Ingrid Lahti
One Pacific Tower, 2006 First Avenue, Belltown
Through June 2013

Ingrid Lahti traditionally works in neon, but has branched out into illuminated lighting gels in her new installation at First and Virginia.  Inspired by the saturated color in Matisse paintings and Chinese artwork, Ingrid views the illuminated window pieces as a study on the emotional effects of color and light, fitting seamlessly into the vibrant neighborhood in Belltown.  

These installations glow brightly at night, adding to the street-level nightlife of Belltown and kicking off a summer in Seattle with a burst of color.

Chris Papa
2505 Second Avenue
Through June 2013

Chris Papa, a local printmaker and sculptor, has installed 5 sculptures at Second and Wall, featuring playful sewn wood sculptures conflating art, craft, and architecture.   Interested in the connotations of sewing as domesticity and mending, Chris utilizes these mundane materials to link art and life and emphasize the connections between art and craft in minimalist forms.

As Chris explains, “I generate sculptural form using eccentric construction techniques such as the stitching together of wooden panels in this group of work. Simple geometric forms – boxes, a cylinder, a plane – are implied by the modular structure. My aim is to present a highly idiosyncratic sense of order full of contradictions that shifts between categories and interpretations.”

Ongoing Hours: Tuesday – Sunday Noon – 6PM
666 South Jackson Street, Seattle

Storefronts Seattle, a project of Shunpike, is proud to partner with Our Fabric Stash-http://www.ourfabricstash.com- the new go-to pop-up shop for shared fabric and crafting materials. Join with Seattle’s thriving crafting community, take a ton of material out of the waste stream (and out of your closet), and meet your crafting neighbors at this unique resource for designers, open to professional and amateur alike.

Our Fabric Stash is an innovative, community-based consignment enterprise that began life as a twice annual event in Seattle in 2009. In its new pop-up location in Chinatown, it will be offering consigned fabrics, notions, and textile-related supplies at 666 Jackson Street. Become a member and recycle your unneeded materials, or come by and browse through the stash to find some brilliant new treasures and meet fellow stash-a-holics.

Project lead Deborah Boone has taken a slightly dumpy, run-down retail space on Jackson Street, and in less than a month has added a new floor, has painted, installed cabinetry and display shelves… She has, in short, completely turned the space around, creating a gem of a retail space out of the raw materials of chronically vacant space.

Join us for the opening this Saturday, March 23, and get a chance to see the project in person.

Somewhere Out There by Ryan Everson. (Image: R. Everson)

Somewhere Out There
A new work by Ryan Everson at the Publix Hotel
504 5th Avenue South through summer 2013

photo by R. Everson

Ryan Everson is a Boulder, Colorado artist showing in Seattle for the first time through the Storefronts program. His work responds directly to the environment where it’s sited, and was developed after site visits to the old Publix Hotel and to South Lake Union, where we hope to install the piece later in the year.

The work consists of two large freestanding marquee signs, announcing the phrase “Somewhere Out There.” The letters (in Jersey font, in case you were curious) are cut from solid wood and inset with several hundred light bulbs.

“I chose the phrase ‘Somewhere Out There,’” says Everson, “because of Seattle’s history, and the Publix Hotel’s history, of harboring seafarers. Thinking of a life at sea and the boat being a sort of untethered, moveable island lead me to think of uncertainty of place.”

Shutter by RSVR visual research (Image: M Richter)

Overlooking Hing Hay Park in the International District, we have installed a new work by RSVR visual research, Shutter. 

The piece is extremely site-specific, reacting to the size and shape of the space that houses it as well as the park over which it sits. The artists (an architect-and-visual-artist team) sought to activate the space for both pedestrians and cars, for daytime and nighttime, and in a non-literal way that spoke to the neighborhood’s Chinese community and visitors alike.

The piece plays with perspective, and with the ideas of empty space, and unfinished space. The roughly torn squares of sheetrock echo the unfinished mid-construction feel of the empty storefront, while the clean, glowing lines of the string pierce them like laser light, offering a crispness of line and a dazzle of color that play against the raggedness of the rest of the piece.

Utilizing a combination of colored and ultraviolet light, the installation jumps out from the background to grab the public’s attention. It also changes shape subtly as you walk past it, and is visible either length-wise or end-on, offering various ways to interact with it.

