The Abiqueños and The Artist at Tacoma Art Museum

This exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum reframes the American Southwest through Indigenous perspectives, challenging the colonial legacy of its collection. Juxtaposing Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic works with contemporary voices, “The Abiqueños and The Artist” re-centers untold stories and the people whose ancestral lands shaped, and still shape, the region’s art.

The Tacoma Art Museum is home to the historic Haub collection which focuses largely on colonial artworks of the American Southwest. Such a collection presents a unique challenge for an art museum in the Pacific Northwest. What the Tacoma Art Museum has done in response is both compelling and vital. It has treated the collection as an opportunity for in-house and guest curators to engage in critical dialogue with a complicated past—while also showcasing contemporary visual artists who offer underrepresented perspectives on the subject matter. These artists help tell untold stories and re-center marginalized subjects.

Examples of this curatorial approach include recent exhibitions such as: Finding Home: The Chinese American West , Blackness is…the Refusal to be Reduced, and Nepantla: The Land is the Beloved. The final show in this current series addresses the peoples and lands among whom the renowned artist Georgia O’Keeffe lived for many years. The Abiqueños and The Artist juxtaposes O’Keeffe’s work from Abiquiú, New Mexico with narratives of the Genízaro peoples, Indigenous to that land.

Art scholars have long referred to this area as “O’Keeffe Country”—a term that alarmingly erases the sacred, ancestral significance of the land to its original inhabitants.

Russel Albert Daniels – *Maurice and Dried Cholla near Plaza Blanca* – 2019

Photographer Russel Albert Daniels captures Maurice Archuleta a descendant of the Genízaro community, posed in the shadow of a dried cholla plant. Archuleta is a local dancer and artist who engages with these landscapes not merely as aesthetic forms, but as connective tissue, linking him to his ancestors.

Georgia O’Keeffe – *Pinions with Cedar* – 1956

O’Keeffe’s art is undeniably beautiful. The shapes and colors she introduced to the Western art world were striking and often unfamiliar, capturing the natural beauty of the American Southwest. Yet her modernist approach is also marked by a certain coolness, a detachment. A solitary figure, she abstracted the land, mountains, and flowers around her—rendering them in a reverent but analytical manner.

Guest curator Patricia Norby provides crucial context. The exhibit reminds us: people lived here—and still do. They hold festivals, dance, and raise families on this land. These landscapes do not belong to O’Keeffe alone. Our understanding is richer when we engage with the full, layered histories they represent.

Nepantla: The Land is the Beloved – Tacoma Art Museum

From the Nahuatl word for the space between two places, comes an exhibit of art by the Arab diaspora addressing colonialism in the Indigenous American West.

Curators at the Tacoma Art Museum continue to engage in a thoughtful reexamination of the Haub collection – a historic body of work focused largely on the American Southwest – by juxtaposing it with contemporary art that speaks for communities whose histories have long been marginalized or silenced.

Following in the footsteps of previous exhibitions such as Finding Home: The Chinese American West , Blackness is…the Refusal to be Reduced, and On Native Land, this one – Nepantla: The Land is the Beloved, deepens the practice. Guest curator Maymanah Farhat invites artists of the Arab diaspora—many of whom have firsthand or inherited experience with colonial trauma—to reflect on the contested landscapes of the Southwest alongside their own histories of dispossession and resilience.

The artists reflect on the internal effects of living along borders—both physical and psychological. Cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldua explores this terrain in her writings, describing borders as “a locus of resistance, of rupture, and of putting pieces back together.” She speaks of “multi-subjectivity and split-subjectivity,” concepts that are central to the perspectives artists of the Arab diaspora bring to these vital conversations.

One of the artists, Sama Alshaibi, born in Iraq in the early 70’s, depicts the divided Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem as a landscape literally divided as a diptych, emphasizing how arbitrary and unnatural it is to sever these landscapes.

Sama Alshaibi – *Contested Land* series 2007. left *Mount of Olives, East Jerusalem &* right Divided Mount of Olives, East Jerusalem.

