Arts Archives - Page 12 of 40

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.

Zine Scene: The F-Bomb

Looking for a little anti-holiday cheer? Tacoma-based zine The F-Bomb might just be the ticket. Since January of 2009, The F-Bomb has gathered submissions from writers into themed issues (seven so far, with topics like “Music,” “Sex,” the paradoxical “Unthemed,” and now “Holiday”) that incorporate comics, slice-of-life tangents and charts, interviews, fiction, and even an advice column.

The “Holiday Issue” features such gems as the “Boo For You” column, which recounts a freewheeling conversation about Nilla Wafers, Jesus, and stealing cheese. Other columns include descriptions of favorite Christmas memories in 10 words or less (sample memory: “I unwrapped a box for a phone. It wasn’t.”), and comics featuring adorable, demented animals using and abusing the titular “F-bomb” to discuss Thanksgiving.

On the opposite page of this irreverent story, you can read a chart diagramming all of the winter holidays, who celebrates them and why, and various fun facts and names for Santa Claus. The juxtaposition of the bizarre and mundane — the prurient and the informative — goes a long way in describing just what The F-Bomb zine is.

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: Elsewhere Collaborative

From 1939 to 1997, Sylvia Gray operated a multi-level thrift store in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. Throughout her life, the building housed eccentric collections of fabric, household goods, toys, and other bric-a-brac; eventually, the inventory came to resemble a hoard of tastes and memories, amassed into a fractured narrative.

The building came into the hands of Ms. Gray’s grandson, George Sheer, in 2003. Along with the help of collaborator Stephanie Sherman, the former thrift store emerged as Elsewhere Collaborative — a living museum and experimental arts platform.

Open Sound New Orleans: Reviving a City

OpenSoundNewOrleans.com is aiding the once-broken city of New Orleans — and its often demonized residents — with inspirational recordings of its music and sounds.

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.

Super/Prime: Installing Art in Unexpected Places

Brooklyn’s Super/Prime is a group of four artists whose aim is to bring pop-art shows to the masses — and they’re doing so in unconventional spaces, including unsold condominiums.

Zine Scene: No More Coffee

Zines might seem like an odd fit for that old high-toned workhorse of publishing, the literary short story. But Ben Spies, author of zines and all-around participant in the Chicago zine community, has succeeded in fitting his work to this intimate, handmade format. The result, No More Coffee, tells quiet, spare tales of ordinary lives that, just like our own, are often touched with mystery or tragedy.

With such a large body of perzines, political zines, how-tos, and comics already being published, Spies decided that fiction needed a bit of a zine makeover as well. “I’ve always thought that if we have a thriving culture of DIY bands, art galleries, et cetera, why can’t we have more DIY fiction?” Spies says.

Current Gallery: Alphabet exhibit (photo by Eileen Wold)

Gallery Spotlight: Current Gallery

Originally formed by 14 Baltimore artists as a short-term artist cooperative, Current Gallery is now in its second home and is currently functioning as a non-profit gallery and artist studio. The space came to life in 2004, after the initial group of young artists received a grant from the city of Baltimore for a proposal to productively utilize an unoccupied downtown building.

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.

Zine Scene: Mosh

For those who think that the zine is only a recent, Western phenomenon, look no further than the Malaysian zine Mosh to have your expectations demolished. This political, punk-rock zine out of southeast Asia is celebrating its tenth anniversary and thirteenth issue this year, thanks to creator Nizang and an increasingly organized zine-writing community in and around Kuala Lumpur.

Gallery Spotlight: Gallery Hijinks

The Mission District in San Francisco has been a relentless spotlight for arts and culture since the 1970s. Initially home to various Latino populations, the neighborhood has featured vibrant murals to express its residents’ social, political, and community concerns.

During the past 20 years, the area has attracted aspiring young people of various ethnicities due to its relatively low cost of living. More recently, the Mission District has grown into a progressive independent arts district. Although the area continues to boast its unyielding street art, it also has become home to an array of creative businesses and alternative art spaces. One of these businesses is Gallery Hijinks.