♪ Art Zone theme song ♪
[NANCY GUPPY] Hi there and welcome to the show.
I'm Nancy Guppy, coming to you
from the very festive Seattle Center
where the annual Holidays
at the Center is in full swing.
♪ festive holiday music ♪
This always popular celebration is packed
with lots of fun activities like
(train choo choos)
the interactive winter train and village,
(film projector whirling)
classic family friendly movies,
next level ice sculpting,
a Seattle Christmas Market,
and live theater for kids and adults.
For the full schedule of events, go to
SeattleCenter.com
All right.
As this is our last
episode of the year,
we decided to look back at a few
of our favorite stories from the past season.
So relax,
put your feet up, and enjoy these
highlights from Art Zone 2025.
♪♪
-He'll be cut in half somehow, or maybe bisected.
[ Dremel buzzing ]
♪♪
And you'll see half of him over here
and then one on the other side.
I think a lot of times when I look at them,
I think about like, if they were alive, like,
how would they move and how would they operate?
And to me, I can see it all in my head.
Like, it all just feels like it makes sense.
♪♪
The kind of work that I do is essentially ceramic collage.
So I find pre-existing pieces,
and then I take those and cut them apart and reassemble them,
because I want the work to all look like it was born that way.
It's really important to me that you look at it
and your first thought is,
"That's a figurine I've seen before."
And then your second thought is,
"Wait, that's something I've never seen before."
And so there's a puzzle in doing that.
And like making that sort of perfect born-that-way moment.
[ Objects clatter ]
I was out thrifting and I saw these two little vintage lambs,
and they were so adorable.
And I just remember looking at them
on the shelf in the thrift store
and just sort of having this vision in my mind
that I could take them apart and put them back together
and make them something different.
And that sort of started the whole thing.
Using a Dremel tool to cut things is a little hit or miss.
Sometimes it works beautifully
and sometimes it does not work at all.
Once I have the cuts made,
we'll either glue the two pieces together
or mix up the epoxy sculpting compound to do a big fill
to stick the pieces together.
Then I will get the paints out,
do all the color matching that I need to do.
I'll airbrush those on, then I'll do final brush work.
Put gloss coats on, polish it, sign the bottom.
Done.
[ Laughs ]
When I look at my work, I see humor mostly.
I just, I see this world
where things are funny and strange,
but they're nice.
It's sort of just this reflection of an unusual world
that we can have.
I like just opening that window of like...
Look at this thing you never thought of and now it's here.
♪♪
-I want visitors to be able to experience comics
in a sort of a different environment,
with a different approach to the medium.
Comics have been sort of stigmatized,
and the work that we show is more based in reality
to appeal to adults,
and my goal is to have people come visit the store
and leave with an appreciation of comics on a different level.
I'm the curator and manager at
Fantagraphics Bookstore in Georgetown.
♪♪
Fantagraphics Books is a publisher
of alternative comics and graphic novels
aimed at adult audiences.
We based in Seattle since 1989.
Here's a recent work we published by Charles Burns.
Imaginary comic book covers of comics
that were never actually existed.
That covers themselves, sort of tell a story.
One of my personal favorites is Peter Bagge.
Peter Bagge is known for chronicling
the grunge phenomenon in the '80s in his comic serial "Hate."
This is Peter Bagge's earlier work, "The Bradleys."
It was sort of a story of a dysfunctional family,
sort of maybe loosely based on his own upbringing.
I've been a comics fan since since I was a child.
Let me rewind back to the beginning.
[ Tape whirrs ]
I started my career in 1978
after graduating with a degree in art history.
I opened an art gallery
in Pioneer Square called "Rosco Louie."
Interestingly enough, that gallery opened
at the same time as three very gifted artists
from The Evergreen State College.
Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, and particularly Matt Groening,
who was later the creator of "The Simpsons,"
and it had just started my gallery
as those artists were entering the field
and I was able to exhibit their work.
♪♪
In addition to showing visual art at my gallery,
I also started booking alternative music.
One of the earlier bands that I embraced was The U-Men,
described as being somewhere between punk rock
and performance art that included a number of
really gifted musicians, among them, Tom price.
And I developed a close relationship with them,
eventually managing the band.
[ Music plays ]
[ Tape whirrs ]
Fast forward to 2006,
when Fantagraphics opened the showroom here in Georgetown,
I became the curator and manager and the first employee.
There's your books.
-It's a foreign edition? -I have no idea what it is.
