Below, we've rounded up the biggest and best art shows you need to know about this season, like Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer and Margie Livingston: Extreme Landscape Painting. You can also find a complete list of art shows in Seattle this winter on our Things To Do calendar, or check out the rest of our critics' picks from Seattle Art and Performance.


Jump to: Museums | Galleries

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MUSEUMS

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
Alfredo Arreguín: Life Patterns This Mexican-born Seattle artist, according to his representatives at Linda Hodges Gallery “recognized as one of the originators of the Pattern and Decoration movement in painting,” imitates mosaic, tile, and floral decorations in oils. A salmon fisher and nature lover, he often depicts life in the Salish Sea. This exhibition will mount more than 30 of his works, particularly his more recent achievements. (Through Sun Feb 3)

Heikki Seppa: Master Metalsmith Heikki Seppa, who died in 2010, was a master smith born in Finland who immigrated west and eventually taught in the USA, where he co-founded the Society of North American Goldsmiths. The museum displays a range of his works, including jewelry, functional pieces, and sculpture. (Through Sun Feb 3)


Bellevue Arts Museum
Dylan Neuwirth: OMNIA Dylan Neuwirth transforms the entire museum into an enormous metaphor for the cycle of life through five exhibitions composed of neon, video, performance art, digital art, and sculpture. Two parts of this multifaceted takeover are installed outside, on the building’s exterior and on the balcony, while two more are found within the museum. The last piece in the entire installation is an online flash gallery entitled New Folklore. (Through Sun March 24)

Polaroids: Personal, Private, Painterly Robert E. Jackson’s exhibition of his collection of Polaroids, cocurated with museum executive director and chief curator Benedict Heywood, is a curious and deeply interesting look into the candid lives of others. All the subjects and authors of these snapshots are unknown to Jackson—the photos are what Heywood described as “pure images.” The photos don’t come across as narrative in and of themselves, but more like beautiful, half-second windows into random people’s lives. (Through Sun March 24) JASMYNE KEIMIG

BAM Biennial 2018: Glasstastic Artists from Oregon and Washington will contribute their most innovative pieces in glass to this year’s BAM Biennial. (Through Sun April 14)

Clyde Petersen: Merch & Destroy Animation filmmaker, musician, artist, and roadie Clyde Petersen presents a “heartfelt yet abject love letter” to touring life, drawn from his own two decades of experience with Aesop Rock, Kimya Dawson, his own band, Your Heart Breaks, and others. With a style that’s equal measures innocence and wry distance, he’s constructed a Ford Econoline and a greenroom out of cardboard that’s complemented by a set of guitars from the same humble materials, and co-created with Darius X for the show Shredders: A Fantasy Guitar Store. (Through Sun April 14) JOULE ZELMAN


Frye Art Museum
Group Therapy Group Therapy features a roster of international artists addressing themes of healing and self-care through a range of media. With its proximity to Harborview Medical Center (the region’s largest trauma care hospital) and several other hospitals, the museum will also function as a community “free clinic” with immersive installations and participatory projects. By including racism, sexism, and political tribalism as social pathologies, the show reframes what it means to be ill in the 21st century and offers community building as one possible curative. (Through Sun Jan 6) KATIE KURTZ

Cherdonna Shinatra: DITCH Cherdonna Shinatra is a drag performer, dancer, choreographer, and generally fun lunatic. Her drag shtick is that she’s a woman playing a man playing a woman, which used to be a radical idea but has now become pretty run-of-the-mill. Which is great! That said, Cherdonna is more than a woman playing a man playing a woman, she’s a performance artist dedicated to interrogating how the female body is consumed by the male gaze/gays. Her new work at the Frye, DITCH, will create immersive DAILY performances that are COMMITTED to making the world happy in a time of Trump. If anyone can do that impossible task, Shinatra and company can. (Jan 26–April 28) CHASE BURNS

The Rain Doesn’t Know Friends from Foes: Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian Three Dubai-based Iranian artists—the Haerizadeh brothers and their friend Hesam Rahmanian—transform internet news images through painting and animation in an interrogation of mass media consumption, violence, and voyeurism. For this exhibition, they show two animations combining photographs of migrants striving to reach Europe with “painterly patterns, fablelike animal imagery, and surreal mirroring effects.” (Jan 26–April 28)

