Cunningham in the Northwest is an interdisciplinary art exhibition that explores the connections between the groundbreaking work of choreographer Merce Cunningham and his hometown region. The first art exhibition to look at Cunninghamʼs work within the context of the Pacific Northwest, Cunningham in the Northwest celebrates his legacy of collaboration and examines how his relationship to Cornish and the Northwest informed his philosophies and the work he created.

Exhibition Info
September 8 – October 22
Cornish Main Gallery, 1st Floor, 1000 Lenora Street, Seattle, WA 98121
Free and open to the public

Gallery Hours
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday, 12:00 – 5:00 pm
Thursday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Opening Reception
September 7, 5:00 – 8:00 pm
With special performance by Stuart Dempster

Thirteen Stitches: A Lunchtime Conversation with Trimpin
September 15, 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Seattle sound artist Trimpin shares his experience collaborating with Merce Cunningham on “Installations” (1996)

More About the Exhibition

Cunningham in the Northwest presents a unique look at the groundbreaking choreographer’s work as it relates to his upbringing in Centralia, his subsequent education at Cornish, and his innovative work with ideas and artists of the Northwest. Drawing from his philosophies on dance that inspired artists across disciplines throughout the world, this exhibition offers viewers the opportunity to experience some of the critical elements of his creative process such as chance operations and collaboration. Relevant work by Northwest School founder and former Cornish instructor William Cummings, musician and composer Stuart Dempster, photographer Barbara Morgan, mixed media artist Barbara Robertson, sound artist Trimpin, and Andy Warhol are integrated with significant photographs from the Cornish archives, material from performances and tours, and one original drawing by Merce himself.

Cunningham in the Northwest is co-curated by Cornish Exhibitions Curator Jess Van Nostrand and Cornish Visual Resources Curator Bridget Nowlin. Special thanks to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Jody Cunningham, Peg Cunningham, Stuart and Renko Dempster, Tonya Lockyer, and the University of Washington archives.

About the Merce Cunningham minEvent 2010 – 2011

This year Cornish College of the Arts celebrates one of the creative giants of the Twentieth Century and Cornish alumnus Merce Cunningham (1919 – 2009). The Merce Cunningham minEvent spans the 2010/2011 academic year and includes community events and campus-wide collaborations: performances, a multidisciplinary art exhibition, master classes, lecture-demonstrations, panel discussions, open rehearsals, workshops for youth choreographers, and community outreach activities in partnership with local public schools and cultural institutions. The minEvent will commemorate Cunningham’s artistic legacy, honoring his creative partnership with composer John Cage, and their association with Cornish and the Northwest.

Learn more about the minEvent at www.cornish.edu/merce.

August 13, 3:30-5:30pm (Session II)

Graduating seniors from the Art and Design departments present their individual thesis in the form of an exhibition as they prepare to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and enter the into the professional artistic community. This exhibition will represent the culmination of each student’s education and experience at Cornish. A wide variety of technical and conceptual skills will be presented to the public in two buildings on the Cornish campus. Artists will be present at the lively, not-to-be-missed opening reception! The Exhibition Catalog can be viewed online.

“This exhibition is unique because it presents an entire body of work from each graduating senior, ranging from site-specific installations to interactive projects to new media pieces and works made by traditional techniques. It’s an opportunity for the graduates to express their creative voice to a large public audience for the first time, and a chance for visitors to preview the work of these new emerging artists.” -Jess Van Nostrand, Exhibitions Curator

Cornish College of the Arts BFA Art and Design 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, May 14, 5 – 9 pm

Art Exhibition:
May 15-29
9th Avenue Studios
427 9th Ave North

Design Exhibition:
May 15-22
Cornish Main Campus
1000 Lenora Street

Gallery hours: 12 pm – 5 pm, Monday – Saturday
Free and open to the public

My most recent project, titled “Comfort and Catastrophe”, consists of three sections.  It is inspired by theories about climate change (“No-Ark”), global ocean currents (“Coriolis”), and global water distribution patterns (“Tears/ Rain”). I am utilizing the 19th c. cyanotype process, in which a range of blue tones is created. I coat various types and colors of paper with a mixture of light sensitive iron compounds (ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide), place objects or materials on the surface of the paper, expose it under ultraviolet light (i.e. sunlight), and process it. In the primary section, “No-Ark”, I am exploring the possible consequences of the sea level rising.  The work consists of photograms of a variety of plastic, wood, or stuffed animals composed and exposed to light in such a way that they appear to be floating or drowning in the water. I am interested in how this imagery hovers in the space between comfort and catastrophe. In the “No-Ark” section, I am also exploring and responding to the oceanic phenomenon known as the “Great Garbage Patch”, which exists within the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The “Coriolis” section explores, in a more scientific or diagrammatic way, the major ocean currents north and south of the equator. The “Tears/ Rain” section not only refers to water patterns but also to the expression of grief and mourning.

