It is a door and window that make a room useful. 

August 7 - 30th 2014
SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA

Exhibition co-curated with Venetia Dale.
Featuring artists Barbara Smith, Christalena Hughmanick, Jovencio de la Paz, Tia Kramer + Venetia Dale.

Taking its title from the 11th verse of the Tao Te Ching, It is a door and window that make a room useful is an exhibition highlighting five emerging artists who utilize craft language, technology, and time to examine the ethereal space between profundity and the everyday. Featured artists Barbara Smith (New York City), Christalena Hughmanick (Chicago), Jovencio de la Paz (Chicago), Tia Kramer (Seattle), and Venetia Dale (Boston) will share video, sculpture, and performance that reframe mundane acts as sacred experience.

Collectively these artists embody craft practices of repetition, labor, attention and process, bringing awareness to our physical human experience and presence, and inviting the possibility for transformative reflection. Just as the 11th verse of the Tao Te Ching attempts to make accessible the concept of emptiness, this exhibition, It is a door and window that makes a room useful, aims to provide a glimpse into the profundity of the mundane, emphasizing the ephemerality of experience.

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
                                                             - Lao Tzu

Opening reception + performance: Variation on Support, no. 4 – 8 by Christalena Hughmanick. Thursday, August 7th 5-8 pm
Off-site performance at Discovery Park: Five Restricted Structures by Tia Kramer.  Saturday, August 23rd 4-6pm

Exhibition Review: 'The Empty, locked buildings on Magnolia Bluff' by Jen Graves of Seattle Stranger and the Slog.