The same artist in her Borderland series shows a triptych of locations along the Mexican/American border in Nogales, interspersed with her body in the middle. The photographs themselves, composed on multiple borders, lines, roofs, roads, are all linear boundaries, separating spaces. The photograph of the artist appears to be floating in a green, natural background, unincumbered by these human constructions.

Sama Alshaibi, *Borderland* series, 2007. left: *Nogales/Mexico*; center: *No-man’s Land II* (along the Mexican/American Border); right: *Nogales/USA*.

Another Iraqi artist, one who works in multimedia, Lahib Jaddo, has constructed sculptural forms based upon her memories of figures in her childhood. has constructed sculptural forms based upon her memories of figures in her childhood. Each are made up of textiles from her country, blurring the boundaries and borders between the subjects. Human or animal, grandmother or chicken, each form communicates a strong, beloved presence.

Lahib Jaddo – *Anna (Grandmother)* 2021.

Ultimately the exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum is a poignant, emotionally resonant show that interrogates concepts of homeland, memory, dispersal, and loss. Curator Farhat has skillfully created space for artists to ask urgent and complex questions: What are borders? And where do we locate ourselves amid the ruptures they impose—externally or internally?

Nepantla: The Land is the Beloved runs through Sept. 6th, 2026 at the Tacoma Art Museum.

Finding Home: The Chinese American West at Tacoma Art Museum

An evocative exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum explores the lives, labors, and erasures of Chinese immigrants in the American West, on view through September 5, 2027

Running through the end of summer 2027 at the Tacoma Art Museum, guest curator Lele Barnett has brought together a series of contemporary works that honor the experiences of Chinese immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries – immigrants who contributed deeply to the American West, often at great personal cost. The exhibit highlights the intersection of migration, labor, violence, and resilience, urging visitors to reckon with histories that are still unfolding today.

In the 1850s, political instability, economic hardship, and famine – particularly in Guangdong province – drove many Chinese people to seek opportunity abroad. Lured by the promise of gold, work on the transcontinental railroad, and jobs in the mines, thousands made the arduous journey across the Pacific.

One featured artist, Monyee Chau explores the spiritual dimension of this migration, illustrating the prayers offered to goddesses during the long voyage, and the backbreaking labor that followed.

Monyee Chau – *Of Salt and Altars Mural,* 2024

A fine art painter originally from Southern China, Mian Situ draws inspiration from historic photographs and impressionist depictions of the era. His work centers on forgotten or overlooked narratives, giving voice to Chinese immigrants whose stories were rarely recorded. In one striking painting, a Chinese cook prepares a meal for cowboys – highlighting a lesser-known aspect of Chinese immigrant labor in the American West. Outside of working on the railroad, or in mines, Chinese laborers were often associated with service work like laundries and restaurants, especially in urban areas. However, their presence in more “mythic” Western settings, like cattle drives and cowboy culture, is less widely recognized.

Mian Situ – Beef, Beans, and Biscuits, 2004.

Violence and discrimination against Chinese immigrants intensified throughout the 19th century, culminating in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. One of the most haunting sections of the exhibit features two works by Zhi Lin that document the November 3, 1885, expulsion of Chinese residents from Tacoma by an armed mob.

In one piece, Lin uses a reproduction of the 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance map, overlaying it with pink post-it notes to mark Chinese-owned businesses listed in the Tacoma city directory. This mapping of economic presence onto city space makes the targeted nature of the violence unmistakable.

Zhi Lin – *Reproduction of the 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map*, 2023.
Pink post-it notes identify Chinese-owned businesses from the 1885 Tacoma city directory.

In a second, more narrative piece, Lin creates a traditional Chinese paper scroll that traces the forced march of Chinese residents through the city blocks along Pacific Avenue. The scroll is richly illustrated with drawings of fleeing families, violent mobs, and tense encounters – each moment rooted in meticulous historical research and survivor testimony.

Zhi Lin – *On November 3rd along Pacific Ave*, 2023.

Zhi Lin – detail from *On November 3rd along Pacific Ave,* 2023.

Together, these works reclaim both geographic and human dimensions of a history that too often goes unremembered.

