Event shirt by CMRTYZ:
CMRTYZ shredders:
SATURDAY 7PM music by KARL BLAU, WET PAINT, and SLIPPERS (USA), $5
Thursday, December 17, 2009
TWO BIG NIGHTS///12.18 & 12/19
FRIDAY 7 PM: CMRTYZ trunk show, with FREE music by PRISON<>TIME COPZ<>INDIAN WARS
Event shirt by CMRTYZ:
CMRTYZ shredders:
SATURDAY 7PM music by KARL BLAU, WET PAINT, and SLIPPERS (USA), $5
Event shirt by CMRTYZ:
CMRTYZ shredders:
SATURDAY 7PM music by KARL BLAU, WET PAINT, and SLIPPERS (USA), $5
Friday, December 4, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
SNEAK peak at some designs for Eclectic Magic.
Stacey Rozich
Darin Shuler
We've been busy commissioning some new t-shirt designs for December's pop-up store, opening December 3rd. here is a sneak peak at two of the 6 local artists we'll be featuring:
Eclectic Magic at Cairo, Dec. 3rd-Jan. 3rd.
Eclectic Magic, open 12-6 everyday from December 3rd - January 3rd
Vintage---Music---Art---Local Designs
Opening party with music by WILD ORCHID CHILDREN, ALASKAS, and STEPHANIE. Friday December 4th at 7 pm. COME HANG.
Monday, November 9, 2009
EXPO 87, November 19th-21st, 2009
FULL SCHEDULE AND LINE-UP. thursday night is free/donation, FRI&SAT, $10 for all day pass at both venues.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
A-ROOM-A-LOOM October 21st 6-10pm
A-ROOM-A-LOOM
JULIA SHERMAN
Wednesday October 21, 2009 – 6-10pm
Cairo is thrilled and proud to announce the opening ceremony of A-ROOM-A-LOOM, a traveling community interactive woven installation, project established by artist Julia Sherman.
Come help WEAVE! At the opening reception, Wednesday October 21, 6-10pm, & Cairo doors will be open the following weekend October 24 & 25, 12-6 pm. Please email cairocollection@gmail.com to set up other weave times on week nights and for the following week! Please bring materials to weave*
Description: A-Room-A-Loom is a site-specific weaving experiment. With consideration for the architecture of the gallery, the loom uses the building’s walls to turn a room into a simple machine. With the loom spanning the width and breadth of the space, approx 6 feet x 14 feet, viewers are invited to become a part of the woven field! This loom is a very simple incarnation of what can be a very complex craft, and people are thrilled to have the opportunity to pick up the basics so quickly and with so little pressure. Anyone can be taught how to weave on the A-Room-A-Loom in a matter of minutes. Participants often form new friendships while sharing stories about the materials they bring in.
Past A-Room-A-Looms at Workspace in Los Angeles and Copy Gallery in Philadelphia have generated a curiosity for weaving and empowered the viewer to co-create a large-scale artistic project, via basic hands on interaction. *Some past materials that used have been: Dog fur, weeds from a neighbor’s garden, a blanket from distant travels, bubble wrap, the yellow pages, an ex-girlfriend’s pajamas, John Baldessari’s toilet paper, audio cassette tape, and tons of old clothes. The possibilities are endless!
It is super easy to learn! And super fun to do! Bring any and all materials you can think of, and let’s weave A-ROOM-A-LOOM at Cairo!
A-ROOM-A-LOOMs have been built in several cities, including Providence, Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles, Vancouver-BC, Philadelphia, & New York. These pieces will take part in a large exhibition, as a group of woven A-ROOM-A-LOOMs.
ARTIST WEBSITE: JULIA SHERMAN
View other exhibitions at galleries here:
WORKSPACE GALLERY
COPY GALLERY
For more information, please contact Justine Ashbee and Joel Leshefka at email: cairocollection@gmail.com
Monday, September 28, 2009
Home, Wednesday Sept. 30h, 7-9 pm
Continuing our series of Intern-curated events, please join us for Home, brought to you by recent Providence transplant, Francesca Lohmann. Please join us Wednesday September 30th, 7-9 pm
A group show exploring the concept of "home", with selected works by Seth Clark, Sarah Cuno, James Ewart, Maureen Halligan, Marisa Keris, Francesca Lohmann, Anna Lynett, Annie Medina, Ana Mikolavich, Allison Roberts, Duncan Scovil, Nicholas Simpson, Henrik Soderstrom, Melissa Tyson, and Jay Zehngebot.
