Regina Hackett

When Stranger art critic Jen Graves took out after Garrison Keillor, I took out after her in this links post:

No humor allowed: Jen Graves posted this dazzling piece of (at least brief) nonsense yesterday:

Remember: American men don’t do art unless it involves naked ladies, unless the men have thin shoulders. I hate you, Garrison Keillor.

Jen.
He’s kidding. Kidding. The whole thing is a spoof on sex stereotypes,
not an indulgence of them. Hate Garrison Keillor? Save it for Dick
Cheney.

Surely the man who invented the place where all the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above average would have to be kidding when he sounds like a sexist troll.

Maybe not. Seattle painter Susanna Bluhm referred me to another version of what’s on Keillor’s mind these days. Turns out, he’s mad at musical Jews.

And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that
trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest
of that dreck. Did one of our guys write ‘Grab your loafers, come along
if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’? No, we didn’t. Christmas is a Christian holiday–if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. (more)

What’s up with Keillor? The doctor is not in, but I’m tempted to think the aging humorist has a medical problem. Something pressing on his cerebral cortex, perhaps? Shout out to Keillor: Time for a check up from the neck up.

Second apology goes out to Stranger book critic Paul Constant. When the Los Angeles Times covered the Elliott Bay Book Company’s closure in Pioneer Square, I praised the article, saying the locals missed the story under their noses. I singled out Constant for special blame, saying he was “more interested in griping that he didn’t get full credit from the Seattle Times for being first as the news breaker.” (more)

The problem is, the LA Times piece read a bit like an obit. Yes, Elliott Bay is leaving Pioneer Square, which is a huge blow to the neighborhood, but, as Constant later reported, it is reopening on Capitol Hill. Constant was waiting to get his facts straight, always laudable.

In the immortal words of Gilda Radner:

By examining the connective tissue between parents and children, Parenthesis is art made from life’s glue. My review here. Jen Graves here. Through Saturday.

From Neil Goldberg‘s video, My Parents Read Dreams I’ve Had About Them, 1998. (He told them not to smile.)

Also ending Saturday: Ten years of New work by SuttonBeresCuller at Lawrimore Project. that surveys ten years of their concerns. My review, Blowing in Blocked Wind, here. Jen Graves here.

Rachel Maxi, final holiday sale, Tuesday, December 22 from 4 to 8 PM  in Seattle: 1326 13th Ave S. 98144 . Tiny paintings for everyone!

If you squint, it’s almost a tree.

In John Ashbery‘s River of the Canoefish, mackerel echo their meaning in Yeats‘ Sailing to Byzantium, but with Ashbery’s own note of revulsion for the mindless forces of biology:

Yeats:

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

Ashbery:

Today they are as abundant as mackerel, as far as the eye can see,
tumbled, tumescent, tinted all the colors of the rainbow
though not in the same order,
a swelling, scumbled mass, rife with incident
and generally immune to sorrow.
Shall we gather at the river? On second thought, let’s not.

In Ashbery’s honor, a small survey of the art of disgust. Shall we gather at the river? On second thought, let’s not.

Marc Quinn, SELF (red), 2006

Katy Stone, Explosion 7 (double bloom), 2006
Acrylic on Duralar, pins

Grant Barnhart, 1938 Acrylic on canvas, 2009

Jon Haddock  R.King – Screenshot Series
2000
chromogenic print from digital file created in photoshop

Nigel Cooke, Mind, 2008 Oil/Canvas

All those moments will be lost like tears in the rain. – Bladerunner

Richard Wright won the Turner Prize. It didn’t hurt him that he frequently destroys what he makes, which means like traditional sand painting, that work is unavailable for purchase. Because nobody’s in it for the money, everybody shares in the warm glow of the moment. Self-editing blue chips can get by on grants, patronage and prizes, as well as what they don’t toss.

What about artists of whom few have heard? When they make a habit of destroying their product, few care because few know.

Let me introduce Seattle’s Randy Wood. When he wants to, which isn’t often, he can paint images of rocks and trees that the amateurs of the Chinese literati tradition would have viewed with favor. Possibly as a homage to them, all of course dead, he sends the drawings crafted in their style to join them: dust thou art, or, in the case of one performance, bedding thou art.

At Soil in 2005, he presented a long glass case with drawings fanned out along the bottom and two rodents scurrying back and forth on top of them. During the course of the exhibit, the rodents chewed the drawings to pulp, which they used as bedding.

First day of They Will Be The Judge Of That:

Wood occasionally takes to the road with a performance he calls Bye Bye Little Drawing.

From his Web site:

It consists of myself sitting at a portable table, creating watercolors and ink drawings and, as soon as they dry, running them through a paper shredder.
People have strong reactions to the shredding of my own work. I’ve been asked to stop, some have offered to buy a piece before I destroy it, and children love to watch art get shredded.

I once asked if he’d save from the shredder a single line of trees whose leaves were a furry green. Like the man who wouldn’t help The Band find a place to lay their heads, no was all he said.

The latest round of acquisitions at the Seattle Art Museum concentrates on Asian and Asian American work, which is, for the museum, a kind of roots music. SAM opened as a Pan-Asian art museum, a field that continues to be a strength.

Highlights.

Xue Song, Coca Cola, 1998, 24 x 20 inches.

Miwa Yanagi, Yuka, from the My Grandmothers series, 2000. Chromogenic print on Plexiglas, mounted on aluminum.

Chiho Aoshima, Red Eyed Tribe Maker, 2002, print
Yuken Teruya, Untitled, (Sigonas), 2002, paper bag sculpture
Joseph Park, Tigerish Bean Maker, 2005, painting
Johsel Namkung,  four photographs, 1980s, including:

Wei Letang (John Way), hanging scroll, 1988
Mr. Hikone Maker, two paintings, 1999-2000
Shen Shichong, hanging scroll, 1629
Zhang Yu, hanging scroll, 1792
Toshiko Takaezu, late 1950s stoneware.

Koo Bohnchang , vessel, 2005
Deng Shu, Boating in Guangling, 1924
Sarah Sze, scroll, 1996
Aki Fujimoto, Mmmmmmmmmmmm 1999; Fine Today, 1999, and 9 Polaroid prints, 1999
Tomoko Takahashi, Line In & Out: Day and Night, 1999
Shen Liang, Book Cover Series, 2006
Sun Yi, hanging scroll, Peony Maker, early 18th century
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sumiyoshi House, photograph, 1999
Bada Shanren (Zhu Da), hanging scroll, Lotus and Ducks Maker Bada Shanren, 1690s
Akio Takamori, Sleeper, Maker, 2000

Via

Video here.

Via

Are an illusion to me now.

John Schuh

William Powhida (click image to enlarge)

The Powhida drawing is part of his contribution to a group show at Platform Gallery, The There, through Jan. 1.

Can slam-dunk his way through the comics.

John Schuh