April2010

Welcome to Spokane’s art circuit! Stay up to date on the latest art and artists during First Fridays! Here you will find footage, photos and stories about the galleries and featured artists of the month. If you don’t have time to make it out to First Fridays or you can’t make it to all the galleries, we’ve got it covered. If you are a gallery in Spokane and were not covered please let us know and we will cover your space and art. Would you like to have an art circuit update sent to you each month? Just send an email to ammyourcity@gmail.com

by Lloyd N. Phillips

The room was much like I remembered when I left. Over a period of some 22 days, I had observed and listened as roughly 30 local artists transformed the Kolva- Sullivan Gallery from its intended purpose, into a living space, and then back again.

“We are putting people on display who are budding artists in Spokane,” curator Jillian Foster told me the first evening I met her. MONTH (as it was known) was the brain-child of Ms. Foster and her partner in Black Rabbit Magic, Naaman Cordova.

Admittedly, I could not attend every day. There were artists I wanted to see. Some I missed, and some I wish I would have seen, but overall, I was there a number of days and from those experiences, brought home with me many wonderful memories. I was able to catch the third installment of Bruce Hormann’s performance art piece, “Happiness and Torture”; met visual artist Chris Dreyer, who opened the show on the First Friday of March and at a later date, made me a badge; received a guided tour of the gallery from Jamie Hyams; spent time with a tired Dara Harvey; interviewed Gina Rawls; reacquainted myself with an old friend, Shanti Perez; watched Angela Mageras paint; spoke briefly with Taylor Weech & Stephani Sellers; and met Tiffany Patterson for the first time, I believe.

Through the efforts of Black Rabbit Magic, MONTH became a reality, but there were other behind-the-scenes heroes as well. “They’re amazing humans, Jim Kolva and Pat Sullivan,” Foster said of the owners of the gallery at 115 S. Adams Street. “I’ve yet to experience people who are so open about letting people come in and create in their space.”

by Lloyd N. Phillips

Ideas on what to cover for Spokane’s April First Friday art walk were not difficult to find, given that the eleven-venue Transcendence Project ( a large-scale juried collaboration of Spokane Arts and Youth Services communities), presented by Black Rabbit Magic pretty much could have covered our entire evening – and then some.

While we wished to see as much of that project as possible, there were also the other galleries and works to see. Armed with the knowledge that art and galleries do exist outside our downtown area, the staff of My Media Magazine decided to toss caution to the wind - and the First Friday listings, a ‘promotional program designed to showcase the Downtown arts and retail scene’, away. We headed north.

While parking my car in front of Sue Bradley’s Tinman Gallery on the 800 block of W. Garland Avenue, I hit the curb and when I got out I heard someone yell out: “You’d better write about that!” It was Seth, our editor, who was riding with me last month when I hit the curb while trying to park near the Avenue West Gallery downtown. Normally, I don’t hit the curb while parking, but for some reason First Friday seems to bring that out in me. Whatever the reason for my odd behavior, I’m sure it’s something that can be worked through with some expensive rehab project.

Seth and I were joined by the remainder of our crew, Ian, Emily, and Alan, and were greeted at the front desk by gallery owner Sue Bradley. Near the front of the main room, classical guitarist Paul Grove entertained the visitors. It was only 5pm, which was the start of the event, and I noticed that they had a very good crowd already. The Tinman Gallery tends to almost always get a good crowd during the First Friday event.

Bradley and Seth introduced me to artist Lou McKee, a nature lover whose show From the Edge of the Sea was being hosted by the Tinman with an artist reception. Ms. McKee had a most interesting story.

On my initial view of her oil pastels on canvas works, I saw almost monochromatic abstracts. In others, galaxies took shape and universes exploded before my eyes. McKee then took me to see a display box of 26 small rocks which sat in the gallery window.

“When a customer purchases a painting,” she told me, “they’ll also receive the matching rock for that piece.” I thought this was great. Not only had she created these canvases, but she’d painted these rocks to match as well. Then she told me her story.

