♪♪
-Hi, there, and welcome to the show.
I'm Nancy Guppy, coming to you from this gem of a private park,
the Seattle Chinese Garden.
♪♪
Conceived as a celebration of the sister-city relationship
between Seattle and Chongqing,
the Seattle Chinese Garden officially broke ground in 1999,
26 years later,
this four-and-a-half-acre oasis
is one of the largest Chinese gardens outside of China,
and the first in the United States
to represent an authentic Sichuan landscape design.
Featuring Sichuan horticulture,
the gorgeous Luoyang Peony Garden,
the Knowing the Spring Courtyard,
the Chongqing Gate,
and the Song Mei Pavilion and bamboo garden.
Add it all up and you have one of our fair city's
best kept secrets.
The Seattle Chinese Garden is open to the public
every day except Monday.
Hours and location are at seattlechinesegarden.org.
♪♪
We have an excellent lineup for you,
including Ai Weiwei
at Seattle Art Museum.
♪♪
Bumbershoot 2025.
♪♪
And music from singer, songwriter Ethan Tucker.
-♪ Well, don't you treat me like a fool, babe ♪
-And we'll begin with master printer Marcia Bartholme.
♪♪
-The best definition of a printer
that I've ever heard anyone give was John Cage.
He said printers were just like musicians.
The composer is writing the piece,
but the printers can put a lot of flavor into it.
They add that element to my work
that I can't put there myself.
Every artist knows that.
They can't get there by themselves.
My name is Marcia Bartholme.
I am what's known as a Master Printer,
and I have had Beta Press,
which is a fine arts press, since 1992.
♪♪
I grew up in Renton, Washington
and went to the University of Washington.
I had a degree in social work.
I then went to work for a print dealer in Seattle.
Larry Dillon and I became a framer working for him.
I left that job
and I ended up working on a fishing boat in Alaska.
From there to working on a charter boat
in the Virgin Islands, where I met my husband
and we came out to California.
I had an opportunity to go visit several print publishers
around the Bay area, and visited Crown Point Press,
where I ultimately ended up working.
I learned to print at Crown Point Press.
Catherine Brown was responsible
for creating this studio in the Bay area.
That really brought a lot of artists to etching.
I started as an assistant,
so it was very much on the job from the very first day.
Learning how to assist in the studio,
watching the other printers.
I paid very close attention to what everybody else was doing.
I worked on several projects with Dick Diebenkorn,
Indigo Horizontal,
and started the green image was the first time
I was in charge of a project with him.
That image required five printers working on the plates
to get five prints a day.
This is a picture of John Cage and myself.
We were actually branding prints with these teapots.
I worked with John Cage for five years.
I started as an assistant,
but then I became the lead printer on his projects.
He changed my life.
Probably the most original art
I ever participated in was with John Cage.
I worked at Crown Point Press from 1980 until 1987.
My husband and I moved up to Seattle in 1990.
At that point I had two children,
and in 1992 I went back to work
and started a press, Beta Press.
By then I was a very good printer.
I had a good skill set
for thinking through complicated prints.
I could really help artists get a lot out of plates.
This is the blue plate that they had executed.
This edge on the stool, there's that dialogue.
You see how there's no black line there anymore?
That line got dropped out.
When you're really cooking along, it's very gratifying.
-Marcia came from Crown Point Press.
She brought all of her knowledge.
She literally raised the bar on printmaking
for the Seattle area at the time.
Lots of people benefited from that.
Lots of artists benefited.
Lots of artists got to see really good printing,
original print printing.
-When artists come in to work at Beta Press,
they don't have anything.
We start by making plates.
And then the artist starts working on the plates.
You're going to be painting with acid
or you're going to be drawing with wax.
There might be a project that results in multiple plates.
Then there's the proofing part of a project.
This is Michael Gregory.
He was rather famous for these tulip paintings.
Working out the printing order of the plates you've made.
This is a proof.
Proofing is fine tuning the colors.
You can see how we do pull downs for the color.
Then finally you get to a print
that is acceptable to the artist.
And that is the okay to print.
You've got all the ink colors just right.
You start printing the image.
And you print.
And you re-ink.
Each plate gets pulled one time through the press.
So if you have a five-plate image,
you're going back and forth.
♪♪
And then you clean off all the residual ink off the plates
and you start all over again.
So if you're pulling an edition of, say, 25 prints,
you do that 25 times.
Whew!
Those prints are the originals
because the image does not exist outside of the plates.
It is an original medium.
It's not a reproduction.
An original limited-edition print
is just what it says, original.
I've worked with Fay Jones.
♪♪
I worked with California artists Michael Gregory,
who did some really beautiful prints with us.
James Lavadour.
♪♪
Judy Hill.
♪♪
I did a project with John Grade.
