2022 The creative spirit continues to flourish at CORE gallery!
Enjoy these videos showcasing exhibitions during the pandemic!
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We are honored to be part of your creative community!
With generous support from 4Culture, CORE gallery has weathered the challenges of the pandemic. Our door remains open and walls filled with innovative art created by local artists! Thank you 4Culture!
December
Annual Community Show celebrating the powerful voices of Liminal Hymns: Identity In Between
curated by Jo Mikesell
As part of our mission at CORE we open the gallery each year to showcase the important work being done in our creative community! Celebrate with us as we are honored to host a powerful exhibition curated by Jo Mikesell.
Liminal Hymns: Identity In Between
Exploring the identities of multiracial Asian diasporic artists and the complexities of existing in-between spaces, of simultaneously belonging and not belonging, and of chosen community.
Artists in the exhibition: Makoto Chi, Marcos Chin, Jonathan Wakuda Fischer, Carolyn Hitt, Laura Kina, May Kytonen, Rob Kolhouse, Diana Li, Hanako O'Leary, Daisy Patton, Katie So, Mandy Tsung, Markel Uriu
Image: The Hermit (from The Tarot Series by Marcos Chin
November
PUZZLING POSSIBILITIES Žanetka K. Gawronski
This all began because of a well-meaning adventure to the toy store, little did I know it would end in a moment of desperation as I realized the pandemic is stripping society of aesthetic possibilities. Everywhere I went the puzzles I found were all insipid, mass-produced, and recycled images. Faced with this deadening sameness, I was inspired to transform each sterile mass-produced puzzle into a unique, one-of-a-kind painting that reflected stories from the past year.
To create this body of work, I brought all those kittens, cottages, and fruit slices home, and endured piecing them together. Painting directly on top of each one, I transformed them into original artworks inspired by recent stories and moments. Some of the puzzles were trimmed here and there to fit together better, some I divided the pieces between two different puzzles, and some I combined multiple puzzles together to make one piece. These puzzles are all functional, they can be framed or taken apart and put back together -- some can even be put back together in multiple ways.
This body of new work is my rallying cry -- no more kittens in baskets, no more cottages in the woods, no more patterns of fruit slices delivered to doorsteps overnight. You deserve better. Take the pieces available to you, put them together in a new way, and rediscover how delicious it is to engage all of your senses. Begin to imagine what you want the world to be rather than what is available via mass consumption.
I am so happy you are here and we can share these PUZZLING POSSIBILITIES.
November
SHELF LIFE Sonja Henrixson
This new installation is epic. An epic about those tragedies in life that just smack you in the face and make you want to laugh and cry with the absurdities. The sculpture speaks of loss, small and large, personal and national, like a pandemic spreading like a wildfire homes disappearing an actual raging fire. The randomness of all of these events coming into our lives and leaving our lives can give an overwhelming feelings of the absurdity of life. There is also a response to this randomness in the humor and gravity of the work, expressed with binding, knotting, and color. Red is strength and bravery in the face of tragedy and trauma, and all through the knotting and tying is resilience.
The sculpture is fabricated with Junk and refuse, transformed into work of strength. However laughable it is to collect four years of plastic to make it into a huge bulging lump or a re-se a broken shelving system. this seeming trash is re-purposed into a meaningful form. the lumpy bundles look to be perilously teetering on the splintered shelves, yet the shaky structure is supporting the weight of those bundles. All throughout the piece hang banners of draped cloth, furthering the metamorphosis of brokenness and tragedy into resilience and bravery.
Special thank you to Dan Bernunzio for taking on my quick sketch and building the shaky wooden shelf and Suzanne Strandberg (my daughter) for editing and rewriting my about SHELF LIFE.
October
FOREST TRAILS John Smither
Installations of video and painted panels featuring various sylvan locations near Seattle.
John’s current show displays his efforts to create memory shrines of places and experiences utilizing videos and painted panels. All of the locations were favorite local forested trails of his during COVID. For this show he has selected Seward Park and its lowland forest, Boulder Loop Trail in the Cascade foothills and finally Tradition Lake Trail near Cougar Mountain. All these works rely heavily on stencil techniques which are inspired by woodcut prints that he also creates.
October
Photograph: Lynn Thompson
THE FOUNDERS HOUSE Laurie Le Clair
I often regret not being able to travel back in time to revisit some significant times and places I lived in - places where I feel sure that pieces of my spirit still bide and wait for me. But time relentlessly pushes forward, cruelly prodding you if you try to straggle or go back for another look - as I would.
That wish has invaded my sleep in the form of recurring dreams in which I do return to one or another of my times and places. In the dreams I am wandering through a house looking for vestiges of home, especially in upstairs bedrooms and closets. I find certain objects and clothing and linens that I know, in place where they belong, and still infused with familiar smells and body warmth. Although their appearance is dramatically different, in that weirdly truthful way in which dreams alter things, I recognize them at once with intense feelings of reassurance and relief.
