♪♪
-Hi there and welcome to the show.
I'm Nancy Guppy, coming to you from Linda Hodges Gallery
in Pioneer Square, a legendary Seattle art gallery
that will be closing at the end of June.
♪♪
Linda grew up in New York City,
going to museums, galleries, and theater with her parents,
who collected art and supported artists.
So she was bitten by the art bug at a young age.
Once in Seattle, Linda worked as an art consultant,
co-directed the Fountain Gallery,
and in 1983 opened Hodges/Banks Gallery,
which eventually became Linda Hodges.
In her 40 years as a gallery owner,
Linda has represented prominent West Coast artists
with strong national reputations,
including...
Kurt Solmssen,
Lucinda Parker,
and the late, great Alfredo Arreguín.
Linda has also been a relentless champion
of younger artists such as Klara Glosova,
Ryan Molenkamp,
and Lisa Golightly.
Linda's final exhibition features paintings
by renowned artist Gaylen Hansen,
who has been with the gallery for 38 years.
June 28th is the gallery's last day.
So plan your visit soon.
Hours and location are at lindahodgesgallery.com.
We've got an excellent lineup for you,
including...
the art festooned walls of The Hideout...
-Of the 101 paintings on the wall.
84 of them are available for sale.
The rest are part of our permanent collection.
♪♪
-...a major installation from artist Emily Counts...
♪♪
...and Bernie Griffin says goodbye to The Fifth.
-I was here on the very first preview of "Hairspray,"
and I was sitting in the audience and went,
"Oh, my God."
♪♪
-And we'll begin with filmmaker David Wilde's portrait
of the dynamic, hilarious,
and no-holds-barred painter Camille Patha.
[ Rock music plays ]
-It's a need. I have a great need to make art.
I can't explain it.
All I know is, is that desperate need.
♪♪
The painting can't give the viewer anything
unless the viewer has something to give the painting
and can emotionally connect with passion
and a kind of sophistication and a depth of knowledge
and hurt and love and passion and longing.
All those things are in each painting.
And if you haven't got anything in your little soul,
you're not going to get anything out of the paintings.
I'm not going to tell them what to think.
The paintings have to stand on their own
when I'm alive now and when I'm gone.
I make paintings because...
they're waiting for me.
♪♪
I'm not getting older.
[ Chuckles ]
I'm the best I've ever been.
I don't want to be a Northwest painter.
I don't want to be known as a Northwest artist.
The purples are fabulous.
And the blues are adequate.
Color has a voice and it's not an audible voice.
There's no words, but it talks to you, and it leads me.
I follow my nose. Oh, look at that there.
Off I go. This one is really gorgeous,
but it's really hard to make it work with anything else.
Colorist is a person that is very aware of color
and color doesn't baffle them.
It intrigues them, and they -- they hunt it down ruthlessly.
And they seek the relationships and what it will do.
The color really isn't a color
until it's next to another color.
-Oh, my God. Look. [ Gasps ]
This is gorgeous.
Look at the orange.
See. Look at that.
-These are two complementary colors.
I never wanted to admit I had a favorite
because I thought that was...
pretty mundane, but I have a favorite.
Oh, this is my favorite of the whole bunch
of all the colors in the whole world,
The whole bloody world, I'm afraid to admit.
that's my favorite one. That damn magenta.
My favorite machine in the world is a trolley on Capitol Hill.
And it's magenta.
It's a beautiful, smooth, magenta,
sleek, beautiful thing. And it moves down the street.
The first time I saw those trolleys,
I stopped in my tracks and said, "Oh, my God."
♪♪
Think of me this way.
Every time you see me, you think
that this is on my face.
Are these -- Are these fluorescents
or are they just strong color?
-There are some fluorescents there.
-Are there? -There are...
-Hot pink and yellow. -Yeah.
-Like a --
All the fluorescents are the bad boys of color.
I love them. I love them, love them.
They're the greasy,
the macho men in beautiful clothes.
They are mmm!
-That's anything that's fluorescent is --
will be like that. I think I like that.
-The reason I'm not painting on this video is because...
there's nothing they can learn
about the secrets of my art
when I'm painting because all the secrets of my art
are inside.
And you can't see inside of me.
♪♪
Yes. Yes.
All my pieces are sensual, not erotic,
but all of them are sensual. Everything I've ever done.
I trick the eye by visually putting one color
or one space in front of the other space.
And it's a thing I don't mean to do,
but I love it when it happens, and I know when it happens.
