ArtSEA: The surprising Seattle connection to ‘The White Lotus’

During a recent bout of insomnia, I attempted to quiet my restless brain by thinking about the opening sequence of The White Lotus. (Hey, whatever works!)

Sleuthing the title credits of popular streaming shows reached a fever pitch this spring, with fans like me poring over the animated openings of series like White Lotus and Severance for clues as to what fate might befall beloved characters.

So with the White Lotus: Season 3 soundtrack boop-boop-booping through my head, I visualized the tableau of intriguing images. While this didn’t end up helping me sleep, it did make me wonder who came up with the wild array of human-headed birds, menacing monkeys and voracious sea monsters. 

And wouldn’t you know — it’s a Seattle-based creative studio.

Plains of Yonder (aka Katrina Crawford and Mark Bashore) created the opening sequences for all three seasons of White Lotus, pitching their original concept to series creator Mike White as a sort of elaborate wallpaper pattern you might find in the fictional hotel chain. (“When we first pitched it, we were like, Oh my God, we just sold wallpaper,” Bashore told Print magazine.)

For Season 3, set at a luxury resort in Thailand, Crawford traveled to Bangkok and studied the painted temples, sitting in on intricate restoration work and photographing mural figures. Using this source material, the team then digitally collaged, painted and invented images tied to the script — adding visual mysteries to draw viewers in. 

“It’s fun creating little whispering puzzles for people to decipher,” Bashore noted in the Print story. Acknowledging that sometimes fans are “wildly off” in their theories about what the images signal, he said, “Good art should do that; not be obvious and spoon-fed.”

In an email interview, Bashore told me the goal for the White Lotus sequences was to “create a netherworld between still art and film — which is a very unique thing for television.”

The duo has lived in Seattle for 18 years, and for inspiration love to visit places like Kubota Gardens, the Bloedel Reserve and Frye Art Museum. “We also use our local Seattle library a LOT,” Bashore wrote. “Whenever we start a project Katrina comes home with a boatload of books related to the subject.” (For White Lotus 3: it was books on Thai mythology and art.)

Another creative influence Bashore cited: Northwest nature. While you won’t find it in any White Lotus credits, as those are very location-specific, you will see it in several shorts Plains of Yonder filmed outdoors for local Westland Distillery. 

“For Westland, we filmed centipedes and snails and birds,” Bashore told me, “which is probably unusual for whiskey branding.” But creatures of all kinds are a theme across the team’s various projects. “We can’t remember the last time we made something that did not have animals snuck into the work,” he said.

Even Saturday Night Live has noticed how creatures are featured, adding its own take on Plains of Yonder visuals in last weekend’s White Lotus spoof. 

If you delight in dissecting animated title credits for the drama they hold within, you’re going to want to check out the work of painter Hyunjeong Lim.

The South Korean artist came to the U.S. in 2018, first landing in San Francisco and then moving to Seattle during the pandemic. She creates fascinating and mysterious landscapes filled with secret surprises and the kind of “whispering puzzles” that make careful inspection a treat. “As an artist, I believe that my role is to evoke the sense of fantasy,” she writes on her website, “which is naturally inherent in all human beings.” 

In the exhibit Trip West (through April 24 at Gallery 4Culture), Lim’s fantastical elements include strange birds, gumdrops with arms and legs (some of which are paddleboarding), a naked woman emerging from a shell and figures watching the scene from behind rocky outcroppings — all amid surreal settings that combine natural elements from the diverse places she has lived.

Hieronymus Bosch fans may spy familiar sights — funnel-headed creatures, a fish with human legs — which hearken back to the Dutch artist’s iconic Garden of Earthly Delights. Lim says much of her work is a “response” to Bosch, as well as to Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel, both of whom she admires for their use of landscape as a way to “describe an artist’s inner view.”

And here’s one more local show that would definitely make for a great opening sequence teeming with mysterious creatures: Mio Asahi’s Stories in the Wind (through April 26 at Davidson Galleries).

The contemporary Japanese print artist invents fantastical imagery influenced by folklore and ancient tapestries. In Asahi’s enchanting etching-and-aquatint works, rabbit-eared women row gondolas, fish dream of deer that have branches for legs and several folks exhibit skills befitting the House of Dragons. Sounds like the perfect opening for an imaginative new series.

Next up: Several captivating new takes on memoir.

< Vauhini Vara: Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age. The Mercer Island-raised tech journalist and novelist (The Immortal King Rao) presents an inventive memoir with an AI assist. The project started when she asked Chat GPT to write about her sister’s death. The resulting essay (“Ghosts”) went viral for being both touching and very creepy.

In this new book, Vara weaves personal stories about growing up in the Northwest with AOL and early chat rooms alongside a chatbot’s responses to each chapter she feeds it. “The narrative is a poignant reflection on the personal and societal transformations ushered in by the internet,” the AI responds. That’s true, and this clever exploration of tech’s undue influence in our lives also resonates with aching humanity. (Reading at Elliott Bay Books April 23 at 7 p.m.)

< Ahamefule Oluo: The Things Around Us (via Intiman Theatre at Broadway Performance Hall, April 24 - May 4). The talented Seattle musician/composer/comedian/ writer/filmmaker/actor presents a personal story in the form of monologues and live music. If you’ve seen the first two installments of this loose trilogy (Now I’m Fine and Susan), you already know: Oluo has an incredible knack for intimate storytelling set to an irresistible groove of their own creation.

Bonus: You can already listen to the accompanying studio album on Bandcamp, featuring Oluo on trumpet, clarinet and “household objects.” I’ve been doing so this month and highly recommend it.

< Suchitra Mattai: she walked in reverse and found their songs (through July 20 at Seattle Asian Art Museum). This Indo-Caribbean artist (now based in Denver) creates stunning textile sculptures by weaving traditional saris into mesh nets and incorporating found objects. In this vibrant and textural show, she highlights the stories of her ancestors — indentured laborers in Guyana who were originally from India. Included is her reimagining of her grandparents’ home in Guyana, a structure that appears soft and welcoming, and at the same time tenuous.