Current Exhibition:
The Unbearable Lightness of 300 Tons a Day
March 17-May 2, 2025
In the current exhibition at the NSC Art Gallery, alumni from the past nine years of the Recology King County Artists in Residence (AIR) Program come together for the first time to display work made from the blue bin. By exhibiting both a piece made at the residency (and in the Recology art collection) and a current piece these sixteen alumni offer a then-and-now look at how the experience of creating art from recyclable materials indelibly changed their lives and practice (or didn’t?), as well as hinting at ways we might collectively re-think our relationship to the material world.
Participating artists:
Karien Balluff - recology.com/recology_artist/karien-balluff
Sarah Ruether - recology.com/recology_artist/sarah-ruether
Alexander Keyes - alexanderkeyes.com
Dakota Gearhart - dakotagearhart.com
Meg Hartwig - meghartwig.com
Max Cleary - max-cleary.com
Philippe Hyojung Kim - philippepirrip.com
Maria Phillips - mariaphillipsstudio.com
Susan Robb - susanrobb.com
Hernan Paganini - hernanpaganini.com
Lee Davignon - leedavignon.com
Satpreet Kahlon - satpreetkahlon.com
Amanda Manitach - amandamanitach.com
Haein Kang - haeinkang.com
Margie Livingston - margie.net
Kalina Winska - kalinawinska.art
About the Recology King County Artist in Residence:
Since its inception in 2015, the Artist in Residence (AIR) program at Recology King County has attracted national attention for its efforts to help communities see discarded material differently through art.
The Recology AIR program taps into the creativity of artist to inspire people to think about their consumption habits, the waste they generate, and the resources they throw away. The program is a unique art and educational opportunity for King County artists, providing access to discarded materials, and opportunities to speak to school classes and adult tour groups about the experience of working with recycled materials
Every year, two local artists are chosen by a committee of arts and environmental professionals to help promote new ways of thinking about conserving resources, art, and the environment. Artists receive a monthly stipend and work at the Recology Material Recovery Facility, sourcing material collected from residential and commercial recycling routes. Artists have access to materials available at the Recology Stores, and additionally, through a partnership with the City of Seattle, have scavenging privileges at North Transfer Station.
The Recology AIR program begins in May and culminates with an exhibition in September at a local gallery.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
recology.com/recology-king-county/artist-in-residence
FOR MORE INFORMATION
@recologyair_kc
Past Exhibitions:
Countenance: Contemporary Portraiture
January 27 - March 7, 2025
Opening Celebration: Wednesday, Wednesday, January 29, 2025, 4-6pm. Light refreshments will be served.
Countenance: Contemporary Portraiture features the work of 10 practicing Artists from around the country. This exhibition celebrates the diverse and evolving tradition of portraiture, exploring the many ways we capture and represent identity, presence, and connection. In its most powerful form, portraiture transcends the surface, offering not only a likeness but an intimate glimpse into both the artist and the subject’s story, spirit, and individuality. Here, we embrace the expansive and inclusive nature of this art form, recognizing that every face, every body, every narrative holds a unique significance.
In this exhibition, we are presenting the work of ten artists who work with the human figure. Through a variety of styles, techniques, and perspectives, the works in this exhibition reflect a wide range of communities. For example, Kate Russell’s documentary photographs allow us an open glimpse into the rich lowrider community in Española, NM; Aisha Harrison’s sculptures pay homage to the connection and relationships between people; Stephanie Alaniz’s drawings explore our insecurities with a goal of normalizing the stigmatized; and Lila Thomas’s drawings explore themes of intimacy, comfort and identity.
In portraiture we start with a face. By centering authenticity, we invite viewers to engage with each portrait not just as a depiction of a person, but as a celebration of the multiplicity of human experience.
