Hedreen Gallery

A Participatory Art Installation with RYAN! Feddersen

April 11 - June 8, 2024

Seeking Visions for a Better World was a call for images and aspirational sentiments that invoke constructive visions of the future to counterbalance the preponderance of dystopic visions presented in pop-culture, literature, and media. Inspired by traditional pictographs and contemporary graffiti culture, this collection of visions creates space for a dialogue where we can build on ideas, reflect on our culture, and imagine better outcomes for humanity.

Participants visited the gallery to participate or contributed content virtually.

RYAN! Elizabeth Feddersen specializes in creating compelling site-specific installations and public artworks which invite people to consider our relationships to history, culture, the land, and our non-human-kin. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Cornish College of the Arts in 2009, and is now based in Tacoma, Washington. Feddersen grew up in Wenatchee and is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, from the Okanogan and Arrow Lakes bands, and of mixed European descent. Her practice focuses on creative problem solving to address social issues through visual allegories that provide opportunities for exploration, introspection, and epiphany. Feddersen has created large-scale site-specific pieces and interactive installations throughout North America and has a growing body of permanent artworks in the public realm.

Artist Gabrielle Wambaugh created the work in “Roughly Embroidered” while in residence at Seattle University, thanks to the generosity of the Pigott Family Endowment for the Arts. 

March 6-30, 2024

This work is a mixture of drawings, ceramics, and embroidery. It features many different materials in striking juxtaposition. Color is added through fabric and other materials. Natural elements also play a role in how Wambaugh is creating her work.

Wambaugh is interested in the transformation and flexibility of materials. Air, water and fire form the essence of her use of ceramics. Then comes the texture imprints by either contact or aggregation. In her work she also likes to assemble, weaving every diverse link between multiple sources. As Wambaugh says “I assemble because I believe in what we cannot see, I bring together spaces, emptiness, and the spaces in between.”

Gabrielle Wambaugh 

Gabrielle Wambaugh primarily works with ceramics. She graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Paris and works and lives in Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, Picardy, France.

Wambaugh won the Altadis Prize in 2002, with a first monograph published by Actes Sud, and she received her first public commission in 2003 in the city of Daegu, South Korea. In 2005 and 2006, she was invited for the research program at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, City of Ceramics. In 2007-8, 2014, 2018, 2022, and 2023, she was invited for new research on stoneware and explored "fusions" at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) Holland. As a Norma Lipman Research Fellowship, she lived for several years in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and received publication support from the Arts Council of England.

Gabrielle Wambaugh's work has been featured in numerous museums, art centers, and private galleries in Europe, the United States, South Korea, and China, Le Grand Hornu in Belgium, the Capitol Museum in Rome, the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy, as well as the Prince's Palace of Monaco. She has participated in Ceramix at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, the Netherlands, the Sèvres Museum, and the Maison Rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert. In 2024, she is an artist in residence at Seattle University, USA, thanks to the Pigott Family Endowment for the Arts.

Featuring Artists Colleen Louise Barry and Craig Mammano. Curated by Jake Alexander

October 26, 2023 - December 21, 2023

Precious, Precious, Unprecious, a special exhibition celebrating self-publication at the Hedreen Gallery October 26 - December 21, 2023, explores this provocative medium as a spectrum, as seen through the works of Seattle-based artists and bookmakers, Colleen Louise Barry and Craig Mammano. By erasing the guidelines and constructs of the publishing world juggernaut, artists are left only with their freedom to create exactly what they want, how they want it.

In conversation with each other, Barry and Mammano explore this dynamic by conjuring motifs of public and private life. We see this with Barry and her whimsical wooden shrines dedicated to the maximalism of the Washington State Fair, and Mammano, who takes us deep inside his world between 1997-2009, re-contextualizing the photography from two of his early zine projects, “Liberty City” and “These Days, Without Some Love, You’re F—ed.”

This exhibition has been made possible with support from the Pigott Family Endowment for the Arts at Seattle University.

Artists:

Colleen Louise Barry is a mixed media artist, writer, and teacher based in Seattle. Her visual work has been exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Museums, The Factory, and other places; her first book of poems, Colleen, is out from After Hours Editions. She ran the interdisciplinary publishing and gallery project Mount Analogue and is currently the Middle School Art Teacher at Westside School.

Craig Mammano (b. New Jersey) studied at Hunter College, The City University of New York. Spending the next few years working in the archives of the Black Star publishing company and assisting world-renowned documentary photographer, Joseph Rodriguez. His work has been exhibited at Solas Gallery, Seattle; The Curated Fridge; The Association of Photographers Gallery, London; FOTO FEST Biennial, Houston; Home Space Gallery, New Orleans; GET THIS Gallery, Atlanta, and Permanent Gallery, Brighton, UK among others. Since 2001 he has been making photography zines and artist books, both self-published and working with many celebrated independent publishers including The Photocopy Club; Swill Children; Hamburger Eyes; Nighted Life and Kaugummi Books. Craig teaches at The Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle and currently lives in South Beacon Hill, Seattle.

Curator:

Jake Alexander (b. San Rafael, CA) is a working artist, organizer, and curator working out of Seattle, WA. Jake’s visual work is mainly composed of snapshot photography within an analog framework, and creates books or zines to convey his autobiographical narratives. His work has been exhibited in Seattle at Love City Love, Northwest Film Forum, Photographic Center Northwest, among others. Jake, a Seattle University graduate in Photography, has a passion for art books and has worked alongside Michelle Dunn Marsh at Minor Matters Books, and currently works and teaches at Photographic Center Northwest where he has spearheaded the creation of their annual Photo Zine and Book Fair.

Images by Colleen Louise Barry (left) and Craig Mammano (right)