To view this history now – at a moment when our current administration engages in large-scale, unconstitutional deportations, without due process – is both difficult and essential. It raises uncomfortable questions: Who will tell today’s stories years from now? Who will document the lives of those forcibly removed – families taken while walking children home from school, or arrested at the hospitals where they work after a visa is quietly revoked? Will these moments be mapped, as history was here, traced across neighborhoods and cities, with names and stories attached? Will we remember them, as we should – not only for how they were wronged, but for the legitimacy of the lives they lived?

Blackness is…the Refusal to be Reduced – at Tacoma Art Museum

At a time when Blackness is being removed from from federal systems, school curriculums, and public archives, museums hold space for artists and curators to challenge that erasure with presence, memory, and vision. Running through March 14, 2027 at the Tacoma Art Museum is curator and artist Nikesha Breeze’s exhibit “Blackness is…the Refusal to be Reduced.”

Breeze has brought together the work of half a dozen contemporary artists, spanning film, sculpture, drawing, painting, and installation. These are artists who engage deeply with the complexity of trauma and memory, who center the marginal, and, most importantly, who create encounters that compel audiences to confront what has been hidden: threads and bones, stories and silences. Breeze writes that the exhibition explores the “complex texture of resistance that is embedded in Black history.”

One of the works, by Nate Young, takes the form of a drawing centered on bones – used here not simply as anatomical elements, but as repositories of memory and embodied experience. The piece reflects on how trauma and narrative are stored within the body, particularly within the bones of both the living and the ancestral. In the composition, the bones appear suspended, hovering above their own shadows—an articulation of how memory and trauma often persist in ghostly, fragmented ways: intangible, difficult to grasp, yet ever-present.

One of the concepts that Breeze puts forth is the need to re-center the margin. To bring the experiences of those that have been pushed aside instead to the forefront. One of her pieces is an installation featuring a couple stacks of indigo dyed denim jeans. They are situated like an altar, resting upon what resemble stones and cotton, with a pair of disembodied Black feet on top of one and Black arms reaching out on top of the other. Black bodies were left out of the history of American denim, despite the fact that this icon of Americana was built upon the toil of stolen African bodies.

Nikesha Breeze – “Red, White, Black, and Blue – an homage to African American Indigo” 2021.

One of Breeze’s oil paintings is particularly arresting. It presents a life-sized portrait of an older man, perhaps a grandfather, dressed in dignified attire, seated beside his young grandson. The man’s face, marked by pain and loss, carries a quiet stoicism, a pride that doesn’t demand attention but nevertheless holds it. He does not meet your gaze directly, yet his presence is commanding. Beside him stands his grandson, who does look out – his gaze weary but unwavering, a look that suggests innocence already challenged, if not lost.

Together, their presence is undeniable. They confront the viewer, not with aggression, but with insistence, asking to be seen, remembered, and honored. They embody a personhood rooted in the past yet very much present, carrying stories that cannot be dismissed. You cannot easily turn away from these life-sized portraits, which I would argue are the centerpiece of Breeze’s exhibition.

Nikesha Breeze – “Anonymous African American man and child” – (2020)

Another oil painting by Breeze, positioned nearby, depicts two young sisters. They, too, meet your gaze. Their expressions are steady, perhaps even searching. Their eyes function almost as a mirror, or a portal, prompting self-reflection. What you see in their faces may reveal more about yourself than about them. It’s as if they are asking a question meant for you alone.

These are American faces, theirs is an American tale. When people express shock at contemporary injustices, claiming “Oh, that’s not the America I know,” they ignore a fundamental truth: this has always been America’s story. It is crucial that our art and museums offer us the lens to see what cannot be denied—and what cannot be reduced.

Come see these artists and others, like Lisa Jarrett and Willie Bonner, whose paintings and installation works prompt reflection and provoke thought. “Blackness is…the Refusal to be Reduced” will be on exhibition through March 14th, 2027 at the Tacoma Art Museum.

Japanese Prints – Echoes of the Floating World at Tacoma Art Museum

Now through January 2026 at the Tacoma Art Museum, experience a unique fusion of history and modernity. Explore dozens of historic Japanese prints displayed alongside contemporary Pacific Northwest artworks inspired by the timeless ukiyo-e tradition.