Tschabalala Self In the first solo museum presentation of her work on the West Coast, New Haven-based Tschabalala Self’s art resists the norms of traditional portraiture. Dealing with the “iconographic significance of the Black female body in contemporary culture,” the figures in Self’s work both accept and reject the stereotypes and fantasies surrounding the Black female body. They are not there to instruct or reprimand, but to simply be. At once garish, cheeky, and thought-provoking, Self’s use of collage gives the paintings a textured look that makes you want to reach out and touch them (don’t, though). (Jan 26–April 28) JASMYNE KEIMIG

Quenton Baker: Ballast In 1841, American-born slaves on the brig Creole commandeered the ship bringing them toward a continued life of misery and cruelty. They landed on British territory, where they found their freedom. Award-winning local poet Quenton Baker uses this story to examine black history from a personal standpoint, à la his collection This Glittering Republic. The survival struggle of long-ago people and the lingering effects of slavery on the psyche of those born free inspired Baker’s “erasure poems,” which he created by blacking out words in the Senate report on the Creole. Baker uses this selective elimination process to take control of the historical narrative, directing the viewer’s consciousness to unintended meanings. (Through Sun Feb 3) JOULE ZELMAN


Henry Art Gallery
Martha Friedman: Castoffs The ancient two-finger amulet, made of dark stone like obsidian or hematite, was placed in ancient Egyptian coffins, presumably to protect the corpse within. Brooklyn artist Martha Friedman, a master of uneasy forms, places glass-blown versions of these talismans alongside distorted, blobby approximations of the male body. She derived these sculptures from casts of the body of Silas Riener, a dancer and choreographer, before embellishing and altering them with rubber tubing and sheeting and metal spikes. Friedman’s dissection of the male body might be taken as an inversion of—or revenge for—the age-old male gaze, in which the torso is not only objectified but dismembered. (Through Sun Feb 10) JOULE ZELMAN

Gurvich Contemporary Artist: Carolina Caycedo London-born Caycedo, whose parents are Colombian, lives in LA, and produces environmentally and politically engaged public art projects in many countries. Her work has also been seen in numerous biennials, from Venice to Sao Paulo. Here, she’ll be involving the public in projects related to Be Dammed, her ongoing reflection on the interconnectedness of waters and the freeing of waterways from dams. She'll give a lecture and lead museum visitors in an improvised dance with handmade fishing nets on February 23. (Feb 20–23)

Bruce Conner: Untitled Prints Bruce Conner’s latest exhibition focuses on murky and moody prints he made in 1970–71 using a new-to-market felt-tip pen. Ink in these pens dried out quickly, resulting in Conner exploring ephemerality in his drawings, memorializing them forever by photographing and then transferring the results to print. (Through Sun April 28) JASMYNE KEIMIG

Edgar Arceneaux: Library of Black Lies Enter Edgar Arceneaux’s unassuming wooden structure—a low, irregular-sided wooden shack—and find yourself in a parallel-world library of sugar-crystal clouded books. According to museum materials, this installation—first exhibited in Paris in 2016—concerns Arceneaux’s preoccupations with history, memory, and our subjective human reconstructions of both. The result looks like a cramped, mazelike hideaway, a metaphor for the limits imposed on our views of the past by our own need for containment. (Through Sun June 2) JOULE ZELMAN


Nordic Museum
The Vikings Begin Dating from the mid-7th to late 11th century, artifacts in this exhibition come from 15 grave boats found buried around the grounds of Sweden's Uppsala University. Seattle is the farthest west these objects have ever been. The exhibit space is moody and sense-stimulating, with an ominous drumbeat playing throughout and two giant screens depicting animal sacrifices and Viking battle scenes. (Through Mon April 15) JASMYNE KEIMIG


Northwest African American Museum
Bold As Love: Jimmy at Home This Jimi Hendrix exhibit, which opens on the late, legendary Seattle guitar player's 76th birthday, features archival and family photos, Hendrix's own artwork, personal artifacts, music findings, and more from throughout his life. (Through May 5)


