As a small awards program, the smART ventures grant encourages innovation and widens cultural participation, particularly by individuals, organizations, and communities that may not qualify for other funding programs. Accepting applications year-round, smART ventures is flexible, inclusive and simple. It provides funding ranging from $500 to $1,000. The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS) encourages small active investments that can have big impacts.

“ARTS is proud to invest in these 46 community-led projects that reflect direct participation in the local arts sector. smART Ventures contributes to financial support that removes barriers for new artists. Communities value participatory art experiences of all sizes.”

royal alley-barnes, Interim Director of the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture

ARTS is excited to announce the 46 projects that smART Ventures funded in 2022.  

2022 smART Ventures Awardees 

• These Whispers – An online virtual panel discussion event around the making of this collaborative film 
• Momentous Gesture – An exhibition at SOIL Gallery 
• Reckoning – A print-based installation and community collaborative performance piece at Seattle Central College’s M. Rosetta Hunter Gallery 
• 2 – A one-night-only performance of 7 individual dance artists 
• Camp Read-a-Rama – Native American Read-In 
• Global Visionaries – A workshop on Music and Social Justice Movements 
• Arami Walker – Revitalizing BIPOC retail spaces with live music.  
• Raúl Sánchez – Poetry in the Park 
• Coriolis Dance Collective’s The Art of Seafaring 
• Louisa Yardley’s U District Community Box Wrap 
• Aaron Asis’s Belltown Mural 
• this is concrete II – A performance ritual at the Georgetown Steam Plant by MALACARNE and choreographer Alice Gosti 
• It’s All a Circus – A dance performance by Alana O. Rogers Dance Company as part of the Seattle International Dance Festival 
• Neighborhood Whimsy Walks 
• Ballard Pop-Up Gallery 
• Grasses Grasses Grasses: poetry and healing with 6 Indigenous poets at Hugo House 
• Bloom FR – An exhibition at Common Area Maintenance 
• Carpathian Mountain Villages of Ukraine – A photography exhibition at Spark and Thread Gallery 
• Seattle City Flag 
• The Art of Music Series in West Seattle during 2nd Thursday Art Walks 
• Ode – K’an, an evening length immersive dance performance created for Mini Mart City Park 
• SHOW FACE – A site-specific performance at Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. Civil Rights Memorial Park 
• E.P.I.C. Fest at North Seattle College 
• Monologue of n Women – A devised theatre piece at Theatre Puget Sound 
• The Yusephinum Project – A multimedia installation at Cornish’s 9^th Avenue Gallery 
• Let the Water Flow – A graphic novel  
• Homegrown: A Work-in-Progress Memoir Reading – A reading from Susan Lieu’s upcoming memoir The Manicurists Daughter 
• Vinyl JP Music Fest in SoDo 
• People in the Square at Skid Road Theatre 
• Vietnamese Senior Association’s Moon Festival 
• Seattle Stories – An exhibition by Kerry D. Sutton in Georgetown 
• Columbia City Beatwalk Meets the Seattle Design Festival 
• Sacrament and Gluttony: The Last Potato by DAIPANbutoh Collective 
• The Application of Harm Reduction – An illustrated journalism piece for Real Change News 
• Stephanie Simek: tied to the moon, tide to the moon – An exhibition at Veronica Arts Space 
• Sorry Clover – A solo dance piece at YAW Theater 
• West Seattle Junction Association’s Gorgeous Lights of Winter (GLOW) 
• Real Change Zine 
• Ballet Rituals at Aether Seattle 
• REWORK HAUS Open Sewing Studio 
• The Feels Foundation PIECES Vendor Market  
• BIPOC Children’s Book Day at Town Hall Seattle 
• Filipino Holiday Festival at Dr. Jose Rizal Park 
• Flight / An Evening of Dance at Lagunitas Brewery 
• Purrdie Burrdie and Friends – A Black and Brown children’s book 
• Two Goldfish (Who Became Heroes) by Yun Theater 

Here’s What Awardees Are Saying 

“After both SHOW FACE events, the dancers expressed how deeply grateful they were for the opportunity to freely dance and connect with their community in a low-pressure performance setting. Many expressed how anxious they had been feeling about returning to performing and how relieved they were to have connection and celebration be the focus of their first performance since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Audience members expressed being touched by the joy and excitement that the dancers created in the park and by the physical closeness they witnessed the dancers having with each other. Several audience members said they had never seen a performance of this kind before and looked forward to seeing more dance community events in city parks.”

