Modern Art Cowboy, Seattle, WA (2026)

07/16/2025

The MiG-21 Project at Seattle Art Fair & Museum of Flight

The MiG-21 Project will have (on view through Jan 26, 2026), select works such as this stunning photography by Ziman and beaded regalia, on exhibition at July 17‑20 at Booth E01.

Join Ralph Ziman for an artist talk Friday, July 18, 1–2 PM.

Be sure to make time head over to to see this work of art and the stunning supporting exhibition and documentary during this week’s

06/29/2025

Christian and I smashed north up to Bellingham on the I‑5, through a drizzling rain late at night to meet The New Tide rolling into town.

Paper Whale Arts just opened their brand-new venue in Old Town Bellingham. The launch party, A New Tide in Old Town, was packed with art, music, people and the pulse of the new wave; all within a full-blown warehouse party in a revitalized industrial district.

The DJs (Vintage Brass, Lady V, Maxa Jaguar, Slippery Shaman) lit the night, the dance floor and the district… we could hear the heavy bass and house music coming off the freeway. There were Live art battles unfolding between Darcie Gray, Ivan Collin, and Aashna Setia. Elixirs from the Fable Bar, tea lounge calm zones, and fireside storytelling offered rest and hydration between sets.

We met the Mayor of Bellingham (the one who got us on the dance floor!), and who is also prioritizing the role of arts and culture in revitalizing the city’s core. Bellingham is backing real investments in infrastructure for artists and in organizations like Paper Whale Arts.

is a Bellingham based non-profit cultural accelerator, with a goal to inspire and grow the creative class in the Pacific Northwest. They are a community-rooted arts organization activating underutilized spaces across Bellingham.

Their new venue is part production studio, part exhibition hall, part event space — and it’s already proving itself as a magnet for artists, DJs, dreamers, and doers from all over the region.

Their Immersive Experience Project opens July 3 — a civic-backed initiative in partnership with the City of Bellingham + Downtown Forward.

Inspired by the Art House Project in Japan, the project transforms vacant storefronts into temporary, imaginative art installations, which helps artists experiment, residents reimagine and landlords find long-term tenants.

These programs are civic beautification through creativity which reminds me a lot of Seattle’s own Seattle Restored.

Bellingham has always had a quietly brilliant art scene. But with this kind of momentum, this kind of backing and this kind of vision; it seems this city is ready to stand behind its artists in real time.

06/28/2025

The longest day of the year came in soaking. It rained, in true PNW fashion and brought with it gray skies. Seattle’s solstice looked more like February than summer. But still — there was ART and swaths of Pink light and … and there DANCING!

Inside Common Objects, Pink Pool of Light, a group show hosted by Common Area Maintenance (CAM), became a shelter and a celebration.

One of the most striking works was a surrealist video and sand installation by Amber Barney-Nivon, titled Suspended in a Single Consciousness. It echoed the cinematic dream logic of Man Ray — shadowplay, fluid time, elemental tension — while channeling the precision and absurdity of Dali. Set against soft sand, the piece felt dislocated from time but anchored in the body, making you question what was moving and what was held still.

The mood of the whole show was set before you even walked in — by the ethereal artwork featured in the event poster. Designed by Xinrui Chen, the show’s visual signature was a soft, glowing, almost etheric pink composition that looked as much like a sun setting over Puget Sound as it did a spiritual diagram.

It instantly brought to mind the work of Hilma af Klint — the early abstract mystic whose spirals, layers, and intuitive systems predated and surpassed much of modernism’s male canon.

The group exhibition featured works by:
Amber Barney‑Nivon, Sylvie Blattenbauer, Xinrui Chen, Dagny Rayn Chika, Miranda Cooper, Abigail Drapkin, Nat Evans, Jennifer Jiang, Nell Kerr, Claire Peckham, Annabella Pfeifer, Lola Reinhardt, Mikki Ulaszewski, and LM Zoller

Live performances created moments of stillness and connection throughout the night. There were two moving dance performances, one from a young girl that reminded us of the importance of making space for youth arts, and another contemporary piece by Michael Arellano that felt raw and refined. Singer Mads Rhodes played a beautiful acoustic set within a neon pink light projection.