Seattle Art Museum
Claire Partington: Taking Tea The British ceramicist elucidates the history hidden in the Porcelain Room, a beloved permanent installation in the museum. Incorporating or evoking Baroque painting, fragments from centuries-old shipwrecks, human figures, and factory production, Partington delves into the Eurasian china trade. Luxury, culture, exploitation all lie behind the seeming anodyne dishes and vessels. (Dec 7–Dec 6, 2020)

Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India A traveling exhibition of some 250 artworks and objects that trace four centuries of royal history of the Rathore dynasty of Rajasthan, India. Most of these objects—which include miniature paintings, handcrafted armor, and carved furnishings—had never traveled to the US prior to this exhibition. The SAM installation will include large-scale photographic murals that evoke the geographic and historical context of these rare treasures. (Through Mon Jan 21) EMILY POTHAST

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer In his first major museum exhibition, Gibson combines traditional elements of Native American art and materials with contemporary pop culture references and images. This leads to an interesting juxtaposition of cultures—like a wooden panel traditionally beaded with “I WANNA BE ADORED” (a lyric from the classic 1991 Stone Roses song) blazed across it. Or a punching bag beautifully adorned with beaded geometric patterns. (Feb 28–May 12) JASMYNE KEIMIG

Noble Splendor: Art of Japanese Aristocrats Works commissioned by rich patrons of the arts in premodern Japan are celebrated: sculptures, screens, scrolls, paintings, and metalwork. (Through Sun March 3)


Tacoma Art Museum
Rebecca and Jack Benaroya Wing Expansion and Inaugural Exhibition A half-century’s worth of glass treasures from the Pilchuck Glass School (founded in '71) is contained in this collection, and the bequeathal of it to the museum is a huge deal for Washington’s art scene, with masterpieces by Lino Tagliapietra, Mary Van Cline, Debora Moore, Dale Chihuly, and Martin Blank included. (Opens Sat Jan 19)

Native Portraiture: Power and Perception This exhibit invites you to contemplate structural oppression and appropriation of Native subjects in portraits by non-Native people, as well as Native artists’ reflections and reworking of this stereotypical iconography. (Through Sun Feb 10)

Places to Call Home: Settlements in the West See representations of Western cities throughout their history and development, including beautiful works by immigrant or immigrant-descended artists like Kenjiro Nomura and Mian Situ. (Through Sun Feb 10)


Whatcom Museum
Endangered Species: Artists on the Front Line of Biodiversity With 80 works by 52 artists, this exhibition explores the full spectrum of our natural environment with art that addresses everything from anthropogenic climate disruption to habitat restoration projects. Pieces in the show date back as far as the early 1800s through the present, and include George Catlin’s striking and strange 1832 oil painting Buffalo Bull, Grazing on the Prairie, Michael Felber’s 2017 colored pencil Arctic Father, and Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species series, 10 silk-screen prints from 1983, each featuring a different endangered animal. (Through Sun Jan 6) KATIE KURTZ


Wing Luke Museum
Wham! Bam! Pow!: Cartoons, Turbans, and Confronting Hate Vishavjit Singh responds to xenophobia—which he experienced plenty of after September 11, 2001, as a Sikh American lumped in with other South Asians and Middle Easterners—with a superhero series about a Sikh anti-bigot. (Through Sun Feb 24)


GALLERIES

The Alice
Everyone's Floored Carrying on the four-year-old tradition of exhibiting art by people of all training and ability levels, the Alice is neglecting the walls in favor of the floor this time. Here's how much they trust the local arts community to do marvelous things: They didn't even know what the pieces would look like before the creators brought them to their door! (To encourage face-to-face contact, the Alice didn't accept mailed submissions.) Turn your eyes earthward and shop carpentry, two-dimensional art, crafts, audio recordings, and whatever else the gallerists can fit in the space. Your dollars will be split 50/50 between the gallery and the creator. It's a great practice that allows you to support the local creative scene and the spread of democracy in art. JOULE ZELMAN (Dec 8–Jan 19)


ArtXchange
Laura Castellanos: Bodega (Love Materials) There’s a sort of spiritual and spooky element to Castellanos’s work—it’s as if her paintbrush is divining some message from a god(dess) who is at once benevolent and strange, gaudy and all-seeing, lover of both bright green and blood sacrifice. Castellanos is turning ArtXchange into a giant interactive “bodega,” partially re-creating her truly legendary studio space inside the gallery, and will display everything from paintings to hand puppets to fine art. I’ve heard that there will be some budget-friendly pieces, so save up and bring a sturdy bag! (Dec 6–Jan 26) JASMYNE KEIMIG


