♪♪
-Hi, and welcome to the show.
I'm Nancy Guppy coming to you from the Labour Temple
located at First and Clay in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood.
This historic landmark building opened in 1942
as a home for unions representing organized workers.
Although the original intent of the temple
has changed over the years,
the bones of the building are intact.
It's been beautifully renovated
and now houses a coffee shop...
salon, co-working facilities,
and, for "Art Zone's" purposes,
two gallery spaces that feature local artists.
More on that a bit later in the show.
In the meantime, we've got a terrific lineup for you,
including...Crystal Pite at PNB.
NFFTY celebrates 18 years.
Seattle's civic poet.
-After St. Paul's Cathedral burned down,
Ma still drove us to mass.
-And music from Beautiful Freaks.
♪♪
And we'll begin with the fascinating work
of visual artist Natalie Krick.
♪♪
-One of my favorite quotes by Marilyn Monroe
is something she said to the photographer Lawrence Schiller.
She said, "Marilyn Monroe is like a veil
I wear over Norma Jean."
♪♪
I am a Seattle-based artist, and I work in photography,
collage, mixed media, and installation.
So, my background is in photography.
I studied photography as an undergraduate student
and as a graduate student.
I took a photography class when I was in high school,
and I got hooked.
I made a lot of photographs of my cousin and my best friend.
They were kind of fashion shoots in our own way.
You can really see us trying to perform these different identities
and trying to kind of mimic these photographs
that we saw in popular culture.
It's moments like those with the camera
that ended up being a part of my practice now.
♪♪
I started to move away from just making photographs
and showing the photographic prints,
and I started to think more about
how the image could be viewed as an object.
But I started cutting things up with using fashion magazines
and putting things together in a kind of very playful way.
This act of sitting for hours, it is this, like,
really slow process that, in a way,
is really comforting and meditative.
♪♪
I would say that feminism plays a large role in my work,
and looking at the world through a feminist lens,
I'm always really drawn to contradictions that I feel,
and how I feel conflicted about the way
that femme-presenting people have been objectified
and photographed, but also at the same time,
there is this love of looking that I also partake in.
So I think in my work,
I'm always having a conversation with those two things
in some way or another.
♪♪
My current exhibition at the Frye
is a collection of physical collages,
also includes text erasure poetry
that I made into photograms,
and then a digital collage that is on the side of the building.
-So, we're currently at the Frye Art Museum
here in Seattle, Washington.
And we're standing in what we call the Graphics Gallery.
And so, for this exhibition with Natalie Krick,
we're really focusing on exploration
into a specific compilation of photographs of Marilyn Monroe.
Yeah, so I think this one is one of my favorites,
just because I love that Natalie really focused
on Marilyn's own mark making.
-So, everything from the show is pulled from one book,
and the book is called "The Complete Last Sitting"
by the photographer Bert Stern.
So, this is the book, "The Complete Last Sitting."
These were really the first
and only fashion photographs taken of Monroe.
And she marked a lot of them with these large X's.
But the way that he frames this in his text,
he kind of refers to her as like this tragedy.
"Oh, she must have been making these X's over her images
because of self-hatred or something like that."
But I think about it very, very differently.
He has written this pretty lengthy text
at the beginning of the book,
which is the way that he talks about her,
and objectifies her, and then literally assaults her
is quite -- quite complicated.
And I know it's a different time,
but it still feels very relevant to today's world.
♪♪
I think art is incredibly important
because we are able to have these moments
when looking at work
where maybe something opens up the way
that we are thinking about the world.
♪♪
We all bring our own experiences and our own point of view
to what we are seeing.
I think there is so much that can be uncovered
by having an art experience.
♪♪
-Learn more about Natalie on her website.
And make sure to check out her artwork in the Frye Art Museum's
Boren Banner Series, running now through April 6th.
♪♪
-After St. Paul's Cathedral burned down,
Ma still drove us to mass.
Held in an old bingo hall,
the liturgy came on folding chairs,
kept time with the slapping sounds of small kid feet
on DuraFlex floors.
Of course, I did not know then, though should have guessed it.
The old Gothic facade was quarried basalt
from the Cowiche Canyon.
On a different island, all my kasamas' feet red,
the whole barkada a muddy mess.
Everyone knows a joke about fat lips and flat noses.
As a matter of course, the lava flow followed us.
The older Filipino women in the portico are my aunties.
When the firefighters broke into the already smoking church,
they found the altar already aflame.
Too dangerous for Father Royce to retrieve the Eucharist,
the 100-year-old domed ceiling caved in.
A man, depending on charity,
searched for a shirt from the clothing bin,
lighting his way with a match or a BIC.
He couldn't remember,
so he was fined $4.4 million,
and spent three years in Idaho Maximum Security.
Stacks of soot-slick stones were all that was left in the end.
We knelt on hard ground.
♪♪
-Read more of Dujie's prize-winning poetry
on their website.
♪♪
Our musical guest this week is the wildly fun
art punk band Beautiful Freaks.
Here they are, from the Sunset Tavern stage,
performing their original song "Loser Sellouts."
