Introduction

"Introduction" 9"x13" woodblock 2011

This first print came to me directly, which the majority of my work does not. It clearly says “hello!”, here I am, and it becomes the simple task of laying it out visually, drawing in the details, choosing layers, carving and printing the block.

This first print is titled “introduction”. Loosely based off the Project Room and it’s origin, the image resembles a maze of temporary gallery walls, one having fallen over exposing the wooden framework it is made of.

I agreed to pursue The Project Room Print Series, a collection based off questions arisen at the Project Room as well as reacting to the other pieces present there, for a multitude of reasons. I am excited to challenge myself and question why I create, and ask why I have made the choices I have made, and look deeper into my personal motivations. Along with questioning my own endeavors, I am also excited to work responding to others process and thought, important in expanding to greater understandings and uncharted territory. I am also excited to explore why we as a whole create and have done so throughout history, and dive into a realm of unknown.

For those reasons and others that will come, I am eager accept this challenge. I see it as a challenge as it forces myself to question and critically explore concepts I have readily avoided (more on that to come). And in following with my philosophy- I deeply believe in breaking down preconceptions and opening ones self up to new possibilities in reach for a greater perspective.

Charles will be working in The Project Room every other Saturday starting February 11, from 1-4pm. Read more about his project.

These Streets Historical Background

Image: Sarah Rudinoff, Fiia McGann, Barbara Dollarhide Pritchard, Rhonda Pelikan, Laura Weller Vanderpoole, Kim Virant Sheryl Wiser, Molly Lannon Kenny, Gretta Harley Jess Van Nostrand in discussion at The Project Room as part of These Streets. Photograph by Sarah Jenks.

The recession of 1971 that brought the Boeing Bust was humorously commented on with a famous billboard posted at S 167th Street and Pacific Highway S near Sea-Tac International Airport that read “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE — Turn out the lights.” That self-deprecating humor still prevailed in 1989 when the young musicians who grew up 1970s Seattle now played with and to each other in small clubs. Young musicians from other parts of the country started moving to Seattle in the late 80s and early 90s adding their energy to Seattle music scene. As the band numbers grew, more clubs opened, indie record labels started. The post punk DIY ethics propelled musicians on regional tours. Musicians glue pasted hand made posters to telephone polls to advertise their shows. Local artists silkscreened T-Shirts. Small indie zines reviewed records and interviewed bands. A small living was eeked out by some, and others subsidized their passion with music through odd jobs. There was a scene here. A quiet, supportive, DIY scene.

In 1989 Seattle was largely thought of a sleepy, blue collar town. Microsoft hadn’t reached a billion dollar corporation yet, Amazon wasn’t an entity and Starbucks had not launched nationally. There was no internet. There were no cell phones. Seattle was an affordable place to live, and young people could share a rented house- paying minimal rent- with a basement to practice music in.

In 1991 the lights of the world were turned up in Seattle with the popularization of “grunge” music. The lives of the young people who were part of a small, supportive music community were forever changed. Many stories have been told, books written, films made, retrospectives celebrated, but mostly absent are the abundant women that owned labels, booking agencies, management companies and of course, led rock bands. Women toured, recorded, played live, and rocked.

Rudinoff and Harley have been interviewing musicians and gathering stories since mid 2011. They are using these real-life stories as the foundation of the play that tells of five musicians who share a house from 1989-1994. The characters are amalgams, but what is real are the stories, the flavor and the music.

The aspects to THESE STREETS are:

• a theatrical /rock music show that will premier at ACT’s historic Allen Theatre in February/March 2013

• a historical archiving of women in the Seattle rock scene- in the late 80s/early 90s- who led bands, toured, recorded, started record labels…rocked, thus adding women to the historic legacy

• a retrospective visual art show of women musicians in the late 80s/early 90s in Seattle

• an educational project aimed at adding music written by women to the standard rock repertoire taught to kids

Join us for an introduction to These Streets

Friday February 3, 7pm

These Streets: Musicians Gretta Harley and Sarah Rudinoff (We Are Golden) share their experiences behind their rock musical-in-progress; and offer their perspectives on cultivating a new idea, while living in Negative Capability(*).