Bryan Ohno Gallery
Laura Hamje: 53 Views of the Alaskan Way Viaduct When the Alaskan Way Viaduct closes next year, the city’s most accessible elevated westward view goes with it. I’ve been practicing nostalgia for that loss over the past couple of years, not minding when traffic slows and I’m stuck staring at Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains in the distance. Seattle artist Laura Hamje’s paintings in various mediums—from oil on linen to gouache on paper—are snapshots of all the different swoops, curves, and pillars of the 65-year-old roadway. Based in part on Japanese artist Hiroshige Ando’s early-19th-century woodblock series 53 Stations of the Tokaido, the series captures the structure in its many moods—from the darkened and rainy, to the bright flashes of light puncturing shadows. All of the views are from the perspective of how we will remember the viaduct the most: through a windshield. KATIE KURTZ (Dec 6-Jan 5)


cogean?
Ellen Ito: Cook The experimental project and home gallery space of artists Joey Veltkamp and Ben Gannon, cogean? features exhibitions that highlight domestic arts and crafts. Their fifth show at the 100-year-old house they share on Cogean Avenue—within easy walking distance of the Bremerton ferry terminal—is from Ellen Ito, and it is centered on sharing food as community building. Ito also organized a publication in conjunction; it features illustrations and recipes by more than 40 artists, including Matthew Offenbacher, Nicholas Nyland, and Lulu Yee. Proceeds from recipe-book sales benefit local organizations, and attendees are encouraged to bring donations for a local food bank. (Through Mon Dec 31) KATIE KURTZ


Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center
Neddy Artist Awards Exhibit One of the largest and most prestigious art awards in the state of Washington, the Neddy Awards provide cash prizes to outstanding artists living in the Puget Sound region. See the artists’ work at this exhibit. (Through Sun Dec 16)


Davidson Galleries
Georges Rouault: The Complete Miserere The print-focused gallery brings another European heavy hitter to town: Georges Rouault, who lived from 1871-1958 and worked in Fauvist and Expressionist modes. Here, you can see his two-part series composed of the Miserere (plea for the pity of God) and Guerre (war), which responded to the horrors of World War I with Christian and humanist imagery. (Through Sat Dec 22)

Arthur Luiz Piza Sao Paulo-born, Paris-educated Piza is known for his unusual style of gouging designs in ultra-thick copper plates with hammers and chisels. The unsteadily balanced, thick abstracts give an impression of weight and power. (Dec 6–22)

Théo Tobiasse
See the figurative lithographs of Lithuanian Israeli artist Théo Tobiasse, a fascinating figure who survived the Holocaust in Paris by hiding for two years in a tiny apartment with his family. (Feb 7-March 2)

Dion Zwirner Looking at Dion Zwirner’s paintings is like looking at a breathtaking landscape through a looking glass covered in rainwater—beautiful, emotional, and wet. Zwirner’s abstract approach to documenting the natural world is refreshing and deeply dewy. The colors she uses drip and bleed into one another, marrying horizons, seas, trees, clouds, and earth in a way that almost reminds you of a place you’ve been to in a dream. (March 7–30) JASMYNE KEIMIG


The Factory
Jean Nagai: With Spirits Featuring LA-based Japanese American artist Nagai’s large-scale, semi-abstract, intricately-designed paintings and works from his 100 Days/100 Paintings project. Anthony White guest-curates. (Thurs Dec 13)


Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery
12th Anniversary Show with Jeremy Eaton Underground comix artist/painter Jeremy Eaton classifies his art as “energetic,” and his pop-surrealist grotesques and abstracts certainly testify to a wild and abundantly weird imagination. We don’t know exactly what he’s showing here, but recent works have included a depiction of an infernal David Bowie head floating in a crowded solar system and a series of misshapen, hairy, demonic pinups. (Dec 8–Jan 9)