When she wasn’t reading poetry and recording her brain, she was building mechanical devices that, based on electrical inputs, could open or close apertures, or spin dials, or lift and release sections of netting… I think you see where we’re headed.

Meghan Trainor’s Ex-Voto Machina

Combining the two projects (they were never really separate) she uses the brainwave recordings as a control track to drive her kinetic sculptures, and the audience sees these objects opening, closing, lifting, dropping, turning, and spinning in response to the electroencephalogram. We are seeing robotic “bodies” respond to the way the artist felt (felt here with all of its emotional connotations) while reading and listening to music.

Meghan Trainor’s Two Fans

They do so in the cold, raw setting of 411 South Maynard Street, an unfinished storefront in Chinatown, a contextual reminder of the meeting of the harsh coldness of the constructed environment and the emotional warmth of these two works of poetry and music.

Paper puppet skeletons loom over brick storefronts mischievously playing with various objects, from butterflies to cakes sourced from a Victorian cookbook.  Puppetry, found images, and a darkly comic joy animate this evolving installation that is changing over time as Susan updates and animates the puppets and their toys.

Please stop by the Thomas street windows (1110 Thomas) and see what she is up to next, and also take in Michael Harrison’s Sentinels project next door!

The Monkees are Seattle’s most celebrated breakdance crew. They’ve won the Mayor’s Arts Award. They’ve won the World B-Boy Championships. They’ve won the international b-boy competition R16 Korea 2012 (whatever, yes, it’s a real thing that I didn’t just learn about on Wikipedia). Mayor Nickels declared April 26 the official Massive Monkees day in Seattle. They’ve danced with, and choreographed for, 50 Cent, and Beyoncé, and Public Enemy, and Jurassic 5, and De La Soul. They’ve been featured on MTV a gazillion times. They’re the real deal.

And as of last night, they’re the newest addition to the Storefronts Seattle line-up of pop-up projects. To celebrate the opening of the new studio, they’re offering FREE classes all week to show off the space and to get to meet you, their audience. Drop in and take a class, or drop off the kids and have a slice next door at World Pizza (potato gorgonzola BEST SLICE EVER). Support your neighborhood, because this is an example of your neighborhood supporting you in the best way we know how. Storefronts looks forward to seeing you, and your kids, there this winter!

What was exciting to learn last week, in the course of trying to direct an artist to a project space online, was that Google’s Street Views ™ on the interwebs had finally caught up with “actual street views” in the (literal) public domain.

Check out this little stroll down memory lane, thanks to Google’s plan to photograph every inch of the planet from robot-controlled vans:

John Fleming’s installation on the 100 block of 3rd Avenue South

Kristen Tollefson’s installation at 411 Maynard Avenue South in full bloom

Romson Bustillo’s installation on South King Street overlooking Hing Hay Park

Ben Hirschkoff’s beautiful painting on 3rd Avenue South

Tomorrow night, Thursday January 3 (First Thursday! The First First Thursday of the Mayan Sixth Katun!) we’ll be loitering on the sidewalks in front of two new installations in Chinatown. Please come down and join us for some sparkling cider, some cheese and fruit, and a chance to meet the artists.

At 505 5^th Avenue South, we’ll celebrate Eva Isaksen’s new installation, consisting of hundreds and hundreds of hand-printed sheets of paper, hung in subtle patterns across almost 30 linear feet of display space. Each sheet is almost completely hidden by each subsequent sheet, hinting at content that is elusively unavailable.

Eva will be adjusting the display over the course of the next six months, reacting to the changing light in the area and working to keep the piece lively and reactive.

Just across Fifth South from Eva’s installation, in the lobby of the old Publix Hotel at 504 5^th Avenue South, a quartet of young artists (Danielle Comeaux, Yael Nov, Joana Stillwell, and Ilysia Van Deren) have recently installed their newest collaborative work, Hullaballoon.

The four spent nearly a year collecting deflated balloons, and have stitched them together, Frankensteining together two giant motley curtains of color. The pieces, building on the subtle sadness of a deflated balloon, actually bring a vibrant splash of brightness and color to the dark defunct lobby of the old Publix.

At both sites, we’ll be hosting little receptions right on the sidewalk for passers-by. The artists will be present to discuss their work and receive the public. The receptions will be from 5 pm through 7 pm.