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Category: Love Letters

  • Love Letters

Love Letter to Julie Green

  • by Erin Bodfish
  • Posted on April 19, 2022April 18, 2022

An Oregon-based educator and artist inspires her students to find beauty in everything.

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A vertical painting of an unbusied city street in the 1930s, the leaves on the trees freshly sprouted and the sky, cloudy and blue.
  • Love Letters

Love Letter to Kenjiro Nomura

  • by Peter Tracy
  • Posted on April 12, 2022April 4, 2022

A Seattle-based painter captures 1930s Seattle, Japanese Internment, grief, loss, and recovery—all with his brush.

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On top of a brightly colored (dotted) bed sheet, two books, a cell phone, floss, pills, a mask, a lighter, a journal, a deodorant stick and a broken cigarette are strewn about.
  • Love Letters

Love Letter to Essie Somma

  • by Sarah Russell
  • Posted on March 29, 2022March 29, 2022

A painter challenges the traditional approach to classical painting through vice, intimacy, and the quotidian.

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A person sits at the end of their bed, facing the camera, their hands folded in their lap—a single poster hanging behind them.
  • Love Letters

Love Letter to Jeannene Przyblyski

  • by Whitney Lynn
  • Posted on March 8, 2022March 8, 2022

A Bay Area-based educator inspired students to look harder, ask deeper questions, and to take a stand.

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Several figures—including a horse—float between back- and foreground in a dizzying, impossible space of bright colors, shapes and patterns
  • Love Letters

Love Letter to Carlson Hatton

  • by Nicole Borgenicht
  • Posted on March 1, 2022March 1, 2022

A Los Angeles-based painter’s ripples in time on canvas immerse his viewers in another world.

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A painting of an oil rig in the ocean depicted like a cross section, so you can see disproportionately large fish swimming around the rig’s legs in the water below a bright blue sky with white clouds. One of the rig’s three towers is violently on fire, with grey smoke extending into the sky.
  • Love Letters

Love Letter to Jessie Homer French

  • by Will Fenstermaker
  • Posted on February 22, 2022February 22, 2022

Paintings for the end of the world made in the middle of nowhere.

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  • Love Letters

Love Letter to Lawrence Oliver iii

  • by Lo Moran
  • Posted on February 15, 2022February 15, 2022

A Portland-based artist layers personal narratives in whimsical sculptures.

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The fingers, roots of a tree stump stretch into warm green grass like veins of a river, the sky shades of pink and peach and cream, beyond, a lush treeline just below.
  • Love Letters

FROM THE ARCHIVES | Love Letter to Patricia Hagen

  • by Lisa Jaffe
  • Posted on January 5, 2022January 5, 2022

A Port Townsend-based painter ponders the simultaneity of life and death in her portraits of stumps.

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An image of composer and musician Pauline Oliveros performing. The orientation of the image is skewed, so the floor is slanted and angles down to the right. Oliveros sits on a chair with a large accordion, her head is tilted down, her eyes are closed, and she has an expression of deep concentration. Oliveros sits in a large gallery room, and behind her there is a giant white ear on the wall with a huge, brass ear horn.
  • Love Letters

FROM THE ARCHIVES | Love Letter to Pauline Oliveros

  • by Zeny May Recidoro
  • Posted on December 14, 2021December 30, 2021

Over the next few weeks, the VW team is looking back and highlighting some of our favorite pieces.

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Two naked figures interlock, each of their legs wrapped tightly around the other's, with one reclined on the floor and the other bracing themself with the other's hands.
  • Love Letters

Love Letter to Tee Corinne

  • by Sam Wrigglesworth
  • Posted on November 30, 2021November 30, 2021

Through an activist lens, a photographer makes lesbian sexuality visible, allowing others to imagine new futures for themselves.

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New voices on West Coast art: exhibition reviews, artist interviews, and more

