Throwing some beer in the mix of UFOs, big foot sightings and snowmen made from dirt and straw, Cable Griffith has raised the level of expectation – and engagement – at the Kirkland Arts Center.
He came on as the exhibitions director two years ago and with a new string of leadership has moved KAC into a fresh direction. When Executive Director Christopher Shainin came aboard last year, “It kind of started this whole snowballing affect of renewal throughout the whole organization,” Griffith said on a recent afternoon at KAC.
A traditional oil painter by trade, the New York native and UW graduate started out at KAC teaching drawing and painting for children and adults before he was asked to take the reigns as exhibitions director.
With his desire to engage his Eastside audience, Griffith has curated curious exhibits, established a curator training program and programs such as the increasingly popular “BruTube” that offers participants free beer and artful conversation each month.
The Reporter chatted with Griffith to find out more about what’s happening – and what’s in store – for the Kirkland Arts Center.
How did this spirit of renewal come about in the past couple years?
Griffith: Fresh blood is always refreshing in any organization, but when Shainin came on in being the executive director he was very much interested in living up to what we said we did in our mission, things like being a leader. It was this kind of language he really looked at and said, ‘Are we really doing that?’ He had that outside perspective.
So I think we’ve become a really great team and we all respect each other’s strengths and knowing that we can all rely on each other to push the whole thing along. Because there is a lot of stuff that we do, from education, to exhibitions to various other components in between like lectures. It’s been a wonderful turnaround.
I also started looking at who our audience is. A lot of the arts were from Seattle, so … Seattle was engaged and the Eastside didn’t know who these people were necessarily. And that’s partly why we’re out here too, because a lot of really fantastic artists do live in Seattle and we want to remain this beacon out here showing people and bringing these fresh really new exciting ideas here and engaging the audience and engaging the artists that are out here because there are plenty of them. But I have found areas away from urban centers, just in general, they become kind of insular and they need something to keep these fresh ideas going. And that’s one of the things that I’m really proud of playing that role out here and challenging people with new, exciting ideas.
What kinds of changes have you helped bring about?
Griffith: BruTube (a free evening of curated YouTube videos and beer) is a good example of something that people do anyways. They gather around with family and friends and they’ll say after dinner, ‘Oh, did you see this video, you’ve got to see this.’ And that naturally leads to, ‘Oh, that reminds me of this, let me show you this.’ And these wonderful moments where you’re sharing and thinking and having fun and laughing and there’s this community engagement and the idea for BruTube came out of that.
It’s something that we’re already doing, let’s just make it a more social event and the idea of having a theme makes it more of a challenge for people to get six curators each time with six different perspectives and it’s made it more of a performance and an interactive show.
BruTube is an amazing resource for people to talk about issues about things like fear, or outsiders, and re-contextualizing things that already exist, which is what Brutube is in a nutshell. I’m hoping the Eastside gets more engaged with it and hopefully it’ll connect them with the exhibition that’s on. We just want to get people engaged and realize that we’re vital to their community.
(The next BruTube – “Fear Factor/Beer Attractor” – is at 7 p.m. Oct. 30 at the Kirkland Arts Center. This Halloween-inspired theme will focus on the phenomenon of fear and the resulting cultural responses.)
Who’s idea was it to bring in the False Proof exhibit (the KAC recently featured this exhibit that addresses time-tested phenomena such as UFOs, sea monsters and the paranormal)?
Griffith: This is the second show that I’ve curated. It’s always been a source of fascination to me, that realm of paranormal, supernatural and mysterious stuff and there’s all these great recurring themes within this world. What’s interesting to me is it demonstrates this common bubble that people preserve that’s kind of on this threshold of what they believe and what they don’t believe. But people hold these bubbles for certain things: UFOs, ghosts, big foot, sea creatures. I wanted to find artists that share an interest in that kind of stuff that also preserve that bubble in some way. It didn’t close the door on it completely because they like the whole “what if.” It’s a wonderful place to be, especially as an artist.
Also what really interests me about this is all these contemporary myths are secular stories that all address fundamental questions about the universe. Like big foot and ideas of evolution, or what if they were still here. Or aliens, what might human beings evolve to in the future or ghosts – what happens to us when we die?
What’s been the biggest challenge for the Kirkland Arts Center?
Griffith: There’s a line sometimes. I want to have things that are engaging and challenging and at the same time I want it to be open and welcoming and I don’t want people to be afraid to ask questions. And there’s a fine line with that sometimes.
Also, I wish we were able to engage younger kids and not have art seem like this inaccessible, over-their-heads kind of thing when really it is so fundamental. I certainly want to inspire the Eastside audience to be engaged. I wish we had a young artists community out here with an artists studio center where artists could live and work. There certainly are many artists on the Eastside, but not many of them deal with contemporary issues. So that’s one of our unique angles here and we hope to remain so for a long time.
What’s the current exhibit all about?
Griffith: The (current) exhibit is called “Changes” and its curated by Jason Wood. It includes five Seattle artists: Matt Browning, Drew Daly, Brendan Jansen, Sean M. Johnson and Shawn Patrick Landis. We like to show a diverse range of things. We’ve had a photography show, painting, ceramics show and a lot of multi-media.
I also wanted to have a contemporary sculpture show that dealt with form in a non-traditional sense. I wanted to give the opportunity for someone who had potential to develop their curatorial practice and that’s a big part of what we do here too.
Jason uses materials that have a given function and kind of turns them around and really flips things. You see the material or object in a completely new way. He was able to find artists that do similar things. These five artists play with material or pre-existing objects and somehow really surprise you with what they come up with (he cites an example where Landis makes a snowman out of dirt and straw).
What else is new with the Kirkland Arts Center?
Griffith: We used to have the (annual) holiday arts sale in the gallery and we have an opportunity this year to have it in a retail space in downtown Kirkland. It’s going to be in Parkplace next to the frame shop. It’s a great space and it has the foot traffic. So we’re focusing from November to December like we normally would with the holiday sale, but we have an option to extend that lease six additional months with no strings attached. If it works out, we can offer opportunities for artists to sell their work.
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620 Market Street
