ArtSEA: Seattle playwright blends Black history, money and laundry

Which means now is perhaps the perfect time for Golden (April 26 - May 11), a new play by Seattle playwright Andrew Lee Creech and directed by Tyrone Phillips that has its world premiere at ACT next week. 

Set during The Great Recession of 2008, the play follows Morris Golden (Ty Willis), a Black laundromat owner desperate to save his fledgling business when he discovers the magical powers of a broken change machine that could “change” everything in the era of Obama’s “Yes We Can.” 

Golden is part of The Legacy Plays Project, Creech’s in-progress nine-play cycle tracing the arc of Black American life over the past 300 years. With three plays set in each century, this is the first in Creech’s series to be set in the 21st. (His two previous plays — Men of Mettle and Last Drive to Dodge — are set in the 19th.)

“The idea is to use specific moments in American history as these cultural touchstones to examine the Black American experience in that particular time period,” Creech said. As he delves into historic eras like Reconstruction and the “golden age” of cowboys, Creech often incorporates a bit of magic realism in his storytelling. Hence that mysterious change machine.

Another throughline in all of his completed and planned plays is the concept of home for Black Americans — where is it? And how can we get there? From being taken from Africa to the colonies, plus the Great Migration out of the South during the early 20th century, there’s an impermanence of place in Black culture. 

“The Black American experience is one shaped by migration, either forcibly or voluntarily,” Creech told me. “I think within that is this bid for stability, for ownership, because all generational wealth is tied into that. Needing to have a place that I can call mine, build and pass down.”

Photography exhibits are springing up this season, including shows that question established definitions of art, politics and national identity.

< Carmen Winant’s Passing On (April 12 - Sept. 25; artist talk May 8) at the Henry Art Gallery is an ode to our feminist forebears. Using obituaries of influential feminist activists clipped from old newspapers, Winant creates collages, adding her own penned annotations with reflections and queries about preservation, memory and collective care.

< The old becomes new again in Fringe Practice: Alternative Methods in Photography at Photography Center NW (now through June 12). Featuring early photography techniques like cyanotypes and chlorophyll printing, this group exhibition is an exploration of “alternative processes” in photography, as well as an embrace of the fringe, the weird, the experimental. The show includes work by local photographers Daniel Carrillo and Eirik Johnson, who collaborated on a series based on the geometry of unfolded paper airplanes.

< the president sang amazing grace by Xinyu Liu (Solas Gallery, April 26 - June 28) is a photographic venture right into the twisted heart of America. Liu came to the U.S. just days after the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. At the funeral for the dead, President Obama sang “Amazing Grace.” Taking inspiration from that moment, Liu’s solo show is a reflection of this country when words fail. “I return to image,” he wrote in a press release. “The one that lingers, and refuses to fade.”

And if you’re itching for a fine-art photography road trip up north (tulips included!), you have even more options.

< Head to the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds to check out Silent Songs: The Photography of Johsel Namkung (through May 18). The late Korea-born photographer spent his life capturing the beauty of the Pacific Northwest from its chilly coasts to abundant forests. He learned from the greats like Ansel Adams and was especially noted for his skill with color processing.

< In Edison, Anacortes-based photographer David Grant Best’s Dreaming the Salish Sea (at i.e. Gallery through April 27) features moody and evocative images of coastal rock formations and misty seas. Just the thing to pair with the hot and cold nature of Northwest springtime. 

< Lastly, at the Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher Building in Bellingham, Not the Whole Picture (through July 27) by Garth Amundson and Pierre Gour is a tour of the two artists’ 35-year career in joint artmaking. At the center of the exhibition is a new enormous photography installation that “evoke[s] devotional mandalas” and is composed of hundreds of personal photos of everyday moments — stitched together with needle and thread.

Three fun festivals

Now in its 22nd year, the Seattle Black Film Festival (April 24 - 27 at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center) is back once again with an impressive array of more than 100 Black films. Expect to see everything from a Nigerian thriller about an investment banker who finds himself deep in corruption to local short films about Black male vulnerability and a quirky flower shop.

Need an excuse to buy a new book (or three)? Enter: Seattle Independent Bookstore Day. Show love for our city’s indie bookstores by throwing some business their way on April 26. If you manage to visit all 29 participating bookstores over 10 days, you will receive a champion stamp card which will get you 25% at each store for one year. Not a bad deal for a bookworm.

It’s National Poetry Month, and Northwest Film Forum’s Cadence Video Poetry Festival (April 24 - 27) deep-dives into the fascinating world of video poetry, combining text and moving image to elevate both forms. The weekend will feature short film screenings, talks, mixers and collaborative workshops.

Three inventive art markets

Punk Rock Flea Market (April 25 - 27) is taking over the old QFC on 15th Avenue on Capitol Hill with a sick roster of vendors selling cool, funky wares and live music. Down in Pioneer Square, Occidental Trading Post (April 26) will set up shop right in the middle of the neighborhood so you can do your vintage shopping en plein air. And over at the Duwamish Longhouse & Cultural Center, celebrate spring at the Duwamish Art Market (April 26 - 27) where you can pick up handmade crafts by Native artisans.