Morgue Anne (a.k.a. Seattle's Burlesque Super Villainess, Elected Gothic Royalty - The Plague Queen) dishes about Seattle Burlesque, supporting Seattle Entertainment venues, and the latest Rendezvous controversy.
On the surface, the works in Jennifer Leigh Harrison’s show I’m Trying to Tell You Something: Breaking the Silence of Femicide Through Visual Art at Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA), belie the show’s heavy subject matter. In contrast, the work is light, largely abstract, not portraiture, with no obvious violence exhibited.
In fact, the only works featuring human subjects are a performance by Harrison and two videos, where she partners with performers from Seattle Pole Dance. A closer look, however, reveals that Harrison’s work utilizes a unique data visualization, in addition to educational wall labels, to tell the stories of intimate partner violence (IPV) against women.
Nicole Bearden (NB): Today we are here with Black Sun from Volunteer Park. I appreciate you taking a moment to engage with us this morning.
Black Sun (BS): Yes, a good conversation passes the time.
NB: Well, we will certainly attempt to make it a good conversation. You have been in the park since 1969. Do you have any favorite moments from the past fifty or so years?
BS: The more people change, the more they remain the same. People, seasons, time—they all cycle, they all come back to incipience.
I bear witness to the spinning wheels of time, the turning clock of seasons, and the joys and sorrows of man—I bear it all and it is both a heavy burden, and a lightsome ecstasy.
During a recent conversation about her upcoming show Wormhole Animism at Capitol Hill’s Steve Gilbert Studio, Meghan Thréinfhir (née Meghan Elizabeth Trainor) takes us on a brief journey from her nascent influences in spiritual tradition to her current work that takes inspiration from the poetic nature of physics in the universe.
Thréinfhir’s work has always had spiritual connections. With a practice firmly rooted in her own ancestral Irish Catholic imagery and iconography in her early art-making days, she found new inspiration via Mexican folk art when she was exposed to the work of Frida Kahlo and later from a nearby shop when she worked at Pike Place Market in the 1990s. Importantly, a 1980s show at Seattle Art Museum about African spiritual objects left a significant impression.