-The bookstore here is showroom
for all of Fantagraphics Publications,
but our mission has expanded
to support local independent artists,
and I'm the curator of that selection.
♪♪
We host hundreds of art exhibitions,
artist talks, workshops, concerts.
[ Music plays ]
My name is Larry Reid.
I've been a cultural worker and advocate
for experimental art in Seattle since 1978.
My thought is to just make it a punk rock, you know,
like something that would have come out in 1981 or 1982.
You know, don't feel pressured to be like the U-Men, you know?
It's not... That's not what this is.
♪♪
"Hot Off The Press Books Fair" started 12 years ago
as an opportunity for local artists
to expose their work to broader audiences.
This year, we are paying homage to some of the past artists
that helped create the environment we enjoy now --
among them, the U-Men.
Tribute to one of the great proto-grunge bands
in the Pacific Northwest.
[ U-Men's "They!" plays ]
♪♪
-♪ Stare at the shadow of myself [indistinct] ♪
♪ Turned 18 and [indistinct] ♪
♪ Said it was a shame the way that poor boy died ♪
♪ When he hit the wall he lost his mind ♪
♪ Woahhh, whooooo ♪
♪ The winner was human ♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
-My presence in Georgetown predates the bookstore here.
I began working with artists and doing productions in here.
I'd like to think that residents here
consider me a cultural asset.
-Some people think Larry is the mayor of Georgetown,
which he may be reluctant to express himself,
but I do believe that is an apt description.
-He always has his ear to the ground with
either the coolest old thing or the coolest new thing.
-It would be tough to replace Larry.
He's really, he's one of a kind.
-At 72 years old, I'm not quite ready to retire yet.
I still have things to say.
You know Al Williamson? This is early stuff.
Really an important artist
and that's a great book.
I'm really pleased that I was able to
make a living working in my chosen field of visual art.
It's not easy.
I guess I'm proud that
I was able to stick with it
through lean times,
and establish a reputation for being a subversive element
of Seattle's art community.
♪♪
[Bird calls and traffic noise]
[Upbeat salsa music]
-What makes this space special
is actually something I can't even
I don't even know how to say it.
It is the soul of this space.
It's the people who come here.
It's the energy that is in the space
when you walk into it.
Our goal
is to have the most diverse group of people
coming together to learn dance.
I like to meld the gay and the straight worlds together.
I just want people to come together
over dance, which I think is just, dance
and music brings us together. ♪♪
When they come into the space, the first thing
everybody says is “Oh, wow.” We don't make spaces
that are this elaborate, that are this beautiful.
So it feels like you're kind of walking back in time.
It was built in 1908.
[electric buzz] It was an
Odd Fellows building until probably about 30 years ago.
The thing about this room that makes it unique
is all of the work that surrounds the balcony.
So they are all lions’ heads, they're all plaster,
they have light up light bulbs
in the lion's mouth.
We still have the original chandeliers.
So you see a lot of the original Odd Fellows
building architecture. ♪♪
Clearly, the best thing about it is the floor.
It's about a 45 by 45, 45 by 50
dance floor, plus extra room to be sitting around.
You can see where people have danced.
You can see where the teachers teach
in the middle of the room
where the people surround
the teachers
around the outside of the room, where people's
favorite place to dance is in front of the stage.
Just year after year, what has happened to the floor.
So for me, it's history. ♪♪
This type of space
is important because it's an art space,
and I think
the more that you lose art, you lose your soul.
But in terms of spaces that are for a community,
that it's the people who have walked
through this space over the years that call it
home, it's been meaningful to people over 28 years
and it brings people together.
And this is a beautiful place to come together.
♪♪
-When I have a brush in my hand,
I feel as though I'm in the right place somehow.
That it's not that nothing can go wrong
because everything can go wrong.
And that simply doesn't bother me.
I think one of the best things about working as long as I have,
doing sort of the same thing every day,
is that it's -- there are only few moments
when things are totally blessed by the muse.
It's so out of your control.
Oops. I'm actually at my best when things are going wrong.
♪♪
My name is Fay Jones and I'm a painter,
and I have been a painter for a long time.
I've been told that I'm a narrative painter,
and I think that's fairly accurate.
Painting has become my basal metabolism.
It's part of what I need to do.
And I will be 88 in June, and I'm fine with that.
But I also can't quite believe I've reached
that point in my life.
This -- it's just the idea of being my age and feeling
that I'm fading in some way.
Not in a bad way, that you feel invisible.
Guess I'm addressing the issues
of being an almost 88 year old woman.
