“Sketching Cascadia” Opens at Graphite

6/24/23 Gabi Campanario gives a presentation at Graphite Arts Center

Behind Roy DeLeon's head is his accordion-style sketchbook that takes up nearly
the whole wall horizontally!

For the first time in many years, an exhibit entirely of urban sketches has opened in the Puget Sound area, and I’m thrilled to be included! As part of Sketcher Fest next month, the nonprofit Graphite Arts Center in Edmonds is hosting a show of art for purchase as well as a display of sketchbooks, all by Pacific Northwest artists. With the theme “Sketching Cascadia,” the entire exhibit showcases work made on location in the region.

The huge gallery space is an ideal facility for hosting the wide range of work being shown. Some artists have poster-size paintings and montages; others have tiny sketchbooks. Roy deLeon has one of the most visually striking pieces: An accordion sketchbook stretched out for the length of one exhibit wall. Mark Ryan contributed two-sided pages removed from his sketchbooks. They are displayed vertically between Plexiglas panes to show the art on both sides (I regret that I didn’t get a photo of this unique display). Full sketchbooks are displayed in glass cases.

Sue Heston with her sketchbook in foreground

Andika Murandi 

Loose artwork hangs unframed on the walls. It was obvious that some artists simply tore sketches right out of their sketchbooks, ragged, spiral-bound edges exposed. It’s rare to see original art exhibited without framing, and I found it especially engaging to view sketches this way: I experienced a raw, immediate intimacy that is not possible when the art is neatly matted and separated from the viewer by glass. It’s as close to being able to thumb through an actual sketchbook as any exhibit could be.

David Hingtgen

Gail Wong

Jane Wingfield

In addition to all the original artwork and sketchbooks, a digital display in the gallery is continuously showing a loop of many more sketch images contributed by USk members.

I didn’t want to tear pages out of my sketchbook, so I opted to make a new piece on loose paper just for the exhibit (it’s the top sketch in this post). Using larger paper that turned out to be less than ideal – and using gouache for nearly the first time! – I took a lot of chances making the piece. With only a couple of weeks’ notice to prepare during iffy spring weather, I wanted to make a couple more pieces, but I had time and opportunity for only one. When I first walked through the show and didn’t see mine on the walls, I thought it had been rejected at the last minute! Interestingly, since I was the only artist who submitted a single piece, the curators decided to put mine in the glass case with the sketchbooks instead of on a wall.

I was surprised to find my loose sketch in a display case instead of on a wall!

I also contributed a recent sketchbook, and it is opened to one of my favorite sketches in the book: Gas Works Park during Gabi Campanario’s sketch tour. The curators also photocopied a couple other pages from my sketchbook so that they could be shown, too. It was a cool surprise to see which sketches were selected to be visible. The sketchbook display cases are made from old studio tables covered with paint marks. Used paint palettes and pencils are scattered among the sketchbooks, giving the whole display the look of “artists at work.” I love the hands-on look!

My opened sketchbook plus photocopies of other pages in the book.

During the reception, Sketcher Fest producer Gabi 

Gabi's presentation

gave a presentation about his journey toward urban sketching and how he began the phenomenon that became the global Urban Sketchers organization.

It was fun as well as an honor to attend the opening reception Saturday evening with so many of my urban sketchers friends who also have work in the show. Many thanks to Graphite events manager Tracy Kay Felix, Jane Wingfield, Gabi and others on the team who organized the excellent exhibit. If you are local, I hope you will be able to catch this unique show, which is on through July 29.

Ellie Doughty

David and Brenda Chamness

Alex Hollmann

Greg, Gabi and me

Behind Gabi and his wife Michelle Archer is a wall where visitors are invited to post their urban sketches. 

Me and my date!

 

Witness to Wartime

10/26/17 Wood sculptures by Takuichi Fujii

(Although it includes only one of my own sketches, I'm hoping this exhibit review will be of interest to urban sketchers. The exhibit has historical importance and is a rare showing of this particular experience through sketch reportage.)

When I was a child, I remember looking through our family photo albums and noticing that while there were many photos of my oldest brother Richard, my sister Linda and myself when we were babies, there were very few of my brother Frank. When I was older, I came to understand the reason: Frank was born in 1942 inside Tule Lake internment camp during World War II, where incarcerated Japanese Americans were not allowed to have cameras. My mother explained to me that the few photos of him during those years were taken by friends in the military who happened to be visiting them in camp and later gave my parents the photos.

The sketchbook and paintings of Takuichi Fujii, now on exhibit at the Washington State History Museum, are a rare opportunity to view first-hand images of the internment experience where photography was not allowed. A first-generation Japanese American, Fujii was already a painter when he was first confined to the Puyallup detention center and later relocated to Minidoka, Idaho (the ultimate destination of my family, too). His 400-page sketchbook shows raw pen-and-ink drawings of his day-to-day life: people lining up for meals; using toilets and showers with no privacy, not even curtains between stalls; killing time by playing cards; the watchtowers and military guards. On the facing pages of sketches, Fujii wrote diary entries describing what he saw and experienced.

The actual sketchbook is displayed in a glass case.

The exhibit includes some oil and watercolor paintings he made before, during and after the war, some based on his sketches, as well as a few small sculptures carved from fence posts. According to the placard, “When part of the fence was removed in 1943, people quickly salvaged the materials for use at their barracks. The carved faces of Fujii and his wife are worn by years of having been caressed.” (My sketch of these sculptures is shown above.)

While the finished paintings are interesting and more polished, I found the sketches to be the most moving and heartbreaking images to view. My only complaint about this excellent exhibit is that the sketchbook pages can only be viewed as a digital slideshow that advances automatically. I would have liked to have studied a few of the sketches at my leisure. I also wish each page of his written diary had been translated as part of the slideshow.

Individual sketchbook pages are shown in a digital slideshow.

Fujii may have been one of very few reportage sketchers of the Japanese American internment experience, with his work only now having an audience. 

Witness to Wartime is on view through Jan. 1, 2018.