Elizabeth Aline Colburne (1885-1948) was one of the most accomplished artists ever active in Washington State. An integral part of the regional Arts and Crafts Movement, she is known today for her extraordinary color woodcuts produced during the 1920s and 1930s. These prints depict the Pacific Northwest landscape in a technique that was highly influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e prints. Colborne elected to design, carve, and print her own editions, using brilliant colors and innovative, multiple overlay techniques. Evergreen Muse is the first in-depth study of her art and presents all the known color woodcuts that she created.
In addition to color woodcuts, Colborne made drawings in graphite and colored pencil, as well as small, intimate and highly detailed gouache paintings. Born in South Dakota, the artist divided her time between Bellingham, Washington, and New York, where she studied with Rockwell Kent, Robert Henri, and Allen Lewis and became a leading children's book illustrator.
David F. Martin is an independent art historian and curator in Seattle.

Evergreen Muse: The Art of Elizabeth Colborne

Arts & Photography

Martin, David F.

History & Criticism

Whatcom Museum

Internationally acclaimed fine-art photographer Ella McBride (1862–1965) played an important role in the Northwest's photography community and was a key figure in the national and international pictorialist photography movements. Despite her many accomplishments, which include managing the photography studio of Edward S. Curtis for many years and being an early member of the Seattle Camera Club, McBride is little known today. Captive Light: The Life and Photography of Ella E. McBride reconsiders her career and the larger pictorialist movement in the Northwest. The book accompanies an exhibition that is co-curated by David F. Martin, a Seattle gallerist and leading art historian on Northwest artists of the early twentieth century, and Margaret E. Bullock, curator of collections and special exhibitions at Tacoma Art Museum. Captive Light is part of the Tacoma Art Museum's Northwest Perspective Series on significant Northwest artists.

Captive Light: The Life and Photography of Ella E. McBride

Bullock, Margaret E.

Individual Artists

Tacoma Art Museum

One of the state's oldest arts organizations, Women Painters of Washington was founded in 1930 with the aim of overcoming limitations faced by women artists. Over its 75-year history, the group has held among its membership talented artists of national prominence whose stories have not been widely shared, until now. From founding members' early efforts to support fellow women artists, to contemporary members' cultural exchanges and international exhibitions, the story of Women Painters of Washington is told by guest-curator David F. Martin. Martin examines historic members' artistic achievements and their recognition in the national and international art world, which has historically been overlooked by Northwest scholars, collectors, museums and galleries. In addition, a selection of current WPW members' work is highlighted, demonstrating the vitality of the organization in its 75th year. Abundant color plates are featured throughout the book, clearly illustrating the talent and innovation of these artists.

Enduring Legacy: Women Painters of Washington 1930-2005

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Whatcom Museum of History & Art

Richard Bennett (1899–1971) was a nationally known printmaker, painter, and illustrator, born in Ireland but raised in Washington State. He later divided his time between New York City and Seattle. A leading children’s book author and illustrator, he received national recognition for his woodblock prints and engravings. He was part of the inner circle of leading Northwest artists including Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. In New York he became close to a group of artists and scholars that included the Abstract Expressionist Theodoros Stamos, etcher Thomas Handforth, and the scholar Edmond Tolk. Among the many children’s books he illustrated are the Paul Bunyon stories, Treasure Island, and Betty MacDonald’s The Egg and I and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. David Martin places Bennett's work in the context of major American printmakers and illustrators and the changes in book production inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement.

The Art of Richard Bennett

Museum of History and Industry

Territorial Hues: The Color Print and Washington State, 1920-1960 will consist of prints that display the cultural and stylistic influences used by Washington State artists to produce highly exceptional works that reflect the color, light, and atmosphere that is unique to this region. The book focuses on several mediums including color woodcut, intaglio, serigraphy, and lithography. The influences of Japanese prints and regional appropriations of international movements will be examined as well as the local production of white-line prints.