Audrey Rachelle Stanley, SHOW FACE

It was a great success – both the workshop and the live concert . . . Sin Fronteras brought a beautiful and educational opportunity to our students and our community through the power of their resilient music and stories . . . They also spoke about how powerful music can be (and is) in today’s social justice movements – relating the topic to what students feel and experience right now. Students were able to gain insight into many facets of life in Latin America and were able to authentically connect with the powerful stories and spirits of the three members of Sin Fronteras. After the workshop Sin Fronteras played live music that set the tone for an incredible evening, with traditional instruments that added an exciting flair for guests to enjoy while the strong flow in general made for a night of unforgettable music and a deeper connection to Central American music and the messages behind their songs.”

Sarah Popelka, Global Visionaries 

SmART Ventures accepts applications on a rolling basis. You can learn more and apply here. work to eliminate institutional racism in our programs, policies and practices. The Office is supported by the 16-member Seattle Arts Commission, citizen volunteers appointed by the mayor and City Council. 

Simi’s voice is instantly recognizable and incredibly sultry. Hailing from Lagos, the singer-songwriter, producer and sound engineer has exploded onto the afropop scene over the past few years, including with her 2020 smash hit “Duduke.” In all of her music, she relays her Nigerian spirit and puts on for her hometown every chance she’s gets. Her recently released song and visual for “Stranger” is actually a great starting place in navigating her music.

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Elena Diadenko is an artist, an animal lover, a teacher and a native of Ukraine. A resident of Chicago for more than 30 years, Diadenko uses her talents to teach a traditional form of folk art and raise awareness about the ongoing war in the country where she was born.

In March of last year, Diadenko sold her artwork at the Ukrainian National Museum to benefit the Red Cross in Ukraine — ultimately raising nearly $50,000.

Many works were painted on glass.

Now the artist, a Golden Apple Award-winning teacher, is giving lessons on how to make this traditional form of folk art that first flourished in the 16th century.

“It is a cultural tradition,” Diadenko said. “Basically self-taught artists started to paint on glass in reverse, and the scenes were mostly from the Bible, so you can see a lot of Virgin Marys, icons and saints.”

“A few 100 years later,” Diadenko continued, “a lot of self-taught artists who lived in different villages started to paint on glass in reverse, but their scenes were mostly village scenes, so they would draw peasants, animals, fields and flowers. It was a primitive style of painting, but it looked very nice, very authentic, very bright, and always with a black outline.”

Diadenko still raises money for the war effort, and she has a new cause. Her friend — a parish priest near Kyiv — has been caring for the many animals displaced by the Russian invasion.

“He start picking them up from Eastern regions and start feeding them and giving them medical treatments with his friend, a veterinarian,” Diadenko said. “I asked him, ‘How many cats and dogs did you save?’ I say, ‘100, 200, over 200?’ He told me, ‘After 200, we stopped counting because we were just saving them and saving them.’”

To benefit the animal shelter, she now leads classes on how to make paintings using glass as a canvas.

“My first class had about 23 people,” Diadenko said. “I had a dentist, a journalist, teachers, an accountant — and some of them had no idea how to paint. I told them not to worry. I have a lot of sketches of my own that I gave them because I’m really careful about copyright issues.”

“I’m doing this because I just cannot not do it,” Diadenko continued. “I have to do it to stay sane. It helps me because I feel, like, what’s the point to cry? You have to pull yourself together and think what you can do to help, like a soldier. That’s how I see it.”

