an artist, a feminist, a pioneering writer and historian of art by women in Turkey, an educator of museum professionals, an activist. Yet all of these identities still do not fully encompass her accomplishments. She is above all a deeply feeling human being who when asked about her dream project stated: “ I would like to work more on human equality with man and woman . . . We are all equal!”
How much we will miss her!
At the time of my visit during 15th Istanbul Biennial. ( I still have that hat)
“I believe artists’ work often functions as the equivalent of a town crier, calling out concepts in public. Traditionally the crier’s message is of civic or community importance, here we add construct. The Town and Country Crier exhibition presents a range of environmental and social issues. These issues often inform actions creating artwork that connects indicator, mitigator and story teller.” Buster Simpson
Buster Simpson ” Woodman”
In the 1970s Buster Simpson picked up pieces of wood off the street and at sites of building demolition.
This photo is a recreation of that action.
When Buster first arrived in Seattle his first exhibition was simply cleaning up a filthy warehouse where he was staying with a fellow artist Chris Jonic. The exhibition was titled “Selective Disposal Project”
Buster Simpson is idealistic and humourous but practical. He really wants to improve the environment and encourage us to to that also, but he has a good time doing it.
His recent exhibition at Slip Galllery in Belltown
“Town and Country Crier” is an appropriate place for Simpson to show his work. Belltown has been a focus of his work for many decades.
We are greeted at the door by a photo of the word purge written in chalk and glass bells with bronze clappers
His themes are embodied in these works, purge referring to cleaning toxins out of water, and the bell points to his ironic sense of humor. It suggests an announcement is coming ( as in Town Crier calling attention fo an emergency. But if you actually ring this bell it will shatter. That takes our imaginations to where we are today. Emergency bells that can’t be heard.
The first gallery is a mini retrospective of his Belltown work with a team of collaborators planting trees on First Avenue. He included a document from that project.The diagram at t he bottom indicates where trees were to be planted ( many were); The project also included benches.
The handwritten document from the First Avenue Project identifies the larger issue at stake: working from and with community rather than top down through government mandates. The archival documents fill a wall.
He stayed in one tree to protest its cutting down : the photograph of the upside down tree on the right is another truncated tree.
One long term project was to use iron bedsteads from SROs that were being torn down to protect the trees that he and others planted in Belltown.Here is a sad statement in the exhibition of the bedstead protecting a burned tree root. When I went back to the exhibition a second time, it was covered with a glass tabletop, which diluted the emotioinal immediacy of the bare black tree. Now it is protecting a small tree outside the gallery
In this first gallery there are also references to two important ongoing projects,”When the Tide is Out the Table is Set”. This is a not at all amusing quote from Native Americans description of the Duwamish River before the white Man came. Now we have intense polution on that same river
This dinner plate picked up pollution from being placed in Elliott Bay
Another series of works are based on the bell shape made into a pan in which a community meal was cooked. The Belltown cafe was a community gathering place that traded food for art.
Purge is a major theme Buster Simpson’s work. Many of his actions over the years have focused on detoxifying rivers. Here you see on the floor the limestone frog, whom Simpson said was an indicator species. The limestone frog when placed in water detoxifies the water, to the extent possible,
an action repeated in many places recorded in the stack of boxes. ( He mentioned that it was a special limestone found only in Texas, which I found amusing). Here is the frog in the Great Salt Lake which is of course disappearing.
Another reference to toxins, in this case deadly, is a rusted oil barrel with a reference to the smallpox ridden rags that were passed on to Indians.
In this room there is also a complex and amusing multimedia piece referring to changing coastlines and climate change with a giant depth measure as well as a crucified haloed “figure” made from branches holding dipsticks. Across the front is a large level with monopoly pieces inside. Simpson’s specialty is multiple overlaid references to what he cares deeply about laced with humor.
Simpson’s roots are in conceptual art, artists who didn’t believe in making objects for sale-instead they make gestures or draw plans. Simpson stands out because he continues to work with the real world and physical things, but always in a subversive and amusing way.
