CoCA starts the summer on Saturday July 8, when it opens two shows concurrently, Kunstkabinett and Home Remedies and Magnificent Obsessions. It's a CoCA tradition to start every exhibition off with a bang, so we're closing the alley behind our building, setting up a stage, and having performances by Faith & Disease and Sokkyo. The public is welcome, doors open at 6:00 P.M.
Kunstkabinett is an exhibition about accumulation, about collecting and about hoarding; about the urge to consume, and the thrill of the hunt. Kunstkabinett is art that looks like collections and collections that look like art. Independent curator Sean Elwood has assembled an international group of artists whose work embodies the spirit (neurosis?) of collecting.
If the following definition strikes a note of recognition for you, Kunstkabinett is right up your alley.
"Sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder's Syndrome often:
- -Throw nothing away; sometimes even bodily waste is stored in open containers.
- -Save all food, no matter how old or rotten.
- -Keep all clothing no matter what condition it is in.
- -Forage compulsively at garage sales.
- -Are defensive about their behavior and resist treatment.
- -Display symptoms of paranoia: keep doors and windows locked at all times, refuse to accept visitors."
Artists in Kunstkabinett are:
- Arthur S. Aubry
- Bernd & Hilla Becher
- Hanne Darboven
- Marita Dingus
- Kate Ericson And Mel Ziegler
- Dan Eskenazi
- Nöle Giulini
- Kathryn Glowen
- Ron Glowen
- Connie Hatch
- David Ireland
- Suzanne McClelland
- Jeffry Mitchel
- Mark Mumford
- Portia Munson
- Paul Natkin
- Yvonne Puffer
- Elaine Reichek
- Elliot Schwartz
- Dale Travous
- Kumi Yamashita
Home Remedies and Magnificent Obsessions is a separate but related exhibition that responds to a renewed interest among many younger artists in producing conceptually based work. Bouncing between sincere attempts at personal redemption and a satiric view of modern life, these artists have carved out a place that in some ways seems closer to projects in Good Housekeeping or Sunset magazine than the walls of a contemporary art gallery. The work of these artists speaks directly to the popular obsessions of the magazine rack, home, garden, and self perfection. But their objects are all, by design, rendered faulty by some subversive twist of conception or execution, so that there is no question that this is art and not craft - unless we are allowed to call it conceptual craft.
- Wilbur Hathaway is a Seattle artist who makes art out of the plastic clips used for closing bread bags will be creating a large new piece for the exhibition.
- Janice Kerbel, (from Toronto) uses traditional domestic practice to "heighten the mundane to the status of art."
- "Suture" is a series of images of Scarlet O'Hara on cross-stitch linen cut and sutured along standard lines of cosmetic surgery.
- "Preserve" consists of 78 labeled jars of daisy petal jam from an obsessive summer of playing "Love me, love me not".
- Germaine Koh, (from Ottawa) takes existing knitwear, sweaters from thrift stores and old afghans and unravels them. She then re-knits these separate objects into a single huge blanket which is now 130 feet long.
- Scott MacGregor, (from Seattle) makes traditional Indian beadwork for a post industrial society.
- Raymond Materson is a convict in jail in Connecticut. After years of supporting a drug habit through theft and drug dealing, Materson, an art school graduate, was thrown in jail for 15 years. In an act of desperate boredom he took up embroidery, which has been his redemption.
- Gerard Menendez & Byron Lymburn make curtains of plastic beads where the subject matter and the materials are in such opposition that it takes you aback.
- Thomas O'Day (Spokane) thinks you can just say no to art. He asks "Are you running out of room in the studio? Tired of storing work nobody wants? Depressed because you can't even give it away? Overwhelmed by the failures you've created? Getting headaches from looking and thinking about it?" Mr. O'Day has created the world's first art disposal service. He buries art, sinks art, blows art up and burns art. Tom's piece for this exhibition is entitled "New and Improved" and will use basic household products, "Liquid Plumber" and bleach etc. to dispose of art in vats.
- Juniper Tedhams, (from Chicago) has dedicated the past two years to a project entitled "Good Things", a visual and tactile time created by realizing monthly domestic improvement projects suggested in Martha Stewart's magazine "Living".
- Jeanne Voltura a Knoxville artist creates traditional domestic embroidery projects, a cross-stitch of the Last Supper, a dish towel apron, but all have a perversion of intent that is unavailable in craft stores.
SLIDES, LECTURES & EVENTS
Home Remedies and Magnificent Obsessions
SUNDAY JULY 9, at 4:00 P.M., Thomas O'Day, Janice Kerbel, Wilbur Hathaway, and Juniper Tedhams will show slides and lecture on their work. Admission is $3 for the general public and $2 for CoCA members.
Kunstkabinett
THURSDAY JULY 20 at 8:00 P.M. Sean Elwood will host an evening with Marita Dingus, Mark Mumford, Arthur S. Aubry, Jeffry Mitchel and Kathryn Glowen who will show slides and speak about their work. Admission is $3 for the general public and $2 for CoCA members.
TOUR DE FARCE
SATURDAY JULY 29 You are invited to take the TOUR DE FARCE, a self-guided tour of Seattle's most astonishing and peculiar collections housed in collector's homes, artists' studios, outdoor environments, and unusual retail spaces. See everything from folk art and enchanted gardens to ludicrous kitsch and horrible displays of excess. CoCA's crack team of cultural anthropologists has been ferreting out an array of the remarkable to titillate and inspire you in your urge to collect. Maps are available at CoCA $15 general, $12.50 CoCA members.
Tour hours: 1:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.
TOUR DE FARCE COLLECTOR'S PARTY
After a day on the road with map and camera, you are invited to CoCA from 8:00 - Midnight for the TOUR DE FARCE COLLECTOR'S PARTY. Listen to collectible music and collected sounds by Northwest music fanciers while you have your own collectibles appraised by a knowledgeable dealer for only $5 each. Shop for treasures in CoCA's Evening Flea Market while you sip some strange brew and view Kunstkabinett. $5 general admission, $4 CoCA members. The party is free for TOUR DE FARCE ticket holders
Regular gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 A.M. - 6:00 P.M.
Daily admission $2.....CoCA members free
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