Diadenko will teach again at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art on July 21. Classes cost $60 and benefit veterans of the Ukraine War and displaced animals and pets.

Diadenko can be reached at [email protected].

Phoenix Art Museum announced the acquisition of Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Incendiary (2023), a vibrantly colored, large-scale tipi work from a recent series that explores the adaptability and versatility of the nomadic structure as a metaphor for the resilience of Indigenous peoples in the face of settler- colonial violence. The painted and shaped canvas is a significant addition to the Museum’s contemporary art collection and furthers the Museum’s efforts to collect and display art that reflects a diversity of voices from the Southwest region and Arizona. Incendiary by Luger was acquired by the Museum with funds from the Men’s Arts Council, a Museum support group dedicated to supporting acquisitions, exhibitions, and education and engagement programming. It is on view now in the Katz Wing for Modern Art.

DEEPER DIVE: Ranking Arizona: Top 10 resorts for 2023

“Adding Incendiary by Cannupa Hanska Luger into the collection of Phoenix Art Museum represents a significant step forward in growing contemporary Indigenous perspectives within the PhxArt Collection,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Museum’s Sybil Harrington Director and CEO. “The work is a wonderful example of how Luger uses Indigenous knowledge to challenge histories and stereotypes and, in dialogue with other works, assertively demonstrates a reframing and repositioning of historical narratives of Native peoples. Incendiary joins other paintings and multimedia works in our contemporary art holdings by contemporary Indigenous artists such as Fritz Scholder and Steven Yazzie.”

Cannupa Hanska Luger was born in 1979 on Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Now based in New Mexico, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, and European heritage. By incorporating wide-ranging media, from ceramics, steel, and fiber to video and repurposed materials, Luger creates monumental installations and sculptures, performances, and wall works that attempt to reframe and reclaim 21st-century narratives about Indigenous cultures and identities. His work unites historical references and tradition with contemporary concerns, all to imagine and dream of Indigenous futures.

Luger is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of a 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft. In 2021, he was named a GRIST Fixer, and in 2020, he was named a Creative Capital Fellow and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, among other previous awards and accolades. Luger has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gardiner Museum, Kunsthal KAdE, ASU Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, Mesa Arts Center, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. His work is featured in collections of various museums around the world, including the North American Native Museum (Zürich, Switzerland); the Denver Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe); the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven); and the Conley Gallery, California State University (Fresno). Luger holds a BFA in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Incendiary (2023) is one of 10 canvases from Luger’s tipi series, a recent investigation of painting. For the Plains people, tipis represent a nomadic lifestyle, defined by patterns of migration that mirror the movements of buffalo herds. The structures were often made from the skins of hunted buffalo, making them part of the land and the humans who constructed them simultaneously. Tipis also adapt to the land on which they exist, similar to how Indigenous peoples have adapted over centuries of struggle and ongoing conflict with colonizers.

As part of his tipi series, Luger transformed the word “tipi” into an acronym—Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure. The acronym suggests that the structure can cross time and space, even into future realms of existence, thus solidifying its status as a testament to Indigenous resilience and innovation. Incendiary, like other canvases from the body of work, features recognizable graphic forms of stars and oversized cartoon eyes with curled eyelashes, which are drawn from specific historical references. The eyes reference stereotypical cartoon characterizations of Indigenous peoples in early animations, while the overall pop aesthetic refers to historical air force nose art. This type of nose art first appeared on British Royal Air Force Tomahawks during World War II and was later adopted by U.S. forces to adorn US P-40s, or Warhawks. By appropriating this imagery and placing it onto a Native nomadic structure, Luger reflects on the ability of Indigenous peoples, their knowledge, and their technologies to withstand the colonial violence and aggression these designs represent. It is also a reflection on how Native American cultural motifs have been appropriated by Western popular culture for centuries.

Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival’s second concert of the 2023 season features Maine native violinist Jennifer Elowitch. Submitted photo

Violinist Jennifer Elowitch returns for the second season in a row to the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival. Elowitch will perform with six other artists from across the United States, but she is the only one of them “born and brought up” in Maine. Most well known in the chamber music tradition is her founding and directing the Portland (Maine) Chamber Music Festival. Today she remains its Music Director Emerita.

The Program on Tuesday, July 18 features:

HAYDN: Divertissement in G Major for Flute, Violin and Cello, Hob. IV:7
KODÁLY: Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7
DVOŘÁK: Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81

The Haydn piece is one of six produced in 1784 when London was “awash in amateur flutists” seeking new pieces to play. And after years of producing works exclusively for the Hungarian House of Esterhazys’ “music-mad court,” Haydn was finally allowed to profit from his work. Prior to that, the Esterhazys owned everything he wrote.

Bela Bartok praised Kodaly as the “perfect embodiment of the Hungarian spirit.” As his compatriot, fellow ethno-musicologists and close friend, he was able to capture the authentic folk music of the Hungarian peasantry and make the folk heritage the basis of a genuine Hungarian musical style.

Dvorak did the same with his Slavonic musical heritage within the classical traditions of Beethoven, Schubert and especially Brahms. For years the composer wrote many of his famous compositions at his family’s peaceful retreat in a small village near Prague.

“We want to remind audiences, that those under 21 years of age are admitted to our concerts free of charge,” said Treasurer Lee Bearse of the SLLMF Board of Trustees. “As a former music teacher at Lake Region High School, I’ve long been an advocate for keeping music accessible to young people. So, I encourage folks to bring their children and grandchildren, even young neighbors. We are always so pleased to see youngsters in the audience.”

Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival performs Tuesdays at 7:30 pm at Deertrees Theatre in Harrison for the next four weeks: July 18 to Aug. 8. For more information about the festival, each concert, artists and to order tickets, go to sebagomusicfestival.org/concert-tickets-2023. Tickets can also be purchased the evening of the concert at the box office.

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Oolong Gallery’s new summer show is “Bread and Chocolate”, featuring the sculpture and paintings of artists Minga Opazo and Peter Stearns.

A native of Chile, Opazo is a fourth-generation textile crafter who recycles found textiles to make sculptural work, even harvesting natural elements like soil, grass and mushrooms in certain installations. Opazo’s work questions the textile industry with a series of pieces exploring the idea of “solastalgia”, a term that describes the mental or existential distress caused by environmental change and living in an era of excess, constantly consuming and throwing away.

“We live in the Plasticene Epoch. A geologic period defined by humanity’s unwavering and ever-increasing creation, use, and discard of plastics on a world-changing scale,” wrote Opazo in her artist statement. “Unsurprisingly, Americans are the largest producer of textile waste, annually discarding more than 34 billion pounds of used textiles (about 100 lbs. per person)…Clothing has been crucial to human survival and is integral to every facet of society; yet, paradoxically, the Plasticene has transformed our ancient textile traditions into toxic commodities that threaten the future of life.”

Some of her experimental bio-art incorporates mushrooms—using utilizing fungi to transform toxic textile waste into regenerative soil. In one of her time-based sculptures, the outer layer is handwoven using recycled garments and within, the space is filled with oyster mushroom mycelium. Over the course of several months, the mycelium gradually digests the sculpture.

Stearns’ work is featured alongside Opazo’s in the show, on view in public for the first time after 30 years in hiding.

Stearns’ new figurative paintings explore floating shapes, geometry and rural California living in surrealist tropes. The Vista artist’s body of work spans four decades and merges autobiography, fantasy, and whimsy with sardonic and spiritual humor, imagery and themes.

“Bread and Chocolate” runs though Aug. 1 at the gallery, 349 N. Highway 101 in Solana Beach. Visit olongallery.com

The Hayward Gallery’s environmentally-themed summer blockbuster, Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis (until 3 September) “takes a different route to look at the environmental crisis: it doesn’t aim to breed despair,” says its chief curator Rachel Thomas. Rather, it vies to “open hope in a way of potentials,”—an idea offered by Otobong Nkanga, one of the show’s contributing artists.

