MANY, MANY HEADS

Dig a selection of fabulous rock show posters from the Wall of Sound Archives. More cool graphics than you can shake a stick at! All posters are available for purchase!

Artist's Statement:

I rust things.

This statement has been at the center for my work for over a decade now, embracing a multiplicity of meanings. Initially, I began my investigations into rust and decay as a means to detour my shortcomings as an oil-painter; and I found myself working with mangled surfaces and corroded objects constructed from wood, paper, metal, glass, light, and photographs. The latter proved to be noteworthy, as I discovered a means of re-activating the photosensitive properties of silver gelatin prints and embedding distressed copper and steel into the surface of the photographs. Not only did this result in a unique patina, but it also introduced time into my work as these photographs demonstrated an ongoing visual transformation. At first, this reaction would be quite pronounced; but even after many years, these corroded photographs exhibited subtle shifts in their bruised surfaces.

Within my current body of work, I continue to investigate the properties of decay. Specifically, I have focused on how decay parallels and relates to the perception of time when cycles of activity dwindle toward stasis. While I still incorporate much of the visual sensibilities from those aforementioned processes, sound has emerged as a central medium for my current installations and performances. Drawing from shortwave radio static, electric field disturbances, controlled feedback manipulation, and numerous textural scrapings, I manifest a broken minimalism whose magnetic drones give the impression of timelessness, when in fact the environment is quite active. This engineering of disparate materials and media seeks to evince the unpredictability of decay, to manifest its potential for a rough hewn beauty, and to bare witness to its inevitability.

Currently, I reside in San Francisco and have exhibited at The Exploratorium (San Francisco), Westspace (Melbourne, Australia), Diapason (New York), Jack Straw Productions (Seattle), Works (San Jose), Eyedrum (Atlanta), The Fugitive Art Center (Nashville), and Varnish (San Francisco). I have participated in a number of fruitful colloborations with Loren Chasse, Keith Evans, Steven Stapleton, and M.S. Waldron. Since 2001, I have been active as the Editorial Director for 23five, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and increased awareness of sound arts within the public arena. Through 23five, I co-curated the 2003 San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and the 2007 Activating The Medium Festival. Furthermore, I have written extensively on sound art, noise culture, minimalism, and general music experimentation for The Wire, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Metro Pulse, The Sound Projector, and Chunklet.

The Art of Tom Dewar @ Wall of Sound Patina, Prints & Americana

Opening night Friday July 17th from 7-9pm Show runs through August 30th     Perhaps best known for the nearly one hundred screen printed rock posters Dewar has drawn, designed and printed over the last ten years in Seattle, Dewar is stretching his finely developed screen printing techniques to produce large oil paintings, relief prints and hand carved linocuts for his show at Wall of Sound July 17. A number of oil paintings, prints and drawings will be on display primarily featuring his affinity for fine details and beat-up old American cars. It’s an unassuming mix of Americana, iconography, rust and weeds that creates the old scenes reminiscent of the Montana landscape that has shaped Dewar’s artistic obsessions.     The show will also include several screen printed works--  muscle cars in varying degrees of decay, and a screen print diptych featuring fictitious scenes from eras past of the Wallingford and Broadway locations of Dick’s Drive-in, Seattle’s locally famous burger joint. Although Dewar continues to work in print media, he’s experimenting with new techniques and methods with all art in the show based on his original pen and ink drawings. All pieces underscore one theme: bad ass cars and bad ass dudes. Of particular interest here, is the printed tribute to another Montananative and long-time idol, Evel Kneivel.     About the Artist :   Tom Dewar was born in Great Falls, Montanain 1977. Dewar attended the University of Montanain Missoula. He majored in art with an emphasis on printmaking. This July will mark Dewar’s tenth year as a Seattleite. His graphic design career in Seattle has yielded nearly one hundred screen printed rock posters for bands and venues in and around the Northwest, as well as a plethora of other freelance design jobs including the recent design of a microbrew label for a brewery in Montana. His rock posters have been the subject of both solo and group art shows in Seattle, Portland and Missoula over the past decade, including four posters in the Experience Music Project’s permanent collection. The Art of Tom Dewar at Wall of Sound will not feature any of his screen printed rock posters; rather a new generation of creativity will be on display.

Artist and illustrator Arbito is a Seattle native who works full time from his home studio in Ballard. Primarily using watercolors, acrylic, and cast resin, his work is composed of psychedelic colors, silly slogans, and crazy characters. Reminiscent of vintage posters and illustrations of the 70's and 60's, his art has been categorized by some as pop-psychedelic. Arbito has exhibited his art internationally from Portland to Brighton UK, and has most recently launched a color-packed animated ad campaign with nike snowboarding.

Colleen Kinsella, artist, printmaker and musician presents a series of etchings and screen prints on paper exploring architecture, humans, demons and folklore. Her work is on display at the International Print Center in NY and Chicago. She is best known for her album and poster art for Cerberus Shoal, Big Blood, Vialka and Sun City Girls.

Eye popping brainmelters from the severely warped mind of the infamous Jim B.

Join us for the opening festivities here @ WoS 1/09/09 from 7-9pm!!!!

Recent work by Clare J. Bowers Paintings, collages and summer camp craft inspired by the magical weirdness of falling in love in desperate times.

