Welcome to Seattle Center
Seeking the participation of individuals to collaborate with strangers in 9 relational art performances.
This painting event invites the visitors to Seattle’s Center, families, strangers and outliers to participate in a common project, accomplishing a series of large-scale paintings together on a Collaborative Landscape. Set on the Mural Amphitheater Stage, a 16 foot canvas stretcher functions as a table, a locus of gathering. A painting will be produced every 20 minutes, with 20 to 30 people participating in each composition; 100 people can participate in 90 minutes. As a temporal art, each painting is washed away so a new group can form. The creation of these paintings can be done anyone, regardless of age, physical or artistic ability.
Applying pigment is as simple as pouring liquid from a cup. It is meeting with nature, the other, and the responsibility of the forces at hand which change the scale of our actions on this landscape.
Distributed by welcoming assistants, groups of 20 strangers will receive cups of iridescent mica flakes in solutions of water. In simultaneous corporations, each group pours a painting together. Compositions form as individual flows of color move toward weighted holes in the center of the canvas. Cups are returned to the assistants and painters move to take pictures on their phones, pronouncing iridescence at different angles, sharing their personal perspective with those next to them.
About the artist:
Jesse Higman began his creative career painting album cover and posters for Seattle’s rock bands. Higman’s work has been presented by The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, MTV, Lollapalooza, Experience Music Project, Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts, and The Smithsonian Museum. As larger works necessitated the help of others, a collaborative practice emerged. Higman has received numerous grants supporting his public paint pours throughout King County, including 4Culture‘s Arc Artist Fellowship in 2019, the CityArtist 2020 Award, a 2022 Arts In Parks Grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture, and this 2023 Artist At The Center opportunity from Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle Center.
A 2009 Mayor’s Arts Award recipient, Higman developed a system of painting he calls illuvium, named after a geologic phenomena of pattern-settling across floodplains. A quadriplegic in a wheelchair, his need for help to pour larger paintings evolved into a social practice. Leanne Mella, a consulting curator for The Smithsonian said, “Higman’s work, with its communitarian and convivial ethos, exhibits many of the tendencies associated with Relational Aesthetics, a theory of art practices that takes the whole of human relations and social context into consideration as a point of departure for the production and presentation of the work of art.”
Additional Artists:
Live Videographers:
Anika Hope Anderson-Monson
Christian Nobel
Motzo Bosic
Live Streamer: Gavyn Fees
Painting Assistants:
Roxane Nihiline
Issa Wegmuller
Sandy Dodge
FAQs:
• Do I need to RSVP or reserve a spot? ~ No this is a first-come first-serve, pop-up to provide spontaneous art happenings for visitors to Seattle’s Center. We’ll see you on the Mural Amphitheater Stage!
• What if I got paint on me/my clothes? This rarely happens, but, if it does, simply rinse with water before it dries. Garden sprayers will be in action, keeping the canvas wet. Just ask for spray! The paint is a solution of mostly water, mixed with 2 teaspoons per cup of Golden’s Interference fluid acrylics. They appear translucent milky-white in the cup, with no visible color until poured onto the black canvas. As the tiny mica flakes settle, they align in similar angles to produce an architectural color, refracting light, as apposed to a color produced by a staining pigment.
Live Stream:
We will broadcast for a wider outlook, appreciating ourselves within different levels of magnification simultaneously, suspended in a universe of scales. Our team of visual artists will multiplex perspectives, editing them live to present correlations between particles in motion and ourselves as individuals in a co-creational whole, as we all participate in generative social systems.
More Information here.
Artists At the Center is a multi-year collaboration between Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle Center, with support from Uptown Arts & Culture Coalition and the communities adjacent to Seattle Center campus. The project is made possible by a 10-year grant from Climate Pledge Arena and Seattle Kraken.
Join us as we introduce emerging and established artists and celebrate their talent on a newly revitalized Seattle Center campus. Artists are given a performance opportunity, allowing them to connect with new audiences, display their talents and advance their careers. Visitors to campus and the surrounding neighborhood benefit from surprising and delightful pop-up performances throughout the year. Each year, artists are selected with an equity and social justice lens, ensuring equitable representation for underserved and emerging artists. Artistic genres include music, dance, theater, demonstrations, and multi-disciplinary work.