Admirable aspirations, and with extractions, extinctions and extreme weather systems currently at an all-time global high we need as much hope as we can muster. But while no one can doubt their fine intentions, many of the 17 artists in Dear Earth seem to be addressing the climate and ecological emergency in the spirit of an earlier era when information was hazy, ideas around the environment vague, and it was a big deal for galleries even to be considering green issues. After one of the UK’s wettest winters and the hottest June on record we now don’t need to be told by American eco Feminist Andrea Bowers that “Climate Change is Real”, and certainly not in the form of a flashing electrically powered neon sign.

Other high-profile works strike a similarly hollow note. With the River Thames rolling alongside the Hayward it’s not necessary to experience the therapeutic power of water, or to ponder “what lies underground towards the centre of the earth” by standing in one of Cristina Iglesias’ elaborate concrete, glass and metal structures, with pumped water constantly gurgling beneath our feet. Did no one consider the environmental impact of shipping such a hefty artwork? Or the power needed to fuel the hydraulic pumping system? Likewise, while the veteran environmental artist Agnes Denes is a hugely significant figure and it’s always great to be shown images of the iconic two-acre wheatfield she planted and harvested on landfill in New York’s Battery Park in 1982 , is it really necessary to fill an upstairs gallery with one of her giant tiered metal Living Pyramids copiously planted with locally-sourced vegetation? Again, consider the shipping! And the irrigation!

A more light-touch reminder of the power of plants is offered by the artist duo Heather Ackroyd & Dan Harvey who have been making their trademark photosynthesis photographs in living grass for more than three decades. Over the years these have often been used to spotlight important figures fighting for climate justice worldwide, and for Dear Earth the artists have made five new portraits of local London based activists. They are: Julian Lahai-Taylor of Grow Lewisham; Love Ssega , co-founder of LIVE & BREATHE; Destiny Boka-Batesa, one of the founders of the clean air campaign Choked Up; Paul Powlesland, a co-founder of Lawyers for Nature and River Roding Trust; and Helene Schulze of the London Freedom Seed Bank. Each of these individuals and their organisations correspond to the four cornerstone ‘commons’: soil, air, water and seed, that we all need – and need to share – in order to sustain life on Earth. While I would have liked more detailed information about each of these figures and how we can support their work ( a QR code by each label, perhaps?) these hauntingly elegiac images literally and figuratively root the work in the urgent – and active – specifics of the here and now.

Ackroyd & Harvey’s grass panels on hessian are recourse-light and can be composted at the end of the exhibition. Another welcome example of how plants and water are being used more responsibly is offered by two significant commissions that will continue to inspire and nurture long after the exhibition has ended. Natura Nostra Forest—Southbank is a 130 sq m ‘pocket forest’ of 390 native trees which has been planted on a terrace adjacent to the Hayward entrance by the urban rewilding organisation SUGi. Specially designed to withstand harsh surroundings and increasingly extreme weather conditions, this arboreal oasis will remain as a new, permanent feature of the South Bank complex, sequestering carbon and encouraging wildlife.

Another important permanent work which lies outside the Hayward’s walls is the Precious Stones Project situated in the nearby Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof Garden. Precious Stones has enabled South Bank gardener Paul Pulford and his team of volunteers to install an ingenious and sustainable irrigation system for arid conditions inspired by the ancestral techniques of the Native American peoples of the south-western United States. This involves surrounding all the garden’s 250 plants—including native and fruit trees—with an eclectic mosaic of discarded stones, tiles and bricks salvaged from throughout London and the banks of the Thames, thus utilising ancient ancestor knowledge from across the globe to cope with the impact of London’s changing climate on an already inhospitable terrain.