“I’ve discovered an island that’s off the coast of Vancouver Island and each of these stones is from the beach on that island. It’s accessible only by kayak and every Summer I go there.” She named her beach, found some 20 years ago, Klee Wyck, a Northwest coastal Native American word meaning ‘laughing one’. “I was going down the beach and I said these (stones) look like paintings.”

Inspired by the beauty of these beautiful polished rocks hammered by the ocean surf McKee returned to her wild beach the following Summer armed with a fold-down easel, large sturdy paper, and a box of oil pastels. She began the large scale paintings, capturing the essence of the details she saw in three of the rocks. The ‘Klee Wyck Stone’ series grew from that as she brought home more stones from the beach.

As she displayed two of the beautifully illustrated nature journals that she does each summer, I was reminded of my childhood. I too kept nature journals, although I was never that good of an illustrator. Hers were beautiful. I was an avid reader of naturalist Vinson Brown and his books The Amateur Naturalist’s Handbook, How to Make a Home Nature Museum and other titles. Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us was another popular favorite as was Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water. I just loved nature and I pestered Mom forever to buy me an otter from the exotic pet dealer in Dayton, Oregon. She never did.

I was awakened from my reminiscences by a voice. “Will you still be able to read what you’ve written later?” McKee asked, commenting on my penmanship. We both laughed.

I do have to admit that my handwriting has become awful in recent months and no matter how hard I try to write neatly, I can’t. Only days later, the general manager of the radio station where I volunteer would bring me a message I’d handwritten for translation.

According to the show’s promotional sheet handed out by the gallery, McKee selects each of the stones herself, looking for patterns and basic colors. She works in oil pastels and begins painting with what she feels is the base color and layers the other colors on top, making sure that none of the colors are completely covered. While painting the series, she’d see layers of our planet or images of our vast universe begin to emerge. In one of my favorites, ‘Klee Wyck Stone #32’ (one of two also pictured with the promotional sheet) I saw an image through a microscope, a strand of pond weed with microscopic life forms swimming about. With McKee’s technique, the end result of any ‘Klee Wyck Stone’ painting is a vibrant finish much like that of the surf-polished stones themselves.

McKee explained why she chose oil pastels for the series: “I’ve been painting in watercolors all my life until about three years ago and I decided that I needed some kind of change. The watercolors became too easy, sort of like a pattern.”

I asked if she had a favorite among her fascinating paintings, but she was hard-pressed for an answer. “I don’t know, it keeps changing,” she said as we walked about the room viewing her different works. “I’ve also placed each stone with its respective painting.” She did say that the entire series was at the gallery and together we found 41 Klee Wyck pieces, before she decided on #7. “It has a lot of movement; it’s like a stone turned into a universe!”

I left her to the other guests and decided to hit the food tray the gallery had laid out for their guests. Tucked away in a tight and narrow space, maneuvering was difficult due to both the already crowded area and the number of people who had decided to socialize right there. But the green olives –something I hated as a kid- were great, and I enjoyed the sliced turkey. Ian noticed my return after the second run through and made a comment about how I always knew where the wine and food was before heading there himself.

I found Bradley and Seth discussing the need to have the First Friday event officially extended beyond the downtown boundaries, with our editor pointing out that it was a topic My Media Magazine has heard discussed by many of the local artists and some galleries, and a point that has been well mentioned in our previous articles.

I returned to the food tray and on a subsequent trip, faced a dilemma: my shoe was untied. There I was, trapped, trying not to trip over my trailing shoelace while balancing my notebook, a plate of food, a glass of wine and my expensive camera, which hung from my shoulder. An elderly lady chatted with a friend at the end of the table, blocking my escape. Could I make it past her without tripping or spilling?

“Sir, your shoestring’s untied!” the kindly caterer pointed out. Gee thanks. There wasn’t really a spot on the tables on which to set my food or wine, and if I bent down to set them on the floor, the camera could possibly slip from what little shoulders I have and hit the floor – for the 100th time! My mission, should I decide to accept it, was to somehow make it past this lady without injury to either myself or my equipment. Eventually she moved, my shoe got tied and we were on our way.

