Others Who Were Here, Cris Bruch’s sparely installed exhibition that just came down at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, used looking and language to summon the expansiveness of eastern Colorado, where Bruch’s family worked as farmers in the early twentieth century. Titles and wall text worked in tandem with Bruch’s sculptures and installations to… Read more »
At the Seahawks-Vikings football game several weeks ago, players exhaled clouds of heat and moisture as they lined up for the snap. Their breaths swelled from their mouths, spread away, and then disappeared into the frigid Minnesota air. Welcome to Jupiter, sportscaster Al Michaels quipped. A galaxy away, at the Henry Art Gallery, artist Demetrius… Read more »
One evening, as he is losing the king’s faith and his own power, Cardinal Wolsey counsels his protégé Thomas Cromwell on their present impasse. King Henry VIII will dissolve his first marriage and take Anne Boleyn as his new bride. Wolsey and Cromwell are to find the means to the king’s end. Confounded, Cromwell questions… Read more »
During the week, I look often from my office to the flickering work lights of a half-finished building south of Lake Union, where Seattle’s skyline is acquiring a new shape and solidity. The lights are distributed regularly throughout the building’s boxy frame, and they radiate in morning fog, pulsate in the fair skies of midday, and shine like beacons… Read more »
We’re coming to the end of daffodil season in Seattle. Everywhere I go, the flowers have been announcing spring, trumpeting forth the news with their proud center coronas and blaze of yellow. It took me a long time to see something more than the daffodil’s bold color and message of seasonal change. These perennial flowers… Read more »
At the Wright Exhibition Space in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, I recently stood in front of a large painting by Andy Warhol, Rorschach, from 1984. I had seen it before in the double-height gallery of the Seattle Art Museum, but in this sparely curated space, the piece took on a new resonance. Part of… Read more »
Just a few blocks from the nearby summer dahlia stand I frequent is a modest house with thin red and grey bricks, taupe siding, and a recessed front door. It would be unremarkable except for its extraordinary front garden. Its owners have surrendered conventional green grass to an insurrection of rosebushes. They grow without rhyme or… Read more »
Whatever the weather, spring officially begins today, March 20th. Heeding the impending day, I hastened to finish Adam Gopnik’s most recent book, Winter: Five Windows on the Season, before the vernal equinox heralded the new season and winter melted away. In the last months, Gopnik has been a constant companion. I was charmed by his 2001… Read more »
Last weekend, cultural historian, art lover, and food enthusiast Nell and I explored Georgetown with a group of about fifteen. Our walking tour was offered by Nell’s company, Localist, which creates customized itineraries for visitors coming to Seattle, and cosponsored by Friend of Georgetown History. We started with some background about the south Seattle neighborhood’s early… Read more »