Tina Aufiero

Between ‘nature observer’ and ‘obsessed videographer’, Tina Aufiero continues to document the arrival of migrating trumpeter swans in Skagit Valley, WA. This particular photo composites several images taken by a digital video camera flown on balloons in 2009. This is an example of Aufiero’s ongoing observation involving migrating swans. The swan becomes an iconic metaphor, the trope that focuses her ideas and experiences concerning love, life cycles and social relations.

“Vantage point” shown here refers to earlier efforts in which photography and video were the result of her process. She has traveled to different locations, local and international, to observe the swans and gather video. These projects overlap and include ‘swan project’ 2002, ‘project swancam’ 2005 and ‘swan song’ 2009.
‘Swan_project’ was an interactive video and photographic journal of time spent in Iceland during the arrival of migrating whooper swans.

‘Project_swancam’ put into use a collar fitted with a video camera on the neck of a swan fabricated by Aufiero. Aufiero worked with Dr. William Sladen at Environmental Studies at Airlie - Swan Research Program in Warrenton,VA. Dr. Sladen is a well known ornithologist in the area of swan migration. Still frames exported from the collected video were exhibited as a photographic grid, 8’ x 6’, representing the ephemeral space of the swan.

Bonnie Biggs

The minis are a series of small objects made with pieces of drawings, photos and a few other uncomplicated materials. So far the ideas are centered around brief evocative vignettes from a bit of what the eye sees and mind imagines.

Linda Davidson

The installations of small paintings that I make collect the impressions, associations and intrusive thoughts that one might have while experiencing an ordinary moment in an ordinary day.  Together they represent my attempt to depict the eternal nature of a single instant in a thinking mind.

They are made as individual paintings that are gathered as opportunities arise, to form larger images.  Sometimes they are presented as pairs in which case the relationship between the particular two paintings becomes the whole story.  On other occasions the paintings are placed in the context of hundreds of others and the mural sized images create a narrative context for the individual paintings.

I use sky imagery because the sky is everywhere in human experience.  The forms and tonal relationships that develop in the clouds are at once endlessly mutable and very particular.  Sometimes a plume of smoke obscures the sky. 

The history and malleability of paint is also important to me.  Binders and pigments have been used in many ways and for millennia to represent everything that is so far conceivable to human beings. Styles and ways of handling painting media can convey a great deal about us, our present and our view of history and the future, whether through depiction, or analogous imagery.

This particular installation springs from a simple observation that I noted at the Venice Biennale in 2007.  There were many works of contemporary art that year presenting environments that had somehow been fabricated for human comfort in a post natural world.  Moving from these exhibits to the many Baroque churches and other buildings in town, I saw the domes of stone that everywhere supplanted the dome of the sky from an altered perspective.  These domes are decorated with extraordinary paintings of human allegorical figures hoisted by clouds into a facsimile of the heavens. 

The knowledge that we live in a fragile world that is threatened by (among other impulses) our human delight in invention, aspiration, opulence – even beauty is not new.  That we can no longer be innocent of this awareness must change us.

Julie Gaskill

In The Elementary Grammar of Dramatic Art, as K. S. Stanislavski called his System, he claimed that there is an immutable tie between the psychological and the physical. In every physical action there is always something psychological. For instance, opening a door is a physical action, but we always open a door for a psychological reason. 
Opening a door to escape from a room is different from opening it to overhear what is said in another room; it is different if you open the door to let in somebody you love; if you open the door during the day or night; and so on.
As a visual artist, I am interested in the same kind of signifier, the telling gesture. A turn of the head or hand that speaks volumes, “in general,” said Stanislavski, “is the enemy of art.”

David Nechak

My interests lie within a practice of faith and mindful consciousness throughout the creative process.