FoodArt Collection
FROOT by Goldsuit: New Artworks from Genevieve St. Charles The pop-art lushness of Genevieve St. Charles combines the sweaty ooziness of MAD magazine comic strips and the shellacked glossiness of 1950s-era fast-food advertising. Her to-scale La Croix cans with flavors like “Homeless Bitcoin Millionaire” or “Women Laughing Alone with Salad” is cultural commentary at its best: throwaway lines on a throwaway can of negligibly flavored bubbly water. A perfect fit for Jeremy Buben’s apartment living room art gallery FoodArt Collection, the show features functional art like peach drink coasters and tomato topped side tables. Tasty :) KATIE KURTZ (Thurs Dec 13)


Foster/White Gallery
Sarah McRae Morton The shadows of ancestors loom in Morton's art in this exhibition with themes of spirit and lineages. Her latest painters are blurred with motion, hinting at fabulist characters and tempestuous weather. (Dec 6-23)


G. Gibson Gallery
Daniel Carrillo: Daguerrotypes In the back gallery, check out Carrillo's mysterious photographic impressions, which focus in part on the paraphernalia and tools of visual artists like Kimberly Trowbridge, Kelly Bjork, Jeffry Mitchell, and Paul Komada. (Dec 7-Jan 12)

Thuy-Van Vu and Samantha Scherer: New Work Seattle-based artists Vu and Scherer seem like an intuitive pairing for a gallery show. Presenting new work, both artists get at the tender underbelly of their subjects. With Vu, inanimate objects (typewriters, quilts, piles of wood) take on a human, alive quality in a rather quiet way. Scherer’s watercolor subjects seem to just surface against the background—craggy, aching, and vulnerable. Whatever these two artists put out is thoughtful, contemplative, and a “don’t miss” in every way. (Dec 7–Jan 12) JASMYNE KEIMIG

Fay Jones and Robert C. Jones: In Tandem Fay Jones is known for her monumental Westlake Station mural, for her Joan Mitchell Grant in 2013, and for her evasion of overt symbolism in favor of playful figurative allusions. Her husband Robert C. Jones is another titan of the Seattle art scene: His colorful gestural abstractions are embedded with Matissean black lines, and are a pleasure to look at. (Jan 9–Feb 23)


Gallery 4Culture
Jite Agbro Jite Agbro is concerned with what you’re wearing. Well, okay, maybe not exactly with what you’re wearing right now, but more with how what we wear and how we wear it is an expression of our “projected narratives and our authentic selves.” Here, the Seattle-based Nigerian American artist will be presenting her latest series of large-scale mixed-media works that investigate class distinction and markers of status, drawing inspiration from the human body and what that body can wear. (Feb 7–28) JASMYNE KEIMIG


Ghost Gallery
Holiday Mini Art Exhibit Pay the happily resurrected Capitol Hill gallery a visit for its 12th annual holiday mini art exhibit, where you can choose from hundreds of small works by locals and artists farther afield.
(Dec 13–Feb 10)


Glassbox Gallery
Artifacts from the Multiverse Don’t miss this exhibition of props, costumes, and “alternate realities” from the breakout Northwest film Prospect. (Dec 6–Jan 5)


Greg Kucera Gallery
Margie Livingston: Extreme Landscape Painting This isn’t your grandma’s landscape painting—there’s not a sun setting over an empty field or a river snaking toward the horizon in sight. Rather, the title refers to Livingston’s practice of harnessing a canvas to her body and then dragging it behind her. Sometimes the canvas will be painted in different layers of colors before being dragged, resulting in a heavily textured painting with various colors exposed and interacting with one another. The Seattle-based artist’s work is interesting, telling a story of the city and acting as an artifact of her performance. (Through Sat Dec 22) JASMYNE KEIMIG

Saul Becker: Uneven Terrain A Saul Becker landscape might be a painted sky hanging over a photographed sea on a piece of paper that fits in the palm of your hand. Real places are pulled into a frame, altered digitally and mechanically, and Frankensteined together. This is one way to be a contemporary landscape painter, to extend the tradition of using a flat surface and paint to evoke place, within a society awash in photography. (Through Sat Dec 22) JEN GRAVES

Anthony White: Smoke and Mirrors If you haven’t come across work by (or curated by) Anthony White at one of the city’s art walks in the past year, you have been missing out on a very talented up-and-comer. The curator behind this local exhibit series has also shown his own fused PLA (polylactic acid) portraits, which resemble plastic tapestries. His subjects are frequently selfie-taking youths framed by opulent mirrors or cast against intricate, space-flattening wallpaper patterns. (Jan 3–Feb 16)

