Over the last 6 months or so I've been making it out to Seattle's "First Thursday" on an almost regular basis. I present to you my photo collection of some of the event's best and worst featured works.

Over the last 6 months or so I've been making it out to Seattle's "First Thursday" on an almost regular basis. Most of the monthly event takes place down at the Pioneer Square area, but a lot goes on over at the South Washington and South 3rd Ave block too. For a detailed map of where to go, check out this link.

As all of you know though, art shows are usually a hit or miss. For this blog entry, I present to you my photo collection of some of the event's best and worst featured works.

For starters, I'd like of show one of this years favorites. The piece was made by Allan Packer, and is called "The Bride."

It's all life sized and very detailed, but right now I don't have any information as to where or how he made the cast. It's been up over at the Davidson Contemporary gallery for the last few months or so, and I think was just replaced with some new stuff by Allen. You and I should head out there soon to check it out for sure.

Here's my example of some of the ugly crap they show at First Thursday... I don't know who the artist is, but I do know that he's a total douche bag. I was walking around all of his stuff on all of their little pedestals, when I spotted this piece of nasty.

I knew that I wanted to make a post on here made of some examples of what gets passed off as art here in Seattle, and decided that this one should be a highlight. The surly old fart who made it must have read my mind cuz when he saw me take the picture he bitched me out of his gallery space. He proceded to harrass me, telling me that it was his art and that he holds all rights to it, and that I was not allowed to take any pictures without his consent.

Another example of bad art... I don't know who made this either, but for some reason they thought it would be interesting to glue a bunch of colored balls of hair to a wall. I'm fairly sure this was up over at the Platform gallery, but sometimes I confuse it with the Soil gallery. Either way, I wasn't into it.

Here's some cool stuff by Bill Finger, of Rochester, NY. His stuff was up over at the Platform gallery for a while in a show called "Dark States" this last Dec. For this installation he made 30" x 40" color photographs, in editions of 5, depicting some of his childhood memories. He recreates the memories on a minature scale and then photographs them. I thought they turned out pretty neat.

Up above, "1972-age 11."

Down below, "1969-age 8."

There's usually some pretty interesting stuff over at the Garde Rail gallery too. They focus a lot of their efforts on bringing in folk art primarily, but always have a wide range of styles to show off. These ones were done by Tom D. & Melissa D, who from what I can tell, focus a lot on southern imagery. That's BB King holding the guitar.

There's also been some interesting stuff by Bill Miller over at the Garde Rail, and his technique is to use discarded vintage linoleum and vinyl flooring to make his collages.

The one above is a self portrait, not Mr. T.

Down below is the stuff of Gregory Blackstock. Each and every time I go check out the new stuff over the Garde Rail, I get into a lengthy conversation with someone about his artwork. Greg lives quite the life. He's an elderly man who lives with autism and has been creating his drawings since 1986. He is also a well accomplished musician and can be seen playing his accordion outside the Key Arena for Sonics and Thunderbirds games, and also outside the Opera House.

As far as I can tell, most of his drawings all follow the same formula. Gregory picks a subject and then draws as many different depictions of it as he can. When he wants to draw a light house, he'll become so involved that that the finished product is really 12 different styles of lighthouses.

This goes on with all of his drawings. I've seen ones of drums, masks, trains, alarms, carnivorous plants, and the list goes on.

The photos down below were donw by Jesse Burke. I don't know much about them really, just that they are gross, and that most of the time I like gross.

I'm including this picture I took of a deer sticker just because it was right outside of the gallery where Jesses' stuff was, and I found it to be kind of ironic.

Moving on, I have no idea who made these...

Michelle thinks that they were done by William Powhida, and although they sorta seem like somthing he'd do, I can't be sure. Speaking of William though, he has a really great show right now up at Platform called "Paper Beings." There's this one huge drawing that really caught my attention, and that's of all the people he ever remembers meeting, just using his memory. The results are pretty interesting, and I would reccomend it.

I'm posting this one because the critic in me says to. For some reason, it just doesn't strike me as somthing unique. I mean, it's sort of pretty, and has some cool colors, but yeah...

Details.

It was made by Brian Novatny, and is called "Stepping on Clifford." It costs $5500.

This wasn't actually in any exhibits or studios I went to, but it was randomly in some hallway I passed through while visiting First Thursday. I thought it was kind of interesting and that you guys might get a kick out of it.

Here's another dentistry piece I saw a few months ago that caught my eye. I really wish I could tell you who made it, but unfortunetly I lost my notes.

Can you imagine where all those teeth came from?!

Here's my last oral piece for today. This one struck a chord cuz I've actually seen this image a few times over the last bunch of years, but in different context every time. I think originally I saw it on rotten.com as a 6th grader, and then later in Matthew Barney's Cremaster book (Yasha just did a review of one of his show's here!) He prolly modified it by smearing vaseline on it or somthing. But this one is cool cuz it's all stiched together. Awsome!

If I remember correctly, the doods face is all peeled back like that cuz he was in an insane motorcycle accident. See that huge piece of flesh in the center? That's his toungue!

Here's another bizarre one.

They were done by Ariana Page Russell. “As it happens, my own skin is extremely sensitive and reactive—blushing easily and swelling at the slightest contact. Although it may appear to be, it is not painful as this surface swells with intense pinkness. I trace a corporal record directly onto my skin, then use mirrors to afford different points of view as I document the puffing process. I am model, photographer and marker.” -APR

This one is kind of interesting too, and definitely some of the best paper mache I've ever seen.

These two down below must have taken forever. They were done by Elise Richman, and each little spire is stacked drops of oil paint, all on top of eachother. If you've ever painted with oils you know how insanely long they take to dry. This must have taken forever!

These one's probably aren't very impressive when they're photographed, but upclose they're kinda cool. I've nicknamed them yuppie clothes since I don't know who made them, but as you can prolly tell, they're different fancy clothes submerged in plastic. It's my assumption that they're left to harden within the desired hexagon shape, and then classified as fine art.

Lastly I want to show you some cool stuff that was over at the Greg Kucera Gallery for a while.

That's a picture of my friend A-ron looking at one of the pieces Tim Roda had up.

That one is called "Untitled #61" and the one A-ron is looking at is "Untitled #39." Unfortuently that's all I was able to photograph before one of the people watching over the place told me not to bother taking photos. They were very specific in mentioning that there is a full catalog of the photos on their website, which you can get to with this link. You should check it out. #43 and #51 (especially) are prolly my favorites.

Anyway, that's all for now, but incase you didn't catch on, every first Thursday of the month here in Seattle, all of the galleries and a lot of the museums open up to let people in for free. It's sort of a big deal, and there's lots of wine and cheese for the yuppies. What they really need though is Pabst and Sparks, me thinks. Anyway, if you're out here in Seattle like me, you should definitely hit it up. I'll be the burnout with the facial scruff walking around in an antihero shirt. If you see me, make sure to come say hi. See ya there!

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