Participating Artists
Stephanie Alaniz - stephaniealaniz.com
Robin Arnitz - robinarnitz.com/home.html
Aisha Harrison - aishaharrison.com
Barry Johnson - barryjohnson.co
Fay Jones - russoleegallery.com/artists/fay-jones
Kate Russell - katerussellphotography.com
Blanca Santander - blancasantander.com
Marisa Stratton - marisastratton.com
Lila Thomas - www.lilathomas.com
Winifred Westergard - instagram.com/winifredwestergardphoto
EXTRACURRICULAR IV: The NSC Art Faculty & Tech Exhibition
Seeds of Culture: The Portraits & Voices of Native American Women, An Exhibition by Matika Wilbur
Student Art Exhibition
May 13 - June 13, 2024
The NSC Art Department and the NSC Art Gallery present a showcase of artwork by students from the last year. Until May 31st voting will be open for Peoples' Choice Award, so please visit the NSC Art Gallery to see the exhibition and cast one vote for your favorite piece.
Persist! Movement and Protest Art
Opening Celebration: March 13, 2024, 4-6 pm
March 11 – April 26, 2024
"Persist! Movement and Protest Art” pulls together posters, art, zines, and ephemera from a wide variety of movements, while focusing on pieces that educate, inspire, and fuel resistance in the face of a white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal world.
Join us for the opening celebration Wednesday, March 13, 2024, 4-6 pm. We will have a provisional press on loan from Partners in Print and visitors will be able to make and take prints and buttons with messages of hope, protest, and persistence. Visitors will also be able to make, take, and add prints to the gallery as well as sit and read zines, and books from the newly renovated NSC library.
Quotidian Queer, curated by Jessica Marie Mercy
Opening Celebration: Thursday, January 25, 2024, 4-7pm.
January 22 - March 1, 2024
As Queer culture reaches new heights within our broader society the world has become increasingly hard for LGBTQIA people to navigate. We are more visible, our aesthetics and culture are more sought after than ever, yet most of us struggle to survive. Our Pride parades have become ad campaigns to make giant corporations money without their investment back into our community. As our culture is appropriated it has become easy to objectify, commodify, and dehumanize us. Our neighborhoods have become unsafe, medical care is rarely accessible, and resources are scarce.
Despite these outrageous conditions our community continues to pull together, trying to keep each other afloat, funded, and as safe as we can manage. In this exhibition we ask you to witness and celebrate our existence- our grief, our beauty, our pain, as well as our joy.
This show is a look at our inner lives and a reminder that Queerness, for us, is everyday.
Curator:
Jessica Marie Mercy
Participating Artists:
Adamska Elizaveta Rakhilkina
Adé Cônnére
Adrienne Leigh
Eli Seibel
Hanako O’Leary
Jasmine Fetterman
Jessica Marie Mercy
Jo Cosme
Kelly Bjork
Kerstin Graudins
Kiki Robinson
Lae Edidin
Leobardo Bañuelos, Jr.
Nikki Jabbora-Barber
Oliver Vy Nguyen
Shilo Davies
Sterling
construct
Opening Celebration: Wednesday, November 15, 4-6pm.
November 13, 2023 - January 12, 2024
construct brings together eight artists selected for their use of material and how they highlight construction in their work. Each piece evades the standard rectangle and calls into question why the rectangle was there at all. Collage weaves its way through the exhibition as does the repurposing and subsequent transformation of materials. These pieces relate to one another by color, line, form, and use of space, each artist working in a variety of materials and modes of making. Seen together, references emerge and we find connections between these works that hint at social constructs, the radical act of reuse, and the undeniable impulse of the maker to play, find relationships, and see materials and meanings anew.
Participating Artists:
Bella Kim https://www.bellakim.com/
Jason Ruhl https://www.jasonruhl.com/
Ellen Garvens https://www.ellengarvens.com/
Gillian Theobald https://www.gilliantheobald.net/
Colleen Toutant Merrill https://colleenmerrill.com/
Denise Treizman https://www.denisetreizman.com/
David Simpson https://www.harrisharveygallery.com/david-simpson
John Masello https://www.johnmasello.com/
The 2023 Seattle Metals Guild Biennial Exhibition: Process is a Loop and a Line
September 25 - November 3, 2023
Opening Celebration: Wed.Sept. 27, 4-6pm
SMG opening: Fri., October 6, 6-8pm
To mark the Seattle Metals Guild’s 35th year, the theme of this year’s member biennial exhibition is Process is a Loop and a Line. Along with the finished work, the show includes process ephemera that document the development of ideas. These process materials represent all the work that extends out into time and space beyond any individual completed work.