Joe Rudko: Photographs Seattle-based Rudko cuts up found photographs to create and reinterpret the way we encounter and think about images—sometimes to trippy result. Whether rearranging shredded photos into a complex labyrinth or seemingly weaving together two different pictures into a lattice, Rudko makes you think about the physicality of the photo itself. (Jan 3–Feb 16) JASMYNE KEIMIG


Harris Harvey Gallery
Richard Morhous: The Color of Light Light-obsessed painter Richard Morhous, a Seattle fixture, dramatizes the play of beams and colors in acrylics. (March 7–30)


Hedreen Gallery
Elizabeth LaPensée: heart of the game Guggenheim Fellowship-winning Anishinaabe/Métis/Irish artist and writer LaPensée explores issues of Indigenous sovereignty through game design, both digital and analog. For this exhibition, she offers a chance to discover her “interventions,” including Thunderbird Strike, the “iPad singing game” Honour Water, the role-playing game Dialect, and levels from an Indigenous answer to Oregon Trail, called When Rivers Were Tails. (Through Sun March 3)


Henry Art Gallery
Between Bodies In February 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—an international body of climate scientists—issued a statement declaring that global warming is “unequivocal,” and the rise in global temperatures is “very likely” the result of human activity. At the time, this was the most strongly worded assessment the IPCC had ever issued. Since then, the warnings have continued to ratchet up, as has governmental complacency. We need to adopt new ways to address climate change before it really, truly, absolutely, unequivocally is too late. This exhibition includes queer, feminist, and indigenous perspectives that are absolutely critical to an expansive view. (Through Sun April 28) KATIE KURTZ


Jacob Lawrence Gallery
Clotilde Jiménez: Apple of My Eye London-based Jiménez’s self-portrait collages are fascinating in that they take on an almost Frankenstein’s monster–like quality, this aggregate idea of identity and self. Culling the figures in his portraits from scraps of free magazines, kitchen towels, and cloth, and combining them with drawn or painted-on elements, his work is a deft exploration into the queer black male body and Jiménez’s own identity. (Through Sat Dec 29) JASMYNE KEIMIG

Jacob Lawrence Legacy Exhibition: Danny Giles Chicago-based Giles is interested in a lot of things—namely, how to address “the dilemmas of representing and performing identity and interrogate histories of oppression and creative resistance.” Using sculpture, video, and live performance, Giles’s work doesn’t necessarily give answers but pushes us to ask questions about police surveillance, understandings of race and identity, and the relationship between state power and anti-black violence. (Feb 4–28) JASMYNE KEIMIG


M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery
Youth in Focus For the past 25 years, low-income city youth have expressed themselves and captured glimpses of their daily lives thanks to Youth in Focus’s arts program, which pairs the young photographers with adult mentors. (Through Fri Dec 14)

Meghan Elizabeth Trainor: Witancraeftlic Witchcraft and electricity unite in Trainor’s sculptural portrayal of folk healing, magic, and technology, an eerie installation of bones, jars, sigils, and “familiars.” The result is an unsettling yet weirdly optimistic vision of hidden feminine occult power. (Jan 2–31)


Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
Alexandra Karakashian: in on itself Based in Cape Town, this young, award-winning Johannesburg-born painter has been frequently exhibited in her home country as well as at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London. (Through Sat Dec 22)


METHOD
Henry Jackson-Spieker: Sight Lines There is something a bit anxiety-inducing about being in a gallery or museum. As if there’s some specific way you are meant to behave and even look at art in those kinds of spaces. The latest installation from Seattle-based Jackson-Spieker is trying to disrupt and interrogate that very notion. He uses the gallery's windows as the primary viewing perspective, creating a clear “sight line” made of lattice-string sculpture that can only be seen from outside the gallery, obstructing free movement inside the space itself.
(Jan 3–Feb 23) JASMYNE KEIMIG


Michael Birawer Gallery
Genna Draper Draper’s mixed-media canvases may be abstract or representative, but they tend to be highly textured, layered, and earthily colored, sometimes mixing in elements of collage. (Feb 1–28)