Photograph by Alan Plemmons

The Hutton Building downtown on Washington and Sprague now houses two galleries: the J.F. Thamm Gallery and the River Ridge Association of Fine Arts collective. We visited both. The featured showing at the J.F. Thamm was "Pigs Gone Wild-Allegorical Animal Portraits," a series of oils by the gallery owner and former Wendell, Idaho resident.

He calls himself a social realist. “There’s a lot of symbolism out there,” he told me as we sat on the couch in his office. “The pigs, for me, are a symbolization of greed. You’ve read 1984, haven’t you?” He asks. “The pigs get up on their hind legs and take over!”

“I’m now 72 and I’ve been painting about 60 years,” he adds. His artistic adventures had taken Thamm coast-to-coast and while in New York he studied portraiture under Samuel Oppenheim. “I did a lot of commercial artwork and graphics back in the 60s and 70s.” With further studies in portraiture, Thamm landed a position as a courtroom sketch artist in 1993, after which he covered such trials as that of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas and the Randy Weaver/Ruby Ridge trial closer to home for ABC, CNN, PBS and the Spokesman-Review. Prior to opening in downtown Spokane, the J.F. Thamm Gallery was located in Bisbee, Arizona. “Lately I’ve been doing acrylic (paint), because it dries quickly. I sometimes paint them over the oil.”

His favorite painting, God’s Intermediary stood prominently near the front door, a representation of a pedophile priest attacked by sexual demons. “I find it to be really kind of a degrading situation, where it’s allowed to exist. It’s a real shame that the Pope is involved.” Overall, he estimated that he had between 8-10 paintings that deal with the situation.

I am not a fan of our former President, but somehow I found Thamm’s Raptured Just In Time, a 36” x 84” oil, to be fascinating. The image of George Bush standing as he waves to the crowd from the back seat of a 1963 Lincoln Limousine convertible (driven by VP Dick Cheney) intrigued me. If Cheney’s driving skills are as good as his hunting, we’re all in trouble. And is that a book depository I see in the background behind the crowd?

Thamm’s suggested I also look at, The Bush-Obama Exit Strategy, and in referring to the large cross I remembered viewing at Raw Space during the February Visual Arts Tour, he pointed out that each of the countries in the Middle East is listed there.

“And since we have troops in every one of those countries,” he says, “It’s an effort to completely take over the Middle East! Since it’s been tried before, and unsuccessfully, I’m not sure it will work now.”

Thamm was happy to be listed as part of this month’s First Friday as he said his gallery “kind of got left out of the showing,” in the March listings. “But with River Ridge right next door, people did come in here.”

The River Ridge Association of Fine Arts right next door was our next stop. Connie Janney we’d met during the February Visual Arts Tour and she and the others were very glad to see us.

“We’ve gained two new artists since the last time you were here,” she told Ian and I. We passed out several business cards and postcards since members asked where they might find the Visual Arts Tour story online.

“My goal is to have a non-profit co-op gallery and teach art classes. The profits will go to support an orphanage,” Janney continued. She showed me some of her own work, and spoke of a piece she called Charter For Compassion. “I was way into the (religious) charter and I did one for the Unity Church of North Spokane. There’s a Monk who comes to Spokane and goes around the world to teach compassion. I also did one for him.”

Janney and Seth then introduced me to artist Tamara Phelps, a beautiful young lady who amazed me when she claimed to have only been painting since June of last year. Just glancing at her Acrylic paint and mixed media piece The Lost Treasure alone, I would’ve concluded that she’d been painting much longer than that.

She explained the sea-themed inspiration of The Lost Treasure: “It was inspired from when I was a little girl. Every time I’d swim, I pretended I was a mermaid. A lot of my works come from childhood memories.” After some time off, her mother-in-law met artist Ellen Blaschke at the gallery who inspired and convinced Phelps to return to her art. “I frequently work in pencil, and charcoal, things like that, and I often combined the two.”

