Heidi Grace Acuña has made me fond of crocodiles. At her exhibition at ARTS at King Street Station, I could study the little ones alongside their larger companions, peer into mouths lined with uneven gold teeth, and circle their clay bodies with all the curiosity and delight that fear would ordinarily keep in check. The…

At her solo exhibition last year at The Vestibule, Seattle artist Ruth Marie Tomlinson presented a new series of work inspired by her close readings of British nature writer J.A. Baker’s The Peregrine and Icelandic author Sjón’s The Blue Fox. As if on sheets torn from a sketchbook, her pages included excerpts and outtakes of…

It’s hard not to smile around artist and writer Colleen Louise Barry. Bubbly and bright, she radiates optimism and cheer that would put most stereotypical Seattleites on edge. I think she is an absolute delight. Originally from Albany, Barry received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before moving to Seattle in 2016. Once here,…

For Ling Chun, creating begins with something sensed before it can be named. Working with clay, glass, light, and sometimes synthetic hair, the Hong Kong-born artist gives physical form to things that words cannot always hold. “For me, the magnitude of making goes far beyond the object that is eventually produced,” Chun says. “The object…

Gabi Nirino carries bag of materials with her almost everywhere she goes. Cloth, thread, yarn, textile scraps, collected fibers—the pieces inside are a network of inspiration waiting for her hands. “You can work with textiles anywhere—on the floor, on a plane—which is why I always carry a project in my bag,” Nirino says. “It’s like…

Can a painting ever contain an entire person? The works of Gerardo Peña, also known as Periko The Artist, leave room for their subjects to move and change, resisting the idea that any of us can be reduced to a single image or expression. Peña’s colorful, surreal figures capture something less fixed than a likeness,…

Liz Tran’s work blooms with color, energy, and emotion. Bright drips and drops, petal-like shapes—in Tran’s skillful hands, canvas, paint, and fabric burst into dynamic studies of nature, transformation, life. Born and raised in Oregon, Tran spent the past 26 years in Seattle, returning to her hometown, Eugene, to be closer to her family—and the…

Jennifer Leigh Harrison’s paintings are dense with movement. Color and texture gather into mosaic-like fields, as if they have been fractured and reformed. There are places in the work where a frenetic buzz seems trapped between the canvas and the first layer of paint. That energy runs through Patterns of Belonging, her current exhibition at…

Painter and educator Lila Alexis Thomas is having a busy summer. In addition to curating the group show This Room is Ours: Centering the Black Figure, on view through July 18 at ARTS at King Street Station, Thomas is heading up programming connected to the exhibition—she will host a figure drawing workshop July 11th—as well…

Seattle artist Nakisa Dehpanah’s work hovers between sculpture and performance. First developed during a residency at Base Art Space, Suspended Selves is now on view at Method Gallery in Pioneer Square, where billowy, vessel-like sheer fabric forms hang with geometric clay elements integrated into them. They seem like soft shelters or skins waiting for an…