Brightwater watermolecule and pipe
molecule
Brightwater Bio Boulevard
Simpson also works often with large committees and successfully completes projects such as the Brightwater Treatment Plan (with many other artists)
photograph by Joe Freeman
and the waterfront “Anthropocene Migration Stage” on the beach near Yesler. Simpson conceived it as a place to sit temporarily until the sea level requires it to migrate away from the waters. He frequently uses these concrete dolos . Dolos are also a metaphor:
“a wave-dissipating concrete block used in coastal management (dolosse), a personified spirit of trickery and guile in Greek mythology, and a source code plagiarism detection tool”
No wonder Simpson likes them!
As we leave the gallery three bags filled with sand say “Searise Trumps Denial.”
A large sack of chalks invite us to take one and make our own protests in the street
As we enter June Sekiguchi ‘s living room we are immediately immersed in a feeling of multi dimensional creativity. From the ceiling, the walls, the floor, strange flowing shapes appear everywhere. As the artist reaches for a stack of fiberboard cut with wavy edges we see an art form appear as the artist puts them together. But this seemingly simple radiating shape around a center is actually what the artist calls a radiolarium, a single cell structure with radiating symmetry.
On the wall are twelve mandala-like carvings; two of them rise up into three dimensions. This shift to three dimensions while maintaining radial symmetry is what the artist’ s new works explore for an upcoming solo show at ArtX Contemporary opening in April.
June Sekiguchi grew up in Arkansas in a large family. In school she and her siblings were definitely seen as the “Other”, a traumatizing experience. But June left with her older sister to go to school in California while still in high school.
But of course the experience stayed with her. Although initially she embraced her Japanese background in California, soon she was exploring world cultures. Her focus has been patterns, looking at the extraordinary patterns of Muslim art for example.
From her public art to installation to intimate pieces, Sekiguchi explores patterns.
The patterns are embedded in various metaphorical forms. In a 2008 work Stacked BuildingBlocks she scroll cut patterns in wood and painted them inspired by shapes in Southeast Asia and North Africa. The planes were put together to form three dimensional shapes that can be moved around to suggest a gate or a building. Or simply a modular form.
Sekiguchi was inspired by children’s building blocks and would like adults to play with these oversize blocks.
A 2016 installation the Pulse of Water, focused on a river, really a specific river, the Mekong River that she deeply experienced floating down it slowly in a boat in Laos. We see the water here invoked by energetic forms, white circles on top suggesting foam and dark brown patterns underneath, suggesting an accumulation of debris. Actually the river is both a history and a lifeline. The artist spoke of the dams that cut off the fishing there. But her focus in the installation was a bamboo bridge that the fishermen build across the river every year after it gets washed out by Monsoon rains. This sense of repeated actions, of feeling the pattern of life, is evoked by the installation.
The current exhibition, still in progress in the artist’s studio, goes beyond the surface to the micro structures of radiollaria, a one celled organism that can absorb silica and create intricate skeletal patterns. These are the basis for Sekiguci’s current work.. Her patterns developed in both two and three dimensions are imaginative, inspired by the pioneering observations of 19th century scientists.
But one cannot visit Sekiguchi for long before the idea of meditation appears in the conversation. Her mandalas based on geometric patterns that represent harmony and peace, have long been a source of spiritual meditation. The geometric pattern represents according to one source “the cosmos or deities in various heavenly worlds.”
But Sekiguchi speaks of her creative process as a meditation whether it be with a scroll saw that cuts intricate designs into medium density fiberboard which the artist stated “cuts like butter.” Then she sands all edges of the sculpture, another meditative act. The three dimensionality of some of the works literally rises from the two dimensional mandalas.
These artworks based on the natural world are a direct result of two artist residencies: on Willapa Bay and Vashon Island. There the artist observed barnacles and sea anemones, what are called sessile creatures that attach themselves to a surface. Sessile creatures have radial symmetry, they cannot move independently, if a creature moves it has bilateral symmetry.
