Before Words: The New Calligraphy
Jerry Hanna

Join us for a reception with the artist Saturday, October 24, from 6:00-8:00pm Free and open to the public Gallery hours Saturday, October 24, through Friday, November 27, 2009 Sundays 6:00-9:00pm Mondays 7:00-11:00pm Tuesdays 6:00-9:30pm Wednesdays 6:30-10:30pm Fridays 9:00pm-12:30am Saturdays 9:00pm-12:30am (closed October 31) Showings also by appointment.   Contact Lauren at Art@CenturyBallroom.com or 206-324-7263

Artists Statement:
Art making is free of self-conscious definitions of art. Everyone knows what art is when they see it, and what anyone sees does not restrain the discoveries and intention of artists. Art making is what I do in the studio, at the printers, at Lowes or Daniel Smith's. It is a kind of adult play making arrangements of materials concerned primarily with evoking visual attention. I work with Asian brushes; cheap, thick ink; acrylic and oil paint; lots of linseed oil at times; 7 kinds of paper; various stiff supports for glued on images; and the small and large copy machines at Kinko's. Of course there are influences and borrowings: newspaper and formalized graphic elements from Jasper Johns, use of photographs in the manner of Rauschenberg, Zen painting and calligraphy, the integration of form learned from Caravagio, the shadow psychology of Carl Jung, and Chinese myths of creativity.

It seems to me that all artists operate within a mythic landscape of creativity, meaning, social relevance, and aspiration for completeness and success in communication. My mythic framework arises from the dragon culture of the Far East. My work in general is something to read across the field of the painting. Viewing needs to be dynamic rather than the contemplation of an array of form in a fixed frame or around a central focus. The reading is not in terms of conceptual reference, but by way of a felt energetic dynamic evoked by the play and interplay of form and space. This reading yields a quality of awareness, a feeling in the body, a liberation of consciousness from the usual constraints of perceptual and intellectual meaning and patterns of self-identification. That is, the image is a kind of proto-language, the display of an energy process which underlies but is not yet articulated in the general meanings of spoken words. It is the myth of the dragon, as the bearer of the great creative intelligence that shapes the energetics of perception into formal language, that underlies and guides my work. That may sound exotic or even culturally perverse. However, for me, such an idea is a way of getting at something fundamental about art. That something is that art is coming in from the future, from all possibilities of an omni-creative universe. I do not know where I am going until some array of those possibilities lands, intuitively and spontaneously, on the paper. Whatever the universe is, she is certainly an artist. And how is it that we may presume to understand or define this art?

HaLo is a space dedicated to social dance lessons and events.  Exhibitions can be viewed free of charge during any of these events.  If you arrive during a lesson, you are welcome to come in and look around, we ask only that you be respectful of the students.  If you arrive during a dance, please let the door person know that you are just there to look at the art.

Artworks are available for purchase.

The Statue Paintings
Shirley Sing

Join us for a reception with the artist Saturday, August 1, from 6:30-8:30pm Free and open to the public Gallery hours Tuesday, July 28, through Monday, August 31, 2009 Sundays 6:00-9:00pm Mondays 7:00-11:00pm Tuesdays 6:30-8:30pm Wednesdays 7:00-9:00pm Thursdays 7:00-9:00pm Fridays 9:00pm-12:30am (closed August 7) Saturdays 9:00pm-12:30am (closed August 8 and 15) Showings also by appointment.   Contact Ricki at Art@CenturyBallroom.com or 206-324-7263

Vanessa Juxtapositioning -acrylic- 36" x 48"

Artists Statement:
Shirley Sing's "The Statue" Paintings are representative of life in it's most simplistic form - for we stay lost in a world of hate, if we do not love one another. In the spirit world, butoh dancer, Vanessa Skantze will perform at the opening reception. She is a spirit caught between the worlds and we are only allowed a glimpse into her encounter with The Statue.

(Please note that "The Statue" Vanessa encounters will not be available to show at HaLo after the opening reception, due to its size. It will be on show at another venue sometime next year.)

Thanks to Ricki, Vanessa Skantze and Band Mate, Holly and Gordy of course!

HaLo is a space dedicated to social dance lessons and events.  Exhibitions can be viewed free of charge during any of these events.  If you arrive during a lesson, you are welcome to come in and look around, we ask only that you be respectful of the students.  If you arrive during a dance, please let the door person know that you are just there to look at the art.

Artworks are available for purchase.

Despondence
Misha Huntting

June 20 through July 24, 2009 Join us for a reception with the artist Saturday, June 20, from 6:00-9:00pm Free and open to the public Gallery hours Saturday, June 20, through Friday, July 24 Sundays 6:00-9:00pm Mondays 6:30-11:00pm Tuesdays 7:00-8:30pm Wednesdays 7:00-9:00pm Thursdays CLOSED Fridays 9:00pm-12:30am* Saturdays 9:00pm-12:30am* *gallery closed Friday, July 3, and Saturday, July 4 Showings also by appointment.   Contact Ricki at Art@CenturyBallroom.com or 206-324-7263

Artists Statement:
Misha Huntting is a person of dissonant harmonies:  her passion for old Hollywood glamour vies with her morbid fascination with everyday decay, a theme visited often in her work.  She adores the eerie wonder of classic children's tales, and embraces and ponders the disenchantment of that wonder in her latest series, Despondence.  Misha draws from her extensive background in photography, special effects, and more traditional media, bringing them all together to form her own particular style.  From the garish neon haunts of Nevada to the catacombs in Paris, Misha's travels have helped her sketch the world as she sees it, down but not hopeless, dark but beautiful, glorious in its utter putrefaction, and most of all, evocative in its pathos and transience.

