Visual Arts – Openings & Events
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Wednesday, December 10, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Wednesday, December 10, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Thursday, December 11, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Thursday, December 11, 2014
SAM Lights How does that Springsteen song go? “The sculpture park is cold and dark” . . . ? Or maybe that’s another tune. Tonight the mood will be considerably more festive at this holiday event, as the OSP is open long past its usual dusk closing time. The paths will be illuminated by candles and lanterns. (To help you create the latter, Celeste Cooning will lead a paper-cut workshop.) There will be live music from Lydia Ramsey, Ben Hunter and Joe Seamo, and the D20 Brass Band. Food and drinks will be offered from Taste and Bikelava. And visitors are encouraged to wear “light ensembles,” which we take to man those wearable, wired, LED-bulb-adorned garments you sometimes see on bicycle commuters or at holiday parties. (The old term “Cosby sweater” will have to be replaced, of course.) Otherwise, dress for the weather; this is primarily an outdoors event-come rain or come snow. BRIAN MILLER Olympic Sculpture Park, 2901 Western Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Thursday, December 11, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm
Robin K. Wright He and Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse (also appearing) edited In the Spirit of the Ancestors: Contemporary Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum. Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, December 11, 2014, 7 – 8pm
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Friday, December 12, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Friday, December 12, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Saturday, December 13, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Saturday, December 13, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Sunday, December 14, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Sunday, December 14, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Monday, December 15, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Monday, December 15, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Tuesday, December 16, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Tuesday, December 16, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Wednesday, December 17, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Wednesday, December 17, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Thursday, December 18, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Thursday, December 18, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Friday, December 19, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Friday, December 19, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Saturday, December 20, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Saturday, December 20, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Sunday, December 21, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Sunday, December 21, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Monday, December 22, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Monday, December 22, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Tuesday, December 23, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Tuesday, December 23, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Wednesday, December 24, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Wednesday, December 24, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Thursday, December 25, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Thursday, December 25, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Friday, December 26, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Friday, December 26, 2014
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Order & Chaos If you’re a Burning Man skeptic, the photographs of one-named Frenchwoman MARTI, though beautiful, may not change your mind; here are the grand and fanciful art projects, the elaborate costuming, the nonchalant undress you’ll see in any visual record of the event. But what I love about her photos, gathered in the exhibit Order & Chaos: A Decade of Burning Man, is that she nearly always shoots the flamboyance in question against a great deal of nothing: the off-white Nevada desert floor, blue sky, maybe a dust cloud, with a palpable sense of vast distance between her subject and anything else that might incidentally be in the frame. The inclusion of all that emptiness emphasizes the improbability, and thus the surrealism, of the images; this isn’t just another Halloween night in Fremont. For me, looking at them feels like what being there feels like-the nothing is just as weird as the something. (Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5. See kirklandartscenter.org for gallery hours.) GAVIN BORCHERT Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, WA 98033 Free Saturday, December 27, 2014
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William Mortensen Port Townsend publisher Feral House is known for pushing the boundaries of good taste and the First Amendment. (It even printed the ravings of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.) But what its founder, Adam Parfrey, really loves are the vulgar-sexy-shocking artifacts of olden times: everything that was cheap and weird and popular before the sanitized standards of the postwar era were imposed. Hence two new volumes celebrating the L.A. photographer Mortensen (1897-1965): the biography American Grotesque and Mortensen’s reissued, newly annotated The Command to Look. A small selection of photos, heavily processed in the darkroom by Mortensen, goes on view tonight (along with recent paintings by locals Stacy Rozich and John Brophy). Mortensen was a master of interwar sensationalism: bare-breasted white women threatened by negroid gorillas, religious persecution and torture, suggestions of horror and the occult. Nonetheless-or maybe precisely because of those tendencies-he was an in-demand portrait photographer who brought Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Fay Wray, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Peter Lorre before his lurid lens. His aesthetic was the opposite of realism, and his photos essentially passed themselves off as paintings. But look at any dime novel, comic book, or movie poster of his day and you’ll see his influence. (Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 4. See roqlarue.com for gallery hours.) BRIAN MILLER Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Saturday, December 27, 2014