There is a sense of intense curiosity and exploration in Sekiguchi, she does not keep repeating ideas.
She also is embedded in her larger community as a curator for several organizations, including the Asian Pacific Cultural Center in Tacoma, which includes 40 different countries. They will be opening a new space next year, in which Sekiguchi plans to begin their exhibition program with the work of the founder of the Cultural Center, Patsy Surh.
So as June Sekiguchi intensely explores the inner structures of nature, she also supports her fellow artists in a larger exploration of the connections of people and community
Sekiguchi’s show The Geometry of Resilience is on display April 3 – May 24, 2025at ArtX Contemporary, 512 1st Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104. A reception will be held at Pioneer Square Art Walk on April 3 & March 1, 5-8 p.m., and an artist talk on April 26, 1 p.m.
First, we think that these two artists, Alexander Calder and Thaddeus Mosley, could not possibly be more dissimilar in this new iteration of the Calder donation curated by Catherina Manchanda. “Following Space,” the title of their joint exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, captures the central feeling of the exhibition. As we walk through the galleries, we do indeed feel we are following the spaces that both of these artists carve and cut and slice in their sculptures. But how different they are!
Calder’s mobiles are light and constantly moving with many small pieces of metal hanging from fragile wires. Mosley’s work is heavy, made of chiseled tree trunks. Calder uses industrial materials like sheet metal, Mosley uses only wood, Calder emphasizes lines created by wire and light shapes of metal, Mosley chisels carefully on solid shapes.
Thaddeus Mosley, Following Space, 2016. Cherry. Overall: 117×28×28in.
But we must look again at this provocative pairing. In the first gallery we see White Panel 1936 by Alexander Calder and First Port, 2008, by Mosley. Calder’s work descends from on high, while Mosley’s work reaches up. The carefully chiseled wood creates a sense of liberating the wood from itself. Following Space, 2016 in the center of the gallery, gives the exhibition its title, and is even more clearly rising up from its base.
Mosley works with wood that he finds in the forest, cherry and walnut. The wood is chiseled carefully to highlight the given shape of the log, then he connects separate pieces by inserting it into a notch or large hole in the wood. This use of notches means that the pieces balance with no outside support, unlike Calder’s mobiles which balance with carefully calculated lengths of wire and the weight of the small pieces of metal. Calder’s mobiles seem to almost flutter like clouds sometimes.
Mosley is entirely self- taught, his rhythms drawn from jazz seen in the abstraction of his shapes. But he has also looked at African sculpture from Dogon, Senufo, Banum and Mossi. He has his own collection of African sculpture. The African artists also carved wood with many different results. Often they were figurative, but also they sometimes allowed the shape of the wood to speak on its own, making an abstract shape. Mosley also learned from looking at Giacometti and Brancusi who work in bronze and stone. Mosley’s work brings together these inspirations in an original composition in wood.
Some of Mosley’s pieces seem to sit solidly on the ground, like Oval Continuity, 2017 that appears to be a carefully cut large oval ball. But the more we look at it, the more we feel it is about to burst forth into some magnificent vertical shape. Next to Mosley’s Oval Continuity is Calder’s Bougainvillea, 1947. It has a base on the ground, but it bursts forth in delicate flowers in all directions.
Other examples of pieces that appear to be grounded, but also rise up are Little Escalation, 2018 and Bended, 2018 (center and right in picture). They are single pieces of wood, with no insertions or extensions, but they too seem to be straining upward with an accordion pleat or a twist.
Mosley is 99 years old! He has been making sculpture since the 1950s. But only in the last few years has he achieved real recognition. He readily admits that is because he is Black. The current situation for artists of color is more open and accepting. But if we were to see one of these muscular sculptures without knowing the artist, we would still be overwhelmed by their beauty: the artist’s respect for wood as a material shines through as we look at his careful chisel marks and his surprising shapes and juxtapositions. It is sometimes tempting to anthropomorphize his shapes, an animal, a bird, a face, but look again and it is gone.