Gathered from a group of young artists across the continental United States, the work in this show is a response to the question “What constitutes your experience of home?” Not yet at the age when we have truly settled, we are still in the process of constructing “home” for ourselves in both a physical and emotional sense. Friends, family, old stories, and familiar objects are the tangible characters that inform our internal conception of "home" and ground us with a sense of place.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Nat Damm Poster Show.
Thanks to everyone that came out, and to Nat, for persistence and vision within his field...he's come a long way since making that first poster at Ground Zero way back when.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
9/26 & 9/27 Ten Years of Poster design, by Nat Damm. A two day special event hosted by Cairo
Please join us this Saturday from 6-10 pm for ten years of poster design by Seattle artist, Nat Damm. show will also open Sunday September 27th from 12-6 pm. For more information about the show and artist:
Nat Damm
The poster show will feature OVER 100 11x17 street posters and heaps of silk screened posters from over the past ten years. We're talking old school folks, posters from The Sit & Spin, Graceland, I-Spy, The Breakroom, Vera and The Paradox. There will of course be work from Neumos, El Corazon, The Crocodile, The Showbox, Chop Suey, not mention venues from all over the country. As if it couldn't get any better he'll be unveiling several large and in charge life size silk screens of drum sets as well. Friends of Nat will also know that where Nat goes, beer is. Bring friends.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Our Family, curated by Serrah Russell
We had the pleasure of working with three fantastic interns this past quarter. Each was asked to complete their time at Cairo by hosting an event of their choosing. First up is Serrah Russell, who curated Our Family, which opens Thursday September 17th at 6 pm, and shows through the weekend. Please join us. Description of the show below.
Welcome home to broken bones and silver spoons, to play houses and stitched up wounds.
A group show of drawings, deconstructions and collages by Paige Fukuhara, Lilly Hern-Fondation, and Julia Salamonik.
As we are cleaning, we find them under a bed. They appear and distract us when on a hunt for something else. After an estate sale, they remain unsold, enduring memories of those who have gone before us. They are monumental and symbolic, but they are also banal, blurry and left for discard. As these images become far removed, stories fail us and names escape us, scenarios are imagined and memories constructed, with wishful thinking and tragic deceptions.
The connection of past events to present life is impossible to sever, even when our minds can not recall the reasons for their grasp. This connection has prompted us to make our own family, to distill, to memorialize and to alter, in order to understand. And in doing so, our family images become less specific, less referential of yours or mine. It becomes ours.
Welcome home to broken bones and silver spoons, to play houses and stitched up wounds.
A group show of drawings, deconstructions and collages by Paige Fukuhara, Lilly Hern-Fondation, and Julia Salamonik.
As we are cleaning, we find them under a bed. They appear and distract us when on a hunt for something else. After an estate sale, they remain unsold, enduring memories of those who have gone before us. They are monumental and symbolic, but they are also banal, blurry and left for discard. As these images become far removed, stories fail us and names escape us, scenarios are imagined and memories constructed, with wishful thinking and tragic deceptions.
The connection of past events to present life is impossible to sever, even when our minds can not recall the reasons for their grasp. This connection has prompted us to make our own family, to distill, to memorialize and to alter, in order to understand. And in doing so, our family images become less specific, less referential of yours or mine. It becomes ours.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Whiskeypriest number 1 and 2 shows Friday Sept. 11th at 9 pm
On-going original series produced by Skagit Valley filmmakers. We showed the first episode during EXPO 86 last year, catch it again with episode 2 Friday Sept. 11th at 9 pm.
