Well this weekend I finally renewed my membership for the Seattle Art Museum. I’d been putting it off for various reasons, such as going through one of my stingy periods, memorizing the exhibits and general procrastination.
Anyway, the main reason I’d finally made my move and got on with it was doing the Pioneer Square Art walk for the first time. I’ve been to other art walks in the city and frequently find them to be one of the closest things to a social life I have these days. I’d been invited to two events that evening. The first being a show by Michael and Jamie Foster at the OK Hotel (Michael’s a fellow cartoonist responsible for Larry’s Café) and a show by Marvin Oliver a noted native artist at the Stonington Gallery.
It also occurred to me that it was free Thursday at SAM and it had been a while since I had gotten my “pushups” in. So I headed I headed downtown.
I arrived about three o’clock with the intent of drawing for as long as I could and then go to the shows afterwards. It had been a while since I had been on First Avenue on a Thursday evening. Working in a home office runs the risk of turning you into a bit of a shut in, so it’s important to get out of the house as often as possible. For most of the year that has consisted of running errands while my hard drive backed up. This was something different. There were a lot of life people out there and it was nice to watch people heading home and to whatever evening event they had planned.
I have to say it was also the first time I’d been around the area since the Lusty Lady, across the street, closed. For the longest time, despite my prudery, I’d seen it as a stubborn last stand against gentrification, a crumbling but still attractive 19th century building in between too glossy modernist monstrosities. But the traditional peepshow, and one place to break a twenty for bus fare after one in the morning, was defeated by Internet porn and the marquees that used to have a different forced punny double entendre every day now had a sign for lease rates.
SAM was packed. It was a first free Thursday since the Picasso show had opened so the line for tickets was huge. Since I was just there to draw I was able to walk around it but the show there was even a line for the coat check. This was the time I finally decided it was time to make my move and renew my membership.
In doing my pushups I stuck with my favorites, including The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, a very complex bronze piece by Massimiliano Soldani Benzi, and Indian Warrior on Horseback by Alexander Proctor and a 15th century Flemish wood carving of St Luke. I always find the St. Luke a challenge. You can tell it was meant to be looked up at from a distance and because of that it has an extremely forced perspective. I’ve yet to get it right.
I finished the evening with four drawings not as good as usual, (my record’s ten) but it was too crowded. Obviously, I don’t begrudge people the right and privilege of seeing good art, but I just can’t get into my zone if there are more than people in a room. I nearly backed into a medieval Madonna trying to avoid a lady in a wheel chair. All in all it was a good session and I enjoyed getting back into the grove of things and talking with many of the security guards I know.
Once finished it had gotten dark and I headed to the show at the OK Hotel this took a little while as I’m afraid I don’t know Pioneer square quite as well as I’d like and while I knew of the OK Hotel that was it. I had to pick up a map of the art walk before I had any luck but in the process I was able to enjoy several of the elements of the event I would have otherwise missed simply going to my goal, including a crafts fair in Occidental Mall.
Michael and Jamie’s show was very nice I met several interesting people. It was a shame that I had to sneak out after an hour to head to the Marvin Oliver Show.
The Oliver show was very good though. I always like these works where traditional techniques and styles are perfectly fused with modern technology and ideas. The centerpiece was a stain class sculpture of an Orca, which had been purchased for a million dollars. My favorite though, was another glass piece with palm prints and spirit animals on it. It almost reminded me more of something by a native Australian artist than someone from the northwest coast.
I ended the evening over a Gyro with my friends, Steve and Barbara Schwartz before getting a ride home. Needless to say I slept very well that night.
One of my favorite exercises and pastimes is to take my sketch book to an art museum. This has several uses. The most obvious being the exercise of drawing, drawing and drawing some more. The second is that it forces you to hyper focus on the image you’re working on and in the process really looking at it and in the process taking in everything about it.
