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Serial in Seattle

By Regina Hackett

Because Jasmine Valandani lays smudges of eye shadow, lipstick and flower pollen beneath transparent, shiny squares of tape in her studio in Bellingham and exhibits the results at Bellingham's excellent Lucia Douglas Gallery, few in Seattle know about her.

Seattle wheeler-dealers don't even glance at Bellingham artists unless they have exhibited in Seattle at a top gallery or collective, preferably in Pioneer Square because God Forbid we go to Phinney Ridge or Ballard to see art. The University district is out too, unless it's the Henry.

In Seattle, we want art to be like meals on wheels. Roll it in right under our noses, and we'll look. We'll also willing to take a train or plane to look, but to drive or bike or bus in King County outside our small, geographical comfort zone? You must be kidding.

I'm as guilty as anybody else, more guilty, even. As the art critic for the P-I, I'm paid to look around, And yet, setting out to tour galleries, I head for Pioneer Square like an old horse heading for the barn.

That's where I encountered the amazing Jasmine Valandani, last year at Pioneer Square's Shift Gallery.

And now that I've seen her in Seattle, I'm going to claim her for Seattle. She's part of a movement that's popping up among painters with particular force and depth here, a new kind of repetitive abstraction.

Fifty years ago, what you saw is what you got in serial patterning. Frank Stella's pinstripe paintings are not corporate culture critiques. They're just pinstripes, his way of carving up space. Bridget Riley's undulating lines mess with your retinal focus, but they say nothing about the world beyond the edges of her canvases.

Now abstract painters are repeating themselves with purpose. By rejecting mid-20th century formalism, which was free of referential entanglements, they bring a back story into their studios; none are purists. What William Carlos Williams wrote about his lover in "Queen Anne's Lace" is true for these painters: "Her body is not so white as / anemone petals nor so smooth - nor / so remote a thing."

Detail of "Pageant"
Copyright Jasmine Valandani
Courtesy of Lucia Douglas Gallery, Bellingham

Back to Valandani. She's a connoisseur of tape. She knows which brands yellow in time and which acquire a faint blue hue. Tape is her art and also the container for her art. Behind some tape passages lie smudges of eye shadow, lipstick, flower petals, pollen, and seeds. Contents from her makeup bag, desk, and garden become abstractions, a girlie-girl sensibility driving rigorous conceptualism.

"Stain Chart (9/02)"
Copyright Jaq Chartier
Courtesy of Platform Gallery, Seattle

The new serialists do not share a back story, however, which means Jaq Chartier is not, repeat not, a girlie girl. Her patterns are fragments of genetic code, while Susan Dory's creamy flat blips are confectionary.

"Venturing Blue"
Copyright Susan Dory
Courtesy of Winston W:a:chter Fine Art, Seattle/NYC

We're also seeing Jeffrey Simmons' intestinal grids; Lisa Liedgren's notched moon phases; Peter Millett's memories of Islamic architecture; Gina Han's East Asian Pop; Robert McNown's domestic subversions; Lynne Woods Turner's fingerprints; Denzil Hurley's magisterial notations; John Dempcy's craters simulating percussive sound; Shea Bajaj's extreme atmospherics; Tom DeGroot's industrial sunsets; Allen Fulle's slimy pools and regulated rivers; Joseph Goldberg's ghost landscapes; Margie Livington's trees having nervous breakdowns.

"Untitled 396"
Copyright Lynne Woods Turner
Courtesy of Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle

In the 1950s, when all eyes were on New York and nobody cared about the regions, that's when, paradoxically, the most distinctive regional art emerged: Bay Area Figurative, the Northwest School, L.A. Cool, and New Image in Chicago.

Why are we still talking about these artists in the present tense?

Although they were tuned in to what was going on in the national and international context, their audiences weren't, necessarily. The audiences were focused on their home team. That support didn't stifle innovation, it seems to have helped make it possible.

"Mainstream Culture"
Copyright John Dempcy
Courtesy of Grover Thurston Gallery, Seattle

In today's pluralistic context, there is no home team and no label to describe the rich diversity in any one place.

"Seeing the Stranger"
Copyright Alan Fulle
courtesy of William Traver Gallery, Seattle

There's no going back to insular audiences. The regions don't have them and don't want them. We do however need a label, and one isn't enough. So let's call this particular group Serial in Seattle. If somebody steps up with an exhibit and catalog that travels, who knows? Maybe these artists and others I'll think of later will be sipping champagne as light bulbs flash and critics scramble to write them into art history.

"Glyph - C"
Copyright Denzil Hurley
Courtesy of Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle
Photo Credit Spike Mafford

After the serialists are launched, we can dust off Northwest Noir. It's still going strong. Get Charles Krafft and you're halfway there.

Then there's Northwest Landscape, actually tied to real lands and scapes.

You get the idea. Get a group, get a label, and get going.