Hanging with artists
Those 100-plus artists in this weekend’s Fall Visual Arts Tour?
You’ll see lots of them, suspended right there on the Chase Gallery walls.
That’s why Rick Singer’s photography exhibit at the Spokane City Hall gallery is the perfect place to start (or end) your Visual Arts Tour peregrinations.
Singer’s exhibit consists of 159 portraits of local artists, musicians, performers and arts benefactors. It’s the culmination of his monumental effort to express his support and appreciation for Spokane’s arts community.
“I’ve spent my whole life down here on West Main,” said Singer, best known as a studio portrait photographer. “I’ve usually used my studio in a way to please my customers. But in this show, I’ve pleased myself. I’m the client.”
For six months, he invited (and occasionally cajoled) the region’s top artists up to his third-floor downtown studio. Singer shot almost every portrait with the same backdrop, yet with wildly different results.
He asked everyone to show up with either a sample of their art, the tools of their trade or – and this was the wild card – “anything that thrills you.”
Thus we have artist and teacher Bernadette Vielbig covered completely with 4,000 marshmallow Peeps. We have Tim Lord with his collection of skulls. And we have Charlie Schmidt in a flight suit.
That’s the same look Schmidt will be sporting a few blocks away, at another stop on the Visual Arts Tour: “Performance Art Test Pilot,” his show at the Lorinda Knight Gallery.
You’ll see his paintings, drawings and installations – including a test-pilot module and an entire cut-open trailer. During the opening reception Friday evening, you’ll also see a 16-minute performance (repeated every 40 minutes) in which Schmidt wanders the galaxies and receives signals about, well, the meaning of the universe.
“I go on various test flights and encounter Jesus and Buddha and my mother,” said Schmidt. “She’s 86 and she’ll be in the show, in the trailer, serving up Italian food.”
Schmidt is a well-known character in Spokane’s art and performance scenes, yet he has devoted most of his energies recently to doing advertising work. This is his first full-fledged art show.
“People tend to think I’m unusual and dance to the beat of my own drummer,” said Schmidt. “But I realized recently I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching. I decided in the last year to be myself and see what happens. And that’s how the test pilot theme came about.”
Nothing else may match that for sheer wildness, but the Visual Arts Tour will present many other unusual and stunning faces.
Many will be on display in “The Mask Show,” featuring a dozen masks created by regional artists, at Artisans’ Wares downtown. Some masks are on dolls, others are full-size disguise masks, all done in the artists’ chosen media.
Even the downtown parking meters will get into the arts act. The meters on Post Street between Main and Second avenues will be topped with artist-made “hats” on Friday from 5 to 9 p.m.
Not only will the streets look jaunty, but no meter money will be required.