Julia Haack

The work of artist Julia Haack will be on display during the month of May with an opening on Thursday, May 7 from 6-9PM.

Please visit http://juliahaack.blogspot.com/

Family Portraits - Mark Kang-O'Higgins

Family Portraits
Mark Kang-O'Higgins
April 2 - April 30
Opening Reception: Thursday April 2, 2009

www.kangohiggins.com

Artist's Statement: My work is firmly rooted in the figurative tradition. This has brought me work as a fine art instructor and as a commission portrait artist. I am interested in the human condition in both the physical and emotional sense.

Much of my work is formally concerned with solid objects/masses in space. I am interested in how objects/beings unfold themselves in space, manifest themselves, and realize themselves as objects and beings, spatially and mentally. In short how objects and beings emanate as physical and mental energy. In my work I want to describe their presence, in every sense of the word: both presence as individuals or events and presence in relation to (or in juxtaposition with) other events and environments.

The synthesis of an individual consciousness with its surroundings and the interaction of different consciousnesses are of particular interest to me from a phenomenological and existential point of view. Recently my work was also concerned with masked or depersonalized intelligences – how individuals can, at times, find each other unfathomable in the Wittgensteinian sense. Specifically, that of one individual never truly being able to know the mind of another and therefore being forced into speculation. Most recently, however, the philosophical questions and issues that my work springs from and attempt to address have been tempered by my desire to additionally represent the simple beauty and mystery of creation.

Shallow Cuts

Tracy Lang

"Shallow Cuts"

opening March 5

live music by Acid Candidate

Art mediates arguments I have with God. The dull weight of traditional constructs rub against my feral sensibilities. As we spiral toward inevitability I feel the need to shape my journey, to create something larger than myself, a world all my own. Each print is a shedding of skin and a notch on the fence post. When I carve I can reduce the world to simple forms and eliminate confusing contradictions, revealing the invisible by creating an eddy in the current of modernity. Printmaking is a way of collecting time, marking our days with blades and ink.

More at . . . .
tracylang.net

langprints@gmail.com

Opening in March

Tracy Lang - Coming Soon

Accents and Slangs

Bill Watt "Accents and Slangs"

An art exhibition by Bill Watt in conjunction with

VERNACULAR

An evening of choreography by Eliza Larson Opening Feb 5

Performances every half hour Between 6:00 and 9:00 PM

Karen Hackenberg Review

Karen Hackenberg's solo show at the Gallery at OK Hotel was recently reviewed by Brian Miller of the Seattle Weekly. Here it is . . .

What’s your spirit animal? In her series of diptych oil paintings, Northwest artist Karen Hackenberg posits a strange human-animal kinship. These man-beast portraits, “Divining Line” (through Jan. 30), pair man and bear, woman and fox, guy and cat, etc. with a frontal candor and cheer. This is not the kitschy sensibility of screaming eagle T-shirts or unicorn scenes painted on panel vans. Rather, Hackenberg’s subjects—at least the homo sapiens among them—pose with a kind of unguarded earnestness, as if to say, “This is who I am” or “This is what I’d to be”—a secret affinity openly expressed. Or more simply, “This is my best friend.” Do the bears and foxes and felines feel the same way about us? Likely not, and that’s where the mystery enters into these canvases. They’re half obvious, half inscrutable. We humans are perfectly plain about what we want (be it to fly like an eagle or swim like a dolphin). But we never truly know the thoughts of the objects of our ardor—or if they think at all. Hackenberg’s naïve realism suits this dichotomy nicely. Also on view, her images of cattle (like a trip to Black Angus!) and barns give the show a neo-Americana vibe (Hackenberg is based in Port Townsend). Her series of pencil and charcoal studies of rooftop exhaust fans also reflects the same shed-and-tractor milieu; these humble, ubiquitous objects are like water tanks in New York—functional and elegant, yet in this case a novelty to us city-dwellers. OK Hotel, 212 Alaskan Way S., 264-1688, www.karenhackenberg.com. Free. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. BRIAN MILLER