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Bainbridge Island Museum of Art Displays New Solo Exhibition
Barbara Earl Thomas brings blood and fire to Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
This article originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of Seattle magazine.
Painter, author and essayist Barbara Earl Thomas is among Seattle’s most emotionally evocative and socially engaged artists. Over the years, she has run the Northwest African American Museum, steered the Seattle Arts Commission and given countless spirited talks and lectures. She has also been the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the 2016 Artists Trust Irving and Yvonne Twining Humber Award.
Her solo exhibition Heaven on Fire, now on display at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, features a new body of work that includes linocuts as well as cut-paper altarpieces and etched blown-glass vessels. Thomas’ dramatic narrative format, her dynamic, stylized figures, and bright but nuanced palette are all present in these varied mediums, but their focus is new. Here she explores the act of bloodletting as a metaphor for the epidemic of young men killed by guns in our cities.
As always, biblical overtones echo through Thomas’ tableaux, conferring grace upon her subjects and helping us make sense of the violence in our world. Through 10/2. Times and prices vary. Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Winslow, 550 Winslow Way E; 206.842.4451; biartmuseum.org
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Seattle Rock Band Stereo Embers Rekindles for One Night
After four years apart, the quartet reunites for a hometown show.
Bands break up, dissolve, or otherwise drift apart all the time, for all sorts of reasons. No matter what the impetus for the split, though, fans will naturally conjure images of scorched-earth implosions like Fleetwood Mac or Oasis—and optimists will note that even those two bands eventually reunited. In the case of Stereo Embers, their…
2026 Fall Arts Hit List—Visual Arts
The must-see gallery shows of the season.
September The 2026 Recology King County AIR Program Exhibition Through September 12 Recology King County To wrap up its latest artist residencies, Recology King County presents the 2026 Recology King County AIR Program Exhibition, featuring fashion designer Janelle Abbott and photographer Eirik Johnson. Held at Mutuus Studio, the show is the culmination of a residency…
Rearview Mirror: Spinasse at Home, a New Spa Experience, and Seattle Mag’s Reader’s Choice Awards
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
YOUR VOTE MATTERS Everyone has a favorite restaurant, coffee shop, or local boutique. Call me old-school, but I will die on the hill that Caffe Vita has the best coffee in town. Disagree with me? Now’s your moment to speak up. Each year, we survey Seattle magazine readers, asking them to weigh in on everything…
Studio Sessions: Ling Chun
The Seattle-based artist brings playful color to ceramics and neon while exploring memory, transformation, and life between cultures.
For Ling Chun, creating begins with something sensed before it can be named. Working with clay, glass, light, and sometimes synthetic hair, the Hong Kong-born artist gives physical form to things that words cannot always hold. “For me, the magnitude of making goes far beyond the object that is eventually produced,” Chun says. “The object…