A Wonderful Exhibition Celebrating Seattle’s Living Artist Community

What does it mean to be an artist? The ability to draw and paint? Simply having the desire to make art? Whatever your definition of being an artist, you may or may not include the criteria that they need to be alive. That’s understandable—the masters are the masters for a reason, and you don’t need to stop appreciating your favorite Monet or Van Gogh painting. But, as the Living Artists Collective’s founding inspiration asserts, we should “support artists while they are alive; the dead ones don’t need your money.” Here, at Magnuson Park Gallery, we want to see Seattle’s very present art community grow and thrive.

This past two months, the Magnuson Park Gallery has had the pleasure of collaborating with the Living Artist Collective (LAC) in presenting 23 pieces by 21 different local visual artists in the exhibit: “Support Artists While They Are Alive”. Pieces were drawn with graphite and colored pencil, assembled with tin pieces, sculpted with epoxy clay and resin, and painted in acrylic, watercolor, and oil (just to name a few mediums utilized by these artists). The variety of mediums is closely tied to the variety of subject matter covered, which ranges from “the mystery of human emotion and behavior” (Joselyn Narvaez) to “the conflict between the joy of creation and the often painful experience of trying to make art into a career” (Jess Ray) to “the ideas of dying and legacy” (Moon Pelton).

In a time where the world can feel less and less connected, it is the candid, vulnerable connection from art that we need the most. While our “Support Artists While They Are Alive” exhibition has since closed, if you find that you want to support LAC and experience some of the art featured in this exhibition, you can purchase The ‘Big Pond’ LAC Interview Zine, available on the livingartistscollective.com website! It has interviews with 11 amazing local Seattle artists. Or if getting a zine doesn’t interest you, you can check the website out for a comprehensive digital catalog.

Click below to listen to an interview with Alaina Stocker, the Executive Director of Living Artists Collective on our podcast, The Magnuson Park Gallery Exchange.

The gallery will be closed from October 19 - November 1 to prepare for our next exhibition, Small Works by the Artists of Building 30 West, opening November 2. Please join us for an opening reception on November 18 from 2-5 PM and our Building 30 West Open Art Studios event on December 2 from 12-4 PM.

Blog post contributed by Chantelle Ma, Gallery Intern

Video provided by Tatyana Kurepina

Opening In: Windows on Interiority

Ahhhh - the holiday hustle and bustle is behind us, and a new year of possibility lies ahead... it’s time for a collective out-breath, haaaa. Deepen this sense of calm with a January visit to the Magnuson Park Gallery for a new exhibit: The

Window, a collection of beguiling oil paintings by Abigail Drapkin. With a subtle, subdued palette, composed yet casual compositions, and the languid light of winter in the Pacific Northwest, Drapkin’s works allow us a visual exhalation.

Painted during the incipient days and ensuing years of the coronavirus pandemic,

Drapkin depicts and honors a long string of quiet moments that filled our domestic

lives, those times when we shed our public personas and reveled in our mundane,

tarnished selves. Her portraits pull you into the inner lives of the subjects - pushing

private spaces outward for our gaze. Personal places contrast with the public domain as newspapers containing pandemic updates coexist with figures in snail-like postures and relaxed time-outs that serve to refuel, restore, and ultimately renew.

There is a refreshing honesty and simplicity to the “Window” paintings with their unabashedly casual still lifes where a lightbulb lies in a box near a kitchen spoon perched precariously on table edge by a plant spray bottle, or where birth control pills, a can of sardines and fork live. With calm focus and steady gaze, Drapkin creates intimate spaces where the value of less lives, where we savor the unscheduled and find solace with what is in front of us. Her muted palette reinforces a pandemic-induced sense of prolonged time - indeed, weren’t we all holding our collective breaths waiting to surface?

The Window by Abigail Drapkin opens January 19 and can be viewed through February 25, with an artist reception on Saturday, January 21 from 5-8 pm at Magnuson Park Gallery.

The Window by Abigail Drapkin

SPACE Volunteer Terriko Sommers sits down with Abigail Drapkin to discuss her exhibition The Window. Listen below via our podcast, The Magnuson Park Gallery Exchange.

The Magnuson Park Gallery Exchange: A Conversation with Karey Kessler

SPACE Volunteer Terriko Somers sits down with artist Karey Kessler to discuss her work in the exhibition, Small Works From The Artists of Building 30 West. This annual exhibition showcases a range of artistic mediums from the artists with studio spaces in Building 30 West. Watercolor, oil, and acrylic paintings are displayed next to photographs, mosaics, and other mixed media works, demonstrating the vast range of artistic expressions.

CLICK HERE to visit Karey Kessler's website.

CLICK HERE for more information on the Small Works show.

CLICK HERE for more episodes of The Magnuson Park Gallery Exchange.