Commentaries: Artists Respond to the Land At Prographica Gallery

Glenn Rudolph 's photograph in PROGRAPHICA
gallery's current exhibit "Commentaries:
Artists Respond to the Land"

Kimberly Clark curates the artwork of Glenn Rudolph, Helen O'Toole and others in the theme of environmental change for PROGRAPHICA gallery's "Commentaries: Artists Respond to the Land". Clark also adds her own vital painting to the exhibit.


Just this side of Snoqualmie Pass on I-90, there is a wooded park visible from the highway.  Seattle Savant Richard Peterson and I made one of the last trips to this park in the Buick Regal which had been donated to me by Glenn Rudolph's close confidante Steven Schrock .  Mr. Peterson had been perseverating on the idea of a trip to Tradition Lake, what he called "the haunted woods" of this park and also made mention of a "ghost bus".  Richard's idea of using video footage taken by me as part of a new movie he envisioned, meant squeezing the last gasps of my automobile addiction, the head gasket had blown on the Regal, I knew how to limp a car for YEARS if necessary.  Soon after the ghost bus trip, I opted to participate in the City Of Seattle's One Less Car program, and I still have a pretty good supply of transit vouchers, being that I ride a bicycle everywhere I need to go.  Turning from that perhaps morally righteous self-disclosure to the topic of ghost bus footage in the haunted woods of Snoqualmie Pass, Richard led me to the abandoned bus, which if memory serves, is the selfsame bus which appears in my sister's boyfriend's confidante Glenn Rudolph's photograph in the Prographica exhibit curated by Kimberly Clark (understand?).  If it is the same bus, pending an inquiry to Rudolph, it will give me a great sense of unity and community in the art cosmos I orbit within, and the world of the mundane can accompany the story if it so happens.  Keep watching this space for an update on the potential relativity of ghost buses my friends know.  I always like to tie things together.

UPDATE: Turns out the buses are two different machines. Rudolph answers the inquiry into the location of his bus:  "This is up Silver Creek enroute to Mineral City. Not too far from Index. Miners use it as a shelter. The road and bridges are washed out and collapsed. A great place to hike."  Rudolph refers to Mineral City and Index, Washington.  Richard Peterson's bus resides near I-90 in close proximity to Tradition Lake at High Point Way Trailhead.

I attended the lecture "Evolving Interpretations Of Wilderness" given by Phillip Govedare
August 16,2012 in conjunction with Prographica's exhibit Commentaries: Artists Respond to the Land. Mr. Govedare, UW SoA Faculty, a two-time recipient of NEA recognition and represented by Francine Seders Gallery, is a painter composing images of post-apocalyptic landscapes and alternate palette representations of brownfields and scarified environments.
Mr. Govedare's lecture was framed by the stifling heat of a 90-degree evening and the confinement of a full space. Often during the lecture, global warming was mentioned, and so cued, the audience would mop a soggy brow, eyelids drooping. A slideshow accompanied the lecture, and featured images from landscape artists Albert Bierstadt (German-American, 1830-1902) and Frederic Edwin Church(American, 1826-1900). The premise posited by the images presented by Mr. Govedore in his febrile mutimedia spectacle was that of the historic legacy of artistic depictions of civilization's attempt to dominate nature, a standpoint which hurtles unflagged, and certainly has intensified in relation to the steady march of conspicuous consumption and the depletion of natural resources therefrom. Following the lecture, dialogue was expanded to include the perspiring audience, and one fellow (positioned smack in front of an electric fan) disgorged the frantically amusing chestnut that global warming wasn't yet proven. I laughed into my hand and sipped a little water.

In summation, Ms. Clark shows courage in organizing this exhibit, boldly uttering the mention of climate change and the resulting imminent mass extinction of humanity; now certain, scientifically assured and true, verifiable and foregone, the veracity of which cannot be refuted, except mockingly, conspiratorially, shamelessly attempted by the stark raving mad, the "fascist avaricious fossil-fuel death's head deceivers" as they are sometimes referred to. We are all dead, our bloodlines blotted out by bloated black oil insanity, obliterated by a bathtub brimming over from an annual buildup of FIVE BILLION METRIC TONS OF CARBON INTO THE ATMOSPHERE EVERY YEAR, year in year out. Mass extinction !X STINK SHUNNED! from driving cars, and burning coal to run hair dryers and tingling-finger massage chairs, for our massive, corpulent asses. I, for my part, can vouch for Curator Clark, she owns no car and rides her bicycle at least as much as I do. She is a wonderfully talented painter, also.