This series of works is informed by this preoccupation and those dreams and by my on-going, never-ending excavation of the bits and pieces in the archeology of the heart and soul. The title THE FOUNDERS HOUSE announced itself to my mind one day as the perfect phrase to bind together the individual pieces in this series that encompasses several seminal times and places, but especially one - a boarding school I attended.
September
soul re/purpose Deirdre Wilcox
Using repurposed surfaces and mixed media, this work explores the soul's experience of being human and questions our true soul purpose.
The black-based east wall acknowledges darkness as part of the human condition without granting permission to give up on cultivating our best selves. Always, there is color in the dark.
The reds and browns on the south wall recognize The Earth as an exquisite but weary host. All non-human life is waiting for the humans to understand the power of choice.
The figures on the west wall are the guides and helpers along the path, as diverse as life on earth, and as distinct. Some are in human form, some are not. Receiving
guidance requires listening. Humans are not skilled listeners. They stubbornly override the system's clanging bells at their own expense.
The human system comes equipped with all it needs to live from the place of Soul Self. Open the built-in app called Intuition. Noodle around, become proficient. This navigational tool is meant to help humans live as Soul Jedeyes*.
Let us live as who we are: spiritual beings having a human experience.
*Souls who use the navigational tools to see clearly. Not to be confused with the better-known spelling, lest anyone in the film industry get unhappy with its use.
September
I’ve Been Out Walking Mylen Tumaliuan-Huggins
natural & random
depth, layers, & textures
metaphors & revelations
being present
August
WITNESS Gary Logan
Gary Logan’s artwork depicts sublime, panoramic landscapes, and magnified biological masses that chronicle our destruction of the natural world, make poignant statements on racial identity, and reveal signs of human discord.
His haunting series of mixed-media images and paintings provide jarring revelations pertaining to our imbalanced relationship with the environment and on the complexities of human nature. The alluring textures, dramatic contrasts, and vibrant colors, inherent to Logan’s work, draw unsettling parallels between our devastation of the Earth and the impact of human subjugation.
August
FRAGILE Carrie Grey
Fragile: An exploration of the tenuous nature of mental stability
Ever since young adulthood I have suffered from episodic depression and it's detrimental impact. Stability always the goal, picking yourself up over and over again becomes tedious.
I call it the invisible disability because not only is it difficult to know who is afflicted, but there is also the stigma and repercussions of declaring oneself as mentally unbalanced to the general public, let alone one's family.
I don't have any meaningful answers, but I hope these pieces start a dialogue. One that empowers those who suffer to self-identify so they can get the support they need. And, for those who care about them, to offer that support without persecution or judgement.
July
JEEPERS CREEPERS Drew Dyrdahl
The latest brood of Little Creepers straight from Drew's Creepery -- monster art dolls created with scavenged materials, showcased in found object habitats.
July
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INTO THE ETHER Amanda Hood
Investigating the complex relationship between human beings and the natural world, my work explores the sublime in the contemporary landscape. Creating atmospheric abstractions, paintings capture elements of light streaming through trees, fire, and coastlines alongside subtle references to human interaction. Mysterious and encapsulating, nature holds a sense of raw power.
As our environment changes rapidly, it is at once a place of stillness and renewal, destruction and terror. Heightening tensions between light and dark, defined and blurred, thick and thin, I am interested in the presence of duality, and the ways in which the landscape can represent the complexities of contemporary life in both our inner and outer worlds.
June
ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION Eileen Wold
A crack in the ice. A divide in the forest from fire. A broken landscape.
Arctic Amplification, a term used to describe the increased rate at which the Arctic is warming compared to the rest of the planet, occurs when sea ice melts and the white disappears, leaving more dark water to absorb heat from the sun and increase temperatures.
As complex global climate systems shift, we are left to contemplate the impact on our local landscapes and ecosystems. How does Arctic Ice melt affect Washington State? That question brought me to the scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their research on extended wildfire dry seasons as it relates to jet stream changes caused by Arctic melt.
This body of work visually explores these questions and ideas of a changing landscape and a broken climate system.
Artist and Scientist Talk: join artist Eileen Wold and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Earth scientist Dr. Hailong Wang, June 17th, 5-7pm at CORE gallery.
Dr. Hailong Wang will discuss his climate research and artist Eileen Wold will share how it inspired and affected her latest body of work, ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION.
June
The CARTS of COVID Scott Carnz
When the pandemic shutdown started, I began seeing a lot of shopping carts left in random places around my neighborhood. I started photographing them as they seemed to be a sign of the times with a sense of loneliness, emptiness, and wanting—signaling so many of the losses we've felt during this time.
Shopping carts are literally the vehicle of our consumerism as a society. Seeing them around my neighborhood started raising so many possibilities in my mind as I anthropomorphized them, imbuing them with personality and intent. Were they coming to our neighborhoods to remind us to still shop? Were they fleeing the stores and their fellow carts in reaction to the “hot zone” that the shopping environment had become? Were they simply roaming free, no longer slaves to American consumers relentlessly filling and emptying them?