Fortunately, you have time to see this show, (it ends on June 1) but don’t put it off. I have been three times and each time I experienced it entirely differently. Hats off to Catharina Manchanda for this wonderful idea.
This entry was posted on February 3, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Raven, the creator in the Tlingit mythology, rescued humans from darkness by stealing the sun.
“He was a white bird and the world was in Darkness. Raven decides he will try and do something about the darkness, for himself and for the world. As he follows the Nass River, he encounters the Fishermen of the Nights … They tell Yeil ( as Raven was then called) that Nass Shaak Arankaawu ( the Nobleman at the Head of the Nass River) has many treasures in his Naa Kanidi ( Clan House)including beautifully carved boxes that house the light,” So Raven having disguised himself as a human baby, took the moon and the sun out of their boxes and liberated them.
Preston Singletary wondered what Raven has been doing since mythic times, so in his new series of glass works he brings Raven back, he wakes him up to our disastrous world. This exhibition (which unfortunately closed on June 1 but there is a free catalog you can get ) includes many versions of Raven as well as a new story about Raven written by collaborator Garth Stine:
“I Dream Therefore I am Raven.”
The exhibition is contained in the smaller room at Trevor Gallery, a low lighted space with a large photo of the forest at one end. Interspersed throughout the room are the new Raven sculptures, it feels like we are walking into the forest with Raven all around us.
Just outside the entrance is “Blue Light Spirit Mobile” suggesting blue spiritual light floating in the air. On the other side is “Communicating with the Spirits” two children riding on a composite bird/animal who seem to be joining us. So, the stage is set for a special event.
At the entrance a sign says, “Please Feed the Raven.” In these stories Raven is constantly in pursuit of food, as he realizes how degraded the salmon and berries he is given have become.
We see a white Raven. Raven was originally white, but when he rescued the sun, the Chief was so angry that he threw ashes at him and turned him black. But after sleeping for such a long time Raven grew new feathers and turned white again. As he arrives among people all glittering and white, they stare at him, so he decides to rub himself with ashes and turn black again so no one will notice him.
Preston Singletary’s “Ashes from the Fire,” 2024, blown and sand carved glass.
Preston: “In my interpretation of what is happening now I want to believe that Raven is battling climate change, protecting the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, or helping discover the Boarding School grave sites.
So the first story tells us about Raven’s Dreams of the World Before with clear skies, clean water, uncorrupted animals, “magnificent salmon, berries ripe to bursting, and roe hurling themselves up river to spawn. “Before the world turned on itself with contempt and tore itself apart.”
Altogether there are sixteen pieces that reference Raven’s efforts to heal the world, each accompanied by a story written by Garth Stein.
They include Raven using ashes from the fire to change himself back to black from white. Crying to unfreeze the frozen river, and purify the water to liberate the fish there, protecting the children who have died at boarding schools, and taking on a fog hat and a fighting hat. The final piece is “Wolf sitting on a Rock “observant, cunning, ruthless, merciful, the spirit he would need to lead People into the Future World.”
Preston Singletary’s “Frozen River,” 2024, blown and sand carved glass.
It is hard to overstate how creative this collaboration is between Stein and Singletary. The sculptures each convey the poignancy of the stories. They are all subtly colored, red, yellow, blue and created with blown and sand carved glass compressed within a larger shape and the form lines of traditional Tlingit sculpture, Stein’s stories seamlessly bring together the mythic and the contemporary in narratives that both tell us of the degraded state of the world, and the possibilities for healing it.
Yet in the end we see how much must be done.
For a brief moment the lush landscape turns brown
How ironic that white colonial settlers tried so hard to obliterate native culture, but now we increasingly realize that Indigenous knowledge may be the only way forward for our planet.
This entry was posted on January 27, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
I have known Lillian for many years, since way back when she visited Washington State University while I was teaching there in the mid-1980s. I bought a pair of her earrings that I still cherish!
