Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Christine Miller, Rachel Elizabeth Jones, Sam Hiura, and Nia-Amina Minor pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Mia Imani Harrison and Mayola Tikaka: Dream Temple for Octavia
ARTS at King Street Station, Seattle, Washington
March 7 to May 23, 2024
Dream Temple for Octavia, created by Mia Imani Harrison and Mayola Tikaka, prioritizes rest as the infinite space from which we might be able to build healthy and whole beloved communities. The temple features blue light, resting mats, altars, and a visual essay that uses Octavia Butler’s vision and voice as guide toward the contemplation of new futures.
Visitors are invited to leave seeds of dreams so they might take root. When I visited the space I offered a prayer of possibility and closed it with a phrase I once read from Octavia Butler’s personal notes: So be it! See to It! A powerful testimony and a life force of affirmation, those words have stuck with me ever since I read them in the book, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia Butler by Lynell Geroge. It only felt right to speak that phrase into the space towards Harrison and Tikaka’s invitation to “dream a new future.”
The King Street train station has been a portal for travelers and dreamers for over 100 years. If you’ve never visited ARTS at King Street Station, a public gallery managed by the Office of Arts and Culture, this is your chance. In the artist’s own words, they want to “honor the role that King Street Station plays in the movement of people, ideas, and culture” while also “creating a portal to slow down, and transform the area for communal gathering and rest.” Dream Temple for Octavia will be up until May 23 and will be activated by rituals and performances over that time.
Reflection: What is your dream for yourself and your community?
Barry Johnson: never leave without saying goodbye
Winston Wächter Fine Art Seattle
March 6 to April 13, 2024
never leave without saying goodbye is the second solo exhibition for Seattle based artist Barry Johnson at Winston Wächter Fine Art. This most recent series is a bold offering of works that enact self portraiture as a medium through which the artist meditates on grief and loss. I’m familiar with Johnson’s figurative paintings and public artwork throughout Seattle. Johnson’s artistic voice is clear and his invitation for contemplation is deeply felt. In this exhibition, the resounding question is how do we contend with loss in our public, private, and shared lives.
This body of work is profoundly personal, born from the artist’s own experience with the recent loss of multiple family members. Using full body self portraiture and landscape, the works communicate a relationship between grief and our environments.
Each piece feels like a reflection on vulnerability. To accompany Son of Ira, the first image in the series, Johnson writes, “something deep within me whispered that it wasn’t okay for a Black man to cry in a public place.” As I read Johnson’s words, I thought of all the Black boys, men, and masculine presenting folx in my life who have ever had to suppress grief as they battle society’s restrictions on their expressiveness. As I continued to read his reflections, I’m not shocked, but angered to learn that while composing Lost in Place, a self portrait image of Johnson lit by a street lamp under three large trees, his presence “startled the neighborhood” so much that someone called the police. Even while having to navigate these internal and external battles, something about witnessing the artist mourn in public gives us all permission to grieve more openly as well.
The title of the series evokes the unpredictable and precarious nature of our existence with a reminder: embrace your loved ones the next time you are with them because everything can shift suddenly.
Reflection: When was the last time you let yourself truly grieve?
2024 Jacob Lawrence Legacy Resident: Simon Benjamin
April 3 to April 20, 2024
Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, Washington
Since 2015, the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington has offered a month-long residency that invites artists to create a new body of work to be exhibited in their gallery.
The 2024 Resident Artist is Simon Benjamin, an artist from Jamaica who lives in New York. This will be Benjamin’s first time visiting the Pacific Northwest where the artist will be in residence from the end of March through early April. Benjamin will work alongside Guest Curator Berette S Macaulay to prepare new works for an exhibition that runs April 3 through April 20 with a free reception open to the public on April 3 from 5-7pm.
A look at the artist’s website shows myriad research based works that investigate the relationship between seascapes, coastal spaces, diasporic peoples, and historic/colonial legacies. I’m planning to visit the space multiple times because as described by curator Macaulay, the exhibition will be crafted into a “living space of contemplation where installation elements are added over the course of the residency.” I’m excited to see how Benjamin brings the Caribbean coastal spaces and histories present in his current work into dialogue with the coastal heritage of the Pacific Northwest. The Jacob Lawrence Legacy Residency exhibition is on my calendar and it should definitely be on yours too.
Reflection: What histories and legacies are present in the places we reside? How can we create deeper connections between past and present?