WHISKEYPRIEST
…Former Episcopalian priest who practiced in a handful of churches throughout the Pacific Northwest, was ejected from the church for reasons unknown, continued to perform confessional duties for people of all faiths on his own and without the permission of the church, known as a local recluse, went missing for over 15 years, rumored sightings in Alger, Marblemount, Sumas (WA), maintains the moniker W.P., or “Whiskey Priest,” originating from Graham Greene’s novel “The Power and the Glory” (1940), continues to receive confessions by way of a PO Box…
WHISKEYPRIEST
…Former Episcopalian priest who practiced in a handful of churches throughout the Pacific Northwest, was ejected from the church for reasons unknown, continued to perform confessional duties for people of all faiths on his own and without the permission of the church, known as a local recluse, went missing for over 15 years, rumored sightings in Alger, Marblemount, Sumas (WA), maintains the moniker W.P., or “Whiskey Priest,” originating from Graham Greene’s novel “The Power and the Glory” (1940), continues to receive confessions by way of a PO Box…
Friday, August 21, 2009
Images of Amelia Bauers show, on view through Sept. 6th
We are currently open Friday 2-7 pm, Saturday & Sunday 12-6 pm
Interview with Amelia Bauer
We asked Amelia a series of questions about herself and her work.
Cairo Collection: What attracts you to the decorative arts?
Amelia Bauer: I have always been fascinated with intricate and obsessively crafted objects. My mother is a potter and my father is an architect, and growing up my house was filled with traditional crafts and modernist furniture. I remember seeing a Victorian house for the first time. I couldn’t believe all of the ornate details, it just blew my mind. It was like a whole universe opened up to me that seemed so foreign and exotic. One of my father’s favorite dictums was “form follows function”and it was so exciting to find that, regardless of my father’s convictions, examples of embellishment in excess of function go back as far as the Egyptian empire.
One of the most consistent themes in the decorative arts (and to me the most compelling) is to take forms from nature and organize them into strict and sometimes geometric patterns, like the lotus leaf pattern of the Egyptian empire, or the lavish floral and feather-based patterns of the baroque era. I find it so interesting that we build structures to shield us from the chaos of the natural world, and then fill them with the references to the natural world, but in a way that is palatable and safe. It is our way of convincing ourselves that we are separate from, and in control of nature — or maybe an attempt to make some sense of it, while at the same time keeping a safe distance. It allows us to hold a romanticized picture of the wild unknown.
CC: What compelled you to generate film stills/imagery in needlepoint and lace?
AB: I had been working on a lot of pieces in which I explored the themes that I laid out above. I was really examining this tendency in the decorative arts to organize the natural world. Simultaneously I was thinking about this Hawthornian idea of the forest or the unsettled wild as being the site of chaos and evil. With the pieces in STILL I wanted to make something that pushed the chaos side of that equation. I thought that the typical Hollywood movie functions for us today in the way that a baroque wallpaper might have functioned in its time. That is to say that when we watch a movie we are able to experience all its chaos (emotional, physical, etc.) from a safe distance.
Hollywood movies showcase our wealth as an empire. All of the high budget productions are louder, brighter, faster and better, and there is more here than in any other country. Empires past flaunted their wealth and power with the various objects that adorned a monarch’s palace and the in the facades of major buildings. I wanted to link Hollywood movies to those lavish imperial displays by putting movie stills back into the format of an older craft. The explosions and defenestration are shown for what they are-- decorative flourishes, in excess.
I also liked taking something violent and hard and fast and making it into this slow, soft thing. I think of the lace as handkerchiefs that could be used in mourning the loss of a loved one, and the pile of pillows are equally comforting. I’ve always felt that I am exposed to more violence, devastation, and tragedy via movies than in my real life. I think as Americans we have so many emotional
experiences in movies before, if ever, we have them in reality. Yet, the reality is that our country is waging war, and there are all kinds of destruction and violence that I feel very detached from. I wanted to make pieces that mourned fictional deaths as a way of demonstrating that disconnect.
CC: What aspects of film and Hollywood in particular are you attracted to?
AB: Well I’m a bit of a film geek in general, but this project has less to do with “film” as a medium, and more to do with Hollywood as a producer of popular culture. There is so much money that goes into Hollywood. The film industry here is so central to our national identity, so I think it’s helpful to look at it as a text for what we’re interested in as a society. It’s where all of our fantasies and fascinations are indulged, so it seems like a very rich area to explore.
CC: What contemporary artists are of interest to you right now?