Welcome to the women behind the Seattle rock community from those infamous years 1989-1994, as We Are Golden (Sarah Rudinoff and Gretta Harley) share music, stories and images while taking you into their process of creating the original rock play/musical, These Streets. They will also discuss making music now, youthful passions, unintended consequences, and what happens when a bright light shines on a dark city.

The late poet John Keats coined the phrase “Negative Capability” as the ability to be “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

Introducing: Beginnings

Many of us who are interested in the arts have listened to makers of things speak about their work after it’s finished. But what if they presented their work right after they first thought of it? Beginnings is a series of events, open studios, and other happenings dedicated to sharing brand new ideas by fascinating creative people. As is the custom with TPR, the idea-in-progress will be followed and supported as it develops so we can all can follow the project’s life on the website and/or live in the space.

The motivation behind Beginnings is to emphasize that ideas are only ideas until someone takes a risk and turns them into things. Our two-year theme, Why Do We Make Things? continues as we examine that crucial place between having an idea and making it happen.

Some of the new ideas being featured are as follows- more information will be online soon about each:

These Streets: A rock musical and educational collaboration by Gretta Harley and Sarah Rudinoff

The Big Question Print Series: A response to Why Do We Make Things? in a limited edition print series by Charlie Spitzack

An Array of Essence: An evolution-inspired sculpture series by Allan Packer

The Klavihorn: A film about an opera about a myth inspired by an instrument by Garrett Fisher and Ryan K Adams

Other special events will also be featured that address the theme of “Beginnings” from different perspectives:

March 22 – Spilled Milk: A conversation with food writers and podcasters Matthew Amster-Burton and Molly Wizenberg, moderated by Langdon Cook.

March 23 – 30 – Northwest Passing by Kevin and Jennifer McCoy: Artwork by Northwest Masters is interpreted on the fly in an improvisational exercise featuring performers and a live audience.

April 27 – Bladfold by David Nixon: An animated musical documentary film-in-the-making with music by David Nixon & Daniel Spils

THESE STREETS

These Streets is a rock ‘n roll story inspired by women musicians in Seattle during the famed grunge years. This original piece of theatre is not a documentary but is based on over 40 interviews with the people who lived it. It is a gritty, funny and powerful fictional story where the characters’ past and present lives collide with their past and present music. The show is filled with music from that era, as well as a few new original songs by Gretta Harley and Sarah Rudinoff’s We Are Golden, all played and sung by the performers and a live band.

The story centers on five musicians who share a house in Seattle from 1989-1994. The audience meets these characters when they are young and full of excitement and optimism. We see the challenges they face as their tight-knit community unexpectedly explodes and their city becomes an international rock Mecca. We also meet the characters in the present; their stories evolving as much as the city around them. These Streets had its world premiere on February 21, 2013 at ACT Theatre in downtown Seattle for 12 public performances.

While the performance is the core of the project, These Streets also aims to illuminate the stories and music of the real life women rockers who were involved in the scene that changed a generation by creating an addendum to history with: an oral history project that will be archived at the Library of the University of Washington; a gallery exhibit at The Project Room (a non-profit interdisciplinary art space in Seattle) of collected memorabilia; and online resources such as Wikipedia and YouTube pages, musician biographies, recordings and discographies.

To go directly to TPR’s programming in conjunction with THESE STREETS, go here

Watch the show video here!

Please follow These Streets HERE and on Facebook to keep up to date on all the ways you can help! Facebook link: (https://www.facebook.com/thesestreetsseattle) and Twitter:  http://twitter.com/wearegolden

Images:  Photograph by David Leonard, 1989; Tess Lotta and Gretta Harley / Maxi Badd, © 1994 Elisa Shebaro Photography; Carrie Akre / Hammerbox by Kelly Evans

The Big Question Print Series

The Big Question Print Series is a project that begins in January 2012.