Affordable and portable, Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) allowed everyday people in Edo-period Japan (18th-19th century) to collect art. When Japan opened up to the West in the late 1800s, Europeans brought many of these prints back where they inspired artists like Van Gogh, Manet, and Degas.

Utagawa Hiroshige b. Edo, Japan. *Plum Garden Kamata* 1857.

These works’ striking beauty and captivating subject matter drew global attention for decades. The visual style bled into Japanese tattoo art (irezumi) and influenced Japanese comics (manga), both of which have gained popularity in the West from the late 20th century onward.

Kenji Stoll, a Tacoma-based muralist and tattooist, practices traditional Japanese and American ink styles. Drawing from the TAM’s extensive ukiyo-e collection, thanks to donations from Constance Lyon and Al and Betsy Buck, Stoll, as guest curator, selected Japanese ukiyo-e prints alongside works by contemporary Pacific Northwest artists. Some artists are Japanese-American, others are Asian-American or Latin-American, or have lived in Japan.

As you enter the gallery, a large ukiyo-e mural by Stoll greets you, alongside sculptures and paintings by local artists inspired by Japanese styles.

Kenji Stoll b. in Tacoma, WA – *Nikkei Butterfly*, 2025, site specific mural.

VANVAN a local artist influenced by 20th-century pop culture, creates paintings that evoke manga and Japanese toys. Other artists, like Lauren Lida explore personal topics through the lens of Japanese print traditions, such as Lida’s investigation into intergenerational trauma from Japanese internment. Hanako O’Leary reinterprets Japanese aesthetics in contemporary sculptures.

VANVAN, b. in Bremerton WA – *Panko* – 2025

As you move through the exhibit, you’ll encounter original Japanese prints depicting dramatic Kabuki actors, heroic warriors, and serene landscapes.

This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to view these works up close. Admire their delicate lines, textures, and dynamic compositions. Utagawa Kuniyoshi known for his prints of warriors (samurai) and supernatural creatures (yokai), also created works featuring dancers and anthropomorphic animals in motion.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi b. Edo, Japan – *Celebration of springtime in the year of the Monkey: Turtle and Crane under the pine tree.* 1847-1848.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi a student of Kuniyoshi, is also famous for samurai and yokai. A selection from his One Hundred Aspects of the Moon is featured here, showcasing layers of patterns and textures. The delicate lines and expressive calligraphy stand out.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi b. Edo, Japan, 1839 – *I wish I had gone to bed immediately, but now the night has passed and I watch the moon descend*. After 1887.

Across from these works are pieces by Yoshiko Yamamoto, a Tokyo-born artist who lived in the Pacific Northwest for 30 years before returning to Japan. Some of her works feature Tacoma-area subjects, influenced by Japanese ink-block style. Her work blends late 20th-century freshness with a bridge between contemporary and Western styles.

Yoshiko Yamamoto, b. Tokyo Japan, 1967 – *Mt. Ranier, Summer Lake*, 2024

My personal favorite is a triptych by Kawanabe Kyosai, a student of Kuniyoshi and later a follower of the Kano school. His work is more painterly, reflecting the transition from the Edo to the Meiji period. Kyosai is considered one of Japan’s first modernist artists.

Kawanabe Kyosai b. Japan – Top and bottom – sections from *Kyosai’s Illustrated Account of a Hundred Demons*, 1889.

His art shows a clear influence on modern manga, particularly in the playful and macabre expressions that would later shape Japanese cartooning.

Back to the local artists, inspired by both history and manga, we see works by Tacoma artist and tattooist Troy Long.

Troy Long b. Tacoma, WA *Title pending* – 2025

Echoes of the Floating World runs through Jan. 4, 2026 at the Tacoma Art Museum. The exhibition actually contains 60 works, but that they will not all be shown at once due to the damage that light can cause to these prints. There will be three rotations of 20-25 pieces between now and the exhibit’s January 2026 wrap-up. Please visit and visit again to see this full collection that Tacoma is honored with!