Along the years I have acquired prints, a Stick mask in ceramic, and a small standing Shadow Spirit in ceramic. I first wrote about her when she had a major exhibition at the Warm Springs Museum in 1999, an article published in Art Papers Magazine and my book, Art and Politics Now.
Pitt has created many series of works. In “Celestial Ancestors,” she introduces the Star People:
In Native American legends, the Star People are often associated with advanced knowledge, spiritual insight, and the ability to traverse space and time. They are seen as benevolent helpers whose wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation. In some traditions, the Star People are revered as ancestors. In others, they are regarded as beings who came to Earth to teach humans essential skills of sustenance, such as planting and healing. Alternatively, they may be seen as guides who assist individuals in finding their way home.
These stories hold a special place in my heart, and it brings me great comfort to have a skilled sculptor, Ben Dye, bring my version of the Star People to life.
~ Lillian Pitt
As we enter the gallery, we immediately encounter a large red glass mask of the iconic Tsagaglal (“she who watches”) who benevolently presides over all of the star people. Tsagaglal is an actual petroglyph on the Columbia River and has been Lillian Pitt’s lodestar for decades. Behind her, six feet tall painted steel sculptures of Star People based on outlines and patterns, rather than a solid form, lead us through the exhibition with titles like Pondering his Direction and Protected from the Dawn.
On the back wall hangs a smaller Tsagaglal. Facing walls include clusters of other Star People, each one offering us a different mood through a specific title.
Many are painted on fragments of wood, a new material for Pitt with the color alone suggesting the title. For example, Star Person After Visiting Hawaii’s Hot Spots, has some pink striations; Star Person Fully Dressed for the Big Dance suggests an elegant outfit with an edge of bark as a wrap! They are almost miraculous, I felt guided and comforted as I looked at them. There is both humor and reverence in these works.
The exhibition also includes some of her jewelry in various media, including jasmine rings and silver earrings, blown glass with embedded imagery, and a large Spirit Watcher, with huge feathers surrounding his head, and a painted raku face. He reminds me of the great headdresses worn by youth at a recent Powwow here. Stick Indians have been a subject for Pitt for many years and this large figure seems to be the grandfather all those smaller Stick Indian masks, much larger and more dominating.
One of the wonders of Lillian Pitt’s work is that she is constantly evolving with new media and subjects, even as all of her work is unified by her particular view of the world. Barry Lopez expressed it beautifully in the catalog of her exhibition Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home (1999):
One of the hardest things to hold together in modern American culture–a rice paper house in a hurricane–is a community founded in memory, in imagination, in moral relations with the land. Lillian’s Pitt’s work tells us at least one woman among us won’t quit. She hasn’t given up, And so each of us gazing at her work has a place in the community of which she is a working part We’re standing together because of Lillian.
This entry was posted on January 24, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Avenue, Seattle, 98101 Runs until January 19, 2025.
Joyce J. Scott, Joyce’s Necklace, ca. 1978-1985. Rotasa Collection. Thread, beads, silver, enamel, metal, horn, stones, ivory, charms. 21 × 16 × 1 in. (53.3 × 40.6 × 2.5 cm.)
“I want to be amazed when I’m working. I want to confound myself. I want to tell a new story each time. I want to see the poetry in it. I want to see the labor in it. It is a kind of sacred embrace. That’s the part you use to create. That’s the part that others may not know or see.”
Joyce Scott is not afraid to be in your face. It has helped in her expressive journey that she learned about the peyote stitch in 1976 from Native American artist Sandy Fife Wilson. The peyote stitch is created off a loom allowing much more freedom for the artist than simply attaching her chosen medium, beads, to a flat surface. We see it used throughout the works in the exhibition.
Let us start where the exhibition begins with her sense of connectivity through generations of her family in art making. We first see a large construction made of fabric, with quilts on the walls outside. Inside beaded “quilts” hang on the walls of a “living room” setting complete with a comfortable sofa, sculpture, books, and art works from many cultures.
