OBAMA Celebrates Bad Art
Upstairs at Café Racer, feast your eyes on the Official Bad Art Museum of Art
By Sam Steele May 3, 2020
This article originally appeared in the May 2020 issue of Seattle magazine.
When Marlow Harris and her husband, Jo David, were given free rein over 10 square feet of a friend’s café back in 2008, they decided to honor two of their favorite things: then presidential candidate Barack Obama and bad art. Today, most of the pieces in the Official Bad Art Museum of Art at Café Racer still come from Harris’ personal collection, although the Jesus made of marshmallow Peeps is by local artist Janet Galore. Now constituting the café’s entire second floor, the OBAMA Room not only serves as a cozy refuge for Racer regulars, but provides what owner Jeff Ramsey describes as “an alternative to exposed wood, wrought iron and fake ferns,” giving young techie transplants a space to recharge away from Amazonia, and older Seattleites a little bit of grunge nostalgia.
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