And she’s only been painting since June?

I also enjoyed Henry Mailhot’s Hand of God, a watercolor/colored pencil combination work which shows an open hand displaying a galaxy inside. There’s an almost photo realism quality to his work from a distance. I had to stop again and view the photographs of Rebecca Tifft, the National Park tour guide in Alaska who started with a point-and-shoot camera 10 years ago and now does some stunning wildlife photography. Like the rest of the collective’s members, we had met Ms. Tifft back in February during the Visual Arts tour.

Next came the decision to view as much of The Transcendence Project, the large-scale interactive art installation collaborative between non-profit organizations and artistic teams, as we could in the remaining time. Together the 11 venue project (only 7 of which I could see on the ‘official’ First Friday list) would take some time, so we decided to split up and while my comrades walked elsewhere, I headed to the Community Building.

Without going through the entire list of artists involved, non-profit organizations, the people who donated their venues and spaces, those who donated their time, and so forth, should be commended for their hard work. Most of all, so should the local ‘social-sculpture’ duo, Jillian Foster and Naaman Cordova-Muenzberg of Black Rabbit Magic. Without their initial vision, The Transcendence Project would’ve never taken place.

Cordova-Muenzberg himself, along with his art team, Boys Who like Butterflies, partnered with the Odyssey Youth Center, Lutheran Community Services, and Partners with Families and Children at the New Madison Apartments downtown. Together, they presented a three-part interactive exhibit about the personal effects of gender and sexual violence.

My choice at the Community Building, ‘Give Peace a Chance’ involved partnering between the M.E.A.D Alternative High School’s Human Rights and Art class, along with the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane (PJALS), which focused on human rights in Palestine and Israel. In a hallway just above the mezzanine, a table was stacked with literature proclaiming police accountability. Clarinetist Sheila Fox was joined by two musicians performing on a mandolin and guitar and the trio played songs of peace following the M.E.A.D student’s presentation. As part of their presentation on freedom, the students had tried to create the border wall that Germany had built. A slogan on the ‘wall’ read, “Freedom to exist is to resist!” From the balcony was hung a large chart showing a timeline of the Palestinian loss of land over the period of 1947-2005.

I must say that I really admire these young people for having the ambition and wanting to learn more about their world. When I was their age and going to school, we were taught absolutely nothing that I recall about this part of the world. As one young student put it during their presentation, “We hadn’t heard a lot before this project and learned a lot while we were working (on it).”

I think they ran into trouble after the presentation as the bulk of the questions (and some comments afterwards) seemed focused on how the presentation seemed too one sided. Possibly they’d focused a bit much on the human rights abuses along the Gaza Strip. One parent, after the presentation, approached My Media Magazine (my comrades had joined me by that point) and asked that we be careful in how we presented his child. While he was animate about how he wants to be very supportive of his child, he seemed a bit nervous about the way the politics were being taught to these young people and his child’s involvement in that. I can certainly sympathize with him as we just weren’t taught about such things when we were that age, especially when it came to human rights abuses. I don’t want to get political myself and my views are not necessarily shared by My Media Magazine, but when it comes to things like war and human rights, I feel that good and evil sometimes exist on both sides of the fence. Enough said.

Ian had been filming a young lady named Katrina for the magazine as she was one of the M.E.A.D. students involved in the presentation. He had more questions and I joined them. “This program was offered at our school. At first I did it just for a credit, but the more involved I became, I became more passionate about it.”

“I knew absolutely nothing about it. I went to the first meeting and they showed this video (Promises) about human rights violations. I thought, What if that were (sic!) me? It’s like your part!”

It’s difficult, I am told by others, in getting teenagers interested in anything today, so again, I applaud these kid’s work. As for the study of a topic that some of the older generation might not feel that a high school student is yet ready for, she defended the choice this way: “At our school, we’re an alternative school, so we have a little more room to work with.” (For more information on the documentary Promises, please check out

http://www.pbs.org/pov/promises/.)

