Earlier this year, I was thinking to myself that I really wanted to do something meaningful to help swing the 2020 election in the direction of good and away from the direction of dictatorship. Because of our goofy electoral college system, my “blue state” vote alone isn’t worth much, and neither is knocking on doors, as far as the presidential election is concerned. I had heard about an organization, Movement Voter Project, that raises funds in states like mine and gives the money to grassroots groups in swing states who fight voter suppression and get out the vote. I convinced my co-curator, Dara Solliday, to add a benefit for MVP to our annual “100 under $100” show, scheduled to happen in June.

Of course, the big group shows we loved to create, our hall crowded with people vying for affordable art—obviously couldn’t happen. (Neither could knocking on doors.) In May I reconvened my dream team (via Zoom) of artists with multiple skill-sets in marketing, art installation, press relations, etc. and we decided to make the benefit happen anyway. After all, with a disastrously mishandled killer pandemic, racist tweets, federal troops invading the next town to beat up protesters, voter rights under even more vicious attack—you get the idea—our motivation to make a change was all the more urgent.

So we organized the thing as an online gallery and auction. We collected the physical art from the 50 artists, hung it in the upstairs gallery, and posted it online, along with a donation link to Movement Voter Project dedicated to our event. Donors of $100 or more can pick out a piece of art (while supplies last!) and pick it up* in September, when we may be able to open the gallery to the public to see the whole show before the work goes to its new homes.

The artist who created each piece will remain anonymous until the work is selected, so I can’t post mine yet. However, a complete list of the illustrious names of the artists I persuaded to donate is on the ’57 Biscayne website.

GO TO THE SQUARE DEAL SITE & GET SOME DEMOCRACY & ART.

*I’ll ship!

The Food Art Collection is now open by appointment!

You can view my new show of 24 tiny round food paintings, I’ll Never Have That Recipe Again, in the lovely apartment gallery, with masks and at a safe distance, through August. Contact Jeremy to make an appointment. All the work is also viewable in their online gallery.

On Wednesday, November 20 from 6-9 PM, I’ll be a panelist in a discussion about—what else?— “Saving Space for the Arts in Seattle,” which is part of The Evergrey series, Setting the Table. After the usual Q & A lineup, the discussion continues more casually, over a meal prepared by local chef Justin Khanna of Voyager’s Table. The description from Evergrey:

Seattle’s history is rich with creative minds who made an impact — from larger than life icons like Jimi Hendrix, Octavia Butler, and Dale Chihuly to our communities of indigenous artists, scrappy trendsetters, counter-culture envelope pushers and more.

Today, Seattle’s rapid growth often looks better suited to our booming tech industry than to creative cultures that have kept us vibrant, authentic, and oh yes — just the right kind of weird.

At this month’s Setting The Table, our community panel and dinner will dive into the Seattle arts ecosystem to try to understand: What led us to where we are today in our arts scene? And how we can build a more inclusive, supportive future for our local creatives?

Led by moderator Caitlin Moran from The Evergrey, local thought leaders will begin the conversation by answering your questions, and we’ll see where we go from there! Our discussion leaders for this month’s topic are:

• Priya Frank – Community Programs, Seattle Art Museum
• Jane Richlovsky – Seattle Painter and Accidental Developer
• Hallie Kuperman – Owner, Century Ballroom
• Greg Lundgren – Art Space Curator and Entrepreneur

The discussion and feast will take place at Makers Workspaces, 92 Lenora Street, Seattle, WA 98121.

Tickets are available here. The event is $40 including the tasting menu. A limited number of reduced-price tickets are set aside; there is a link to apply for them on the event website.

My work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Face First at the Bainbridge Museum of Art, on lovely Bainbridge Island, Washington. Curated by Greg Robinson and Amy Sawyer,

PLEASE JOIN US FOR A CLOSING PARTY AND INDUSTRY NIGHT ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 17 FROM 5-7 PM!

For the sixth year in a row, my colleague Dara Solliday and I will be organizing and curating the 100 under $100 show at ’57 Biscayne. I love doing this. We gather art from a whole bunch of artists we know, and usually a few that we don’t, all of it priced under $100 (as the name would imply) and wrestle it into a surprisingly coherent show. The first year we put  it on, it was kind of thrown together at the last minute (we frantically raided a lot of our neighbors studios to get to 100 pieces) but nevertheless went pretty well. There are collectors from that first event who still come back year after year. We’ve got it down to a system now: The work has to be ready to hang; the artists have to drop it off at prescribed times and enter their own information into a form (I spent several evenings sliding down the hall with my laptop on a chair with casters as Dara fished out post-its and tried to match them to artworks); and we’ve gotten really good at herding a big fat mishmash of art into aestheically pleasing groupings that make their own kind of sense. In other words, it’s a real show now. And until the day we hang it (with some help from other Biscaynitos), we really have no idea what it’s going to look like.

One of the many pleasures of this show is giving some newer artists the opportunity to show their work and actually sell it. However, many established artists look forward to it as well because it’s a chance to do something outside of their known style or medium, to play around a little bit.  We can take risks with something brand-new, or conversely, dig up something old. I’ll be doing the latter this year. I found some oil studies for paintings from the turn of the century—studies that were actually done after the works themselves were in progress. The paintings have long since left my life and gone to good homes, and the studies are like memories of them. They’re also fresher and looser and less precious, from a time before I learned to be loose in my “real” work.

Saturday, April 27 is Independent Bookstore Day, a day set aside to celebrate all those havens of civilization and culture where you can browse in the old sense, touch and leaf through physical books, and talk to real people who read a lot.

In Seattle, the celebration includes the Passport Challenge, in which one tries to visit all 25 participating bookstores in one day. Arundel Books of Pioneer Square is one of them. Their house imprint, Chatwin Books, who published my Fabric of the American Dream in 2015, will be presenting a series of readings by Chatwin authors at the store that day.

As one of their art book “authors,” rather than reading from my book I will be talking about the paintings that are in it; about my subsequent work; and then about two artists of my choosing, Edouard Manet (of course) and Norman Rockwell (about whom I wrote a piece for ArtDish a few years back).

My talk starts at 3:30 PM PDT. The event will be live-streamed on Facebook, but to reward actually showing up in person, which is kind of the point, champagne will be served at the bookstore.