2023-2023 North Seattle College Continuing Education Art Exhibition
July 178 - August 17, 2023
NSC Continuing Education and the NSC Art Gallery present a showcase of artwork by CE students from the last year.
Student Art Exhibition
May 15 - June 15, 2023
The NSC Art Department and the NSC Art Gallery present a showcase of artwork by students from the last year. Until May 31st voting will be open for People's Choice Award, so please visit the NSC Art Gallery to see the exhibition and cast one vote for your favorite piece.
About Helen Ramona P2
March 13 - April 28, 2023
Artist's Exhibition Statement:
Janelle Abbott’s 2023 series “Helen Ramona” is dedicated to and inspired by the artists late grandmother of the same name. In this iteration, Abbott utilizes fashion, painting, and furniture to contemplate the stages of a life lived, and the narrative void left in the absence of the dead—illustrating the creative power of the living to memorialize and mythologize those who have gone before us. Large scale paintings of weeping roses are juxtaposed by a series of translucent white garments representing the transformation of Helen Ramona from child to eternal spirit.
About the Zero Waste Methodology
The zero waste patterns are like giant puzzles where each piece fits perfectly into the next so that nothing fabric is wasted. When cut and assembled, these pattern pieces become a garment; deconstructed, they can be returned to a perfect rectangle of fabric. Comparatively, traditional pattern drafting wastes 15% of materials in conjunction with garment production. Zero waste honors the time, energy, labor, and natural resources imbued within the material world—it can also provide artists and designers with an opportunity to extend their creative capacity by working within strict limitations. The JRAT brand of zero waste design extends beyond pattern drafting and includes the exclusive use of post-consumer waste such as found or donated clothing, dead-stock textiles, and factory off cuts.
About the Artist
Janelle Abbott (JRAT) was born into the fashion industry—her parents owned a clothing manufacturing company where they produced Tencel garments in Seattle for over 20 years. This early exposure to the behind the scenes of garment production gave Janelle a sense of reverence for the labor involved in creating clothing. She received a BFA in fashion design from Parsons School of Design in 2012. In the face of the exploitive labor and environmental damage perpetrated by corporate fashion, Janelle decided to carve her own path—one committed to upcycling, sustainability, hand craft, and the zero waste design methodology. Densely pleated, boldly clashing, and unexpectedly rhythmic, Janelle’s work is scrappy, unapologetic, and a testament to just how much time and energy it takes for real humans to manufacture and produce every consumer product we engage with.
Ideas of Home
January 23 - March 3, 2023
When we think about home each of us conjures a different image, and these continue to morph and change throughout our lives. For some, home is the container—the place—that holds our daily activities; for others it is where our emotions and memories dwell; for still others it is about those we care most about; and for some it is all of these. The concept of home also brings to mind a balance of scarcity and abundance, the transitional nature of place, as well as what it means to build a home. After the last few years in which most of us spent more time “at home” than we ever imagined we would, ideas of home have expanded. The eight artists whose work is included in this show are brought together around this theme of home, though their standpoints and perspectives may differ.
Participating Artists:
Martha Armstrong: www.marthaarmstrong.com
Tyanna Buie: tyannajbuie.com
Olivia Fredricks: oliviamfredricks.com
Shruti Ghatak: shrutighatak.com
Ariston Jacks: www.aristonjacks.com/fineart
Kathy Liao: www.kathyliao.com
Daphne Minkoff: dminko.otherpeoplespixels.com
Markeith Woods:www.markeithwoods.com
Distilled: Contemporary Abstraction
November 14, 2022 – January 13, 2023
In the art world the word abstraction is slippery in its meaning and the category is large. There are many connotations. It presumes many different visions and ways of working all pulled out of the representational world and distinct. For this exhibition we look toward work that takes a concept to its core with a clarified aspect. But even in the included pieces by these seven artists there are many ways of working. For some it might be a considered simplification, the concept distilled to its essential parts, whittled down. For some they submerge themselves in a place or ingest a researched idea distilling it to its essential parts, iterating and perhaps reiterating it after much time circling the mind. For all of the included artists what you are seeing is an offering of something of the repeated trace of the original idea. Whether simple or complex in its aspect each is made with a highly considered touch or gesture, honed.