Scott titles this work The Threads That Unite My Seat to Knowledge, 2024. It brings together quilts by her mother (Elizabeth Talford Scott (Fifty Year Quilt, 1930–80); maternal grandmother, Mary Jane Caldwell; maternal grandfather, Samuel Caldwell; and godmother, Lucille Foster Brown. Inside is a quilt by her paternal grandmother.
This connection across generations is accompanied by sculpture in the same gallery that suggest three powerful images of black womanhood: the birth of a baby, the birth of a dead baby
and the selling of white body parts by a black woman (called Dead Albino Boy for Sale from the Series Flayed Tanzanian Albinos, 2021-2022).
An early group of works titled Mammie Wadi 1979-1981 (Mother Water) refers to black people who are now in the ocean and have transformed into semi aquatic forms or goddesses. “I’m a water sign. I also have always lived near water. Many religions see underwater as where a lot of the powerful Orishas or gods are. Bones are at the bottom, people who jumped off slave ships or who were thrown off. Ships that went down, planes that drop.”
Look closely at the dresses and many necklaces throughout the exhibition that contain small souvenirs from other cultures, reflecting Scott’s own life experiences.
Each gallery has a theme,
For example there is the Black Nanny series,
The Racist Stereotypes,
Messing with Stereotypes, (in collaboration in one work Donald Byrd of Spectrum Dance ).
Mammy/Penis From the series Still Funny,
2011
Her fearless confrontation with stereotypes like the hypermasculinity of black men is seen in her works like Cuddly Black Dick from 1995-7
In the same section she sends up Aunt Jemima, watermelons and most shockingly, Baby Bait a pair of earrings that refer to a practice celebrated by Southern racists, to feed black baby children to alligators.
On a more cheerful note her delightful Thunder Thigh Review, 1975-1990, flows with her sense of humor and irony. The theme of celebrating the magnificent posteriors of black woman in contrast to the skinny white body was hugely entertaining as well as sending up traditional concepts of beauty.
Scott’s frequently intersects with African sculpture as in Birth of Mammi (Anansi), in which the artist has added complex bead work to an African carving to suggest the birth of Anansi, a spider who is a mythical African trickster.
Note this installation carefully
Lynched Tree, 2011/2024
We see an upside down white person made of beads.
Second image shows rubbish pouring from inside her
Third image is her lower half
Final image is the rest
According to the artist:
A pale-pink beaded figure hangs by her feet, her body open on the ground below. An accumulation of broken glass and discarded things, her insides pour forth from her abdomen and chest cavity. She personifies for Scott “the immature feelings we have as a young, slowly evolving species. The work addresses what we refuse to embrace because, if we accept the truth, then we must change or be proven wrong.”
Other section titles are Making A Way When there is no Way, (sexual and physical violence)
and Ancestor and Progeny.
the figure on the left has procelain 18th century dolls’ arms and legs, on the right are African sculpture on a white figure
In the beginnintg of the exhibition are a series of works incorporating African sculptures. to the right is trickster savior of African Albinos, and to the right SHHH,
At the end of the exhibition with “Turning the Tables”, we are given an opportunity to join in communal weaving, the yarn is supplied as is the frame. It returns to the theme at the beginning of the exhibition, of her powerful intergenerational experience and inspiration, only now we are also part of it as well:
As Joyce Scott put it at the end of the show: “I am a sharer. I don’t sit on my knowledge. When I go over, I want to leave a cadre of people who are like, “That Joyce” taught me this stitch. Watch me write a whole new book with that stitch. That is a kind of legacy.”
What a treat to talk with Patti Warashina, the legendary Seattle-based ceramic sculptor. Warashina has been creating wildly original artworks for decades. Based on her own invented figural form, a detailed face, hands and feet , uninhibited by anatomy, they perform incredible acrobatic feats. She wants her figures to represent humanity in general rather than a specific person.
