Claire Cowie

Claire Cowie uses a variety of media to reference the natural world around her home in Seattle, as well as around the world. Cowie utilizes symbols of the natural world such as birds, insects, and a variety of plant-life, as well as heavily using the negative space in a work. By using watercolor and ink in the areas around her subject Cowie references the fragmentation between the natural world and us, as well as of memory. The colors and shapes in her work create dream-like landscapes that pull in characteristics of urban architecture.

 Claire Cowie lives and works in Seattle, Washington, where she is a lecturer at the University of Washington. Cowie attended both the North Carolina School of the Arts (Winston-Salem, NC) and Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO). She received her MFA from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA). Cowie’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including shows at the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA), Takeda Biennial (Oaxaca, Mexico), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Frye Art Museum (Seattle, WA), Shenzhen Art Institute (Shenzhen, China) and the Art Gym at Marylhurst University (Lake Oswego, OR). Her work is included in the collections of the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA), Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA), Safeco (Seattle, WA), and Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), among others.

Steve Davis

Steve Davis is a photographer based in the Pacific Northwest who takes both landscape and portrait photographs. His images always reference a social idea or group of people, whether that is the social and physical landscape of Washington or contemporary hippie culture. Often his photographs depict those on the fringes of society, in order to raise awareness and bring images of forgotten groups of people and landscapes into art spaces.

Steve Davis is the Coordinator of Photography and Media Curator at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. Davis was twice the recipient of the WA Arts Commission/Artist Trust Fellowship. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and Russian Esquire. His photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Haggerty Museum of Art, George Eastman House, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum and the Musée de la Photographie in Belgium.

Akio Takamori

Takamori was a seminal figure in ceramic art, whose work over the past thirty years has left an enduring impact on the Pacific Northwest arts and the medium itself. His work is often autobiographical, drawing on his life in Japan, his family, and mythological themes. He is known for his coil-built figurative sculptures in which the narrative painting defines the form.  Takamori explored themes of cultural identity by engaging the history of Eastern and Western aesthetics. Bold form and color defines his body of work, which is highly expressive of human emotion and sensuality.

Akio Takamori was born and raised in Japan. He has been exhibiting in the United States, Europe and Asia since the mid 1980s. Takamori received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1976 and his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University in 1978.

Takamori’s work is included in numerous collections including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Los Angels County Museum of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Ariana Museum in Geneva, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including three National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grants (1986, 1988, 1992), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2006), and the USA Ford Fellowship (2011). Takamori was a professor of art at the University of Washington. He lived and worked in Seattle.

Sol Hashemi

Sol Hashemi is a photographer who uses the medium in a wide range of ways allowing the viewer to approach his works in different ways. Hashemi uses post-modern ideas and themes to challenge the ideas of hierarchies among objects and in artworks. He also uses a wide array of recognizable objects from everyday life and pop culture to further challenge hierarchical ideas. While Hashemi works within photography, he also adds three-dimensional elements such as shirts, plants, and vanilla beans to give the viewer yet another viewing experience.

 Sol Hashemi was born in 1987 in Vancouver, Washington. He currently lives and works in Seattle. He received his BFA from the University of Washington where he received Mary Gates Research Scholar Seventh Annual Summer Institute in the Arts and Humanities and Matt J. Jarvis Travel Award for Photography. He is also the recipient of Seattle Art Museum’s Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award, 2013. Solo Exhibitions include “Technical Support” Annarumma Gallery Naples, Italy (2013), “Software Update / System Build” Henry Art Gallery Seattle, WA (2013), “Industry Standard” James Harris Gallery Seattle, WA (2012). He has also shown at Greg Kucera Gallery, 4 Culture, and Punch Gallery in Seattle. Hashemi has works included in the permanent collection of Portland Art Museum.

Jason Hirata

Jason Hirata is a contemporary, multimedia artist who uses his work to address technology, language, and social and cultural issues in the world today. He uses historical frames of reference to discuss our present world as well as utilizing technology and contemporary art practices. He gives vague meaning to the viewer, but allows them to approach the work and take the meaning from it that they will.

 Jason Hirata received his BFA in 2009 from the University of Washington. In 2008, he presented collaborative (with Sol Hashemi) performance-based exhibit at Punch Gallery and at the alternative space Dirty Shed. In winter 2009, he exhibited at The Gift Shop, the Henry Art Gallery’s abandoned museum store (turned artist run, alternative exhibition space). In January 2010, Sol Hashemi and Jason Hirata exhibited and new group of sculpture at Greg Kucera Gallery. In 2015, Hirata was awarded the Brink Award from the Henry Art Gallery.

Mary Ann Peters

“I work from the premise that images are never neutral and that they sustain layered meaning from the inception of an idea to the completed piece. Historical narratives, architecture, science, personal heritage, politics and questions of perception have all played a part in my thinking over the years.  I look for seemingly disparate elements that can coalesce and redefine a topic.  I have traveled extensively, most frequently in non-Western cultures. Traveling has informed my understanding of the global roots of aesthetics. It consistently defines for me those social practices that provide outlines for cultural inquiry, including which ethical questions should be considered or supported. In the end I work to the afterimage of the viewer and the potential discourse that might ensue.  The kiss of death for any artist is the work that no one can remember.”

- Mary Ann Peters

Mary Ann Peters lives and works in Seattle, WA  She received an MFA from the University of Washington in 1978. She has received numerous awards including an Art Matters Foundaton Grant, New York that allowed her to travel to Paris and Mexico City to research the migration from the Middle East after World War II, a grant from The New Foundation, Seattle in 2014,  a MacDowell Fellowship in 2010, a Jentel residency in 2009, the Northwest Institute of Architecture & Urban Studies in Italy (NIAUSI) residency in 2003 and the Neddy Fellowship from the Behnke Foundation in 2000. Collections include Microsoft, Seattle Art Museum, 4Culture, Tacoma Art Museum, and others.  

Xavier Toubes

Working in ceramics for over 40 years, Toubes’ artistic practice is one of constant discovery and abandon, always approaching the material with a sincere curiosity for the core philosophical questions around human existence. For Toubes, being an artist is “a way of understanding and being in the world, a tool to knowledge.” In this recent body of work, the artist revisits forms he has been exploring for decades. But as everything in life, each interaction marks a new experience that informs meaning in the present. Toubes’ work is about relationships, on ongoing dialogue between artist, object, and context. The alchemical nature of ceramics and his process of multiple glazes and firings keeps this interaction open-ended and without preconceptions. In this way, Toubes allows the work to unfold intuitively, relying on the material and his artistic sensibility. The objects he creates reflect this raw intimate interaction, imbued with animate qualities that appeal to the senses and reactivate each moment like a performer on stage.