And so you see the space.
For example, you think this space way back here is deep
because dark is always for the vacuum.
We know that.
And then you have something lighter,
but then all of a sudden --
it's just a stupid piece of board, you guys --
and all of a sudden it's not flat.
It's -- it's got depth to it.
All of a sudden, you go way back in here
and then all of a sudden -- boing-oing-oing-oing-oing --
bring it right back up
front and center with that light color.
POW! There it is.
And then I can push you over the edge
and get you way back in there. I can drag you along.
I can make you come almost forward, but not quite.
And if, oh, God, look, it's transparent,
I'm going back into it. Ooh, I'm being sucked in.
Oh, no, I'm back.
No, I fallen back way deep into it again.
And now I've come up forward and,
oh, I'm out, I'm out, I'm free. Oh, I'm falling through again.
And then you're into the depth into the black
and you're in a space.
It's actual visual places in -- in -- in space.
But we all know it's just a stupid board.
Yes. Lovely. Oh, my God.
I want to make a great big one, you see.
-Oh, yeah. Huh. -Nice and huge.
-Yeah. Two exactly the same size
would be great. -Okay.
-Watch this.
The things that you don't know are the most intriguing.
Because then you can make up what you think it could be
or there's an unending joy in finding what it actually means
or what it could mean or what it never did mean and might.
You're getting a lot of information out of me
that I've never verbalized before
because painters don't have to.
They paint it. They say it that way.
See? Complicated as hell. Have a jelly bean.
Quit talking about it and have one.
♪♪
Find my pastels?
-Oh, yeah. -Good.
Whoo, my flowers.
We need to photograph those two big ones
and the two small -- three small ones.
I've always kind of been outspoken as a young woman.
That's forbidden, you know?
Young man, it's okay.
You can't live in the past because
you're living in the present thinking about the past.
And what good is that doing you?
It is my life, my breathing in and out right now.
That's what it is. It's all about that.
That's all there is.
That's all there is -- now.
I don't want it to stop.
I want it all to be as exhilarating
and as exciting and as colorful and as filthy, chalky,
messy as it can be.
Love it.
♪♪
It's remarkable to be alive.
[ Music stops ]
Breathing in and breathing out is remarkable.
[ Rock music plays ]
-Runs now through September 3rd at Tacoma Art Museum.
Hours and location are at tacomaartmuseum.org.
If you're looking for an arty place to enjoy a cocktail
or a mocktail, hightail it to The Hideout.
[ Jazzy music plays ]
-I'm Jeremy Beaven.
And I am the curator of The Hideout.
The Hideout is Seattle's best art bar.
It is a dive bar with 100 pieces of art
on the walls and great cocktails.
♪♪
Of the 101 paintings on the wall,
84 of them are available for sale.
The rest are part of our permanent collection.
And anybody who comes in can become a collector.
The Hideout has a wide array of patrons,
from hospital workers to first Hill residents to artists.
So we create an atmosphere that is surrounded by creativity.
We have interesting paintings on the walls
that spark conversation and remind people
that we're living in a town with great art.
♪♪
Many of the artists on the walls
are what I would consider established Seattle artists.
They've had shows at galleries,
but I'm also always on the hunt for new emerging artists
that maybe haven't had a show yet,
but I get wind of their work or see it on Instagram,
and nothing's more fun than putting something up
for the first time for an artist.
One thing that is fascinating to think about is how many hours
and how much of people's lives
are poured into these paintings on the walls.
For some people, it's a lifetime
to get to the image you're seeing.
Other people, they're just discovering paint
and just starting to express themselves.
But every painting has a personal story to tell.
I was so happy to get the large Tondo painting
from Sullivan Giles.
It's the hands with the tattoos,
and it is just exquisite and massive.
Another piece that I really like
is Blake Blanco's "The Fallen One."
It's this red devil angel.
And he kind of looms right behind the patrons,
casting his glance down at them.
And also, I was really happy
to get one of Laura Hamza's viaduct paintings.
I have cataloged all the art on the walls,
and we put out a magazine roughly quarterly.
Everything's pictured.
You can find what you're looking for really easily.
The Vital 5 is a long-standing tradition here at The Hideout.
It is a magazine compiled with drawings by patrons.
So we put that out a couple of times a year,
and it's some of our favorite drawings
that were created right here.
The Hideout is definitely a cocktail bar.
Probably the most popular drink on the menu is the Andy Warhol,
and that is a cosmopolitan
and a Polaroid picture of yourself.
