This is the final in a series conceived by Scott Kolbo and designed to create/stimulate dialogue about the state of the arts in the Spokane area.

Speaking of Scott, who is from Whitworth College, the BFA Senior show is on at Saranac through the end of the month. Good show. Always interesting to see what is happening with emerging artists.

Tinman Gallery Schedule: 6 Month Preview

 I love it when galleries send me advance listings!

Check out the Peter Pan show, if you can (I think I'll be showing a piece in it, actually).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...5 months later

Wow, has it really been 5 months since my last post? It goes in spurts, I guess. I overcome the notion that no one is reading this stuff and get really ambitious about putting out a lot of posts. And maybe I'm not so busy that I can't spare some time to actually go view other people's art. But then...after awhile...I begin to lag behind. Other things happen:


  • The start of third quarter grading and so lots of student projects to attend to.
  • The sudden (albeit fleeting) appearance of the sun, prompting me to spend inordinate amounts of time contemplating my garden and attempting to get several dozen varieties of vegetables started in the indoor greenhouse.
  • The realization that I will be showing work at Saranac in October and haven't done a dang thing for it yet.
  • The surprising invitation to show at two other places before the Saranac show in October...for which I haven't done a dang thing...and thus now have several shows for which I need to do something.
  • The death of a best friend, which set me on my haunches for awhile. Jeez that hurt. I miss you Melanie.

And so, here I am late in the evening when I ought to be sleeping. Finally, after 6 months, a new post. Maybe it will be the start of a new phase in posting. Too soon to tell...

It's a little known fact that I graduated from this university but since I already had an undergrad degree in art, I only took my educational theory classes there; I never got to fully experience the art program. Too bad. I missed out on Lanny DeVuono, who has since gone south to Colorado, and on Ruben Trejo, who has gone north or wherever it is good souls go when they pass.

I'm happy to know at least a few of the instructors, however, both through Saranac Art Projects and writing for Inlander. And I always have the best intentions to get out to the gallery in the hinterlands of Cheney, Washington (ok, not the hinterlands but in the winter the drive from North Idaho seems especially long). Maybe I'll get out there over winter break!

In the meantime, here is a taste of Faculty Exhibition 2010, featuring:

Tom Askman
Mindy Breen
Greg DuMonthier
Adrian Freuen (shown above)
Jamie Hahn
Jenny Hyde (shown at right)
Lisa Nappa
Roger Ralston
James Scarcello
Garric Simonsen
Chris Tyllia

LocationThe Eastern Washington University Gallery of Art is located in the Art building, situated in the center of the fine and performing arts complex on the south end of the EWU campus.

Gallery Hours
Monday - Friday, 9:00am - 5:00pm
Closed weekends and holidays.

Matt Frieburghaus
Curated by EWU's Jenny Hyde, Saranac Arts Projects presents ten artists selected to participate in an exhibition of cutting-edge digital media. 

Dave Beck
Jessica Westbrook
Adam Hinterlang
Richard O'Sullivan
Michal Brzinkski
Julian Palacz
Jason Bolte
Martins Rokis
Ron Lambert
Matt Frieburghaus

Richard O'Sullivan
The works include forms such as video, sound, digital print and animation. Digital_Matters will open on Dec 3 with a reception from 5 – 8 pm and run through Jan 1, 2011.


Jenny Hyde will present the works in the exhibition as well as discuss the use of digital media within fine art at Saranac Art Projects on Thursday Dec 9 at 6:30 pm.


About the Curator:
Jenny Hyde holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University in New York and a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA.  Her work has been part of numerous Media Art Festivals and exhibitions nationally and abroad. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Eastern Washington University.


About Saranac Art Projects:

Hours: Thursdays & Fridays 12- 5 pm, Saturdays 12 – 8 pm

Located in the Community Building at 25 W. Main Street




I still remember my first glimpse at a Timothy Ely manuscript. It looked like an ancient artifact, perfectly preserved, as if from a time capsule. The pages--hand-tooled and bound--were covered in enigmatic characters and illustrations, flowing throughout the book like a river. Images spilled over the margins and into one another, not chaotically but intelligent-design like, secret code meant to direct us to another place, perhaps even another time.

This is the work of Tim Ely, whose Line of Sight exhibition caps a series of smaller exhibitions this year at Gonzaga University and Coeur d'Alene's The Art Spirit Gallery.

