Restaurants Make It Easy To Graze And Gaze At Art

Seattle has a long tradition of art-friendly bars, notably The Virginia Inn, The Two Bells and a host of newer establishments mostly downtown and on Capitol Hill. But restaurants also are finding that having rotating, curated art shows on their walls is an easy way to support the local art community and bring an artsy ambience to their dining rooms.

Notable among restaurants that have regular, professionally curated shows are Italia, on Western Avenue, and The Painted Table, at Madison Street and First Avenue.

Shows at Italia have been curated since early 1993 by Bill Moore, Jan Cook and Spike Mafford, the three partners in Galleria Potatohead, one of Seattle's most ambitious small galleries. Painted Table shows have been curated for two years by Jeffrey Moose, a printmaker and art consultant. Shows at both restaurants change every other month. Though it is a coffeehouse rather than a bistro, Caffe Ladro on Queen Anne Avenue has shows curated by Margery Aronson, one of Seattle's best-known art consultants.

Karl Bruno, Painted Table manager, says having art on his restaurant's big, deep walls - many galleries would kill to have such good display space - seemed like the natural fit.

"I've got great painting by local artists on my plates; a piano; great food. Putting art on the walls looked like something that made sense." Bruno says his customers have been known to buy a piece of art after spending several meals gazing at it.

Mafford says shows in restaurants such as Italia are great exposure for artists; usually at least one piece sells. But for the curator, it can be a challenge to find art that strikes the right balance between decoration and provocation, he notes. "It's a little challenging because you can't hang something too controversial."

On display this month at Italia are photographs by Mafford and Cook. (Mafford explained, sheepishly, that he usually doesn't curate his own work but that another show fell through at the last moment.) Mafford's show is a retrospective since '84 and Cook is showing recent images from travels to Mexico and New Mexico.

At The Painted Table, longtime Seattle artist Joan Ross Blaedel's work has been held over through March. It includes older work as well as recent work based on a fellowship in Rome. At Caffe Ladro, Stephen Reip's exhibit of large photographs of unusual Seattle vistas went up two weeks ago.

(A tip for those who remember the days when gallery openings used to mean free hors d'oeuvres: At The Painted Table and Italia, it still does.)

ArtFair results steady

The final sales numbers for ArtFair/Seattle, held at the Westin Hotel in early February, still have not been tallied, says Irene Mahler, principal organizer of the event. Mahler says she has reached about 30 of the 50 exhibitors at the fair thus far, so cannot give a final number for sales made as a result of the four-day event. But she says that, estimating from the figures she does have, total sales should be about the same as last year's, which she pegged at $1.4 million. Attendance also was steady at about 8,000.

Seattle art dealers have mixed reports as to how well they did at the fair. Says Kate Elliott of Elliott/Brown Gallery, "For me, sales were not so good at the show, but it was great for me at the gallery. A lot of people came by because of the show."

New loans at SAM

For those who follow contemporary art, the Seattle Art Museum has recently hung three Susan Rothenberg works and a huge, 1982 painting by the German artist Sigmar Polke on the fourth floor. All except a Rothenberg drawing are on loan from private California collectors.

The two Rothenberg paintings are from 1978 and 1994 and both are of horses, though the paintings are dissimilar. (The 1978 is an isolated horse on a dark background, apparently trapped within a circle. The more recent work shows a horse's head with two sets of hands holding reins.) Polke was a '60s pop artist who later moved into other media and subject matter. The work on display appears at first to be an abstract wash of purple and yellow - until you notice a group of ghostly heads that seem to be looking down from above.