News: Threshold
Threshold Presents Slab Art and Yoko Murao
04.28.2011 Threshold
Slab Art, a woodworking company that creates artisanal furniture from salvaged wood, teams up with Japanese calligraphy artist Yoko Murao to explore the primary elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and reveal unexpected connections therein.
Slab Art’s pieces range from functional furniture to dramatic sculptural pieces, each with an elemental narrative—a torched live edge of red cedar; spalting that evokes the spattering of water; a twelve-foot grounded slab reaching skyward. Sometimes monolithic, sometimes playful, always with a strong organic presence that incorporates the original tree.
Yoko Murao, artist, choreographer and dancer, has explored the transient nature of the human condition by focusing on our mortality. With her Japanese Calligraphy, Yoko will focus on earth and air, including an interactive installation dedicated to the people of Japan. The piece acknowledges the quaking of the earth while also acting as dynamic witness—via leaf-like messages hanging in bamboo branches – of the support that continues to arrive daily from all corners of the world.
Opening Reception:
Thurs…..May 5….5-7pm
1201 Alaskan Way Suite 200
206.623.3344
Show Dates:
May 5 – June 21
M-F 8am-5pm
www.slabart.com
yokomurao@hotmail.com
Threshold Presents Todd Smith
03.18.2011 Threshold
Syndicate: An association of people or firms authorized to undertake a duty or transact specific business
Syndicate Smith LLC, was created by owner Todd Smith in May of 2010. Todd wished to create a truly service driven, full spectrum design shop, encompassing all of his design & artistic passions. After eight great years at Johnston Architects PLLC, a small architectural firm in Seattle, Todd decided to leave his principal position to create his own company. Taking from his experience designing projects for clients ranging from real estate developers to prospective home owners, and combining them with other design/artistic interests, Todd decided to seek different project opportunities and collaborations. Photography is just one of those many opportunities.
Blocks: They were what we used to play with. Worlds created and destroyed with friends or by one’s self. Such simple assemblies.
Todd Smith’s latest exhibition, Blocks, includes (75) 20“x20” photos, taken in a single session as an exercise to capture the purest of forms created by the assemblies of classic wooden blocks. His goal is not to convince importance of the imagery, because quite frankly they may not be that important or intriguing to others as they are to him. His goal is to show the purest imagery of a classic toy, a spatial and formal learning tool and a memory perhaps of all of our childhoods.
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 24 from 5-7pm
Show Dates: March 24 – May 3, 2011
Threshold Presents RobRoy Chalmers
12.14.2010 Threshold
RobRoy Chalmers has been making art for over 20 years. His primary focus has been 2-D but he has been know to dabble in 3-D and performance.
His current project The Sporozoan Cavities Suite of prints has spawned a number of side projects most notably The Sporozoan Swarm. This object with a projected 500,000 components is a free floating modular piece made up of torn and cut Intaglio and lithographic prints that are pinned to surfaces with stick pins. Like topography, they describe an unknown space that draws viewers into its patterns and details.
For more information on this project please visit: http://www.printtroll.com/a-swarm-to-build-on-2/
RobRoy Chalmers will create his largest install of The Sporozoan Swarm, to date, at Mithun’s Threshold Gallery. This install will guide viewers through a visually complex and exciting vision. It will delve into the artists ideas on art object and its relationship with modifying space and decoration. Chalmers will be at Mithun’s offices for the opening on December 16th (time here) and will give a short talk followed by Q & A.
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 16th from 5-7pm
Show Dates: December 16th – February 9th, 2011
Threshold Presents Jo Braun
11.02.2010 Threshold
Artist Jo Braun‘s show is titled 69 Insecurities: A Miseducation in Contemporary Fine Art Mosaic. Composed of miniature art objects and handwritten commentary, Jo Braun’s work explores the self-teaching of a fine art medium that, despite its ancient roots, one cannot study in North American fine arts programs.
For more information about the artist visit http://www.jo-braun.com.
Opening Reception: Thursday, Nov 4th from 5-8 pm
Show dates: Nov 4th – Dec 10th, 2010
Threshold Presents Julia Freeman
07.07.2010 Threshold
Julia Freeman is a Seattle based artist originally from Kansas City, Missouri. Her work is a continuous blend of printmaking, collaging, painting and drawing.
_“Conceived as a self-reflexive portrait of familiar/personal alienation, theses pieces became for me
a meditation on the supports we build because we must: uneasy attempts at stability, built rapidly
and often shoddily for perceived needs of the moment.
This series explores my sense of vertigo as crisis—reading movement where there is none, not
knowing up from down—and also as something which opens the possibility of lightness, of the
uncertain potential of losing stability.
The fabrics used here—collected from my own and my family’s clothing—play with familiarity
disguised, the original traits present but distorted, obscured and made distant.”
_
-Julia Freeman
Show dates: July 1st – August 12th, 2010
Threshold Presents Larry Halvorsen
05.12.2010 Threshold
Larry Halvorsen, a Seattle sculptor, has been working to evolve his technique and signature style for over 30 years through studio production. His approach to creating work for the Threshold lobby was to take advantage of the unusual spaces by creating site specific work.
“Ancient stone tools, ritual objects, architecture and forms from nature are the inspirations for my sculptures and sculptural vessels. I am attempting to carve out my place as a contemporary object maker, with honor and deep respect for those who came before. The carving on all my pieces is the result of a lifelong exploration of line and pattern.”
-Larry Halvorsen
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 20th from 5-7pm
Show dates: May 20th – June 30th, 2010 p.
Threshold mentioned in The Stranger
04.30.2010 Noteworthy, Threshold
Artist Ellen Ziegler’s current exhibit at Mithun’s Seattle office was noticed recently by The Stranger.
Ellen Ziegler’s ambitious drawing series evokes the visual and auditory hallucinations that occur during the period between waking and sleeping, known as the “hypnopompic state”.
Drawings are made on asphalt roofing paper (tar paper) with metallic pigments and other media. The smell of tar evokes for Ziegler the primeval ooze of the La Brea Tar Pits in her native Los Angeles, where dinosaur bones continue to be excavated. This underground source of fossils, fuel and prehistory is analogous to the upwelling of images from the unconscious mind.