The big exception to that point of view is her 1986 Procession the Seattle Art Scene with 72 artists, driving and dancing over a Ming style semicircular bridge. Warashina took multiple polaroids of each person and then created recognizable faces. Not only that the figures also have props, such as a real pencil or brush (perhaps scaled down for the sculpture). Procession celebrates the artists and the lively art scene.
Warashina first emerged as part of an informal group of ceramic artists in the Northwest who were moving beyond the vessel tradition in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The “ Poke in the Eye” exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum is a refreshing look at this quirky art of the Northwest and California that continued into the 1980s. These artists rejected both the abstract expressionist obsession with inner drives as well as the slick surfaces of New York Pop. Peter Voulkos pioneered clay as sculpture with huge slabs that he pierced in various ways. Artists such as Robert Arneson and Howard Kottner created ceramic sculpture filled with humor, irony and even cynicism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Patti Warashina’s works in the show like Airstream Turkey are classic examples of funk art.
At the time she went to undergrad and grad school in the early 60s, there was a turn away from figure drawing and sculpture, as a rejection of classical approaches. But as an undergraduate she took one drawing course as an elective ( her parents wanted her to be a dental hygienist), and was hooked on art. Then she happened to see people making hand built clay pots with slabs of clay, So she turned to clay, first punching, and coiling, then using the wheel and painting and drawing on the pots.
When she was hired to teach at UW in 1973, her colleague Harold Kottler was already working with a funk attitude and she joined him. Thus from accidentally moving toward clay, she became part of pioneering changes to clay tradition. But as she was immersed in a male dominated scene, she decided to branch out into her own sense of humor and aesthetic
One of my favorite themes from this era is the Kiln Series. It was inspired, the artist explained, by the constant kiln talk among “the guys” including a cart loading technique for the kiln. Warashina’s wonderful take on the idea, turning the cart into an actual model of a car: as it drives into the kiln it becomes a brick car. Warashina made a series of kiln sculptures between 68 and 72, then car sculptures starting in 79 that continued into the late 80s.
Cats became another theme of her work, based on a Japanese cat (nekko.) She was asked to do one and then she made a whole series starting in 2013. These were seen in a major exhibition at the Bellevue Art Museum.
As she explained, there is a lot of serendipity as she changed from one theme to another, pyramids, cats, cups. Her role as a foundational part of the funk movement in the NW ceramics world is only part of her story. Her work has many layers: sophisticated firing techniques, drawing, subtle statements on the state of the world, as well as absurdity.
Many of them present us with empowered women.
Patti Warashina’s recent exhibition, “The World Upside Down,” at the Travor Gallery, spoke to our immediate moment.
The figures escape a trouble filled globe, climbing away from it.
Just to give one example, in Double Trouble, two of her characteristic figures are back to back, the lower one on a bright red globe with indications of flames. Under that figure and the red globe is a base depicting the solar system with representations of the sun, and planets, but we also see in another strip of detailed drawing, specific references to salmon, guns, nationalism and other intense topics.
The figures themselves, partly covered in black paint to suggest a mask on the face and tight leggings, fling their arms out and pump their legs uselessly in mid air. They want to escape but seem to be only flailing. The top figure spears somewhere between joyful and anxious. She immobilizes the figure under her.
There is nothing funk about this series of works. The artist said she was storytelling, although she does not write the stories. These figures have four or five glazes fired at different temperatures. They include detailed painting and drawing. They are sophisticated examples of what ceramics can do in the hands of a master artist. They are also clearly referring to the current state of the world.
This entry was posted on November 26, 2024 and is filed under Uncategorized.
A contribution to my blog by art historian Pamela Allara
Heidi Mielke is a visual artist who is the education manager at Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg. In the” Sentinels” series of Vandyke prints on cloth, she addresses the concept of the female nude in art from a political/activist perspective. The prints are life size, all posed by the artist.
