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Artist at Washington Foundation Creates a Spectacle

During a June 2010 residency at The James and Janie Washington Foundation, artist Garric Simonsen created a project called The Spectacle. The project was inspired by a parade where he saw vendors roaming the crowd with carts selling inflatable novelty toys and balloons. What attracted him to these mobile stores was the effort each vendor put into the presentation of their products. What also interested Simonsen were some unique connections these vendors shared with the business of being a self-promoted artist.

Artists put themselves into the public eye displaying things, trying to be noticed for their ability to produce unique items. Most commonly their art is engaged commercially and in some cases mass-produced to appease high demands from collectors. This project critiques the idea that art is a commodity. It also symbolizes the artist’s ability to withstand public scrutiny, standing as a metaphor that interprets what it’s like to be viewed as a spectacle.

The connections between an artist’s self-promotion and a parade vendor inspired Simonsen. During his one-month residency at the James and Janie Washington Foundation, he created one of these carts and stocked it with his own selection of inflatable novelties. The process began with finding an abandoned shopping cart and getting it back to the studio for modifications. He ordered his products from an online retailer and began outfitting the cart with oversized sunglasses, glow-sticks, balloons shaped like frosty beer mugs, giant crayons, little guitars and even a huge inflatable hammer called the “Big Bopper.” This Saturday, he will set out on a three-mile pilgrimage to the art district in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Everything on the cart will be given away for free.

The walk will start around 10:00am Saturday, June 19^th from The James and Janie Washington Foundation (1816 26^th Ave.) and continue down Capitol Hill jetting back and forth between Pike and Pine Street eventually landing in Westlake Park around 12:30pm. From Westlake Park the cart will make its way through downtown, landing in Occidental Park in Pioneer Square between 3:30pm-4:30pm. Finally the artist will head up Jackson through the International District and turn north on 23^rd , through the Central District.

The Fountain of Triumph

As a student of the UW Museum Studies Certificate Program I’ve been volunteering at the James and Janie Washington Foundation for about 2 months. With my program now over, I can’t help but think how lucky I am to have found a practicum at a museum that keeps me constantly inspired by its mission, and excited to keep coming back. As a new student in the museum field, it is endlessly encouraging to be surrounded by motivated artists, to be a small part of Mr. Washington’s beautiful legacy, and to be around Tim Detweiler, executive director, for his constant enthusiasm about his museum and his great stories.

Sitting in the living room of the house, one photograph in particular has been grabbing my attention for the past two weeks. It’s a simple picture of Mr. Washington sitting in front of one of his sculptural fountains located in the Central District neighborhood as traffic and life pass by around him. However simple, the photo strikes me every time I enter the house. I think the photo, as well as Mr. Washington’s expression, says so much about who he was and what his foundation continuously strives to accomplish. The sculpture is on the corner of Union and 23^rd, and was originally made as a meeting place for the community. He sits happily in front of the sculpture with a sweet, and unassuming demeanor.

The community is working to restore the sculpture and to restore the original idea of unity in an ever-changing neighborhood. The beauty and message of struggle and determination that the sculpture still brings to the neighborhood, long after his death, is moving. With the youth programs, exhibit tours, and artist in residency programs, the museum keeps Mr. Washington’s message alive and well and I’ve been honored to be part of it.

Philadelphia sculptures found

James Washington was commissioned to sculpt six busts of African American heros in 1968. The sculptures were placed in the Rotunda of Achievement at the Freedom Plaza, the first African American owned outdoor mall. The sculptures at the Rotunda of Achievement were vandalized within a month of their installation in 1969. Mr. Washington later said, “That’s the way Philadelphia was in the 60s.” It was as if he expected it to happen.

Later in the 1980s, the sculptures were again vandalized and the management of the Freedom Plaza where the Rotunda was located, decided to take the sculptures off of public display. The Rotunda itself was later raised because it had become a hangout for drug dealers.

I became interested in the whereabouts of the busts when I heard about the story in 2007. I called a friend in Philly and checked public art websites and called several people in the City Government and found no information. An Art Historian, Susan Platt, who was going to the East Coast to do some research swung by the Plaza to look at the sight and ask a few questions. The spot where the Rotunda had sat was now a vacant lot and no one at the Plaza office even remembered the busts. Susan called the one person that the folks at the Plaza thought might know about the history. The woman that she contacted remembered the sculptures and said that they had been stored away and that was all she knew.

A year went by and Susan called the woman at the Plaza to ask if she had found out any more information. The woman was immediately excited when she heard Susans voice on the phone. She said that they had uncoved the sculptures, literally, when workers sarted on a renovation on the old Plaza building a week before. They removed a wall under a staircase and found the six sculptures underneigth.

Susan was able to visit Philadelphia again shortly after the phone conversation and photograph the busts. The faces of one of the sculptures had been painted white and the lips of two others. They are all in good shape otherwise and plans are being discussed to put them perminately on display in the offices of the newly renovated Freedom Plaza.

Io Palmer review

Io Palmer was a Washington Artist in Residence in Summer 2009.

Io Palmer and Modou Dieng

THE ART GYM AT MARYLHURST UNIVERSITY
BP John Administration Building, 17600 Pacific Highway (Hwy 43),
November 8–December 13

View of “Io Palmer and Modou Dieng,” 2009.From left: Io Palmer, Artstar #4, 2009; Io Palmer,Artstar #3, 2009; Io Palmer, Janitorial Supplies #7, 2009; Io Palmer, Janitorial Supplies #4, 2009.

Io Palmer’s ongoing work Artstars, 2007–, comprises a team of players represented, in absentia, by a collection of white “uniforms” paired with common cleaning tools (mops, brushes, and brooms) that have been radically accessorized with artificial hair, bobby pins, and barrettes, transforming them into radically hirsute tools. The Artstars are Palmer’s Dream Team—heroic amalgamations of the artist’s friends, family members, and sports heroes––and brilliantly synthesize haute couture, feminist art history, professional sports, and domestic servitude.

In the artists’ hands, a plain maid’s smock is sexed up into a flowing linen gown that opens across the gallery floor in a corona of petal-like teardrops. Palmer references labor and women’s work while raising African-American identity politics to glamorous new heights of Jugendstil panache. In one instance, Palmer exhibits a cape made of leather that is covered in bobby pins and patterned after former Detroit Piston Allen Iverson’s cornrows. The piece reads like a chain-mail cuirass lying in wait for its commander.

In the Art Gym’s second gallery, Senegalese artist Modou Dieng exhibits a series of new mixed-media wall works inspired by African cloth, African-American musical history, and sexy Blaxploitation graphics. Dieng works the canvas with a rigorous ease, incorporating vinyl LPs into the work and slathering them with iridescent paint and collage elements. In hello mom, hello dad, 2009, Dieng overlays silk-screened images of Malcolm X with actual albums (and their covers) by Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, and Isaac Hayes. The albums transmit a vibrant, kinetic energy and hark back to Marcel Duchamp’s Rotorelief devices. Yet Dieng takes on the history of the readymade and Pop art with a fresh attitude and finesse.

— Stephanie Snyder

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