♪♪
Did projects with Bob Jones.
♪♪
I did a project with Robert Helm.
Pretty significant portfolio project.
Jacob Lawrence was 1996.
That project lasted about eight months
by the time we had finished creating all the plates
and executing all the editions.
Every artist is very different in the way
they have a working style.
I think prints are very important
because they're a very democratic way
in so many ways for people to start collecting art
or to keep collecting art.
♪♪
-More about Marcia and her work
is available through Studio E Gallery,
James Harris Gallery, and Russo Lee Gallery.
♪♪
Our music this week is from singer, songwriter
Ethan Tucker performing his original tune titled "Number"
from the stage of the Sunset Tavern.
♪♪
-♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
♪♪
♪ Well, don't you treat me like a fool, babe ♪
♪ Don't you play no game ♪
♪ 'Cause I ain't no child, babe ♪
♪ And I must show you what I mean ♪
♪ And I know what you've been thinking ♪
♪ 'Cause baby, ♪
♪ I've been thinking just the same, I said ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I got your number ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I'm on the line ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I got your number ♪
♪ And I wonder ♪
♪ If six turned into nine ♪
♪ And I have one last dime ♪
♪ Could I ♪
♪ Call on you tonight? ♪
♪♪
♪ And you just might understand ♪
♪ If you could see that look on your face ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm only just a man ♪
♪ And I wanna be your favorite mistake ♪
♪ And I know what you've been thinking ♪
♪ 'Cause baby, ♪
♪ I've been thinking just the same, I said ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I got your number ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I'm on the line all the time ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I got your number ♪
♪ And I wonder ♪
♪ If six turned into nine ♪
♪ And I have one last dime ♪
♪ Could I call on you tonight? ♪
♪ Would you understand ♪
♪ That this ain't no thing ♪
♪ You said you want me forever ♪
♪ Well, I don't know what that means ♪
♪ But, oh, oh, oh, I got your number ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I'm on the line ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I got your number ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I'm on the line all the time ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, I got your number ♪
♪ And I wonder ♪
♪ If I was down to my last dime ♪
♪ And I finally lost my mind ♪
♪ Could I call on you tonight? ♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
-"Number" will be released as a single this October.
In the meantime,
catch Ethan live at the Reggae Rise Up Festival
in Redmond, Oregon on Friday, August 29th,
and Ethan's full performance schedule is
at ethantuckermusic.com.
♪♪
-We are in one of the final galleries
Ai, Rebel.
It's a very large gallery and dim in the light,
but you see how it highlights all of the works on the wall,
which are all made out of Legos.
For Ai Weiwei, Legos are a very important medium.
He started using it in 2014,
and he has continued over a decade now,
creating all kinds of images with Legos,
which he feels like is very interesting visually
because it is by nature pixelated.
So it looks kind of like Roman mosaics.
It looks like pointillist paintings,
and it looks like smartphone snapshots.
This is one example of a smartphone snapshot.
The image today is quite iconic.
It shows Ai Weiwei inside an elevator.
He has lifted up his phone,
and you can see his flash going off
and it's reflecting in all the mirrors in the elevator.
He's in there with a friend of his,
and also a policeman
who had come to take him away in the middle of the night.
Ai Weiwei had been called to testify
at a fellow activist's trial.
And this was during the 2008 earthquake
when they were had begun asking for transparency
and for more information as to what had happened
that led to the tens and thousands of people
who died during a magnitude-eight earthquake
in Sichuan province in southwest China.
So he was prevented from testifying.
They went into his room.
They hit him on the head.
He had developed a hematoma that nearly killed him.
This work is a Lego version of that very famous photograph,
which he. as soon as he took it,
he somehow managed to post it online,
where it instantly went viral.
It reminds us of the importance of smartphones
in acts of resistance and in political activism today.
♪♪
-Ai, Rebel:
The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei
at Seattle Art Museum
closes on September 7th,
so don't delay.
Reserve your ticket
at seattleartmuseum.org.
♪♪
And now, a quick preview of Bumbershoot 2025.
♪♪
This beloved local event,
one of the longest running independent festivals
in the world,
celebrates its 52nd year with two action-packed days
of cool music,
expansive visual art,
and culinary deliciousness,
along with the always popular
Fashion District, Wig Farm, Gravity Park,
SOS wrestling, and Cat Circus.
[ Meows ]
A 48-hour Fun Fest runs Saturday and Sunday,
August 30th and 31st.
For the full schedule,
along with ticket and pass information,
go to bumbershoot.com.
♪♪
And that's a wrap!
Big thanks to the Seattle Chinese Garden
for hosting us.
And thanks to you for tuning in.
We hope that you enjoy these lovely late summer days
with family, friends,
and of course, lots of local art.
We'll see you soon.
♪♪