Katie Fanuko, Author at ALARM

Gallery Spotlight: Platform Gallery

Back in 2004, Stephen Lyons and four other business partners started Platform Gallery in the midst of one of Seattle’s dot-com crashes. At the time, the city’s gallery industry was dramatically shifting, and a number of galleries shuddered due to the downturn. During that period, Platform was able to fill the gap in representing and exhibiting work by local artists.

As a result of the most recent downturn, Platform’s operational structure has shifted significantly as well. Lyons is currently the gallery’s sole owner as his business partners have chosen to return to their studios. Despite the changes, Platform’s commitment to showcasing challenging contemporary art has remained unwavering.

Mark Jenkins: Startling, Lifelike Street Art

Installation artist Mark Jenkins knows how to provoke a double take. His work, primarily done in tape and plastic, confronts the public with human and animal forms in bizarre scenarios.

Gallery Spotlight: SPACE Gallery

When Nat May founded SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine back in 2002, timing was everything. After one of the city’s few indie venues shuttered, May decided to fill the void by creating a multipurpose gallery and performance venue that would cater to both Portland’s indie art and music scenes.

May’s intent was to offer gallery patrons additional events to attend and allow regular concertgoers to check out SPACE’s art offerings. “Part of our goal is to get people to come in for one thing and see something else that they didn’t know that they were interested in,” he says.

Gallery Spotlight: Chicago Urban Art Society

For the past 40 years, artists in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood have been slowly transforming a four-block stretch of Halsted Street into a quiet creative enclave. Even though the area has established a solid presence within Chicago’s art scene, it’s sometimes seen as a separate entity that doesn’t always engage with the rest of Pilsen’s predominantly Hispanic, working-class community. However, since opening in May of 2010, the Chicago Urban Art Society (CUAS) has made it a point to bridge this gap.

Jorge Chamorro: Exercising Freedom with Graphic Design

Spanish artist Jorge Chamorro‘s past jobs have shaped him to value art for enjoyment and personal expression rather than the corporate mindset of making for profit. His artwork embodies simplicity and personal creativity, with surrealist images drawing similarities to Salvador Dali.

Gallery Spotlight: Factory Fresh

Ad Deville and Ali Ha, the co-owners of Factory Fresh Gallery, are considered venerable street artists operating as Skewville and Pufferella, respectively. Yet they didn’t quite realize how to define their work until attending a Wooster Collective art walk along New York’s Lower East Side in 2002. During the event, some attendees inquired whether they were street artists, to which Deville responded, “Well, I put sneakers on wires, and it’s in the street.”

As Skewville and Pufferella, Deville quietly strung sneaker-shaped wooden blocks along the telephone wires of New York and other international cities while Ha delved into her fascination of creating plush fabric images. But the cohesive street-art community that was quickly taking shape along the Lower East Side intrigued them. They introduced their new friends to Orchard Street Gallery, which the couple opened in late 2002. Deville and Ha began collaborating with other contemporary art galleries and featuring shows by Gore B, Meeka, and Jet + Rubble.

Gallery Spotlight: Altered Esthetics

In 2004, Jamie Schumacher founded Minneapolis’ Altered Esthetics Gallery with the intent of “bringing artists together and creating a community dialogue.” The non-profit gallery is a space where both emerging and established artists can interact and explore their own creative interests without the pressure of producing work that is commercially viable. Since opening, Altered Esthetics — which is currently one of 18 galleries operating out of Minneapolis’ historic Q’arma building — has built a solid reputation within the Twin City’s creative community.

Gallery Spotlight: Western Front Society

Vancouver’s Western Front Society was created back in 1973 when eight artists got together, bought a former Knights of Pythias lodge, and renovated it into an alternative art space. Over the years, the multidisciplinary art center has developed an international reputation similar to the way that Vancouver itself has transformed into a cosmopolitan city.

“If you think back to even the early ’90s, Vancouver wasn’t much of a booming town,” Western Front exhibits curator Jesse McKee says. “But in the past 15 years, it’s kind of come into its own.”

Gallery Spotlight: Shooting Gallery

For Justin Giarla, owner of San Francisco’s Shooting Gallery, opening up an art space in a once-dicey neighborhood was inevitable — especially considering that his captivation with the West Coast’s lowbrow scene started when he was in high school.

“I really got hooked on art, and I would cut history, math, and English to go to my other art classes and stay there all day long,” Giarla says. “After a while, my teachers figured it out, but they never really did anything or said anything because they were just kind of like, ‘Well, at least he’s still in school.'”

Gallery Spotlight: Flatcolor Gallery

When Cris Cook was out of a job last May, the freelance art director / graphic designer decided that it was the perfect time to start up a gallery, and soon after, Seattle’s Flatcolor Gallery was founded. “It was in the back of my mind for a while,” he says, “and this situation kind of came up where I was like, ‘Do I go get a full-time job right away, do I freelance and start something of my own, or do I sit back and relax for a summer?’ I guess I decided to take the difficult route and just try to create something new.”

Richard Colman: From Graffiti to Fine Art

When looking at the paintings and illustrations of California-based artist Richard Colman, it’s clear that his electric-hued, intricately detailed images are influenced by everything from Byzantine-era iconography to geometric abstractions. Less obvious, however, is that the Washington, DC native started out as a graffiti artist.

Gallery Spotlight: Okay Mountain

Nowadays, Austin, Texas may be considered a venerable indie music and art Mecca, but only a few years ago, the city’s contemporary art scene was much more transient. The formation of art collectives like Okay Mountain has given artists more incentive to set down roots.

“There wasn’t always a lot going on in terms of spaces, so people just took it upon themselves to kind of just start doing things DIY style and open their own spaces,” co-founder Carlos Rosales-Silva says. “Now, there’s always young people coming through, and it seems like there’s people starting to stick around now, whereas before it was like people would make work for a while and often move to some bigger place.”