I look for connections between humor and insights involving life situations.

Barbara Noah

The images in this exhibition are from the Likely Stories series, which was interrupted by a hiatus to build and move into a new art studio, but will be completed in 2010. In this series, I am intrigued by the ideas of the long shot, a cultural longing for a better life, the can-do moxie that often arises out of that desire, and the notion that achievement, redemption, and salvation might be found in the sky. These themes are explored in pigment prints constructed from multiple images into alternative realities, in which solitary airborne objects function as surrogates for the viewer. These iconic symbols are everyday objects, often toys - diminutive objects taming the infinite. Whether free-floating or propelled by a toss, they are in full throttle can-do mode, ascending to improbable, transcendent heights and wryly reflective of the humor and pathos of the desire for human achievement.

Heather Dew Oaksen

What puts one impulsive adolescent boy in prison while another stays free? Minor differences. They may be as simple as the neighborhood he lives in, a better sense of which lines not to cross or ties to one influential adult. The major differences come to light post-prison. For the boy who is jailed, incarceration for a few years tends to launch a life plagued by obstacles, inappropriate responses and more prison.
The MINOR DIFFERENCES documentary film, currently in production, chronicles the 15 year post-prison journey of 7 former juvenile offenders. Their first person commentaries shed light on why and how jail exacts a long term, often lifetime, toll on youth who grow up behind bars. This exhibit excerpts stories from 4 of the 7.

In 1994, Oaksen taught a video skills class at Green Hill, a maximum security prison for juveniles in Chehalis, WA. There she got to know the young men you will meet in MINOR DIFFERENCES. At the time, they were boys between the ages of 13 and 18 – Caucasian, Native American, Mexican American and African-American. In creating their video pieces, the boys momentarily shed their label of “offender” or “gang banger.” They came across as engaging young people who, despite their mistakes, aspired to stay out of jail and lead satisfying lives. They had hopes for the future. And when they were released, Oaksen stayed in touch. Intermixing footage from recent interviews with her original work with the Green Hill boys, the feature length documentary film will vividly illustrate the subjects’ continued efforts to reconnect with the world.
The MINOR DIFFERENCES Project combines digital media products, emerging distribution technologies, and community action partners to convince audiences that sending juveniles to prison irreparably damages both the individual and the communities to which he or she will eventually return. All media products are an integral part of the larger, activist project operating as catalysts to encourage awareness, and promote action. http://www.minordifferences.com

John Overton

My work combines mixed tenses that express different times at which action takes place relative to the artist or viewer.  Color is a principal part of the work, conveying conditions of the past, present and future.

Kathleen Rabel

My current body of work strives to make physical an action, to make the intangible tangible.  These images are concerned with how a shape takes form through a series of structures that represent space, time and change on a two dimensional surface.  This comes from interest in change as movement through individual elements. My continuing work in painting, prints, process media, and photography also reflects this interest.

Kristen Ramirez

For most of my artistic practice, I have played with images that depict our culture’s fascination with easy mobility, gaudy commerce, infrastructure, and technology, always looking for a way to reveal the messy collision of messages and images. The work on view here represents an excavation of my studio practice.  Using sketches I’ve saved over the years and moving from 2d to 3d, I overlap distinct elements from five years’ worth of drawings. Tracing these layers onto one another, I am building an accretion of imagery that shows topography, commerce, natural forms, and infrastructure all in the same breath. This is my ongoing search for a vision that is useful, bittersweet, perhaps even beautiful.

Kristin L. Tollefson

Plant forms grown from line:
I draw it long and round.
These pips could be played as music.
We’d hear stylized botany, studded
with fecund beads
dew
pearl
bud
gelatinous fungi
capturing ambient light
shedding themselves, holding their breath,
exhaling.

I am drawn to the interplay between organic forms and human systems. Inspiration comes from sources including botanical illustration, micrograph photography, traditional textile and needlework techniques and fractal theory. Repetition and pattern-making, obsessive labor, and modular elements find their way into many of my pieces. Multiple simple elements convene into powerful and complex wholes. The work is simultaneously scientific and poetic.

Ruth Marie Tomlinson

Two Dot Spot Project #2: as the world turns
6.17.09 6:03am I was awake briefly at 5 to see a bright red pre-dawn strip on the horizon and to hear the densest layers of birdcalls. I know the western meadowlark, the magpies, and the sand-hill cranes, but there are many others I don’t yet know.