Mount Analogue
Sara Long: Building a Body of Light Local painter Sara Long, who’s shown light-bathed nudes and lush portraits of people and animals, has a new exhibition exulting in nature, sunlight, and sensuality. (Dec 6–28)


Re:definition
Re:Definition 2018: Celebrating 90 Years of Community, Culture and Space For the Paramount’s 90th birthday, respected curators Juan Alonso-Rodríguez, Tracy Rector, and Tariqa Waters preside over an exhibition of their own and other locals’ works, including “large-scale panels, ceiling installations, video projection, and a rotating salon wall of artwork created by youth from various non-profit organizations.” Alonso-Rodríguez’s painting and activism won him a Conducive Garboil Grant in 2017, Rector’s a Stranger Genius Award winner, and Waters is a longtime Stranger favorite for her roguish and iconoclastic sensibility. They’ve chosen Christopher Paul Jordan, Junko Yamamoto, Rhea Vega, Kenji Hamai Stoll, Joe (wahalatsu?) Seymour, Jr., and Gabriel Marquez to display work. (Through Sun Dec 30)


Roq La Rue
D. Allan Drummond: Curiosity UChicago biochemistry professor and natural science sculptor Drummond’s marvelously detailed animal sculptures, including 3-D-printed trilobites and other arthropods, colonize the gallery. (Dec 7–Jan 6)


Shift
Wallflower: Kara Mia Fenoglietto God, is there any feeling more oppressive than the exquisitely pinching pain of high heels? The sweaty tyranny of a too-tight bra? Fenoglietto’s newest exhibition explores the crux of femininity and entrapment through her conceptual fashion designs, taking inspiration from patterns and themes associated with homemaking accessories mass-marketed to women. Fenoglietto hopes to stimulate conversation around gender stereotypes and map out a course for liberation from them. (Jan 3–26) JASMYNE KEIMIG


Stonington Gallery
Fast Forward: Skateboards and Paddles Upon closer inspection, these two modes of transportation share a lot of similarities. Not only do they take us where we need to be, fast, but they can also act as a canvas for personal expression. In this giant group show, more than 35 artists have decorated longboards, traditional skateboards, and paddles in whatever way they see fit. The results are sure to be intriguing. (Dec 6–Jan 6) JASMYNE KEIMIG

Two Ravens: Alison Marks & Crystal Worl The gallery presents work by two Alaska-based artists on their own and in collaboration, Alison Marks (Tlingit) and Crystal Worl (Tlingit/Athabascan). Marks had a solo exhibition last year at the Frye called One Gray Hair, which Emily Pothast praised for its “playful, fluid” reimagination of Tlingit traditional forms. Worl, a cofounder of the wonderful Trickster design company, has a background in metalsmithing and moving images. The gallery explains: “All modern Tlingit people are either part of the Eagle or Raven moiety. Both Marks and Worl are of the Raven moiety, forming the title for their show. But Raven is more than just their clan marker: Raven is one of the most important mythic characters on the Northwest Coast.” (Feb 7–28)

Drew Michael During his fourth solo exhibition at this gallery, the up-and-coming Yup’ik/Inupiaq mixed-media sculptor once again experiments with traditional masks and charring practices, blending Western, Native, and even Byzantine influences. (March 7–31)


studio e
Warren Dykeman: Attention Span Do you remember learning about cuneiform—one of the earliest systems of writing? Wedges made with reeds that made language? I started thinking about cuneiform, then went down a hobo code rabbit hole while trying to figure out the symbolism in Dykeman’s work. Which led me to early computer language. Does the mirror frame plus green square plus tree plus the letter “Z” add up somehow? A painting emblazoned FRONT STAB seems easily interpretable, but the one declaring SAFE FAZ leads us back into the cryptic. (Through Sat Dec 22) KATIE KURTZ


Traver Gallery
Charlie Parriott, Cappy Thompson, Dick Weiss: Old Friends, New Work Thompson is responsible for the 90-foot-long window mural—a woodland/celestial scene of painted glass—at Sea-Tac International Airport. Thompson will show work with Weiss, an Everett-born glass artist whose large-scale piece can also be seen at Sea-Tac, and Parriott, who spent 12 years as a colorist at Chihuly Studio before helping to run the hot glass studio at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. (Through Sat Dec 22)