For the final part of the evening, we journeyed out to Spokane Boxing, located in the ‘Historic International District’ of East Sprague. While the event had not been officially sanctioned as a First Friday venue on our list, the remainder of the arts and music community had pretty much crowned it as such. In fact, the official title of the event was First Friday!

This Community-Minded Enterprises production in an alternative venue was a wonderful idea. This first-ever collected works of art and music event had several of us hoping to see it repeated. There were five live music performances, six collections worth of artwork, and “fresh local artist Jeremy Vermilion,” as the poster read. And what’s a boxing place without boxers? As local favorites Belt of Vapor performed inside the square circle, two local boxers wearing heavy headgear briefly punched it out behind the band for the audience below.

We arrived somewhere between 9-10pm and the place was pretty well packed, especially on the side that sold the beer. Seeing several art pieces I did like, I took a look about the room, feeling it was fortunate that they chose to place the artwork on the non-beer side of the room. Most people in this situation would respect other’s property in these situations, but then there are some who, well… better safe than sorry, as we shall later see.

One of the pieces that really caught my eye was the four’-by-three’ acrylic painting Spokane River by a talented new local artist whose work deserves mention, Jeremy Vermilion. (The event poster misspells his name as ‘Jeremey’. On both his MySpace and FaceBook pages, he spells it without the ‘ey’ at the end). This beautiful interpretation of the Monroe Street Bridge behind the YMCA really deserved to be out in what light there was. As it was, I had to ask for assistance in copying his e-mail address even with my glasses removed because I wanted more information. Little did I know, he was seated at a table almost directly behind me. When I spoke with Vermilion, he told me that it took two weeks to paint. Originally it had been painted for the now defunct Met-Life, and later a buddy of his wanted it for his office.

Vermilion sat at a table towards the back of the room with his wife, surrounded by his work on the wall and a table full of supplies. He assured me that he was the only artist there and that the other works in the room were all from collections. I asked him about Elpis Hope, an interesting, somewhat large work which hung on the wall above their heads. “I wanted to paint a picture of my wife,” he said. “It represents going through the dark past of life and walking forward!” His favorite, he told me, was Bird of War simply, “because it was just a fun piece to paint.”

By now, I’d bumped into artist Jamie Hyams, who showed me a hilarious video in which performance artist Gabriel Brown, wearing a suit and carrying an umbrella, stands alongside traffic waving a sign while sipping an espresso. The sign reads: “ Please help with my early retirement fund.” Another reads, “Need Starbucks!”

artist: Jeremy Vermilion

I’d once again missed the performance by the Malsam brother’s Please Draw Me In (although I vow to see them someday). On the plus side, both Hyams and I really enjoyed the performance by local rap artist Jaeda and the hip-hop/rap/soul duo that followed, which Jaeda told me was called the Badpenmanship Crew. After those observations on my handwriting earlier in the evening, maybe I could join these guys later on. “We’re boxing verbally,” they began, and the still thick crowd applauded wildly.

As the two rapped, sang and strutted about the ring, a group of audience members proceeded to grab hold of the lower ring rope, while bouncing it up and down to the beat of the rhythm. However, the award for the most creative use of the ring that evening for entertainment purposes goes to Dara ‘The Painter’ Harvey.

Between musical sets, Ms. Harvey climbed into the ring, and leaning over the ropes, loudly issued a challenge to the crowd, a challenge to any and all who dared step inside. Accepting the challenge was Naaman ‘Magic’ Cordova-Muenzberg of Black Rabitt Magic.

The next morning, I realized that I had missed a great photo opportunity, not for them, but for myself. Only the day before, I had removed my referee shirt from the car. Had I not done that, I could’ve run out, grabbed my whistle and put on my shirt, and joined them in the ring to officiate their bout under the name of my roller derby alter ego, ‘Pretty Boy Lloyd’. But back to ringside!