How's that? [ Laughs ]
This is a photograph of me as a very young child.
It's 1937, so I would have been a year and something.
I'm the oldest of six children.
I've always been able to spend a lot of time by myself.
I think I'm a master of staring into space,
and I feel extremely fortunate that I grew up in a generation
where that was perfectly all right.
If you finished your schoolwork,
you could just look out the window.
I read a lot as a child,
and I also drew a lot as a child from a very young age.
And I wanted to be an artist, but had no idea what that meant.
When I went to art school,
I was 17 and I got into Rhode Island School of Design.
I was able to be completely self-centered for four years.
It was great.
Then I got married at the end of the fourth year
and by the time I graduated, I was pregnant.
We moved to Seattle from Providence, Rhode Island in 1960
with two children and a basil plant. [ Chuckles ]
And my husband had a job teaching
at the University of Washington.
I got out of school in 1957,
and I didn't actually exhibit until 1970.
So I painted very small, because I had four children.
The maximum dimension of my paintings
at that time was probably 15 inches.
I took over the biggest room in our house
and started painting paintings
that were at least six feet tall.
So, everything changed.
[ Indistinct chatter ]
-Well, this is studio e gallery.
Our current exhibition is a collection
of new monoprints by Fay Jones.
Being an inhabitant of the city of Seattle,
there's no way that I would not have known
who Fay Jones is as the artist.
Fay is probably our most important painter in the region.
Her imagery is known by people who don't even know her name.
Fay's work is in the subconscious
of a lot of people in the area.
♪♪
-I think I have a habit of recycling certain images.
That figure, and this was 34 years ago,
the gambler image I'm still working on 34 years later.
Those are probably the first two that I did.
The rabbit for me is a humorous symbol of fecundity.
I love the monkeys. [ Chuckles ]
They're funny and we're related to them.
The donkey is a beast of burden.
And I've always sort of felt with a donkey was, in a way,
sometimes being a woman, it's like being a donkey
or in a way, a beast of burden.
I'm not sure I'm a feminist,
but the alternative is unthinkable.
At some point,
I realized I didn't have to prove anything.
You know, I didn't have to prove that I knew what I was doing
from the beginning to the end of a painting.
I used to feel you had to cover up your history.
♪♪
I realized the history is part of the painting.
-You know, often there's a shadow of
where that arm first was drawn or where that,
you know, angle was.
Or maybe this thing that was masked out.
You can leave that -- she leaves the trail because I think,
in her words, the path is as interesting as the destination.
And you can see it here.
I mean, look how many donkey legs this has. [ Laughs ]
♪♪
-It's really how I process whatever's coming in.
I think I am best suited to
sort of taking it out on a piece of paper.
Ah, good. That's a relief. [ Chuckles ]
It has to come from inside, you know.
That's the hard thing to explain to people.
Better. [ Laughs ]
♪♪
Ten years ago, I painted small watercolors
that were based on still photographs
of Jean Renoir films.
And I always wanted to make a big painting of it.
Unlike a lot of other work that I've done,
I've had someplace to go every day.
I really wanted to paint this painting.
So I gave myself an assignment.
You hear writers say, "I'm not going to write anymore."
Some do and some don't.
It's just possible that one day you'll wake up and say,
"That's it."
Something happens, and there you are.
You're back in the studio and say...
I don't know what I'll take up when I decide I can't do it.
Maybe I'll try knitting again. [ Scoffs ] I don't know.
♪♪
♪♪​
-I'm still kind of getting my standing
and figuring out how to be a front person in a band.
I've, you know, always played in bands as more of a sideman.
♪ Felt like it took awhile ♪​♪​
Challenge of being a front man for me
is just getting over my nerves, and it's pretty wild, you know,
I mean, you could rehearse as much as you want
and get so comfortable in your practice space.
And then there is just something about walking
out in front of people and the dynamic changes.
♪♪​
I knew I wanted to play music since I was a little kid.
Certainly.
I mean, it started as thinking I just was --
wanted to be a singer and performer,
and then I got a guitar.
It was just a lousy little gremlin guitar that,
like the fret board was cut your fingers, you know?
♪ Boy, what didi they do to you? ♪​♪​
And at the time I was growing up, you know,
like Seattle had already exploded
into this international scene.
These five teenage boys first started playing
loud music together two years ago
when they were all freshmen in high school.
I was in a band when I was a teenager
that kind of like blew up,
and then it turned into all these like
major label demo deals,
so I moved up here in order to like fulfill that dream.
