ArtSEA: For Earth Month, Seattle artists show us what’s at stake

We earthlings are inveterate mess-makers, and that’s writ large in smell-o-vision at the Recology King County Material Recovery Facility. It’s where our blue-bin recycling ends up, sorted by workers using a two-story system of conveyor belts and stacked in towering, disheartening bundles. (Sign up for a free facility tour — fascinating and unforgettable and available to anyone 16+ on third Thursdays; this month, April 17.)

Since 2015, the Recology Artist in Residence program has invited artists to make work from whatever they find in the waste, and the alums I’ve spoken with view it as a creative candy store. Now past artists are showing their trash-to-treasures in The Unbearable Lightness of 300 Tons a Day (at North Seattle College through May 2).

Related: Former Recology resident Kalina Winska is showing Natural Households at Method Gallery (through May 17), featuring her creative repurposing of the wire dishwasher racks, fan covers and closet shelving she scavenged at the facility.

Overconsumption is what got us here, and it’s taken literally in a series of new acrylic paintings by Jed Dunkerley. In Consumption (April 11 - May 3, at Roq La Rue’s airy new Belltown space), the Seattle artist depicts scenes of natural beauty from Cougar Mountain to Monument Valley overlaid with scientific diagrams of digestive enzymes. 

Illustrated in primary colors, these “ribbon diagrams” of amylase, lipase and pepsin look like festive abstractions but serve as what Dunkerley calls a “garishly seductive” metaphor. 

Also at Roq La Rue is a show of new work by painter Mary Iverson, known for the meticulously measured shipping containers she incorporates into surreal scenes. In past work, these stacked metal boxes full of untold stuff loom like a bad dream, or tumble forward into bucolic scenes.

In Waterfalls (through May 3), the containers topple like barrels over local cascades, including a gut-punch gorgeous piece called “Destiny Falls.” Iverson’s newfound technique of scraping away at the finished canvases gives them a retro glow, like a photo we keep revisiting for clues about the future. 

Inspired by tidepools at Vashon Island and Willapa Bay, Northwest artist June Sekiguchi examines water at the microscopic level — with radiolaria.

These single-celled zooplankton are little marine mysteries that absorb silica from the sea to create intricate geometric skeletons. In The Geometry of Resilience (through May 24 at ArtX Contemporary; artist talk April 26 at 1 p.m.), Sekiguchi recreates these skeletons on a larger scale, using a scroll saw to render the elaborate organic shapes in medium-density fiberboard.

“[Radiolaria’s] evolved ability to thrive amid ever-changing marine conditions embodies a quiet resilience,” she writes in her artist statement. “During this difficult time … my hope for us is ganbatte, a Japanese word for stick-to-it-ness, resilience, and perseverance, using radiolarians as a metaphor for this concept.” 

For more local waterways, check out the show of new work by local artist Laura Hamje (at Chatwin Arts through April 26), whose thick brush strokes seem to emphasize precipitation, whether filtering through forests, splashing against coastal shores or hanging in heavy clouds.

See also Seattleite Niki Keenan’s work in the group show Force of Nature (at AMcE Creative Arts through May 11). Soft-lit acrylic paintings glimmer with ponds and creeks chanced upon in deep woods, while sculptures of deep green and blue pools sparkle with stars above — imagined oases that remind us of natural magic. 

We’ll end this week’s edition with an assist from Cascade PBS newsletter editor Sophie Grossman, who shares a slew of theatrical events outside the mainstream. Take it away, Sophie!

The surreal, the absurd and the supernatural beckon in these avant-garde performances, which meet the current moment with black comedy, camp and chaps.

Buster Keaton meets Samuel Beckett in Umo Ensemble’s Squeeze (Seattle Public Theatre, April 10 - 13). Based on Vashon Island, the decades-strong physical-theater troupe offers an absurdist look at the contemporary human condition by way of five “lost souls” meeting at a bar. As always with Umo, expect daring physical feats, dark humor and deep connection. 

Even the punctuation is unexpected in :Probed! (Erickson Theatre, April 10 - 13), part of Intiman Theatre’s intimate cabaret series. Longtime local performers/writers Scott Shoemaker and Freddy Molitch (of the popular War on Christmas) take a supernatural romp in this multimedia mashup of parody and character acting that channels the paranormal investigation genre. 

In Cherdonna’s Favorite Things (Erickson Theatre, April 16 - 20), the inimitable Cherdonna Shinatra deploys a signature blend of song, dance and cringe. The Seattle-based movement performer (aka Jody Kuehner) uses her maximalist drag persona to poke and puncture boundaries of all sorts, including the line between tragedy and comedy.

For this installment in Intiman Theatre’s cabaret series, Kuehner uses her clownish alter ego to explore the surreal lunacy of living through atrocities while being obliged to continue tending to the mundane details of daily life.

DADS (at 12th Ave Arts, April 24 - May 10), by Seattle performance duo Drama Tops (Elby Brosch and Shane Donohue), is existentialism in fetish chaps. Acrobatic, entangled choreography and an electronic soundtrack that references sci-fi and queer club culture in the same breath are the building blocks for their expanded vision of masculinity and fatherhood in this experimental “dance odyssey.”

In Eddie Izzard Hamlet (Seattle Rep, April 30 - May 18), the legendary British comic/actor flits among all 23 roles in a production that emphasizes prose over set. Spare Shakespeare adaptations have proliferated in recent years, but Izzard brings more than three decades’ experience of searing solo performance to the stage. And as ever, Hamlet’s themes of revenge, madness and coup hum with contemporary relevance. The show has already been extended another week – but don’t dally.