Skip to main contentIt's 5 pm, and I'm on the first of my monthly reports on First Thursday. There's too much ground to cover to indulge in a proper meal. Tonight I'll feast on gallery scraps: brie, havarti, crackers, merlot.
I begin in Southwest, where ever-affable Charles Froelick is showing off Joe Feddersen's 8-by-16-foot print, Okanagon II--crisscrossing triangles and quadrilaterals in orange-red and beige, listed at a cool 25 grand. "It may look like a modernist grid," says the artist, who hails from Washington's Colville tribe, "but it's based on basket patterns of lightning, mountains and butterflies."
There's a 38-artist group show over at Broderick. Karen Madsen's crumpled-paper collages grab me, as do Jason Litt's surrealist fantasies. Roberto Belinki has a retrospective up at Belinki & DuPrey, his neo-Impressionist flowers and semi-abstract landscapes equally appealing. Marilyn Duprey holds court in the far gallery, crooning old standards in her Annie Ross alto while John Fresk accompanies with wide-fingered jazz chords.
Duprey is promoting her CD, profits from which she's donating to Alzheimer's research in honor of her mother. At one point, Duprey flubs a line in "Embraceable You." "If I keep forgetting lines," she ad libs, "they'll have to put me in the bed next to my mom!" The audience gasps.
Chetwynd Stapleton's Tessa Pappas introduces me to John Van Hamersveld, who at 61 is a walking time capsule of surfing and rock culture, having created the poster- and cover-art for The Endless Summer and Magical Mystery Tour. Charismatic and opinionated in his huge tortoise-shell glasses, he drops names--"Mick," "Keith," "Jimi"--without sounding like a pretentious prick.
I jaywalk across Burnside to Ogle, presided over by husband-and-wife team Valentina Barroso and Jeremy Graziano. Valentina's photographer father, Derli, is up from Brazil, showing his close-ups of tropical flowers. He's manipulated the negatives with an old-school technique, scratch-tracing the flowers' contours with a needle, with results far more engaging than anything that ever came out of Photoshop.
Michael Oman Reagan has filled his new gallery, Field, with his own installations, one of which (a provocatively shaped masking-tape number) prompts me to ask, "Is it just me, or is that a cock?" Answer: "It's just you." Sarah Wilmer is playing her art-house horror movie at Neon, but I prefer her small-format black-and-whites.
Outside, street musician Shawn Flanigan is playing dulcimer for tips, but a panhandler braying obscenities parks his cart directly in front of him and refuses to budge, driving people away. "Would you mind moving away, friend?" Flanigan pleads. "I play to eat." The bum stays put.
Tom Sprenkle's paintings of lug nuts and bolts at Atelier Z give me the ZZZs, but I perk up when I run into artist Jacqueline Ehlis and Play curator Jeff Jahn, his peroxide 'do (which he swears is natural) standing on end like a Nordic Don King.
Incense wafts out of Needful Things. Painter Pauly Peacock's take on the Grand Canyon doesn't inspire the awe of the real thing. The most interesting piece at Shift, a red abstract, is up in the sleeping loft, beyond a sign marked "Private." At Blue Screen, Greg Forcum's wire-hanger sculptures feel voluminous, despite their open design.
At Freedom Box, I gravitate toward Ann Cookman's digital photos of skinny-dipping hippie chicks. Gavin Shettler, the best-dressed doyen on the block, introduces me to Jo Ann Kemmis, whose twinkly cubes of color strike me (along with Feddersen at Froelick), as the night's most promising art thus far.
It's nearing 9 pm. Galleries are beginning to close down for the night, but I've still not made it to SoundVision and PushDot, nor seen Nic Walker at Fleck (I heard he killed a guy...or was it a deer?), nor Gregory Grenon at Laura Russo, nor...I quicken my pace through the light rain, merlots to go before I sleep.
Atelier Z 328 NW Broadway, # 117, 236- 4855.
Belinki & DuPrey 1224 SW Broadway, 227- 1242.
Broderick 814 SW 1st Ave., 224-4020.
Chetwynd Stapylton 615 SW Broadway, 223- 4226.
Freedom Box 625 NW Everett St., #104, 274- 2199.
Froelick 817 SW 2nd Ave., 222-1142.
Gavin Shettler 625 NW Everett St., #106, 224- 0252.
Needful Things 325 NW 6th Ave., 417- 1952.
Neon 328 NW Broadway, #115, 701- 0853.
Ogle 310 NW Broadway, 227- 4333.
WWeek 2015