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 Closing the books on 2007 is a very daunting task. Citywide two major events occurred, both involving the Seattle Art Museum. The opening of the Olympic Sculpture Park brought back Alexander Calder's Eagle into the public eye as the iconic symbol of the new park. The expansion of SAM downtown added new luster to the older Robert Venturi building and local arts patrons stepped up to pledge one billion dollars worth of artwork to the new facility. This reporter got to experience the Press Previews under the aegis of Art Radio Seattle. SAM gets high marks for how they handled that giant journalistic scrum. At the OSP preview, [green group] I traipsed around in the good company of Jim Demetre of Art Dish freezing my fingers off to make this video the day of the preview. At SAM downtown, [red group]. the architect and the museum director led our group on an intense tour with the national press. With camera in hand, I posted this video of the new galleries on the new video channel.
 By March, I had taken on a new project, the Gallery at 911 Media Arts Center. Anyone who agrees to do two original back to back shows ought to have their head examined.
"Memory Whole" art by Tony Weathers opened in April to great reviews and ran through Mid-May.
The online catalog is available here.
 In profiling the Hideout, Seattle's premier art bar, for The Capitol Hill Times {Story Here} I discovered that owner Greg Lundgren had a mountain of documentary material from his ongoing project Vital 5 Productions. This lead to a very successful 10 year retrospective at 911 Media Arts Center entitled, "Straight to Video: the First 10 Years of Vital 5" which ran last June and July at the last arts center in South Lake Union.
The online catalog is available here.
View a video fragment by clicking here!
 After these two shows, I served as a technical curator for the exhibit "Glass Onion" by Gary Hill,[view installation fragment from twofold: goats and sheep here] The Travels of Mariko Horo by Tamiko Thiel,[video fragment here] and "Dorkbot: People Doing Strange things with Electricity"
 Sutton Beres Culler were profiled in December 2nd issue of the Pacific Northwest Magazine. Their Ship in a bottle sculpture was a major feature at the 8th Northwest Biannual, Tacoma Art Museum. They have just returned from a star turn at the Art Basel Miami earlier this month and have many active projects planned for next year.
Read about them on Vroom Journal here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
See digital panoramas of their early exhibitions
here, here, here, here, and here.
 Keith Tilford, who is represented by the James Harris Gallery, had a very good year The Tacoma Art Museum liked his drawing in the show so much that they bought it for their permanent collection. With six pieces already placed in the Microsoft collection, this achievement is even more remarkable considering that the artist is not even 30 years old yet.
Read my profile for
The Capitol Hill Times here.
 Video sculptor Joseph Gray exhibited a new work at Unit B in San Antonio Texas. He also created a new work for exhibition at First Thursday in October in the Tashiro Kaplan building downtown.
Read my review of his exhibit at 911 Media Arts Center here.
 The Museums enticed viewers with exceptionally strong programming. The current exhibition "Dreaming the Emerald City" at the Frye Art Museum is a masterful look at the founding collections of both the Frye and the Henry Art Gallery.
Curator Robin Held deserves kudos for taking on a rarified exercise in Art History and making it into a vital exhibition, which speaks to the beginnings of the visual arts in Seattle.
Read my review of the New Leipzig Paintings exhibition for The Capitol Hill Times here.
For a look into the education offerings at the Frye read my profile of Susie J. Lee's class for The Capitol Hill Times here.
 The Seattle Asian Art Museum hosted the most seminal exhibition of contemporary Chinese Art seen in the past ten years.
Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art featured the fabled A book from the sky by art superstar Xu Bing who also came to our city last month to deliver a well-attended lecture. It also served as a debut for Josh Yiu, Foster Foundation Assistant Curator of Chinese Art as the coordinating curator for SAAM.
He also brought "Ink in Motion" a five-minute video installation by Sio Ieng Ng to emphasize the commitment that SAAM has to exhibit contemporary new media Asian art.
Read my review of SHU for The Capitol Hill Times here.
Also read my review of "Ink in Motion" for The Capitol Hill Times here.
 Crawl Space earned a place in the sun in 2007 as Capitol Hill's best alternative gallery space. A stellar solo show by Brad Biancardi, along with exhibitions featuring guest curators like Liz Brown from the Henry and the members themselves made for exciting adventures in contemporary art.
Read my review of Biancardi for The Capitol Hill Times here.
Also read my review of "Current Works" for The Capitol Hill Times here.
Look for greater programming here in the future!
 The Café as exhibition space is something that Capitol Hill does better than anyplace else. Faire Gallery Café gives many artists their first chance at a solo exhibition while serving up weekly jam sessions featuring the Jazz students from Cornish College of the Arts. Read a review about Faire in The Capitol Hill Times The Joe Bar Café under the direction of Curator Chris Crites continues to please with high quality works by notable artists like Sara Lanzillotta and her Dolls of the Silver Screen exhibit last May.
Read my review for The Capitol Hill Times here.
 In September, the Fetherston Gallery celebrated its 10th anniversary.
In anticipation, the gallery was closed during July and August for a major facelift.
Read my review for The Capitol Hill Times here.
 Art Radio Seattle recorded the100th podcast last August and returns to the internet January 13, 2008. Last month there were 92,454 requests for Art Radio's news service. Click here to visit the home page.
 In trying to turn Vroom Journal into a multi channel content delivery system, much of 2007 was spent on video production. About 10,000 people a month view a video at Vroom Journal. Here is a list of the 20 videos put up in 2007
- Secret
Chefs 3 Rendezvous, Jewel Box Theatre
November 02, 2007
- Fragment
from Tamiko Thiel Exhibition
October 14, 2007
- Sean
Owen Guitar Recital, All Pilgrims Church
October 13, 2007
- Stephen
Fandrich Piano Recital All Pilgrims Church
October 13, 2007
- Ovid's
Metamorphoses by Greta Harley
August 10, 2007
- Sounds Outside III at Cal Anderson Park
- Fragment
from Gary Hill Exhibition
August 03, 2007
- Sounds Outside II at Cal Anderson Park
- Straight
to Video 10 Years of Vital 5
Installation View In Fragments
June 20, 2007
- Non
Grata Plays the Sky Church EMP Seattle
June 15, 2007
- Sounds Outside I at Cal Anderson Park
- SAM
I AM Downtown Museum Reopens Press Preview
April 26, 2007
- OSP
Press Preview
January 10, 2007
 2008 looks very promising for the Visual Arts. First up will be "Tide Ornaments - New Paintings by Benjamin Hanawalt" at the Joe Bar Café with an opening reception on Friday, January 11th. Hanawalt is another Seattle artist who had a very successful solo exhibition in Portland last summer. The paintings are all done in his unique signature style and will sparkle and dazzle the viewer with their quiet excellence.
As we close the books on 2007, we can confidently predict that the Visual Art created and exhibited in the Pacific Northwest will continue to drive the art scene in an independent quirky direction from which Seattle takes direction.
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