Kathryn V. White, Award-Winning Author & Artist
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Rethinking Contemporary Craft

4/19/2014

 
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Yoshima Tsuchiya's Carnival. Photo from BAM's website--4-19-2014.
The Bellevue Art Museum (BAM) in Bellevue, WA continues its tradition of exhibiting high-quality and diverse work by extremely talented craftspeople.  

I love contemporary crafts—so full of texture, quirkiness, and ingenuity.  I look forward to the day when crafts are given as much respect and admiration as what is deemed fine art.

Here's BAM's current lineup:

*Crafting a Continuum—My favorite of the four exhibits.  It includes 60+ pieces drawn from the Arizona State University Art Museum’s contemporary craft collection of more than 5,000 objects. It’s a wonderful exhibit that’s too diverse and difficult to describe here.  So do yourself a favor and go see this exhibit before it closes on April 27, 2014.  Learn more here.

*Fragile Fortress—Wood carvings by Dan Webb. An interesting mixture of the finely carved juxtapositioned with rough, unfinished wood—reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Blockhead Slave sculpture.  Some of his pieces have a nightmarish quality and yet, strangely, do not incite fear.  

Works include realistic hands attached by carved wooden rings to roughly hewn wood pillars.  The rings are thick, such as ones used on the chains attached to manacles on convicts in the past. Several strands of these same wooden rings with heavy looking padlocks form long chains running from floor to ceiling.  It’s ironically titled, Rosary.   A beautifully carved open-winged dove rests on a wood chunk.  A heart-shaped balloon of wood echoing the crinkliness of helium balloons found in card stores seems to float in the air.  Delicate dandelions sprout from a redwood block.  This exhibit runs until June 15, 2014.  Learn more here. 

*Life—Ceramic sculptures by Kathy Venter. Over 30 figurative life-sized sculptures, mostly of nude women.  After firing and reassembling the parts into complete figures (the figures are too large to fire in the kiln fully assembled), a mixture of white and dental plaster is applied.  The seemingly random placement of the mixture on the sculptures and its texture adds great visual and tactile appeal.   

Throughout the exhibit, sculptures stand, sit, or recline on the floor.  Several are heads and upper torsos.  Like circus acrobats, a few hang dramatically in space, casting interesting shadows against the walls and floors.  This exhibit runs until June 15, 2013. Learn more here.

*At Your Service—Plates as sculpture from a variety of artists.  This exhibit gives you a whole new appreciation of the plate and what can be done with it.  

I particularly enjoyed Gesine Hackenberg Makkum Plooishotel’s drilling of plates and making rings and necklaces from the circles she extracts as well as Amelia Toelke’s Light and Shadow, Part 2.  Amelia covers plates with faux gold leaf, breaks them along clean lines, and then re-assembles them into a simple, eye-catching pattern adorning BAM's wall.  While this picture from the BAM’s website gives you a taste, it does not do justice to the beauty of the piece.  This exhibit runs until September 21, 2014.  Learn more here.
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Amelia Toelke's Light and Shadow, Part 2. Photo from BAM's website--4-19-2014.
Take some time to enjoy these exhibits; you’ll be glad you made the trip to BAM! 

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    Author

    Kathryn V. White is an author and artist who dreams of rousingly playing a djembe in a drum circle.  

    Two of my books are finalists in the 2014 Wishing Shelf Book Awards!  Click on the below book covers to learn more.
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    Rumble Tumble Joy book reviews: San Francisco Book Review (4 star) & Story Circle Book Reviews (4 star).
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    2020 Juried Exhibit at the Washington State History Museum 
    Kathryn's collage, "Resonating Truth" has been juried into a show at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, Washington. The exhibit runs from April 9 to August 20, 2020.

    2019 - 2020 Juried Traveling Art Exhibit in Virginia

    Kathryn's papercutting plus collage  "Summer Interlude" has been juried into a traveling show.  The exhibit runs September 9, 2019 to December 8, 2019 at Gallery 3700 in Arlington, Virginia and from December 17, 2019 to February 18, 2020 at Westover Library in Arlington, Virginia.
    2019 Juried Exhibit at the Washington State Convention Center
    Kathryn's large collage "When I'm Gone, Who Will Remember Me?" has been juried into a show at the Washington State Convention Center's Phyllis Lamphere Gallery.  The exhibit runs January 12, 2019 to March 31, 2019.
    Poetry On Buses 
    Kathryn's poem, The Sound Soothes, was selected for the ​2017 Poetry on Buses: Your Body of Water Program and is a part of the online collection! Click here to read it!

    2018 Juried Exhibit at the Rosehill Community Center

    ​*Three of Kathryn's collages have been juried into an exhibit at the Rosehill Community Center in Mukilteo, WA from April 3 through June 24, 2018. "Phoenix" won the Northwest Collage Society's prestigious Eleanor Wolters Smith Memorial Award.

    2017 SOLO SHOW at the University Business Center

    *20 of Kathryn's artworks were on exhibit in a solo show from October 16 through December 7, 2017 at the University Business Center's Gallery 4500 in Seattle's U-District.
    2017 Juried Exhibit at Seattle City Hall 
    ​Kathryn's collage, "Welcome to My Universe" was juried into the exhibit, "Hot Town: Summer in the City" at the Seattle City Hall in downtown Seattle that ran from July 7 through August 30, 2017.
     
    2017 Juried Exhibit at Seattle University  
    ​Kathryn had a large collage, "Broadway at Times Square" juried into the 2017 Search for Meaning Art Exhibition (part of the Search for Meaning Book Festival) from February  16 to 25, 2017 at Seattle University's Vachon Gallery. 
    2017 Juried Exhibit at Cascadia Art Museum  
    ​Kathryn had a collage, "Indra's Net" juried into the exhibit, "Collaged Impressions of the Northwest Social Realism and the American Scene 1930 to 1950" that ran January 19 to March 26, 2017 at the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, WA.
    2017 Exhibit at Dreamclinic 
    ​Kathryn had 10 artworks exhibited from January through April 12, 2017 at Dreamclinic in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood.
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    Kathryn's art is available as fine art prints. Click here to find out more.

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