Past AIRs
Gus Franklin • Summer 2008
website: Sheahan Drive
Steven Kado • Spring 2008
Jeff Thompson • Fall 2007
Yellow Cloud from Jeff Thompson.
Marianna Ritchey & Andrew Verne Peterson • Summer 2007
By Ritchey:GOALS, an album of songs about failure and seagulls.
By Andrew: SOUND/SPUR: ANACORTES, WA SUNDAY AUGUST 5TH, 2007 12:04PM – 1:13PM
Eroyn Franklin • Spring 2007
MATTER
James Sumner • Fall 2006
Knowing that more than 70% of the languages spoken today will be extinct within his lifetime, video artist James Sumner attempts to do something about it. Things Are Difficult, his new installation at the Department of Safety, centers on the purportedly impossible task of learning Navajo in isolation.
Looped video shows Sumner in close-up, grimacing as he tries to produce complicated verb forms and phrases in Navajo. By pronouncing syllables in isolation, with no interlocutor, Sumner hints at the inherent sadness of his enterprise as well as the nobility of the struggle. The phonemes of the language, detached from all cultural context, resonate in a way both alien and musical. Just as in the ephemeral art of Navajo sand-painting, Sumner’s task lies in the act and can result in no lasting product. The difficulty of the act itself serves both as an apology and an elegy for endangered languages.
Handwritten notes on legal paper cover the walls of the gallery,
illustrating the porous border between obsession and compulsion.
Complex charts of verb paradigms alternate with maniacally repetitive phrases (“I am not done,” “I grow old learning many things”) to suggest that these self-fulfilling occupations may ultimately be self-defeating.
Alyse Emdur • Summer 2006
Alyse Emdur is an interdisciplinary artist who examines everyday phenomena through socially engaged projects that employ photography, film, and installation. During her Department of Safety residency, Alyse worked on a series of micro-documentaries that look at the world in the spirit of a show and tell circle. She is a recent graduate of the Cooper Union and a recipient of an Earthling Award.
Alyse’s gallery show at the DoS, “Mother Nature Loves You” centered around the observation that “Every cell in your body has one goal: to keep you alive.”
Angie Lacerenza • Spring 2006
Angie Lacerenza came to us after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles (B.F.A.). While residing at the Department of Safety as our second artist in residence, Angie continued to work on her ‘American’ series, painting from her own daily life, with the lingering idea that American life is a very strange thing. While here Angie spent a lot of time at Causland Park and taking long drives around the island. Since this became her everyday she decided to make paintings about it. The work shown here reflects her valued time here, with the lingering awareness that this “everyday life” was limited to but a few Winter months, and had a beginning and an end.
Kate Clark • Fall 2005
Kate was our first Artist in Residence. A local Anacortesian, Kate spent her first semester after high school living and working at the Department of Safety. She is a painter, photographer, expert pie-baker, and general jack-of-all-trades. Here’s to Kate!