2020: Coming up for air, albeit with a mask

It’s been a year since my last post and there were many reasons for that. First was work, developing taxonomies and controlled vocabularies for machine learning related projects. Then Covid happened, so I couldn’t go out to museums and galleries. Then I had to become a learning coach for my teen who is taking multiple AP classes online. Add to this ongoing efforts to stay current on technology and knowledge management by taking webinars, reading books, and going to virtual conferences. On top of all that, the hot mess that was American politics. It is Dec. 1st and I have finally come up for air – albeit with a mask.

I will do my best to re-cap and document the beta launch of Austin’s EAST online studio tour in a second post. It happened a couple weekends ago and unfortunately overlapped with an online conference so I was not able to attend in real time, but I will do my best to document for posterity.

After this I will try something new. All this time I have been tracking and posting links on Twitter for a variety of topics: online museum resources, digital humanities, digital preservation, open access courses, ethical AI, Asian visual culture and literature, taxonomy, ontology, linked data, and more. I’d like to attempt once a week to compile and curate these into newsletter type posts.

Once a month I will do my best to safely find a way to go out and look at art and review it. I will perhaps also make a post once a month looking at what local exhibitions are currently open for view and will share safety notes and tips, as well as share what online resources are available for those wanting to stay at home.

I will also work toward making occassional posts promoting resources and options for those wanting to live a more eco, sustainable, plastic-free lifestyle as that is top of mind as well.

I’d like to also share and promote local, small businesses in featured posts, pulling in photos from my Instagram account.

2021 will begin in just one more month – and I am feeling very hopeful that we will get past all this.

Art|Tech|Eco|Culture

Mexican Modern Art at the Harry Ransom Center

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Running for just a couple more days is the Harry Ransom Center’s exhibit “Mexico Modern: Art, Commerce, and Cultural Exchange, 1920–1945.” One of the main points this show raises is the impact that transnational curators, gallery owners, and journalists had on political artists in Mexico during and after the the Revolution.

The archival photographs, letters, books, prints, and paintings are, as always at the HRC, brilliant and worthy of deeper study. Drawing from over 200 works including jewelry and decorative pieces this exhibit “highlights the important history of 20th-century art…how both countries instigated a cultural phenomenon by creating and promoting art that pioneered a synthesis of indigenous traditions and international aesthetics,” explained the curators. There are examples of many works and correspondences from Diego Rivera, David Alfaro, Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco, as well as Frida Kahlo, Miguel Covarrubias, and photographers Edward Weston, Manuel Bravo, and Tina Modotti.

Poster for Mexican tourism, published by Asociacion Mexicana de Turismo, 1940, 97.2 x 73.3 cm.

However, as an overall installation it was not moving, and I really wanted it to be. Not sure if it was the weather, the last days of the exhibit, post-holiday fatigue (there were a lot of visitors), but I wanted something dynamic and colorful, doing the subject matter justice.

As is often the case with archival exhibits, an immersive or experiential element is missing. I worry that younger people may not have background on the Revolution, or why it was important or meaningful for the artists to make the statements that they did. Sometimes these exhibits can be heavy on the text, and could benefit from more documentary footage, music from the era and more art. Performative or sculptural pieces could provide dynamism and three-dimensionality to the exhibit. Without enough narrative flow and context the pieces can come across as random and flat, which is a tragic disservice.

Paul Strand (American, 1890–1976), Cristo with Thorns, Huexotla, 1933; printed 1940. From the portfolio Photographs of Mexico. Photogravure, 26.1 x 20.5 cm (image).

If you knew nothing about early 20th century Mexico or modernism, this might not be the best introduction, unless perhaps you signed up with a tour with a vibrant docent. On the other hand, if you find the collaboration between journalists, curators and artists, across Mexico and the U.S. during the first half of the twentieth century fascinating, you will find plenty to read and explore.

Ultimately what these exhibits are about, is giving the public a taste of what the Harry Ransom Center has in its collections, tempting scholars to do further study. Many of these holdings can also be found in the exhibit catalog.

Mexicana: A Book of Pictures by René d’Harnoncourt, with cover illustration by d’Harnoncourt, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1931.