Celebrated inside a cool, cozy art exhibition during a rainy solstice, Pink Pool of Light invited Seattle to soften, to dance, to remain connected amid the brutality of the times we are facing.

06/24/2025

Last week, I surprised Grandma Kathy to the final matinee of Always… Patsy Cline at Taproot Theatre and it was the sweetest live songbook experience.

What made this possible was Taproot’s commitment to community-centered programming. Their senior matinees are a subtle but powerful act of consideration. With Grandma Kathy’s health and mobility challenges, attending evening performances can be nearly impossible. These daytime shows offer a dignified, accessible way for elders in our community to stay engaged with the arts and with communities -comfortably, joyfully, and with others. Grandma Kathy lit up the moment she saw Patsy’s name on the marquee.

The theater was transformed to the Grand ‘Ol Opry, the Arthur Godfrey show, the Esquire Ballroom and your best friend’s kitchen with a 1960’s radio, dark coffee and a pack of ci******es.

Throughout the performance, Grandma Kathy softly sang along. Between songs, she whispered stories -how old she was after losing everything in the fire, her home, her husband, so she moved her and her two toddlers to Hawaii to heal, that was when the single “Crazy” came out… somehow we were back at her local diner where she pulled doubles to support her family in West Virginia when“I Fall to Pieces” was the tune of the time. These songs were a part of her life long before I even existed -and now they’re part of our shared memories baking in the kitchen and here singing at The Taproot.

I brought my own reflections into the theatre. In a past life, while studying viticulture and working harvests across Northern California, I’d sing Patsy Cline to the vineyards and the wine tanks -her songs echoing through the cellars as the wine laid to ferment. I often thought of my father then, who raised me on this music while running around the Napa Valley floor and Santa Cruz Mountains, and who I was slowly losing to Alzheimer’s. Patsy’s music gave me back pieces of him -and of myself. Art is both medicine and mirror. Music and literature especially, along with cinema and theater, have helped me process and develop empathy for the weight of memory, grief, family and mortality.

06/16/2025

A new art fashion collective is emerging in Seattle—and it’s being led by emerging youth creatives, MODE UW. MODE is the University of Washington’s first student-run modeling and fashion collective, built not just to showcase style, but to nurture community, autonomy, and cultural agency. Their debut show, OUTLAW ORDER, was a Capital Hill, Harvard Garage rooftop takeover that felt cinematic, intentional, original and eco-conscious.

Directed by graduating senior Hoony Chang, the production was not only original, but organized, bold but required so many risks and adjustments that were managed so professionally and creatively. Entirely locally sourced and student-produced, the show was powered off-grid using an electric Hyundai IONIQ 5, turning a parking garage into a fully sustainable fashion arena. It wasn’t just fashion—it was resourceful, impactful and future-thinking in action.

Three collections defined the night:

Prairie Underground –
A longtime champion of sustainable fashion, their collection brought timeless structure and ethical production to the runway with an avant-garde city grit edge.

Mediums Collective –
Their work channeled the pulse of the Seattle —raw, intentional, and rooted in culture and community.

ropa.lab –
A sustainable accessories brand crafting sculptural pieces from salvaged materials. Their designs offered a vital enhancement to the story unfolding on the runway.

MODE UW is more than a student group. They are building a new cultural lane—one led by care, innovation, and creative conviction. Their work is necessary, ambitious, thoughtful, innovative and absolutely inspiring.

To all the artists, producers, models, and collaborators: thank you for inviting me to be part of this moment. The future you’re building is one we want to live in.

06/13/2025

MODE UW Presents: OUTLAW ORDER — SS25 FASHION SHOW

What if the runway wasn’t a stage...but an escape plan?

Outlaw Order is MODE UW’s first-ever fashion show: a high-stakes jailbreak told through fashion. Witness a cinematic storm of rebellion as Seattle’s fiercest models break free from solitary confinement and storm the runway in a thrilling, open-air escape.

