November 2 – December 2, 2023

Artist Angshuman Sarkar‘s photography exhibition Arriving Somewhere presents a documentary exploration of the American landscape through the eyes of an immigrant artist. The exhibition features photographs that capture the beauty and complexity of the American landscape, from natural formations to the topological landscapes shaped by human activity.

Consisting of two main sections, “natural landscapes” and “topological landscapes”, Arriving Somewhere is a series of photographs documenting the natural beauty of the American landscape (including geological formations, canyons, and deserts) with a second section exploring the impact of human activity on the landscape (industrial zones, urban areas, and transportation infrastructure).

Arriving Somewhere highlights the complexity and diversity of the American landscape, prompting reflection on the impact human activity has had on the environment. Sarkar’s photographs invite viewers to consider their own relationship with the natural world and to reflect on their responsibility to preserve and protect it. In addition to exploring the natural and human-altered landscapes, Arriving Somewhere also considers the political and cultural divisions that can arise from these changes. Washington state is a microcosm of the American landscape in general, it has clear demarcations of red and blue areas. Arriving Somewhere explores these divisions through photographs of two contrasting areas in the state: rural eastern Washington, which tends to be more conservative and Republican-leaning, and the urban western Washington, which tends to be more liberal and Democratic-leaning.

Designed to immerse viewers in the landscape, Sarkar’s work creates a contemplative atmosphere, inviting viewers to slow down. Using Washington as a case study, Arriving Somewhere offers a documentary exploration of political and cultural divisions that can arise from changes in landscape, while also reflecting on the beauty and complexity of the natural world and our impact in it.

Arriving Somewhere will be on display at Gallery 110 from November 2 – December 2, 2023. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday from 12pm – 5pm and by appointment. Please join us for the First Thursday Art Walk on November 2, 2023 from 4-8pm.

November 2 – December 2, 2023

Featuring original acrylic paintings and prints from several previous solo exhibitions, artist Rajaa Gharbi‘s exhibition, Rajaa Gharbi, Selected Works is largely inspired by a sense of realism and the need for collective, life-nurturing visions and practices.

Gharbi’s works are never about just one or two themes. Among her earliest and indelible art influences and “training” grounds were her mother’s clothing designs, her father’s storytelling feats, her native city’s omnipresent visual worlds of hand-weaving arts, first centuries BCE monumental representational mosaic “paintings”, and the vestiges of a bygone Roman Empire. Visual storytelling and ancient scripts have held her focus since childhood. There, the first waves of infinite geometric designs and limitless color palettes permeated her psyche. Hopping around or staring at the fallen or still standing marble statues of all sizes, texts hand-engraved on steles, and very young olive trees cracking life open right through ancient fallen columns in her native Carthage, Tunisia and across North Africa are still among her sources of inspiration. She is also inhabited and taught by the geographic and human landscapes of the American Northwest.

Gharbi has painted to communicate and travel through “time” and “space”, and to cross real or imagined boundaries since childhood. In the past she has described her painting work as semi abstract or surrealistic, but the truth is her work shouldn’t and doesn’t fit in any already established category. Gharbi pays homage to great artists from the South and the North and the East and the West who have preceded her, and finds inspiration wherever and whenever her brush and concepts find grounding form and pigment.

In her exhibition, Rajaa Gharbi, Selected Works, the title themes I Will Catch You No Matter Which Angle You Fall, Birds in an Alpha City Scape, Gathering for Food and Light, and Every Eye Was Born a Bird are connected thoughts – a throughline present in these works and in many other paintings. Gharbi painted objective and nonobjective forms in non-linear space arrangements; her piece, They used to call her Simorgh, a mythical bird covers the sky while it holds conversation with its human children as they hang down from under her wings or watch various kinds of “passages” and cross some. Much of what Gharbi works for in her paintings is the creation of space for the invisible, and the best aspects of the human and non-human to become “seeable”, “feelable”, and to live joy on their own terms.

Rajaa Gharbi, Selected Works will be on display at Gallery 110 from November 2 – December 2, 2023. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday from 12pm – 5pm and by appointment. Please join us for the First Thursday Art Walk on November 2, 2023 from 4-8pm.

November 2 – December 2, 2023

Artist Ingrid Sojit is drawn to deep philosophical questions. Employing a broad range of visual symbols, she explores these questions in pictorial form. A series of oil paintings, mixed media collage and paper collage, Recover, Transcend, Repeat engages viewers in a visual discussion on the nature of change, resilience and transcendence.

Sojit’s symbolic lexicon ranges from representational to abstract. A bird can represent freedom or the ability to rise above difficulties, the color red may symbolize strength, vigor or love, while a faint blurred broken line can convey exhaustion or psychological trauma. In June of 2020, Ingrid decided to set aside paper collage, a medium she had employed nearly exclusively over the previous five years, and returned to oil painting. The pandemic provided a safe and private space to experiment, and she decided to make art about how she imagined her own afterlife, a theme inspired by the reality of the unfolding deadly pandemic. While working on the afterlife series, Sojit began to understand that this series was just one branch of a broader theme which had been present in her work for some time. The cycle of trauma, transcendence and recovery is at the core of all biological life. Imagining an afterlife was Ingrid’s attempt to understand the role of death within this cycle.

