Placiness
August 4 – August 31 at ’57 Biscayne: hours & location
In the exploding urban environment of boom-and-bust Seattle, stories of artists losing their homes and studios abound.
The artists of ’57 Biscayne created their Pioneer Square studios out of the much-ballyhooed demise of 619 Western in 2011. In the intervening years they have found themselves becoming a kind of charismatic megafauna, viewed as endangered wildlife in the changing urban ecosystem. The intense focus on where the artists happen to be working, while well-intentioned and necessary, often takes focus away from the art itself. Urban artists’ communities are not mere symbols to the artists who work there, but a solid base from which they observe, interact with, and respond to the city they call home.
Placiness gathers visual evidence of what it actually means–from the artists’ points of view–to live and work in Seattle, to move about the city and to look at things and people.
Placiness features both artists who work in the building and an stellar lineup of local guests. The work on view ranges from the representational – paintings, drawings, and photographs that directly confront the cityscape – to constructions that incorporate materials and objects endemic to the region, and much that falls in between, all visually inspired by the streets, buildings, history, landscape, and humanscape of Seattle.
The building housing ’57 Biscayne was purchased by an artist-developer partnership, Good Arts LLC, in 2015, with the mission of preserving and expanding a home for the arts in Pioneer Square. In keeping with its mission, the Good Arts Building is an Event Partner of the Seattle Art Fair, hosting an official Art Fair venue at 108 Cherry, as well as providing storefront space elsewhere in the building to La Sala and the Center on Contemporary Art, which are independently organizing concurrent arts events.