Territorial Hues: The Color Print and Washington State, 1920-1960

History

Americas

Cascadia Art Museum

Invocation of Beauty accompanies the first full-scale exhibition of this important American photographer. Drawing almost exclusively from the family archives, the book includes many images that have been previously unpublished. Soichi Sunami was born in Okayama, Japan in 1885 and immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty and arrived in Seattle in 1907. Initially aspiring to be a painter and sculptor, he studied with local artist Fokko Tadama and became part of the Seattle art community. During this time, he became seriously interested in photography and apprenticed with important local figures such as Wayne Albee and Frank Asakichi Kunishige. He soon found employment in the photography studio of Ella McBride, who became associated with Seattle's Cornish School in its early years. Important modern dancers such as Anna Pavlova and Ted Shawn performed in Seattle and were photographed by the McBride Studio through Nellie Cornish's connections. Many were or became major figures of modern dance. When Sunami moved to New York in 1922, he attended the Art Students League to advance his art training. He met numerous visual artists who posed in his studio and employed him to photograph their works. Retaining his interest in modern dance from his connections in Seattle, Sunami soon began a collaboration with Martha Graham, producing some of the most iconic images of her dance performances. In 1930, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. asked him to become staff photographer at the new Museum of Modern Art. During the next thirty-eight years he produced more than twenty thousand large-format negatives for the MOMA archive and independently created an important body of work in the field of modern dance photography. The book includes Sunami's rare, early pictorialist images of the Northwest landscape and follows his journey to the east coast where he became internationally recognized for his brilliant studies of dancers and cultural figures of the era.

Invocation of Beauty: The Life and Photography of Soichi Sunami

The first study of how gay and lesbian artists influenced and established a regional cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking publication chronicles and contextualizes pioneering gay and lesbian artists from the pre-Stonewall era. Looking back as far as the 1910s, museum curator David F. Martin has unearthed astonishing works by both lesser-known and internationally famous artists. Created primarily from original research drawn from the artists? unpublished archival materials, and produced in conjunction with a previous exhibition at the Cascadia Art Museum, The Lavender Palette consists of three essays as well as individual biographies of thirteen artists. Generously illustrated with artwork and personal photographs, The Lavender Palette sheds light on significant contributions from a marginalized and understudied group. Throughout, Martin aims to amend the formerly pejorative use of the colors lavender and purple in association with homosexuality as signs of weakness and frivolity, and to establish the effect these artists had in defining a regional aesthetic that remains to this day. This publication is distributed for the Cascadia Art Museum.

The Lavender Palette: Gay Culture and the Art of Washington State

One of the leading Northwest artists of his generation, George Tsutakawa (1910–97) is internationally known for his sculpture and fountain designs. However, a lesser-known aspect of his career was the production of blockprints, watercolors, and works on paper that began in the 1920s and continued throughout his career. 
Born in Seattle and educated in Japan, Tsutakawa had early success while still in high school. He attended the University of Washington, where he received an MFA in sculpture in 1950, and became an influential instructor at the university's School of Art from 1947 to 1976. 
Drawn from the Tsutakawa estate, most of the works shown here have never been seen previously by the public. These early works display concepts and inspirations that would inform Tsutakawa's aesthetic throughout a long and distinguished career. Contextual works by Tsutakawa's instructors and contemporaries provides a broader understanding of his oeuvre.\nExhibition dates: Cascadia Art Museum, December 1, 2022–March 26, 2023

George Tsutakawa: Early Works on Paper

This is the first study of the work of Chao-Chen Yang (1909?1969), an important Seattle photographer who gained national prominence in the mid-twentieth century. Born in Hangzhou, China, Yang received his art training at the University of Hsin-Hwa in Shanghai. After graduating, he became art director for the Government Institute of Nanking. In 1933 he moved to Chicago as chancellor of the Chinese Consulate and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. Initially trained as a painter, he later used photography as his main medium for artistic expression. In 1938 Yang was transferred to Seattle as chancellor of the Chinese Consulate and became actively involved with the Seattle Photographic Society. He was also an influential art and photography instructor and worked tirelessly to advance Chinese culture in the United States. Yang won numerous awards in important photography salons and became a Fellow of the Photographic Society of America, the Professional Photographers Association of America, and the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. He was a pioneer in color photography in the Northwest in both advertising and the fine arts. Exhibition dates: Cascadia Art Museum, November 9, 2023?February 11, 2024

Full Light and Perfect Shadow: The Photography of Chao-Chen Yang

A major rediscovery in the history of Northwest art Beulah Loomis Hyde (1886?1983) was an important cultural figure in Tacoma, Washington, as both a contemporary painter and a patron of the arts. Growing up in the rugged Northwest environment, Hyde was an athletic individualist who defied the societal restrictions of her time. She signed her paintings with initials to conceal her gender from possible limitations or exclusionary practices. Her early painting career was interrupted by the raising of three sons. After her sons matured, she returned to painting and expanded on her interest in modernism. In the 1930s, she began a series of paintings that utilized industrial and architectural subjects as her main themes. She developed a highly personal and sophisticated style that incorporated elements of precisionism, surrealism, and geometric abstraction. Although Hyde was considered one of the more accomplished and progressive regional artists in the early to mid-twentieth century, her work has remained primarily in the collections of her descendants, unavailable to the general public. With the resurgence of interest in and scholarship on the accomplishments of American women artists, this book and the corresponding exhibition introduce and reexamine a major talent whose work transcends the boundaries of gender and regionalism.

Structure and Form: The Art of B. L. Hyde

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