Review: Come As You Are – Art of the 90’s

The sign upon entering the exhibit warns the viewer of adult content; this is real. Come As You Are: Art of the 90’s is probably one of the strangest and most unsettling exhibits I have seen in the Blanton. I had the sense the student and volunteer staffers felt a little destabilized with the content and its sensory challenges. This was not pretty art that lay quietly on the wall, it was a collection of jarring pieces that did not all play nicely. Each piece was provocative in the overall sterile space, like an isolated scream or a fist thrown up in an environment that expected polite behavior. When I discussed the exhibit with another 90’s era friend, we joked about how tempted we were to pull pranks with some of the participatory pieces. We would probably be kicked out but it would have been in keeping with the spirit of that time. It’s always a strange thing to navigate a space that historicizes a time you either know intimately or know was anti-establishment. I felt similarly at odds visiting Punk and Fluxus retrospectives in museums. One could not help but feel the work better suited to dingy warehouses filled with cigarette smoke and the noise of motorbikes.

Ultimately however, the work has the last laugh….poking out at the viewers, making them shift uncomfortably and glance away. There is an overwhelming drone of noise that fluctuates in the space, partly stemming from an adrenaline-triggering installation of a late 90’s Aeron chair, typical of those populating 90s start-ups. The chair in Glenn Kaino‘s piece the Siege Perilous (2002) revolves within a glass box, faster and faster, simulating the feeling of the intensifying dot com era, until it whirls madly, filling the air with the sound of a something out of control. I couldn’t help but wish it was juxtaposed with something signifying the crash.

The other loud drone comes from a video piece across the hall in a small viewing room. Doug Aitken‘s Monsoon (1995) is a sobering, eerie piece, from the artist visiting the site of the Jonestown 1978 mass suicide almost 20 years later. The camera follows the overgrown jungle, littered occasionally with abandoned vehicles like a deserted, tropical ghostown. The only sound is that of insects, birds and the slowly building noise of an impending monsoon. The piece develops so much tension and unanswered questions that you expect the rain to wash it all away, but the rain never comes.

While you’re listening to these insects and thunder you overhear the LA babble from one of Alex Bag’s characters in her proto-YouTube/proto-reality show video diary (Untitled, Fall ’95), perhaps the new art student who is struggling with identity, theory and expectation. Her valley girl tones pierce your experience of all the art as she battles with perception and articulation. Are her characters ironic or truer than the audience wants to admit?

Alex Bag, video still from Untitled Fall 95. From Come As You Are: Art of the 1990s." Alex Bag (born 1969, USA) Untitled Fall 95, 1995 57 min, color, sound Courtesy of Team Gallery and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York Alex Bag — Alex Bag, video still from Untitled Fall 95. From Come As You Are: Art of the 1990s.”

Does the exhibit capture the 90’s? To this I have to say no, because there was so much more to that era and these are only snapshots from a selection of conceptual artists. It’s difficult to build something immersive and cohesive out of time when we felt full of questions and rejected all the answers. Explaining to someone who was not there, or who was not in their youth at this time, it would be difficult to say that these pieces spoke for me, or even spoke to me. The show does call attention to most of the major issues of the time however, from the fallout after the AIDS crisis to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a period after the 80’s when people wanted to pull down and critique all the walls and conventions.

If I were to curate the period I would select different some different pieces. Mine would likely overlap with the 1980s as that was a time that the early 90’s was still trying to digest and rebel against. I would probably cover the period 1987 to 1994 and would highlight some pieces by Joel Peter Witkin bringing attention to the influence he had on 90’s industrial band Nine Inch Nails. I would have to incorporate performance pieces by Guillermo Gomez-Pena and films by Greg Araki and Jon Moritsugu. I could weave music by Portishead with Sonic Youth and Janes Addiction. I would like to include dioramas featuring old Amiga computers, external 56k modems, bottles of Orbitz sodas and Jolt cola, Doc Marten boots, art by Taraoka Masami and Dave McKean, novels by Anne Rice and Kathy Acker, Mondo 2000 magazines and Fringeware zines. The exhibit would span the beginning of the Indie/Alternative scene breaking through to the mainstream, to the beginning of the dot com era, because for many of us the latter signaled a domestication of these energies. The full story of this time has not yet emerged, but, Come as You Are is a great place to start that conversation.

Secret Art of Dr. Seuss

The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss on view at the Art on 5th Gallery on S. Lamar til April 9th.