AB: I tend to be fascinated by artists that do work that I feel is very far from what I would ever make. Its exciting to see something and have the feeling, “it would never even occur to me to make this, but I LOVE it.” Most recently I’ve decided that I really like Cory Arcangel. He’s got good ideas, I love his general ethos, and I would never ever make anything like it.
CC: What artists, if any, do you consider are currently handling the same issues?
AB: I think in general I try not to look at things that are close to what I’m doing, for fear that I’ll see something too similar and become discouraged. I suppose something vaguely related that comes
to mind is Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Theaters series, wherein he photographs the interior of a movie theater using the length of the movie on screen as his light source. I absolutely love those photographs. They capture the utter romance of the movie theater, and as prints they are exquisitely crafted and deeply seductive. Another piece that I love is Pierre Huyghe’s The Third Memory, a split screen video projection showing footage from Dog Day Afternoon alongside footage of John Wojtowicz, the man on whom the movie was based, retelling his story decades
after the fact on a sound stage. The piece reveals to us that Wojtowicz’s memory of the real life event is heavily affected by the film adaptation. It’s a brilliant piece that speaks so strongly of the way that Hollywood affects the way we view and interpret so many of our life experiences.
Cairo Collection: What attracts you to the decorative arts?
Amelia Bauer: I have always been fascinated with intricate and obsessively crafted objects. My mother is a potter and my father is an architect, and growing up my house was filled with traditional crafts and modernist furniture. I remember seeing a Victorian house for the first time. I couldn’t believe all of the ornate details, it just blew my mind. It was like a whole universe opened up to me that seemed so foreign and exotic. One of my father’s favorite dictums was “form follows function”and it was so exciting to find that, regardless of my father’s convictions, examples of embellishment in excess of function go back as far as the Egyptian empire.
One of the most consistent themes in the decorative arts (and to me the most compelling) is to take forms from nature and organize them into strict and sometimes geometric patterns, like the lotus leaf pattern of the Egyptian empire, or the lavish floral and feather-based patterns of the baroque era. I find it so interesting that we build structures to shield us from the chaos of the natural world, and then fill them with the references to the natural world, but in a way that is palatable and safe. It is our way of convincing ourselves that we are separate from, and in control of nature — or maybe an attempt to make some sense of it, while at the same time keeping a safe distance. It allows us to hold a romanticized picture of the wild unknown.
CC: What compelled you to generate film stills/imagery in needlepoint and lace?
AB: I had been working on a lot of pieces in which I explored the themes that I laid out above. I was really examining this tendency in the decorative arts to organize the natural world. Simultaneously I was thinking about this Hawthornian idea of the forest or the unsettled wild as being the site of chaos and evil. With the pieces in STILL I wanted to make something that pushed the chaos side of that equation. I thought that the typical Hollywood movie functions for us today in the way that a baroque wallpaper might have functioned in its time. That is to say that when we watch a movie we are able to experience all its chaos (emotional, physical, etc.) from a safe distance.
Hollywood movies showcase our wealth as an empire. All of the high budget productions are louder, brighter, faster and better, and there is more here than in any other country. Empires past flaunted their wealth and power with the various objects that adorned a monarch’s palace and the in the facades of major buildings. I wanted to link Hollywood movies to those lavish imperial displays by putting movie stills back into the format of an older craft. The explosions and defenestration are shown for what they are-- decorative flourishes, in excess.
I also liked taking something violent and hard and fast and making it into this slow, soft thing. I think of the lace as handkerchiefs that could be used in mourning the loss of a loved one, and the pile of pillows are equally comforting. I’ve always felt that I am exposed to more violence, devastation, and tragedy via movies than in my real life. I think as Americans we have so many emotional
experiences in movies before, if ever, we have them in reality. Yet, the reality is that our country is waging war, and there are all kinds of destruction and violence that I feel very detached from. I wanted to make pieces that mourned fictional deaths as a way of demonstrating that disconnect.
CC: What aspects of film and Hollywood in particular are you attracted to?