♪♪
-♪ Look out, the people in this town ♪
♪ Don't take very kindly if you're too loud ♪
♪ I found out that caring is costly ♪
♪ When your only goal is to sell yourself ♪
♪ To someone to go jerk off to ♪
♪ How nostalgic it all was ♪
♪ In the city of emeralds, our profit's exponential ♪
♪ Uh, and you know you want it ♪
-♪ No more idols ♪
-♪ I think I've heard this one before ♪
-♪ No more idols ♪
-♪ It looks cheap, and we are bored ♪
-♪ Rock ain't dead, yeah ♪
-♪ You just ain't a part of it ♪
♪ It's better off without you, yuppie mother ♪
♪ Anyway ♪
♪♪
♪ Slow down ♪
♪ You're being dramatic ♪
♪ Won't you let us have our fun? ♪
♪ This town's got a business interest ♪
♪ Even the losers all sold out ♪
♪ No one's gonna stick with you that long ♪
♪ Oh ♪
♪ Till you shut up and play along ♪
♪ But I don't wanna ♪
-♪ No more idols ♪
-♪ I think I've heard this one before ♪
-♪ No more idols ♪
-♪ It looks cheap, and we are bored ♪
-♪ Rock ain't dead, yeah ♪
♪ You just ain't a part of it ♪
-♪ It is better off without you, yuppie mother ♪
♪ Anyway ♪
♪♪
♪ You wanna make it ♪
♪ Oh, you wanna make it ♪
♪ You wanna make it ♪
♪ Oh, you wanna make it ♪
♪♪
-Hear more music by Beautiful Freaks on Bandcamp,
and on the new and national DIY blog platform Freakscene,
and keep current with the band's
live performance schedule on Instagram.
♪♪
Up next is Flóra Carlile-Kovács,
the artist behind Feltscapes: Lichens,
this lovely exhibit of felted sculpture.
-I think I'm naturally attracted
to textures and forms and shapes.
I get most inspired when I see beautiful shapes
that can become my composition.
Colors are also very inspiring.
[ Soft piano music plays ]
♪♪
I grew up in rural Hungary, in a smaller town, in Szeged.
It's a big town for Hungary,
but it would be a small town here.
My mom was an art teacher.
My uncle and my aunt were sculptors.
My grandfather was a furniture maker.
When I was growing up,
I was always interested in all kinds of fiber arts.
I was trying weaving, knitting, basket weaving,
beading, lace making, embroidery.
When I grew up,
I visited an exhibit in my home country of Anna Kubinyi.
She was a super innovative artist.
Her weavings had layers
of perpendicular fins on the surface.
She was probably one of my main influences.
When I was in my teenage years, the war in Serbia was going on,
so we could hear the jets flying across the border.
That was a little scary.
I moved to the United States 12 years ago.
So, nature is very different here than where I grew up.
I love living so close to beautiful parks in Seattle
like Lincoln Park, Seward Park, Smith Park.
So, felting is the most ancient textile technique
because you don't need any sort of instruments
to process the fibers.
We only need loose, washed wool.
We organize the fibers to go in one direction.
And once we make the wool fiber moist and soapy,
we start agitating the fibers by rubbing and rolling.
Then the fibers start migrating and connecting.
And this is how the fabric gets really dense.
When I work, I love listening to music.
When I need to focus,
I usually listen to music without any words.
[ Classical music playing ]
♪♪
And when it becomes more repetitive and more physical,
then I find a music with more energy that keeps me going.
♪♪
It's a modern way of felting
when we start incorporating different materials in the felt.
And I'm particularly attracted to using various silks
where the weave of the silk is loose enough
so when I rub the wool,
I can physically force the wool fibers to migrate
through the weave of the silk.
And in this process, the wool fiber captures the silk,
and then it creates that beautiful, very rich texture.
I was honored to get a grant
from the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture
for creating public art.
And I chose the Labour Temple as the venue.
I created six new pieces
for this particular show.
My intention was to start a new line
based on lichen shapes and forms.
Lichens are beautiful creatures.
They are basically a symbiosis of algae and fungi.
Lichens grow really slowly.
They grow about 1 or 2 millimeters a year.
That means these bigger ones can be even 20 years old.
Felting is a combination of painting and sculpting.
It still blows my mind
that we can create on so many levels from felt.
I think this is the most diverse or versatile medium.
We can make something very small, like even jewelry,
and we can felt as large as making yurts or houses.
When I was exploring making garments,
wearable art, without tailoring and sewing,
that completely blew my mind.
Sometimes I take some time
to work only on scarves, only on hats,
and then I make wall art.
And this way I don't feel I ever get bored.
I think these pieces bring beautiful color and texture
and softness and calmness into spaces.
And I think these soft textiles beautifully complement
the modern buildings built from glass and metal and concrete,
so I hope to see them in office buildings, lobbies,
private homes to make people's life happier.
♪♪
-Catch Feltscapes: Lichens now through March 31st.
And for more information on Flóra's upcoming events,
including how to sign up for felting classes,
go to florafelts.com.
Finally, NFFTY,
the National Film Festival For Talented Youth,
hits Seattle April 3rd through the 6th.
♪♪
-Good? -Mm-hmm.
-You're great. -No.
I'm acting.
-♪ I've been waiting forever ♪
-This hugely popular annual event
showcases filmmakers 24 years old and younger
from all over the world.
Documentaries, full-length features,
shorts, animation, and all manner of special events
makes this a four-day festival you don't want to miss.
For the full schedule,
along with ticket and pass information,
go to nffty.org.
And that's a wrap.
Big thanks to the Labour Temple for hosting us,
and a reminder that Feltscapes: Lichens
runs through March 31st.
Hours and location
and more information about this really cool building
is at labourtemple.com.
And we're going to leave you
with some dress rehearsal footage from "Emergence,"
a phenomenal dance piece by choreographer Crystal Pite.
This performance,
part of the Pacific Northwest Ballet's four-dance program,
also called "Emergence," closes March 23rd.
Ticket information is at pnb.org.
So, enjoy, have a great week,
and we'll see you soon.
♪♪