Many of us grew up with the visual vocabulary of Dr. Seuss’s art. His wild trees with their fluffy tops or the whimsical horns on his animals all communicated not just creative freedom but also gave us a sense that there was more to the world than we were being taught. Apparently there was more to Dr. Seuss as well. During the day he wrote children’s books, by night he was a surrealist painter. Art on 5th Gallery has a wonderful collection of his many works, spanning a variety of styles and ranging from the familiar to more mature interpretations of his literary oeuvre.

at Art on 5th Gallery

Maybe you were one of those children who would spend hours pouring over the imagery in his books, absorbing the nuances in all of his characters wild expressions. You owe yourself a favor to spend some time now, revisiting these wonders in a new light. While you discover more to Dr. Seuss than you knew you may gain a new look into your own grownup imagination and perhaps marvel at the journey you both took.

If viewing these works up close at Art on 5th Gallery is still not enough, there is a wonderful volume on this secret art of Dr. Seuss that offers an introduction by the equally formative Maurice Sendak. Similarly there is another work on his secret art entitled the Cat Behind the Hat (which is also the title of one of his works featured in the Gallery.)

East Austin Studio Tour Survival Guide

The first weekend of EAST is over but you have one more weekend to check it out! Perhaps you didn’t get a chance to go or perhaps you went and weren’t able to see all the galleries. I recommend heading out early to beat the crowds.

Stack out a spot at Sa-Ten, the amazing Japanese fusion cafe inside the Canopy art complex where you can enjoy your cappuccino with a breakfast of smoked salmon with sriracha mayo, nori, mozzarella on toast. That’s just one of many offerings, in addition to everything from oatmeal to allegedly the famed Red Rabbit vegan donuts. But wait, you say…Red Rabbit vegan collective closed, how is it I can get my vegan donut fix on? Wheatsville Co-op came through and saved the day. Point is, when EAST is happening you don’t want to spin your wheels elsewhere in town doing brunch, you need to get out into it early. As the day progresses at Canopy you can enjoy the best teriyaki gluten-free fried chicken with a side of kimchi, and some of the galleries offer free beer (sorry not gluten-free).

This is the 14th annual EAST that Big Medium and the Austin art community have put together. Featuring 287 artists, 152 exhibitions and 7 happenings there’s more than enough for everyone. They’ve even put out a handful of different guides to curate and help plan your attack.

Taking kids? Check out the events in their family-friendly guide, like Austin’s Tinkering School, Austin’s own Maker Space, for hands-on art-making activities. Or Creative Action‘s Community Art Sunday on Nov. 22 where you can enjoy dance, music, food, art and inventing. Or perhaps you and your kids would like to check out kinetic steel sculptures inspired by Jean Tinguely. Your purchases will go to Save Our Springs Alliance at Barry George’s collection at 204 Attayac St.

I went to EAST last weekend and was impressed with what I saw from the following artists.

Diana Presley Greenberg‘s delicate abstracts are like viewing a gentle bouquet of flowers through a soft curtain of linen. Other examples feature bold splashes in complex relationships upon white canvas, bringing to mind Swedish interiors.
Gert Johan Manschot produces dramatic works resembling Japanese Zen calligraphy.
Alex Diamond‘s work was a personal favorite of mine, for his fantastic sense of texture, line and intensity, with a cartoon/graffiti edge. He produces woodcuts, photo paintings and installations.
Chun Hui Pak creates gorgeous geometric abstract works inspired by the structures of origami. Her pieces serve as 2-D interpretations of the ancient art of paper-folding.
Ann Fleming produces vibrant abstractions with bold punches of color that relate to each other in surprisingly ways.
I was blown away by the assemblage work of Janie Milstein. Inspired by cityscapes her textured work features architectural abstractions, layers of material and an industrial palate that will leave you speechless.
Rothko Hauschildt is a budding encaustic artist whose pieces communicate intensity and release.
Flip Solomon is an incredible illustrator, her drawings are eclectic and full of wonder.

So get out there and see these and other artists. And if the crowds become too much, escape to the quiet retreat of Zhi Tea on Bolm. If the weather is fair they have a beautiful garden patio under the trees.