The Project Room asked printmaker Charles Spitzack to create new works on paper in response to the current theme, Why Do We Make Things?” Charles is creating a limited edition series of twelve woodblock prints and documenting the progress online and during open studio hours. The work will be displayed in The Project Room as it is completed.

Charles will work from The Project Room Saturdays from 1-4pm. To see more happenings, visit the Calendar.

About the Artist:

Charles Spitzack is a Midwest artist and entrepreneur based out of Seattle WA.  Taking a multifaceted approach to survival, Spitzack is the founder of The New Number Two, a small business operating in the Capitol Hill neighborhood offering a wide range of hands-on services. Though he graduated from Cornish College of Art in 2010 with a focus in Print Arts & Drawing, Spitzack prefers to be known as a self-realized individual.

The majority of Spitzack’s work resolves itself in the form of a print. Dedicated to dissolving barriers in commitment to the communal whole, Spitzack has found printmaking to be an excellent way to express these ideas in both subject matter and process. Having dedicated himself to a life of mystery at the age of nine, he wonders how long he will be able to hold on before becoming a Jehovah’s Witness.

Charles works in association with Davidson Galleries

A limited number of prints will be for sale, either individually or in the complete set. Email jess@projectroomseattle.org for more information.

Above image: ‘Introduction’: Response #1 from The Big Question Print Series (detail) by Charles Spitzack, 2011. Woodblock print.

An Array of Essence

Sculptor Allan Packer responds to the theme Beginnings in a new body of work that examines evolution and plays with natural forms from the small (snail) to the large (solar system).

Titled An Array of Essence, this new project is inspired by a recent trip to Playa Grande, Costa Rica where Packer and a scientist were looking at snails with transmitters on their backs to see where and how far they would travel. Further study of other snail species revealed the whole ecosystem of who devours who and the calculated yet randomness of the whole existence of the characters within the parameters of this habitat.

Packer will share his process in TPR, from the first drawings that lead to 3-D models and eventually to the finished work. Visit this webpage for frequent updates on the progress of the work, or come to TPR during open hours on Wednesdays between 11am-2pm to see the work in person.

From the Artist:

An idea is a seed sprouting into a process that ultimately becomes something smaller than a blip – or a force that affects an entire planet. Made from snap-together paintings, fittings, armatures, sculpture, theatrical lighting, scale models and cutout drawings, this work will evolve from a seed into objects, which will culminate in a short, stop action animation of the metamorphosis of a snail.

Envisioning parallel lines of thought, the one we consciously recognize and the actual electro-impulse stimulus that occurs in our body I endeavor to undertake the awareness of the correlation of the minuteness of scale of the snail compared with the infinite scale of the Galaxy.

About the Artist:

Allan Packer was born in 1956 in Windsor Ontario, Canada. After graduating from the University of Windsor, Packer journeyed north to the high arctic community of Cape Dorset with Terry Ryan in 1980. This appointment was to implement a working etching print shop, which became the vibrant and internationally recognized Dorset Fine Arts. There he met Inuit artists Kananginak, Pitseolak and Pudlo Pudlat. Departing the Arctic, Packer traveled to Paris to study with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17. Hayter was a scientist and it is here Packer began to experiment with mathematics in his work. The first result of this is A dodecahedron – Time Machine (2007, Kohler Factories, Wisconsin).

In 1986 Packer moved to New York City and began using books as a medium, creating his first sculpture, The Poet, (1988) a portrait of the poet Barbara Barg (above image). Packer then abolished the use of canvas completely and painted with books, creating the piece Forming and Thinking, (1992, Denver Art Museum.)

Leaving New York after 14 years and settling into Seattle, Packer gained recognition for his wry, politically charged, large, cast plastic sculptures, such as The Bride (2000, private collection). This body of work received awards including, two major Canada Council grants, Artist Trust Fellowship and GAP grants including residencies at Kohler Arts/Industry, Banff Centre for the Arts and the International Studio Curatorial Program, New York.

Packer continues to explore ideas of the metamorphosis of biological matter, often using mechanical paintings to represent  natural transformation.