  • We Vessels of Existence: Jesse Mockrin at Night Gallery
    by Jaushua Rombaoa
    June 23, 2022
    Religious images question the multifaceted nature of human lives.
  • A person with long brown hair and markings all over their face, representing the plans of a plastic surgeon, lifts their cheeks with their hands. The words "Make Me Look Natural" are above their face in paint.
    Who Do I Think I Am? Lynn Hershman Leeson at Altman Siegel
    by Max Blue
    June 7, 2022
    A multi-media artist on the West Coast gets up close and personal with their viewers, unsettling the notion of a fixed identity.
  • Balancing Buoyancy and Desolation: Emily Kepulis at Lolo Pass
    by Jeff Alessandrelli
    May 31, 2022
    A painter meditates on the impending and preventable horror of environmental destruction.
  • On a wall, overlapping sheets of paper with sketches of hands—clutched together, held, curled closed—are pinned.
    Support, Opportunity, and Liberation: Month of Sundays at Eugene Contemporary Art
    by Chelsea Couch
    May 26, 2022
    An ambitious group exhibition steps in to show the world that liberation requires both trouble and quietude.
  • A painting with surreal, hyper-saturated colors of a group of young women, sitting on pedestals, some wearing crows. Behind them, an enormous US flag waves in the wind.
    Surreal Society: Marika Thunder Interviewed
    by Kathy Battista
    May 19, 2022
    Class, tradition, gender roles, race, and celebrity take center stage in Marika Thunder's exhibition at de boer gallery in Los Angeles
  • Asian Futures, With Asians: Astria Suparak and Everything Everywhere All at Once
    by May Maylisa Cat
    May 17, 2022
    May Maylisa Cat considers how Asian people and cultures have been continuously erased from film and TV.
  • In the bottom of the frame, multiple individuals in a dark room hole up their phones to take photos of a painting of a person's face projected on a far wall.
    Immersive Frida Kahlo & Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino
    by Renée Reizman
    May 12, 2022
    What do blockbuster immersive art exhibits and junk food have in common?
  • an ellipse followed by an exclamation point in a bold black font.
    Aaron Shurin’s Poetic Punctuation
    by Douglas Weissman
    May 10, 2022
    A writer discusses how an unlikely combination of punctuation changed his writing forever.
  • Sponsored Connection | Christine Miller: Syrup on Watermelon at Portland Art Museum Reviewed
    by Ruby Joy White
    May 5, 2022
    Portland artist Christine Miller turns historical racist imagery into tools for Black liberation and love.
  • Sponsored Connection | Diedrick Brackens & D’Angelo Lovell Williams: The Quick at lumber room Reviewed
    by Ella Ray
    May 5, 2022
    Two artists collaborate to explore kinship, multigenerational learning, and community.
  • Mixed Feelings for Strange Fruit: Genevieve Gaignard at Vielmetter Los Angeles
    by Gabrielle Lawrence
    May 3, 2022
    A daring but imperfect exhibition challenges notions of racism and colorism.
  • Chromophilia
    by Daniela Molnar
    April 28, 2022
    Stelo + Variable West Art Writing Resident Daniela Molnar examines the human relationship with color.
  • Against a hot pink background, a to-go box of food—including rice, beans, and a triangle-folded tortilla—are neatly arranged for an aerial photograph.
    Raúl Guerrero & Mexican food in the United States
    by Gerry Peña-Martinez
    April 26, 2022
    Raúl Guerrero's paintings of food celebrate the Mexican-American experience.
  • In the center of a mostly black-and-white collage of photos, images and screenshots, an individual wearing a red scarf kneels before an "Official Ballot Box."
    Theaters for Frankensteins: Yuyang Zhang Interviewed
    by Laurel V. McLaughlin
    April 21, 2022
    Yuyang Zhang's paintings and digital collages offer cultural commentary through memes, Chinese-American culture, and dark humor.
  • Love Letter to Julie Green
    by Erin Bodfish
    April 19, 2022
    An Oregon-based educator and artist inspires her students to find beauty in everything.
  • In three colorful panels, several hairy, flower-like, person-like, elongated and distorted forms meander about in one two-dimensional scene.
    Nasim Hantezadeh and summer stone fruit
    by Emma Robitaille
    April 14, 2022
    An LA-based artist's biomorphic works on paper evoke the vocabulary of food.
  • Amelia Ketzel standing in the Jacob Lawrence gallery in front of a haint blue wall and window. She is an Asian-American woman with long black hair and a black puff-sleeve top. She is smiling in between laughs.
    Introducing Amelia Ketzel, our spring quarter Editorial Apprentice
    by Variable West
    April 13, 2022
    We are thrilled to announce that Amelia Ketzel is joining Variable West as the spring 2022 Editorial Apprentice.
  • A vertical painting of an unbusied city street in the 1930s, the leaves on the trees freshly sprouted and the sky, cloudy and blue.
    Love Letter to Kenjiro Nomura
    by Peter Tracy
    April 12, 2022
    A Seattle-based painter captures 1930s Seattle, Japanese Internment, grief, loss, and recovery—all with his brush.
  • A person sits on a leather couch, one leg crossed, an open book in their hand. Bright light streams through tall windows behind them.
    Srijon Chowdhury’s “Groundhog Day” at SE Cooper Contemporary
    by Hannah Krafcik
    April 7, 2022
    A Portland-based painter conjures the otherworldly to meditate on the shrouded interiority of his subjects.
  • Art of Glass: Emily Endo Interviewed
    by May Maylisa Cat
    April 6, 2022
    Through scientific discovery and mysticism, Emily Endo explores the possibility of glass.
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