USF at Cairo

amazing show this past weekend!

WHITE RAINBOW//usf//BIG SPIDER'S BACK//matt dillon

this saturday, and epic show, for sure. 7 pm, $6. BLOW YOUR MIND.

FRIDAY APRIL 16TH! 7 PM!

the art of ADAM ZEEK (PDX), music by MALLCRAWLERS (PDX), BEL AIR, and BRAINFRUIT! $5/$7 with zineeeeeeeeee. COME!

Former Ghosts, Stephanie, and VERY special guests! Friday April 2nd 8 pm

Former Ghosts from L.A. and one of our favorite Seattle bands, Stephanie, with extra special guests (!!!), 8 pm, $6.

RESERVE your spot for Cairo's 1st EVER SILKSCREENING WORKSHOP

CAIRO officially opens it's water-based silkscreening studio. We will teach you how to make posters and t-shirts for very little $$$. SPACE IS EXTREMELY LIMITED, PLEASE BRING $40 TO CAIRO THIS WEEK TO SECURE YOUR SPOT! we are open from 12-7 every day.

Step-by-Step Orientation and Workshop that will prepare you to work in our new silkscreening studio. Workshop Saturday April 3rd, 2-4 pm. Cost will be $40, which includes 30 days of access to our studio to create your work!! Studio will have open hours Thursday-Sunday from 12-6 pm. Once you've completed the workshop, you are then eligible to use the space.

Once your initial month is up, you can take a break for awhile, or continue using the studio at a $25 per month fee. If you do take a break, you can rejoin at any time.

In addition to teaching you how to use all of the equipment, your membership also gets you photo emulsion (one of the most expensive parts of silkscreening!!), access to screen emulsion cleaner (so you can re-use old screens), discounted equipment (such as screens), and use of general silkscreening supplies (emulsion applier, squeegee's to apply ink, etc).

What the studio offers:

1. Water-based ink, non toxic environment
2. Four Color Press
3. Exposure unit to create your own screens
4. Flash dryer to set ink on t-shirts
5. Pressure washer and utility sink (to use in cleaning and re-using screens)

What the workshop will cover:

1. What makes a good image to silkscreen
2. How to Re-claim or Re-use an old screen (application of photo emulsion, and exposing of silkscreen)
3. Printing
4. Clean-up

Questions? email us at: alchemy.of.time@gmail.com

EEL-EATER, stephanie, WET PAINT, magic johnson, Friday March 26th

Great show this Friday!

EEL-EATER
WET PAINT
STEPHANIE
MAGIC JOHNSON (pdx)

7 pm, $5

Events this WEEK, March 2nd-9th

THREE BIG EVENTS!

Wednesday we continue to show episodes of season one's Twin Peaks! This event is free, bring your own pillow to sit on, and anything you'd like to sip on. Starts at 7pm

Friday we have an amazing music show:

Hoquiam (RECORD RELEASE!)
Blood Mongrel
Generifus

$5, 7pm



Saturday & Sunday Huge sale on vintage goods, we will be converting the back performance space into a 50% off room, for Cairo AND 20twenty goods. Hundreds of amazing gems at 50% off. Come get it!!

EVENTS for the week of Feb. 15th-22nd!

Got three great events this week at Cairo! We are also open 12-7 pm everyday selling vintage, and locally-made clothing and housewares for men and women...see you soon!!

Wednesday FEB. 17th, 7 pm, FREE Every Wednesday night, starting at 7 PM, we will be watching episodes of the early-90s-cult-television show TWIN PEAKS!




Come chill with your favorite Twin Peaks residents every Wednesday starting on the 17th, until we finish all 30 episodes (and movie).

To make this a more authentic experience we will be providing cherry pie, donuts and coffee.

In appreciation of Northwest fashion and Twin Peaks, each wednesdays, all men's and women's FLANNELS will be 15% off (also any items with shoulder pads!).

Thursday FEB. 18th, 7 pm, $7 music by TINY VIPERS, CHARLES LEO GEBHARDT, and SECRET COLORS!! this is going to be an amazing show! come!!