Representing change in two dimensional art can be challenging. While change is an inherent dimension in temporal and kinetic art forms, in two dimensional art change is often conveyed through symbols, references, or the guided movement of the viewer’s eyes. Recover, Transcend, Repeat is symbolic with varying degrees of representationalism. Recognizable objects, suggestive shapes, evocative colors and gestural forms are employed in a way that illustrates transformative change. Transformation is viewed, not as a unique and spectacular event, but as a fundamental aspect of life in all its forms and at every stage.

Is growth simply a matter of embracing change by actively engaging in multiple cycles of recovery and transcendence? Do strength and perseverance naturally emerge when this cycle has been completed? Does death abruptly end the natural cycle of trauma, followed by healing, followed by transcendence? Or is death the most dramatic version of the same cycle?

Recover, Transcend, Repeat is an exploration of these philosophical questions and will be on display at Gallery 110 from November 2 – December 2, 2023. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday from 12pm – 5pm and by appointment. Please join us for the First Thursday Art Walk on November 2, 2023 from 4-8pm.

October 5 – 28, 2023

A-M Petersons‘ exhibition Memoriae Botanicum explores the fluidity and dynamism of our local cityscapes. Over the last five years Petersons has been collecting botanical specimens from the homes on her street, rendering each as a black and white ink drawing on 4×6 postcard sized paper. This documentation has gone through bursts and droughts as she navigates life’s priorities and tragedies, elevating each of her findings to a format that is most often associated with travel documentation and small-scale storytelling.

Neighborhoods, streets, and city blocks showcase the economic climate and architectural trends of the day; dwellings and front gardens mirror the impulses of their inhabitants. Seattle is changing rapidly, buildings are being razed to make way for new construction. Entire neighborhoods are altered, often with their unique personalities lost forever.  During daily walks in Petersons’ neighborhood, she witnesses local landscapes being permanently altered by this new construction. Contemplating the changes in our landscape, she notices the displacement of modest homes also destroying the unique and historic “greenscape” of these neighborhoods. Most new homes are unveiled with a footprint that swallows the previous garden or with perfectly manicured, monochromatic front yards. Established heirloom plants, trees, and flowers are uprooted forever.  Since she’s started the project, already a couple of homes have been razed and gardens uprooted, emphasizing Memoriae Botanicum‘s historical significance, however small and hyper-local.

Petersons’ is drawn to the established gardens of Seattle, curious to understand the botanical imprint that previous generations have left on our local landscape and capture existing gardens before they disappear.

Memoriae Botanicum will be on display at Gallery 110 from October 5 – 28, 2023. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday from 12pm – 5pm and by appointment. Please join us for the First Thursday Art Walk on October 5, 2023 from 4-8pm.

October 5 – 28, 2023

Artist Katherine Loveland‘s six abstract macrophotographs of nature provide witnesses a greater sense of an image through varied perspectives, colors and compositions. Nature is much richer than our cursory first impression. A rose is just a rose, or is it?

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave challenges us to wonder: is our vision of nature “real” or a “shadow”? What exactly is truth? In “SHADOWS” OR “REALITY”?, Loveland’s photographs represent reality, and the artwork labels and name of the object represent the shadow. Loveland’s work emphasizes how nature is richer than a superficial and predetermined view typically provides, and how viewing nature in depth allows us the opportunity to embrace a complex reality.

“SHADOWS” OR “REALITY”? will be on display at Gallery 110 from October 5 – 28, 2023. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday from 12pm – 5pm and by appointment. Please join us for the First Thursday Art Walk on October 5, 2023 from 4-8pm.

October 5 – 28, 2023

Artist JW Harrington‘s exhibition The Impossibility of Knowing refers to the strength of memory and imagination, compared to what is “real” or “observed”. Powerful and curatorially acclaimed, Harrington’s series of oil and acrylic paintings feature solid shapes, figures, or silhouettes interacting with mirrored outlines against shadowed backgrounds. What seems substantive is augmented with its past, future, mirror or shadow. Harrington’s figures seem to be doubled, each interacting with its respective complement. The Impossibility of Knowing‘s interplay creates visual dynamism as subjects are pulled in opposite directions and interact with their outlines.

Harrington’s fundamental motivation is to generate compositions that may give a viewer pause; in the abstract compositions, because of the overlapping of figure and outline; in the (more prevalent) figurative compositions, because the figures seem aware of its existence, future, or eventual absence. Some of The Impossibility of Knowing’s compositions also emphasize Harrington’s additional motivation – helping normalize brown faces and skin on gallery walls. Indeed, many of the figures and scenes reflect his experiences and family.

The Impossibility of Knowing will be on display at Gallery 110 from October 5 – 28, 2023. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday from 12pm – 5pm and by appointment. Please join us for the First Thursday Art Walk on October 5, 2023 from 4-8pm.