6.22.09 8:09am Following patches of light through stencils across the wall and then across the tabletop, my work has begun. It is a game to see how much I can get down before cloud-cover stops me or the sun moves beyond the window frame. I mailed three postcards today.

6.27.09 5:38am The sun broke the horizon just a few minutes ago and now at 5:42 it is behind a low grey cloud. Will there be enough light for me to work today? Yesterday was gray most of the day. I only managed two postcards and I mourn the loss of 6.26.09 on my large paper…but 7 is a beautiful number. Maybe these clouds will give. The meadowlarks are singing, perhaps declaiming the day. 

7.7.09 7:30am A look at the clock each morning notes the start of the day, but the rising and the setting of the sun determine waking and sleeping. I finished a second large drawing yesterday.

8.7.09 6:07am Eyes on my wall, I am waiting for the sun to clear a last cloud. Each date working with the sun is marked. The absence of the sun marked with the absence of a date. I mailed five postcards today.

8.10.09 6:16am The days are shortening and our Two Dot summer is ending. It is amazing how fast the sun moves. In 10 minutes it has doubled its distance from the horizon and now there are two pink squares on my working wall, one at each end. In the beginning of the summer, the west square began in the middle of my wall, now it starts at the edge. The light is moving so quickly I will need to get up soon to finish the last large drawing. All summer I’ve worked with the movement of the earth as a locater and marker of time. Yet I continue to refer to the sun’s movement. It is hard to wrap my mind around the idea of the ground under my feet moving, yet it is in constant motion…Terra Firma…the solidness we depend on hurling through our universe. Nothing…nothing is as it seems.
Two Dot Spot
Two Dot, Montana

David Ulrich

I am alarmed by the paradoxical attitudes we, as a society, hold towards the immediate natural environment and, by extension, the planet itself. We often claim reverence, respect, and deep enjoyment in the face of nature, yet our actions belie our words. Our fundamental right to the pursuit of happiness has been distorted by some to imply the desire for indulgent personal satisfaction, often through consumerism, which has an untold impact on both our implicit humanity and on the environment.
The images in this exhibition derive from two ongoing projects. The first is titled Mediated Nature, which is an examination of how the land itself is shaped by its inhabitants. And the second, They Paved Paradise, refers to a Joni Mitchell song written in response to the massive and insensitive development of Waikiki on the island of Oahu.

Featuring:

March 10 – April 14, 2010
Opening Reception: March 10, 5 – 8 pm

Cornish Main Gallery, First Floor, 1000 Lenora Street, Seattle, WA 98121
Cornish Main Gallery Hours: Monday – Wednesday, Friday 12 – 5 pm; Thursday 10 am – 6 pm

Location: Main Gallery, MCC 1st floor
Day: February 9
Time: 12-1pm

The Cornish Main Gallery presents Unring the Bell, a solo exhibition by Cornish alumnus Dan Webb (Art ’91). The second installment in the Alumni Retrospective Series, Unring the Bell emphasizes the artist’s creative development from his student experiences at Cornish through recent years. The exhibition features finished sculptures, works-in-progress, early objects and drawings not previously exhibited, and an original comic book co-created by the artist and Cornish student Kelly Martin (Art ’10).

Curated by Cornish Exhibitions Curator Jess Van Nostrand

January 21 — February 26, 2010
Opening Reception: January 20, 5 - 8pm

Cornish Main Gallery, First Floor, 1000 Lenora Street, Seattle, WA 98121
Cornish Main Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 12 - 5 pm

Thursday, December 3rd
Noon-1PM
MCC Room 309
Please note that room 309 is on the main floor of 1000 Lenora St.

Guest curated by Marisa C. Sánchez, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum

Through a selection of photography and video works, GRAVITY probes the ways in which contemporary artists give expression to the gradual, and often imperceptible, shifts in daily life and experience. Attune to the subtleties of transformation, the works on view highlight an impulse to embrace uncertainty, ambiguity, and the ephemeral.

Nov 3 - Dec 11
Cornish Main Gallery
Main Campus Center
1000 Lenora Street, 1st Floor

Lecture and demonstration of technique: 
Cornish College of the Arts, Room 510 (Print Studio)
1:30 PM, Friday Oct 9, 2009

Zha Sai’s Homepage