After some initial pushing and shoving, the two returned to neutral corners and then came out laughing. Cameras flashed at ringside as the two combatants fought their best in a no-time-limit, one round exhibition bout of slap boxing, kicking and general rough housing. In the end, they had fought to a draw, yet I was certain that each had pinned the other at some point during the bout, but without either a time keeper or a referee to make it official, the Harvey vs Cordova-Muenzberg bout will be recorded only in the memories of those who were there.

Photograph by Lloyd N. Phillips

Photograph by Emily Bishop

Photograph by Alan Plemmons

Photograph by Emily Bishop

Photograph by Alan Plemmons

The big disappoint of the evening was when Ze Krau failed to show. The band had been scheduled to play both this show and open for The Makers at Mootsy’s, and in an earlier FaceBook post, the Swanstroms Stated that they and the other band members intended to make both shows. Sometimes things don’t work out and it’s understandable why they couldn’t show.

Belt of Vapor, currently one of Spokane’s top bands, closed the show and Hyams suggested that I should check out the artwork of their drummer Justin Walter, which I will. I also seem to remember someone later telling me about watching the trio before they took their present name and how much they had enjoyed them then.

Another group of audience members stood ringside as Belt of Vapor performed, pulling on the lower rope to keep time. We watched as one young man used the ring as a giant coaster, setting his beer on the outside apron until it spilt over, after which he proceeded to rub the liquid into the mat with his arm. A bartender brought paper towels with which to soak up the mess, but ‘The Human Sponge’ proceeded to again move his arm in a back-and-forth motion upon the apron once the bartender was gone. I agree with Hyams, the beer shouldn’t be allowed to be sat on the ring.

The band really tried and did keep the attention of a few apparent diehards, but after I continued to hear the name Ze Krau mentioned several times and noticed the thinning crowd, it was apparent what was going on. Maybe it was getting late, or maybe if the rumor hadn’t gone around that the band wasn’t going to show, people would’ve stayed. The energy was certainly there, as was the performance. Both bands have followings, but they also have different styles. It happens.

One thing that almost everyone I talked to agreed with, was that the Spokane Boxing hall should continue to be used as a venue for more collected art and music shows in the future. Just leave ‘The Human Sponge’ at home.

MORE pics

from art circuit April 2nd

pics by Alan Plemmons

“The ability to play a musical instrument or sing in a public place and solicit funds are forms of expression that are protected by the First Amendment.”~~Harpman Hatter

City laws in Spokane state that it is legal for a musician to play on a street corner and accept tips for their work. However, if the same musician were to go sit in a park and play, one of the most public places in a city, he will be ticketed for accepting tips. Rick “Harpman Hatter” BoCook, harmonica player, and Tommy G., guitarist, both feel that this goes against the rights of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

On Saturday, April 3rd, a sit in was held at Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane to change the law against busking, better known as playing for tips, in public parks. Around 20 musicians, and numerous supporters, showed up to protest their right to play and accept tips. “The First amendment doesn't protect irresponsible speech, but it does protect non-commercial speech, such as busking,” states Tommy G.

For almost an hour, musicians got away with having their cases open to accept tips before authorities, in the form of the Spokane Park Police, showed up.

The musicians went from playing miscellaneously around the fountain, to circling around the authorities and rocking out while they tried to issue Harpman Hatter a ticket. Amongst the beat, Harpman pulled out the First Amendment and stated why the busking laws were violating the rights of a performing artist. He also stated that if he were to get ticketed, the other musicians around him would need to be ticketed as well, since they were also violating the law.

At this, the Spokane Park Police consulted with the Spokane Police Department who felt it was too much of a waste of time to ticket all the musicians. Instead, they found it more convenient to let them have their fun this time around, and if the City Prosecutors wanted to press charges, then it was up to them to do so.

“I'd like to see the park freed up to let all musicians come down and apply their craft in a manner that is already widely accepted all across the country,” says Tommy G when asked why he joined the cause. While most citizens didn’t know about the busking laws, when asked, didn't mind performers in the park with their cases open. Spokane laws still state that busking in the park is illegal. It is Harpman's goal to change this. He is on a path to appeal these laws and has many followers behind him.