When one brings to mind the image of the female nude in Western art history, for instance from Titian to Manet, one sees a reclining figure, often on a bed, gazing alluringly out at the viewer, ready to be mounted. Although feminist artists challenged that ‘one-dimensional’ portrayal of the female nude by presenting more realistic, less idealized images from the 1970s on, often these ‘naked’ nudes remain prone or seated. I am thinking in particular of Alice Neel’s portrait nudes, including her own from 1980. Of her many nudes, only her 1934 portrait of her naked 10-year-old daughter Isabetta is standing. But there is one exception: the well-known South African artist Marlene Dumas, whose standing nudes, either in ink or oil paint, are unabashed in their nakedness—indeed they appear to celebrate it. I assume that Mielke knows the work; certainly, she appears to be building on it. Nonetheless, I did not have Dumas in mind when I saw Miele’s images in her talk. It was my own long-standing expectations of the female nude that caused me to be taken aback by Mielke’s “Sentinels Project”. The nudes are standing! In that posture they become confrontational, but what precisely may that mean?
Mielke describes the project in detail on her website, https://heidimielke.com, I will summarize some of her main points. In her prints and paintings, the artist uses her own body to perform. She present us with examples of violence against women, which, she argues, still predominatein the ‘new’ South Africa. She began the series in 2013 after learning of the violent rape and murder of a 17-year-old woman, Amene Booysen, who was disemboweled in the process. That horrific event propelled her toward an activist art.
Mielke continued the series in 2016 during the perpetrator’s trial. Her aim has in general been to provide a heightened consciousness of social justice issues in a patriarchal country that has failed to overcome the discrimination and victimization of women. After her masters exhibit in the Women’s Jail at the Constitutional Court in 2015, she began to incorporate newspaper clippings and drawings on the women’s bodies transforming them into landscapes of violence. Should such violence simply be accepted? “Over my dead body!” she exclaims in her exhibition of that title.
When displayed, the “Sentinels” must be seen one at a time as they are life-sized. All are self-portraits of the artist. The figures appear to be standing, but their feet are crossed, so they must be either hanging or lying down. The dark ground suggests to me that they are lying on a slab, but overall, their ambivalent position suggests the figures are being raised from the dead. They were murdered, but here they are given a voice. And through the objects that they carry and the words that are written across and around them, they speak.. We cannot claim to know or understand these violent acts, but with careful viewing we are forced to confront the ways in which the artist presents violence.
In response to my query, the artist replied that in some of the images, “I am holding pieces of dead livestock, such as a pig’s head, a cow’s tongue, and a bull’s heart” which create a comparison between the slaughter of livestock and that of the victims. (email, October 7, 2024). In violent death, the distinction between human and animal is in some sense obliterated. Mielke added that some objects refer to the objects used to perpetuate the murders. For example, in a case from 2013 as reported in IOL news, Duduzile Zozo, who was lesbian, had a toilet brush shoved up her vagina as a sort of corrective rape.
Surprisingly, despite the horrific circumstances of their demise, the victims, as represented by Mielke’s self-portraits, are not as disturbing as one might expect. The bodies suspended before us are upright and do not appear at all to be in pain. Instead, they are performing as sentinels, by keeping watch, impassively, calmly, and continuously. They do not permit us to forget or to turn away. In Mielke’s words, they are like superheroes that guard us from being overwhelmed and fearful of confronting violent death. Through collaborating with artists both locally and internationally, she hopes to create an army of sentinels creating awareness of gender-based violence. I look forward to seeing how this important and moving project continues.
This entry was posted on November 24, 2024 and is filed under Uncategorized.
n the back
This photo is a recreation of that action.
Another series of works are based on the bell shape made into a pan in which a community meal was cooked. The Belltown cafe was a community gathering place that traded food for art.
One of my favorite themes from this era is the Kiln Series. It was inspired, the artist explained, by the constant kiln talk among “the guys” including a cart loading technique for the kiln. Warashina’s wonderful take on the idea, turning the cart into an actual model of a car: as it drives into the kiln it becomes a brick car. Warashina made a series of kiln sculptures between 68 and 72, then car sculptures starting in 79 that continued into the late 80s.
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