Writer/Artist/Adventurer Tessa Hulls will be painting in The Project Room for the next few days preparing for an upcoming show of her highly detailed gouache paintings inspired, in part, by her travels. If you have stopped in to TRP the last week, you might have seen her hard at work. Her show opens on August 5th at Evo’s Timesinfinity Gallery, at 122 Northwest 36th Street, Seattle from 6-9pm, so she will be working extra hard, because she is also preparing to head off to Antarctica to work in a research station kitchen. The ‘Adventurer’ title is no joke.
Tessa will also be a part of a round-table discussion I will be hosting very soon here at TPR about “Artists That Interview”, on August 8th at 4:30pm 7th at 1pm, along with Sharon Arnold, Saskia Delores, Joey Veltkamp and Amanda Manitach. Since I’m incorporating the interview format into my Solstenen project learning process, I want to pick these brains, and just hear about what brought them to incorporating interviewing into their art practice. Though I don’t have a broad understanding of this, it seems to me just one more example of creative people filling a void in the Seattle art/creative world that needed filling. We’ll find out more…
I met Tessa when she approached me about an interview for Redefine Magazine surrounding my recent show at Roq La Rue Gallery, ‘Honey and Lightening’. When she came to my studio, I was really almost taken aback at how much she had researched my work, and her attention to detail, and willingness to draw out some difficult things to articulate. Her article brings to the surface small details that are significant to me, but quite subtle and usually overlooked. It was a marked difference from some of the off-the cuff writing I have seen about myself in the press over the years in Seattle. I know that is a particular approach, to not research the artist, but the inaccuracies have been bizarre to read! So I want to know why and how she does this, and maintains her connection to her own work and a connection to a wandering life as a compulsive traveler. Each of the other artist/interviewers on the panel have a very different approach to the process of digging deeper into an artist’s work and process, so I am looking forward to stretching my own abilities as I begin to use this tool to learn about why others make what they do.
Anyhow, come visit Tessa as she works here during the open studio hours at TPR; M, W, Th, Fr. 10:30 am – 2:30 pm. Tessa usually is in around 11am…