My advice for anybody that wants to buy art
that hasn't had experience with it
is just follow your heart.
Buy what you like.
The hardest thing with art is the ones that got away.
So if you really love something, figure out how to buy it
and then make it part of your life.
The Hideout is open every day of the week
from 4:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.
and 6:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. on weekends.
It might look like a speakeasy,
but just open the door and come on in.
♪♪
-The Hideout is open seven days a week.
Hours and location are at hideoutseattle.com.
[ Ethereal music plays ]
♪♪
Bernie Griffin,
managing director at Fifth Avenue Theater,
has been a powerful voice in the local art scene
for over 20 years with her impending retirement.
Bernie shared a few highlights from her storied career.
[ Projector whirring ]
[ Ragtime music plays ]
♪♪
-The Fifth Avenue Theater was built at the same time
as the Skinner Building in 1926,
and it started as a Vaudeville movie palace
and went along into the '70s as a movie theater.
So a lot of folks I know who are my contemporaries
talk about coming here in high school and seeing "Jaws,"
which would have been like the last big movie
that folks would have seen at the Fifth.
And then it closed.
And it was the days of the rise of the suburbs.
Cineplex Odeon's movie palaces in urban areas
were kind of falling out of favor.
And so the Fifth Avenue closed in the late '70s.
And what happened was it was a lot of the same folks
who brought the World's Fair to Seattle in the '60s.
They turned their attention to what the next issue
facing Seattle was,
and it was a revitalization of downtown.
[ Up-tempo music plays ]
Prior to 1980, there was not a venue in Seattle
where Broadway touring show could come,
and so it was renovating the Fifth Avenue
to move it from a movie venue to a performing arts venue.
And the first show that came was "Annie."
It was a brand new show,
and it came and it ran
for weeks and weeks,
and then it came back and it ran
for weeks and weeks.
And then in 2000, the board said, you know,
it is time for the Fifth Avenue
to have its own artistic profile.
And so David Armstrong was hired
as the first ever
producing artistic director.
The Fifth has transformed from a roadhouse
to one of the leading
musical theater producers in the country.
♪♪
I was here on the very first preview of "Hairspray,"
which was the first pre-Broadway
that had ever been done in Seattle.
Of course, ever been done at the Fifth.
And it was an unknown entity.
And I was sitting in the audience and went,
"Oh, my God."
This is something I have never seen before.
I had never experienced before.
You knew that this was something amazing
and the audience felt it.
We get to allow an experience that is really worlds away
from the everyday, you know, come in and
and just be transported to a new place.
♪♪
For me, it's always about the music.
It's that thing that just,
you know, that moves me.
I think the most wonderful thing
for me to hear
is when somebody who worked here as a kid,
you know, their first job out of college,
and then they went on and they say to me,
you had a big impact on my career and starting out.
And these are the lessons that I learned.
And I mean, because people did that for me.
You know, it's -- it's handcrafted,
it's handcrafted an art form.
It's handcrafted how we do things.
And that's -- that's really lovely.
Well, you know, I want to talk about somebody here
who has been with me every step of the way,
and that's my husband, Seán Griffin.
You know, he experienced everything
that I went through here,
the ups and the downs, the goods and the bad,
the triumphs and the hard times and everything else.
And I couldn't have done it.
I couldn't have done it without Sean.
You know, we've been talking a lot about what's been on stage,
but this is also about community engagement
and ensuring that we are we are part of the communities
we serve outside of this amazing physical structure.
We have programs that reach 75,000 young people
throughout the state of Washington,
whether it's touring in a van with, you know, the backdrop
and you go out into the schools and perform.
♪♪
-Will we see you around the theater after your retirement?
-Oh, yeah. I'll be selling golden tickets out there.
I'll be volunteering at the table
next spring if I get a call.
Fingers crossed.
-Happy trails, Bernie.
And you can learn more about
the Fifth Avenue Theater's 2023-24 season
at 5thavenue.org.
And that's a wrap.
Big thanks to Linda Hodges Gallery for hosting us.
And more importantly, big thanks to Linda
for her immeasurable contributions
to the cultural life of Seattle.
The gallery's final exhibition showing paintings
by Gaylen Hansen closes on the gallery's final day,
June 28th.
And thanks to you for tuning in.
We're going to take a little summer break,
but we'll be back in the fall
with lots more local art.
So enjoy these warm days and we'll see you in September.
♪♪