Participating Artists:
Lydia Bassis: https://www.lydiabassis.com/
Avantika Bawa: https://www.avantikabawa.net/
Susan Belau: https://susanbelau.com/
Sue Danielson: https://www.suedanielson.net/
Carole d’Inverno: https://www.caroledinverno.com/
Sara Osebold: https://www.soseboldart.com/
Megan Prince: https://www.meganprince.com/
(a) relation of body to water
September 26 - November 4, 2022
Water is a multifaceted and, of course, fluid proposition and as we approach it the relationship builds in complication. Through dependance, power, comfort, worship, fear, and the many ways we envision this natural resource our connections and viewpoints multiply. (a) relation of body to water is a group exhibition of work by artists who have looked to the entwined relationship of water and people. This exhibition supports these relationships.
Among the pieces in this show are Mayumi Hamanaka’s Invisible Lands which presents what the sea has stolen and given back as gifts, redistributing wealth. Jen Shaw’s Flood State expresses the uncertainty of living in Louisiana where humans and water are constantly at odds. Ethan Bickel swims in the waters surrounding Seattle as a daily healing practice and his photographs document his interaction. All of the artists in this exhibition delve into our ties to water and what we imbue it with.
Participating Artists:
Ethan Bickel, ethanbickel.net
Sheila Coppola, duwamishresidency.com/sheila-coppola
Mayumi Hamanaka, mayumihamanaka.com
Gene Gentry McMahon, northwestworklofts.com/gene-gentry-mcmahon/
Natalie Niblack, natalieniblack.com
Joaquin Palting, joaquinpalting.com
Samantha Scherer, samanthascherer.com
Jen Shaw, tracy-simpson.com
2021-2022 North Seattle College Continuing Education Art Exhibition
July 19 - August 18, 2022
NSC Continuing Education and the NSC Art Gallery present a showcase of artwork by CE students from the last year. Until August 5th voting will be open for People's Choice Award, so please visit the NSC Art Gallery to see the exhibition and cast one vote for your favorite piece. Gallery hours for the summer are Tuesday & Wednesday 12-2pm and 5-7pm and Thursday & Friday 12-2pm.
2021-2022 North Seattle College Juried Student Art Exhibition
May 16 - June 16, 2022
The NSC Art Department and the NSC Art Gallery present a showcase of artwork by students from the last year. Until May 31st voting will be open for People's Choice Award, so please visit the NSC Art Gallery to see the exhibition and cast one vote for your favorite piece.
Extracurricular lll
March 14 - April 28th
Extracurricular features the work of the practicing Artists who comprise the North Seattle College Art Department. This exhibition highlights current work by this incredible group of makers. Our art faculty and techs create work that is not only inspiring to the community in which live but serves as inspiration for the students they teach. Their individual artistic practices are central to their teaching curriculum and in turn the experiences they have in the classroom greatly impact their work. Do not miss this chance to see what our outstanding group of teaching artists has been working on when not in the classroom.
Participating Artists and their Classes/Roles at NSC:
Ling Chun – Ceramics
Emily Gherard – Drawing
Michelle Kelly – Painting/Drawing
Amanda Knowles – Printmaking/Drawing
Barbara Knuth – Jewelry and Metalsmithing
Paul Komada – Digital Art
Kelda Martensen – Printmaking/Drawing/Painting
Daphne Minkoff – Painting
Joaquin Palting – Digital Photography
Paula Rebsom – Sculpture/Ceramics/2D and 3D Design
Aaron Scofield – Jewelry Tech
The Sun, The Moon, & Stars
January 31 - March 3, 2022
The sky holds intrigue. During the day when the sun reigns we can believe that we are the center of the universe. Once the sun sets and we gaze out into space filled with millions of other stars and planets we see our insignificance. All cultures honor these heavenly bodies through art, poetry, films and song. We all stand side by side looking out from our place in the universe and marvel.
In this show seven artists look into space for their motivation – seeing it through a telescope, watching the patterns that the stars make as they traverse the sky, tracking time, creating a vision of history and the future – all read into the sky just above our heads.
Participating Artists:
Daniel Carrillo
Rebecca Cummins
Louise Fisher
Patricia Lagarde
Kirk Lang
Nora Pauwels
Anna Von Mertens