From Prairie Underground’s artistic statements to Mediums Collective’s raw streetwear, every look tells a story of defiance, identity, and unapologetic power.

Don’t miss out. Join the escape.

Your ticket is waiting for you here: https://posh.vip/e/outlaw-order-fashion-show

06/13/2025

MODE UW Presents: OUTLAW ORDER — SS25 FASHION SHOW

What if the runway wasn’t a stage...but an escape plan?

06/13/2025

🏆 NEDDY AWARDS EXHIBITION | 2025

🎨 ENTROPY: For Those Who Dream Awake Between Dawns

📍Behnke Family Gallery at Cornish | On view through September 13

During this exhibition I witnessed something rare: a room curated not for spectacle but for reckoning. “ENTROPY,” the 2025 Neddy Awards Exhibition, gathers eight Washington-based artists whose work doesn’t just speak—it listens. It mourns. It resists. It builds.

Curated by the visionary Berette S. Macaulay, the exhibition opens a space for fragmentation, for collapse, for the generative mess between one ending and the next uncertain morning. Themes of ancestral memory, survival, and community care pulse through every wall—reminding us that dreaming, too, is a form of resistance.

✨Artist/Artwork Featured in Post:

⚡️2025 Neddy Painting Finalist
Deirdre Peterson
“You Could Be Everywhere or Nowhere”
2024, Acrylic on Canvas

⚡️Neddy Open Medium Finalist
Bri Chesler
“Bruised Brute”
2020, Glass, Mixed Media, Vinyl

⚡️Neddy Painting Finalist
Lauren Boilini
“Celestial Navigation”
2022, Oil on Linen

🧑‍🎨 Curation: Berette S. Macaulay

04/01/2025

Our life and work in Arizona, always consists of spending quite a bit of family time in various art adventures and pursuits. We joined the museum after our first visit two years ago. Since then we have seen developments include more access for the community as well as inclusive and family friendly programming such as robotics and arts labs. Since then we have made so many family memories here. Sharing our passion for art history and preservation is one of our greatest joys and priorities as parents and art patrons.

1.) My two favorite boys 🤠🤠 standing next to Fritz Scholder’s “The Cowboy”

2.) Fritz Scholder (1937-2005)
The Cowboy (1982) acrylic on canvas

3.) Icebergs and Installations

4.) Explaining digital art to Bodhi

5.) Audioheads 🎧🎧

6.) Walking through the overwhelming black swarms of Carlos Amorales: Black Cloud.
Inspired by the annual migration of monarch butterflies from Canada to Mexico, Black Cloud features a “swarm” of paper moths that take over museum spaces, rising to envelop viewers.

6.) Bodhi wanting to see the art through my eyes as much as I want to see art through his.

7.) Art Mom Multi-tasking: One eye on the kid, the other scanning this enormous work hanging in the lobby trying to determine “Is this a Frank Stella? While also trying to track down the kids scavenger art map.

8.) My three favorite works of art in this museum: My two handsome 😍 loves and this sensational fabric and steel frame wall mounted sculpture by one of my all-time favorite female sculptors Lee Bontecou.

03/05/2025

Looking forward to celebrating this vibrate design community!

From the Seattle Design Center and Reflection Marketing:

In honor of International Women's Day, we invite you to the Seattle Design Center on March 5th from 2-5 PM for "Women in Design: Define and Demand Your Value."

This event will feature a powerful panel discussion-including our own showroom owners, Carmen Andonian of Andonian Rugs and Roz Taylor of Dixon
—on breaking the barriers and navigating success in male-dominated fields.

Stay for refreshments, networking, and our special floral activity to close out the day.

Seattle Design Center
17 March 5th | 2-5 PM
Don't miss this chance to learn, connect, and celebrate the power of women in design!
RSVP now and be part of the conversation.

09/13/2024

Museums are church.
Art Books are Bible.
Artists are Angels, Devils AND GODS.
Art is Nirvana.

Modern Art Cowboy

07/16/2025

06/29/2025

06/28/2025

06/24/2025

06/16/2025

06/13/2025

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06/13/2025

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09/13/2024

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