Such practical, enduring initiatives offer a hopeful indication of the ways in which humankind can nurture and work in harmony with the natural world, even in the most hostile surroundings. Back inside the Hayward artworks from across the world and in multiple media are also at pains to communicate the many manifestations of this crucial interconnection with nature. These include Otobong Nkanga’s drawings, film and extensive tapestry which links humans with nature and the cosmos; aneight metre mural painted on the Hayward’s walls by indigenous Brazilian artist-activist Daiara Tukano and a vast textile sculpture by Aluaiy Kaumakan using endangered Taiwanese craft traditions. Yet while they are often visually striking, these works appear more concerned with illustrating and commemorating lost communal bonds between the human and the natural world than offering any resistance—caring or otherwise—to the current status quo.

More galvanising is Richard Mosse’s ongoing documentation of environmental crimes in the Amazon Basin which uses the latest imaging technology to capture information invisible to the human eye. These take the form of films and photographs that combine his documentary footage with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping technology that renders polluted terrain in trippy psychedelic hues. Even though he has recently shown similar work in London both at the Barbican Centre and at 180 The Strand, Mosse is still a welcome presence at the Hayward, with new work consisting of uncannily vivid photographs of the effects of oil extraction by multinational companies on Kichwa Indigenous territory in North Eastern Peru, as well as a coruscating film made this year which splices together angry speeches by Yanomami people in Northern Brazil with powerful footage charting the extent of the devastation.

Imani Jacqueline Brown is another campaigning artist whose video installation draws on her extensive research into the polluting petrochemical companies in her native Louisiana. In prints, video and an interactive mapping platform Brown uncovers how the origins of this fossil fuel industry lie in a 300 year old history of extractivism in the region, which began with the colonial conquest of indigenous territory and the subsequent establishment of sugarcane plantations dependent on slave labour. The Louisiana oil industry continues to employ descendants of enslaved people, many of whom are also the most affected by the pollution and destruction of the land today. By mapping both the hidden geographies of oil wells and canals as well as uncovering the location of enslaved people’s burial grounds and their planting of restorative trees, Brown powerfully underlines the irrefutable interconnection between climate and social and colonial injustices which exist throughout the world whether in Louisiana, Lagos or Lewisham.

Sometimes the most simple works can be the most effective and hope-inducing. In Cornelia Parker’s THE FUTURE (Sixes and Sevens) a class of London primary school children talk about their hopes and fears for the future. Funny, poignant and frequently more clued-up about the climate emergency than most adults, these kids offer some sound sense. “Does every single person need a computer, does every single person need a phone?” asks one, while another declares, “We need people to start designing better cities!” The film ends with one girl asserting that “the future is great!” But it’s a bittersweet clarion call as right now, it’s up to us to make sure they have a future at all.

Desperate times call for radical and active measures from both artists and institutions alike. It is encouraging to read in the most recent press material the Hayward’s assertion that no flights were taken in researching Dear Earth, with just one European artist visited by train and the rest via Zoom. The same press release includes listings of various ways in which Dear Earth has striven to be “as sustainable as possible” in its installation and infrastructure—from recycled walls and gloves to climate-positive paint, offering what it describes as “a breakdown of what we are proud to have achieved”. Eco-friendly, low waste actions in the café, the shop and in the production of the catalogue are also itemised. Some—but not all—the artists are credited for materials that are recycled or have green credentials. Along with the South Bank the Hayward states its aim to becoming “a Net Zero carbon site by 2035 (scope 1 and 2)”.

All of the above and more is positive, but it should be—and often now is— standard practice for all institutions, whether or not they are doing a green-themed show. If the Hayward is proud of its initiatives, then listing them for all to see alongside the exhibition information on the gallery walls and artist labels would send out a significant message of genuine intent. But to offer a genuine sense of hope and to signal a real sea change in culture and attitude there needs to be a demonstrable programme of systemic change in place that foregrounds the environment in every operational aspect of the Hayward’s activities, present and future. This would send out a very real message that the climate and environmental catastrophe is more than just another topical subject for a group show. 

Paige Powell and Brigid Berlin documented the world of artists who overshadowed them. With shows in New York and Paris, can these women escape their connections?