AB: Well I’m a bit of a film geek in general, but this project has less to do with “film” as a medium, and more to do with Hollywood as a producer of popular culture. There is so much money that goes into Hollywood. The film industry here is so central to our national identity, so I think it’s helpful to look at it as a text for what we’re interested in as a society. It’s where all of our fantasies and fascinations are indulged, so it seems like a very rich area to explore.
CC: What contemporary artists are of interest to you right now?
AB: I tend to be fascinated by artists that do work that I feel is very far from what I would ever make. Its exciting to see something and have the feeling, “it would never even occur to me to make this, but I LOVE it.” Most recently I’ve decided that I really like Cory Arcangel. He’s got good ideas, I love his general ethos, and I would never ever make anything like it.
CC: What artists, if any, do you consider are currently handling the same issues?
AB: I think in general I try not to look at things that are close to what I’m doing, for fear that I’ll see something too similar and become discouraged. I suppose something vaguely related that comes
to mind is Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Theaters series, wherein he photographs the interior of a movie theater using the length of the movie on screen as his light source. I absolutely love those photographs. They capture the utter romance of the movie theater, and as prints they are exquisitely crafted and deeply seductive. Another piece that I love is Pierre Huyghe’s The Third Memory, a split screen video projection showing footage from Dog Day Afternoon alongside footage of John Wojtowicz, the man on whom the movie was based, retelling his story decades
after the fact on a sound stage. The piece reveals to us that Wojtowicz’s memory of the real life event is heavily affected by the film adaptation. It’s a brilliant piece that speaks so strongly of the way that Hollywood affects the way we view and interpret so many of our life experiences.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Hollywood Depicted in Needlepoint and Lace: a new project by Amelia Bauer
Opens Thursday July 23rd, 7 pm
Amelia Bauer’s work considers ways in which the decorative arts throughout the history of western civilization have attempted to organize the chaos of the natural world. The pieces in her newest show entitled STILL reflect that tendency, while also examining the coinciding romanticization of, and fascination with violence. In STILL, Bauer presents a peculiar kind of rubble: a pile of pillows on the gallery floor. Each pillow in the pile uses needlepoint to photo-realistically depict a different car explosion scene from a Hollywood movie. Handkerchiefs line the walls of the gallery. In each handkerchief, a cinema-derived scene of defenestration is rendered in lace.
The movie stills Bauer has chosen to translate into needlepoint and lace are pulled from varying film genres--from romantic comedy to horror--produced between 1948 and 2009. Significantly, all of her sources are American productions. These bright flowering explosions and shards of shattering glass are the decorative elements that bejewel so many Hollywood films. The natural impulse to violence is depicted in cinema as glamourous decoration. The Hollywood machine is America’s own decadence of empire. The artworks in STILL resonate between an homage to this decadence and a mourning place for the fictional victims within these stories.
Amelia Bauer is a Brooklyn based artist born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has been living in New York for the past 12 years, excluding a ten-month working vacation in Seattle in 2005. She is a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and received her BFA with honors from the School of Art at The Cooper Union. Her work has been exhibited at Capricious gallery in Brooklyn, the Swarovski Crystal Palace at Art Basel Miami, Helen Pitt Gallery in Vancouver B.C., CCA Santa Fe, the Center on Contemporary Arts in Seattle, American Fine Arts in New York City, New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Miami Museum of Art, and National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution. Her drawings have been published in The New York Times, the Believer and Warrior Magazines, and several McSweeney’s publications.
Photos from Toby Leibowitz opening
A huge success, thank you to everyone who came out and enjoyed an incredible evening!!
Toby on the right!
Toby on the right!
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Opening reception for Peg and Awl, by Toby Liebowitz: Saturday May 30th 7-10 pm
Brand new work by Seattle artist Toby Liebowitz. Immaculate drawings, and accompanying collaborative installation (Max Liebowitz and Sean Pecknold) introduce us to the fictional depression era Peg and Awl Society.
Peg and Awl is a fictional society based in Douglas County, Oregon between the spring of 1933 and the winter of 1934. A community built from the dreams of the great depression; a place for artists, carpenters, writers and adventurers with visions of a utopian society. Through a series of graphite drawings, that span the seasons of a year, we witness the rise and fall of a community of people who are forced to face the realities of human desire and the harsh unknown.