The works in “Sign” were put together by artist Donald Fels over the last decade on the the Italian island of Procida-off the coast of Napoli, on the island of Favignana-off the coast of Sicily, in Cochin-on the coast of Kerala in India, and in his studio in ever-more exotic Fall City, WA , in the foothills of the Cascades. The subject of a major exhibition this fall at the Tacoma Art Museum, Fels has been making art around the world since the early 1980’s. The pieces in the Wall of Sound exhibition share a small format, but run the gamut from constructions, to collages, distemper on file folders, to work made with a funky zerox machine in Naples.

Recent works by local artist and designer Shawn Wolfe. Nauseously Optimistic features painted, photographic and sculptural works that sometimes evoke the artist's pre-millennial pre-catastrophe "Panic Now" campaign. Graphic creations take the form of signage and draw on the imagery and the daft/deft language of a mass-produced culture of crisis.

In 1995 Nintendo released what, by any measure, remains to this day the worst camera ever made. A cartridge for the original Gameboy, the Gameboy Camera takes pictures in four "colors" (if you can call white, black, light gray & dark gray colors) at an astonishing 0.009 mega-pixels. John has been using this camera for years to take snapshots of his daily life - obsessively cataloging and printing them out on the matching (and matchingly shoddy) Gameboy Printer. "Two Bit Shadows" collects 774 of these photos, blown up to 4x5 prints, into one large-scale mural to uncover the momentary histories and hidden orders revealed by the most reductive imaging device ever made.

Dig a selection of fabulous rock show posters from the Wall of Sound Archives.
More cool graphics than you can shake a stick at!
All posters are available for purchase!

Wally Shoup is a self-taught painter, as well as a notable free-improvising saxophonist. His work in both music and art is unfettered, and he's been painting and blowing since the mid-70's. His paintings are informed by the "sophisticated primitivism" of Paul Klee, Jean Dubufett and the COBRA school. Rock surfaces, microscopic realities and the rhythms of trees are also prime influences on his work. Rough but elegant, serious yet playful, his work delights in subtle contradictions. He is represented in Seattle by Garde-Rail Gallery and Vital 5 Productions. 'Painting should be direct (no hidden intellectual sub-texts to decipher) but never obvious'

For this show Shoup is mixing and matching a wide range of sizes and styles in order to maximize the salon-hanging potential of the large Wall (of Sound).

Check out this article about Wally in the Seattle Weekly!

Wall of Sound Art Galleries International, Seattle, is pleased to present '2006 - 2007' new photographs by Seattle photographer Arthur S. Aubry. This is Aubry's first local exhibition since his show at the now defunct Esther/Claypool gallery in 2002. This is a rare chance for his fellow Seattlites to view new work in the flesh. In addition to 18 large scale color photographs a series of photographic sketches will be made available for the first time.These are small scale work proofs used during his editing process. Aubry personally prints his own photographs with his own hands, he does not own a computer.

Aubry is represented by Gitterman Gallery in Manhattan.

“Yonder” are landscapes by Curtis Taylor, an artist working in film and theater. “Yonder” are drawings, shadowboxes and paintings.

Biography of Marefumi Komura

1977 Born in Osaka, Japan. Lives and works in Tokyo
2004 Illustration for CD compilation “Re-Enter The Dragon: A Black Belt Graffiti Of The Grandmaster Dragon” (Victor/Speedstar)
2005 Illustration for Climax Golden Twins CD cover
2005 Epson Color Imaging Contest (honourable mention)
2006 Geisai 2006 bronze prize
2006 NADA - New Art Dealers Alliance Art Fair Miami 2006

For more than a decade Rachael Jackson has been developing a style of black and white photography which brings out the beauty of texture and forms in nature. Often these photographs focus on bringing out the very small and quite fantastic details of plants, minerals and water. Using only existing light and the diverse environments of the Northwest, she has revealed a striking world of nature's embodiments. For the February/March showing at Wall of Sound, Rachael offers a new set of fine archival prints from a traditional wet darkroom. Unique images will be duplicated and arranged to construct extended patterns and shapes.

Michael Ohlenroth, of Wall of Sound fame, presents "Snow Show," a multimedia display of winter wonderment including snowflake portraiture, snowball reliefs, and "Snow Buddies." All the work willl be for sale and new Buddies will be introduced as the show progresses!

A group show of LP and CD artwork and design.

Original paintings,drawings,sketches,mechanical art and finished results.

By the following artists: Jim Blanchard / Dialing In / Jesy Fortino (Tiny Vipers) / Ear Venom / Climax Golden Twins / Jamie Potter (Bonus) / Sublime Frequencies / Gust Burns / John Hubbard/ Scatological Liberation Front / Jesse Paul Miller / Kazutaka Nomura / Sparkle Girl

Jesse Paul Miller A Small Pool of Time

Opening Friday August 11th 7pm -10pm

A wall based exhibit of improvisatory, spontaneous and compulsive small works; intermingling paper, drawing, painting, mixed media, collage and found objects... including never-before-shown drawings burned on found driftwood & spin-art style paintings on LP records... Created around the Puget Sound region within the last 5 years.

A limited edition of 25 artist made audio cdr's entitled PVC will also be available.