SATURDAY, Feb. 20th, 7 pm, $7 music with REPORTER (pdx), THEESatisfaction, and Sev and the Sins!! YES!

Changes.

Two years ago today we ignored all economic trends and opened Cairo Gallery, a space for emerging local, national, and international artists of all disciplines. We are proud of what we’ve accomplished as a gallery, and every single artist we’ve hosted in our intimate space. We’ve been encouraged and inspired by your support, and especially the depth of your engagement in Cairo, which is why it pains us deeply to tell you that the space as it’s existed is no longer. Cairo as a gallery will not reopen in 2010, though some elements of its former self will persist. Of note, Cairo will continue to be a venue for great music and occasional film...we may even host another modern dance performance, or let Michael and Emma turn this place into a Narnia-esque (sans biblical references) forest again. Unfortunately the regular 6 week art exhibitions will not be back, nor will one of Cairo’s original founders.

This space could never EVER have happened without Justine, there is just no simpler, nor bolder way to state it. Her vision is an inspiration to me, and everyone else she touches. We are all excited to see what she creates next.

We could give you a list of reasons why running a gallery didn’t work out for us, but ultimately we enjoyed the act of curating and engaging artists, more than the act of hosting and selling. We launched Cairo out of a desire to showcase artists and work that we felt would not otherwise be seen in Seattle, and we did it well.

We’d like to take this time to thank the artists who took a chance on a couple of folks with nothing but passion, and gave us such inspired work in return. We hope other galleries and artspaces will take notice of these artists, as their work deserves to be seen more in Seattle:


Aaron Osborn (NYC)
Alika Cooper (LA)
Chad States (Philadelphia b/w of Seattle)
Edie Tsong (Santa Fe)
Pete Kuhov (Santa Fe)
Kyle Ranson (SF)
Nicholas Kamuda (Seattle)
Jesse Brown (Seattle)
Aaron Harris (Seattle)
Stephen Eichhorn (Chicago)
Toby Liebowitz(Seattle)
Heidi Anderson(website is for her twin sister Erika as well (Seattle/LA)
Amelia Bauer(NYC)

All of these artists truly inspire us. They are the reason why Cairo existed in the first place. Thank you all for showing at Cairo.

Thanks also to the following talented and patient Cairo interns: Emily Stebbins, Jennifer Mao, Serrah Russell, Francesca Lohmann, Sacha Parker, Maegan Bell, and Lindsey Schoeneman

Though we are at times incredibly torn about watching elements of what we created together become history, Justine and I are simultaneously very thankful to be returning to just "partners", as opposed to “business partners”. This is not to say we have regrets, we've reveled in even the most difficult interpersonal/business situations, gaining a greater respect for each other and our relationship in process....more on that here:

The Strange Attractor

The next week will bring more information on Cairo, the space, but not the gallery. A new partner for Cairo has also emerged in Aimee Butterworth, formerly of 20twenty, and one of the driving forces behind The Holy Mountain, a venue for incredible music in Seattle. We’ve chosen to keep the Cairo name, because we think the new space still properly reflects the mission statement written two years ago, which we reprint below. Cairo has never been just one thing, we've lived in each moment of our two years, morphing and adapting, while keeping the integrity of it's original vision completely intact. Cairo is an ever evolving entity. As long as people find a place and a time to engage it, we will continue to tweak, sustain, and grow it.

Mission Statement: Cairo is a forum for creative inquiry and exposure, showcasing visual arts, design, performance, sound, film, and artist-in-residence opportunities. We renegotiate the traditional relationships between artist and institution in partnership with our visiting artists, and, in the process, create an ever-evolving arts space open to all kinds of circumstance.

Sincerely,

Joel Leshefka

Cairo Collection Tshirts !

Cairo Collection Tshirts ! Designed by artists Justine Ashbee, Nicholas Kamuda, Jesse Brown . . . Super deliciously soft tees - get your own here

http://cairocollection.bigcartel.com/

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

ECLECTIC MAGIC now open!! come party tonight!

Open everyday from 12-6 until January 3rd!!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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!