The name of the community "Peg and Awl" comes from the song of the same title, popular during the industrial revolution of the late 1800s in America. The song prophecies the demise of handcrafts in favor of the machine. This fictional Peg & Awl society, created by Leibowitz, largely based on handcrafts, is an ode to the simplicity and creative spirit in our past, present, and potentially our future communities.
Toby Liebowitz attended Parsons School of Design for Illustration & Currently, is pursuing a degree in Agriculture at the Evergreen State College. Toby has shown her work in Seattle, New York and London.
Artist Statement about the installation:
Early in the 20th century hundreds of small sustainable communities were popping up around America. One of the most common ideas was the notion of free land and the liberation to builds ones shelter however and wherever they pleased. It was always with what they had and just the amount of space that was needed. The installation is trying to reenact a space of handmade and time spent shelter. Inside the shelter a sound piece is looped. Taking fragments of human life, a baby first laugh, and fragments of sound clips appropriate to 1933, clips of FDR’s fireside chats. The sound piece will aurally express the arc of the society “Peg and Awl” through the seasons and cyclical nature of patterns in human nature and the repeating of history past.
Sculpture Installation by Max Liebowitz
Sound Piece by Sean Pecknold
Brand new work by Seattle artist Toby Liebowitz. Immaculate drawings, and accompanying collaborative installation (Max Liebowitz and Sean Pecknold) introduce us to the fictional depression era Peg and Awl Society.
Peg and Awl is a fictional society based in Douglas County, Oregon between the spring of 1933 and the winter of 1934. A community built from the dreams of the great depression; a place for artists, carpenters, writers and adventurers with visions of a utopian society. Through a series of graphite drawings, that span the seasons of a year, we witness the rise and fall of a community of people who are forced to face the realities of human desire and the harsh unknown.
The name of the community "Peg and Awl" comes from the song of the same title, popular during the industrial revolution of the late 1800s in America. The song prophecies the demise of handcrafts in favor of the machine. This fictional Peg & Awl society, created by Leibowitz, largely based on handcrafts, is an ode to the simplicity and creative spirit in our past, present, and potentially our future communities.
Toby Liebowitz attended Parsons School of Design for Illustration & Currently, is pursuing a degree in Agriculture at the Evergreen State College. Toby has shown her work in Seattle, New York and London.
Artist Statement about the installation:
Early in the 20th century hundreds of small sustainable communities were popping up around America. One of the most common ideas was the notion of free land and the liberation to builds ones shelter however and wherever they pleased. It was always with what they had and just the amount of space that was needed. The installation is trying to reenact a space of handmade and time spent shelter. Inside the shelter a sound piece is looped. Taking fragments of human life, a baby first laugh, and fragments of sound clips appropriate to 1933, clips of FDR’s fireside chats. The sound piece will aurally express the arc of the society “Peg and Awl” through the seasons and cyclical nature of patterns in human nature and the repeating of history past.
Sculpture Installation by Max Liebowitz
Sound Piece by Sean Pecknold
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Heidi Anderson show on view until May 17th
gorgeous. gallery is open friday 2-7, saturday and sunday 12-6
Monday, April 27, 2009
Ghost Of Plants - Heidi Anderson - May 8th
Ghost of Plants
New Work from Heidi Anderson
Opening Reception Friday, May 8th at 7.00 PM
Heidi Anderson’s work is of a parallel world where her visions are rendered into fantastical apparitions. Spirits come to life in vivid color and float freely in atmospheric landscapes that reflect inner realms, personal mythology and an appreciation for the mysteries of nature.
Heidi Anderson was born in Seattle, WA. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003. Heidi has shown work in San Francisco, Brussels, London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Miami, and most recently at the Salon Du Dessin Contemporain in Paris.
Website for Heidi and her twin sister Erika: http://www.heidianderikadraw.com/
Friday, April 3, 2009
April 10th and 11th at Cairo. Two great shows
.jpg)
We have two great music shows at Cairo on April 10th and April 11th.
Friday April 10th Weekend, Flexions, and Katherine Hepburn's Voice, 8 pm, $7
Saturday April 11th Braidstorm (tape release), Dimples, and Fuck you Safari, 8 pm, $5
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