At the Museum of Arts and Culture, you can expect the unfurling of the widest range of Ely ephemera to date. From the MAC's Ben Mitchell:

  1. Nearly 50 unique, hand-made manuscripts (he doesn’t call them “books”) covering over 35 years of his work, and, a 1957 work, his earliest unique book mad when he was a youngster. We have borrowed works from over two dozen public and private collections for the show, (but not any of those major names above because those intuitional loans are prohibitively expensive). 
  2. The centerpiece of the exhibition is an enormous graphic work—up to 20 feet wide and 10 feet tall—that Tim Ely will paint and draw directly onto the gallery’s south wall with a variety of projected forms, and with pigments, beautiful metal armatures, wire, and thread. This work, in essence an animated, open book, will exist only for the life of the exhibition. 
  3. A selection of the artist’s sketchbooks which he has been working in daily since he was an undergraduate student. 
  4. Over a dozen preliminary models for projects. 
  5. A selection of his book-making studio tools, many of which are antiques. 
  6. A selection of formative texts the artist has been referencing throughout his career, from as early as a mid-1950s pulp science fiction title that a teacher confiscated from him when he was a young student, to Tom Swift titles, comics, games, Isaac Asimov, Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, etc
  7. Our Solarium, adjacent to the gallery, will contain a graphic introduction to the extraordinary array of the subjects of his inquiry and art (see the attached Master List of Influences and Subjects), and photographs of the artist working in his studio. This component of the show will serve as a kind of map to Tim Ely’s unique mind.
Expect lots of media coverage, and a major fete at the opening, December 4.  And you'll want to see the site-specific installation Ely will be creating for the exhibition space. Truly a magnificent show.

Upstairs Downstairs: Kota Ezawa at University of Idaho, thru December 5


Kota Ezawa has made a name for himself by taking the names...and images...of others and digitially remixing them, much like the early rappers. The result is comic, but not comical; often the images are wry commentaries on such things as race, social justice, stereotypes, and pop culture.

If this exhbition, which runs through December 5 at University of Idaho's Prichard Gallery, were just the digital pieces for which Ezawa is best known, then a drive to Moscow might be a little much. However, this display includes watercolor, digital projections and film. Unfortunatley, no etchings.

From University of Idaho's press room:

“Kota Ezawa is very adept at sorting through the accumulation of images and selecting particular moments that speak to the place media holds in society,” said Roger Rowley, director of the Prichard Art Gallery. “The way he transforms source images into their presentation format highlights the process by which images become part of our collective history.”

Ezawa focuses on the contrasting streams of information and media, and weaves together coherent and cohesive statements on the impact of media fragmentation. Images and videos become part of our consciousness through a continual sifting process. These images shape society's view of history and the importance of people or events in a given time period. Ezawa strips away the density of media information through a process of digital animation, heightening the importance of what remains.


This exhibition showcases the use of technology in parallel with traditional imaging techniques. It suggests there are alternative possibilities for the future, as long as the viewer can move beyond the blind submission of a surface reading of the images that bombard society every day and pay more attention to underlying content.


“There is a vapor-ish sense to all the images that swirl around us every day,” said Rowley. “A celebrity breakup, miraculous rescue or the latest crisis are kind of there, even when we aren’t looking. What Kota does gives significance to that presence and also accentuates the distance between us as receivers of images and the many forms of media producing those images.”


In addition to the exhibit, an artist talk will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 26, at 5 p.m. in the University of Idaho Teaching and Learning Center, room 040. Ezawa will discuss his previous work and his current projects.


Ezawa was born in Cologne, Germany. He earned his bachelor of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and his master’s of fine arts degree from Stanford University. His solo shows include Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, Murray Guy in New York, N.Y., and the Hayward Gallery in London, England. Group exhibitions include Museum of Modern Art in New York, N.Y., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Calif., Musée d’art Moderne de la ville de Paris, France, as well as a showing in the Fifth Seoul International Biennale of Media Art in South Korea and the 2004 Shanghai Biennale in China. Ezawa received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2003. Ezawa lives and works in San Francisco, Calif.


The Prichard Art Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The gallery is closed Monday. The gallery, an outreach facility of the University of Idaho, is located at 414/416 S. Main St., on the corner of Fifth and Main streets in downtown Moscow.


Admission is free. Additional information is available at www.uidaho.edu/galleries