That whole Seattle scene and explosion,
as progressive as a city as it is,
did not seem accessible or designed to be for me.
And I think that created a lot of conflict
because, you know, you want to be inside a club,
but you know that you don't get a membership, yeah.
♪ Hold my hand ♪​
♪ Don’t be afraid ♪​
♪♪​
♪ To lose your place in line ♪​♪​
When I was a kid,
I was kind of like locked into this really closed-down world
that made you conform.
♪ And like a storm ♪​♪​
Just the knowledge of knowing that I was queer
made it instantly clear that the world was not designed
for me to roam freely within.
When you spend your life hiding for so long
and then you realize, oh, it doesn't have to be this way,
you know, once you kick that door open,
then that is going to just become
like a really important part about who you are
and how you want to express who you are to other people.
♪ Every day is like ♪​
♪ An echo in the hall ♪​
♪ And I can’t listen to it anymore ♪​
♪ Maybe you are enough to keep us warm ♪​♪​
I feel like I only really found my footing with music
and my comfort with myself in the last like 10 years.
I've been out for a really long time now,
but really leaning into that as part of my identity
and the actual music.
♪♪​
You know, I mean, I'm still kind of figuring that out right now,
like I don't know what queer music necessarily is
in the first place. It's not really a genre.
♪ Lover, picking out all the parts that make it work ♪​♪​
But I feel that it is a pillar
of what I'm trying to communicate.
♪♪​
Mikey Moo; I've kind of taken into calling it queer psych pop
and I don't know if that's, you know, I mean,
trying to come up with words that can best label a sound.
I mean, to me it's pop music.
It's psych. It's rock and roll.
The lyrics deal with queer matters,
but definitely like bringing in different genres for sure,
and I like to dance all over wherever I can.
♪ I am drunk on your innocence lately♪​♪​
This is the first time I've ever written a full-length
and been like, okay, this is a statement of sorts.
Here is Mikey Moo's "Fresh Idiot" on vinyl.
I wrote the record on my own
and then workshopped it with some other friends,
but now I finally have a band with Scotty and Nicki.
So I'm really excited to collaborate and write with them.
It's the first time we played that.
♪♪​
I'm learning that Mikey Moo is not just about me now,
it's about trusting the other two in the band -- --
because they're really truly two of the best musicians
in the town and dear friends. Seattle is --
♪ Why does everyone report to me? ♪​♪​
it's always been about not being a sellout
and all that kind of thing.
And I feel like the city is wanting for marketing, jingles,
those kind of things that like don't take itself so seriously.
♪ I need a V-I-T-A morning and night♪​♪​
Heavy Metal Marching Band is a project that Troy Nelson
and I started during the pandemic
because everything kind of shut down.
There were no more shows -- --
♪ I need a Vita ♪​♪​
So we were just kind of goofing around. We were making some jingles,
and then we did some for Saint John's, for my bar.
♪ St. John’s takeout ♪​
♪ The answer to your prayers is finally here ♪​
♪ St. John’s takeout ♪​♪​
The process is really collaborative.
Generally, we share a brain, and like,
I mean like, we have a really,
really good time creating this stuff.
We're just going to see where we can take it.
-Hey, what are you doing today?
-Well, I’ll tell ya.
♪ I’m gonna walk out to the Clock-Out, baby ♪​
♪ They got everything you want and need ♪​♪​
I feel like Seattle's
music scene is the coolest it's ever been.
It's people who have just gotten so creative with what art is.
There's so many new projects and collaborations,
so there's just all sorts of music
kind of going around all the time
and all sorts of different kind of music.
So I'm really excited to see what the next chapter is,
and I'm like, wow, Seattle is where it's at.
Thanks, everybody. Good night, we're Mikey Moo.
Love you. Thanks. -We love you, Mikey.
[NANCY GUPPY] And that’s a wrap.
Big thanks to the
Seattle Center for hosting us.
And a reminder that holidays at
the Center is happening throughout the month.
Most of all, we want to thank you
for tuning in.
We have such a great time bringing
you art and artists in our community,
and we look forward to
sharing lots more art with you
in the New Year.
So we're going to leave you
with images from “Farm to Table:
Art, Food and Identity
In the Age of Impressionism.”
This gorgeous show at Seattle Art Museum,
featuring over 50
paintings by renowned artists,
runs through January 18th,
which to my mind
makes it
a perfect afternoon outing
for visiting family and friends.
So enjoy...
Have a terrific holiday
and we'll see you in 2026.
♪♪