Misha loves Abyssinians, crimson lipstick, and the smell of old books.  She has not yet made her peace with mobile phones.  She hopes to retire to the deep south, and own a veranda.

HaLo is a space dedicated to social dance lessons and events.  Exhibitions can be viewed free of charge during any of these events.  If you arrive during a lesson, you are welcome to come in and look around, we ask only that you be respectful of the students.  If you arrive during a dance, please let the door person know that you are just there to look at the art.

Artworks are available for purchase.

Big Dreams and little Nightmares
By Joseph Larkin

Free and open to the public Friday, May 15, through Monday, June 15 Showings also by appointment.   Contact Ricki at Art@CenturyBallroom.com or 206-324-7263

Bird Liquor and the Boastful Ghost

Artist Statement:
Seekers of aesthetic gratification will doubtless spin the jewel of perception to view the facets that they find most captivating. More often than not a curious mind craves a balance intervening the real and the unreal, of safe comfort and contrasting thrill, and the light and darkness that inhabits and defines us all. Artist Joseph Larkin focuses on symbols and attributes inherent in organic subjects in an effort to bring the viewer closer to the relevance of a living thing's imprint on the inner mind. He pits his better nature against his inner demons to create emotional and analytical parity in his work.

With nature a perpetual inspiration, Larkin has drawn his own pliant appraisals about parallels and contrasts regarding the roles of symbiosis, struggle, cohabitation and extinction that are the wages of life on Earth. In nearly every piece of art he has executed there is the consideration of the relationships and similarities between humans and other animals. He feeds these assessments through subconscious filters, grinds them through the process of critical consideration, and assigns them roles in his pantheon of symbols. In Larkin's world, the medium of flesh and mind become interchangeable, and the players on his stage coexist in ways that make it impossible to discern where one ends and the other begins. It is a place where dreams and nightmares coexist and intermingle, often exchanging roles to experience the other.

Physical aspects of the work include many forms of traditional and experimental media including painting, drawing, small sculpture inclusion and fiber arts. Larkin most often employs techniques developed by close study of the familiar organic form. There are emblematic reasons behind the use of certain media just as there are often subconsciously driven purposes behind the actual compositions. The works are frequently windows into one's own need to understand the unknown, and often portals to odd small places, ornately invading our shared world at their borders.

Larkin's art requires a suspension of reliance upon traditional purposes of iconography, and begs a willingness to give in to one's own first impulse of interpretation to identify personally with the subjects in the imagery. It demands from the viewer a desire to get close to uncomfortable anxieties, and a readiness to engage old pain with open arms. In embracing the humor in the abyss, the vision of Joseph Larkin is fully realized; the viewer, through this realization, is eternally metamorphosed.
Artworks are available for purchase.


Dolltalker

all our inventions
Amber Gephart, painter
Joseph Findeiss, photographer & mixed media artist

Artists Amber Gephart, painter, & Joseph Findeiss, photographer & mixed media artist, will present their latest works of portraiture and assemblage, respectively, in an exhibit titled "all our inventions" at HaLo from March 20th, 2009 through April 23rd. Free and open to the public Showings also by appointment.   Contact Ricki at Art@CenturyBallroom.com or 206-324-7263

Artists Statement:
Amber Gephart presents turn of the century inspired portraits painted in oil and mixed media on wood and canvas, largely paying homage to performers and other denizens from the 20s era.

Joseph Findeiss creates tiny worlds & atmospheres of loss and nostalgia through vintage and antique artifacts arranged within found and handmade wooden boxes.

To learn more about "all our inventions" contact Amber Gephart at ambergephart@hotmail.com Joseph Findeiss at josephfindeiss.com or josephfindeiss@hotmail.com.

Artworks are available for purchase.

Dreamscapes
Surrealist Collages by Melanie Reed

Free and open to the public Gallery hours Thursday, February 12, through Monday, March 16

Home

Artists Statement:
Using fragments of found paper, these seamlessly-crafted works serve as deeply personal reflections, employing vivid colors, flowing, energetic lines and visceral, evocative imagery to spontaneously capture and depict the varied terrain of a series of emotional landscapes.

Artworks are available for purchase.


Revelation

Graham Fracha

Free and open to the public Gallery hours Sunay, January 4, through Saturday, February 7

Dwelling #222

Artists Statement:
Graham Fracha's current mixed media paintings on birch board are inspired by interest in the ebb and flow of architectural and natural forms. He paints landscapes and dwellings in a thoughtful juxtaposition. A patchwork of metal encroaches on the organic simplicity of the board, just as clusters of dwellings encroach the vast landscape. Human presence is a constant dichotomy: intriguing and threatening, beautiful and garish.

Graham Fracha came to Seattle, Washington in 1992 to study at Cornish College of the Arts. Seattle's thriving art community encouraged Fracha to focus on painting. His saturated color, loose draftsmanship, and bold compositions create unique and intimate experiences with our surroundings.

His paintings are in the collection of Swedish Hospital, the City of Kent and numerous private collections around the country. Fracha's work has been exhibited in Washington, California, New York, England and Paris.

HaLo is a space dedicated to social dance lessons and events.  Exhibitions can be viewed free of charge during any of these events.  If you arrive during a lesson, you are welcome to come in and look around, we ask only that you be respectful of the students.  If you arrive during a dance, please let the door person know that you are just there to look at the art.

Artworks are available for purchase.


Dwelling #233