There is a viral "Shopping Cart Theory" that proposes that an individual's moral character can be determined by whether they choose to return a shopping cart to its designated spot after use or whether they simply leave it wherever it suits them. This question becomes ridiculous when you realize that in reality, most of these carts have been utilized and left by those suffering from homelessness in these difficult times. Those whom our capitalist society has failed are left to use the vehicles of that very system, the carts, as a way to store and transport their only possessions. Sitting with this I wonder, what is the true illness with which our society is battling?
May
SOULS UNRAVELED Uyen Tran-Gjerde
Without the ability to mourn I wonder how do we move forward? In my new series Souls Unraveled, I tackle ideas of sorrow and regret and the different stages and directions it may have. The images are surreal and dreamy, with angel-like figures falling and spiraling about. Some parts of the series take a decidedly dark turn as I explore themes of death and depression. What surprised me while I was painting this series were the moments of hope and levity. They don’t appear often, but as you explore each painting, you may find some glimmer of it.
May
FORGIVENESS Liz Ophoven
This body of sculptural work examines the Four Cardinal Directions and the essence of symbology for each depicted through figures, animals and forms.
I have created this body of work with the notion of Forgiveness, a meandering awareness that all can simply pass through, no need to attach to a certain outcome, judge a moment in time or linger in angst about an ideal. My endeavor is to create emotive figurative ceramic sculptures that evoke curiosity, tenderness, connection and sometimes humor. I wish for these pieces to reflect back to the onlooker a message for their spirit. I aim to represent time, ages and layers of experiential projection while creating each piece.
April
Collateral Discoveries Stuart Kleiger
Collateral Discoveries is about crossing over the last two years and the unexpected discoveries that were made along the way. Discoveries of ourselves, of others, of sorrow, and of isolation. We also began to see again what we forgot, what we took for granted, and were reminded of what was overlooked. I hope you find in these works shared expressions of what we have endured and moments of gratitude we had among such loss. It is my hope this body of work can create community out of experiences previously held in isolation. We all went through something, let us now “common thread” our burdens, and commune in joy. Let us remember what we found as much as what we wish to forget.
April
DownStream Tracy Simpson
Whether we choose to acknowledge it, each of us lives downstream of somebody and each of us lives upstream of somebody. We may not be able to see who all are affecting us from their perches upstream and we may not be able to see who all we are affecting downstream of us, but affecting one another we are. The beloved Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh called this interconnectedness “interbeing.”
The phrase in the namesake piece of this collection, “Everybody lives downstream” is from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book, Braiding Sweetgrass.* To provide a bit of context, in this portion of the book she is talking about the lengths she went to in the restoration of the small pond on her land and why it mattered that she did so without resorting to a quick fix through chemicals, noting that “the water connects us all.” I further channeled this idea that water connects us all into a series of stylized water drops portraying some of the most environmentally impactful things we are collectively doing to the water we share. Other pieces in this collection speak to the importance of speaking up, to the idea that losing anyone to violence is unacceptable, and to the notion that keeping gratitude front and center is a powerful antidote* to what ails us.
*The phrases “Everybody Lives Downstream” and “Gratitude is a powerful antidote” from Braiding Sweetgrass are used with permission from Milkweed Editions.
March System Layers Claire Putney
These vibrant, multi-dimensional works layer diagrams and charts from various systems of social, economic, and political power. City maps, electrical power structures, stock market graphs, and military strategy diagrams are all systems that are controlled by few, and impact many.
This exhibition presents a fantastical, pulsating configuration of these inherently layered and interconnected systems.
March Inhabitants Kate Harkins
My work is figurative, but rooted very much in the exploration of materials, set in fabric, drawing, nail polish, spray paint and fabric, with play and invention being the engines.
The people in my work are from life or invented characters, and once created, seek to participate in the conversation we are having now, about the life and world we navigate and work to reinvent.
February shaping perception Melissa Knowles
![sm_behind_schedule_-watercolor_and_mixed_medium-22.5__x_31_-2019[1].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/34f636_38356a92f8fa4890b1600d3a4ec0452b~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_245,h_183,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/sm_behind_schedule_-watercolor_and_mixed_medium-22_5__x_31_-2019%5B1%5D.jpg)
a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting: a mental impression
how we see becomes our truth
February Dreamscapes John Leahy
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When I paint, I release myself to the process, seeking mental states of flow. I have developed a distinctive visual vocabulary through years of observation and experimentation. Using water-based media to play with texture and layers of color that flow and bifurcate, I create evocative personal dreamscapes. My compositions come from drawing, painting, and monoprinting techniques to explore themes which emerge from my subconscious, memories, and experiences.
January CORE Group Show experience the creative vision of the CORE 2022 artists
Celebrate with CORE as we showcase our 2022 gallery artists in our annual group exhibition! During these unprecedented times, we are grateful the creative spirit is flourishing as we present another year of colors, textures, stories, and ideas within which to take refuge and find inspiration.
Exhibition on view: January 5-29, 2022
Pioneer Square Art Walk and Artist Reception: January 6th from 6-8pm
