January 2011

During the month of January 2011, VALISE gallery is pleased to host the work of two Vashon artists, Beverly Naidus (a member of the VALISE collective) and Shahreyar Ataie.  

Beverly Naidus will be sharing mixed media works and will solicit stories from gallery visitors as part of Reframing Eden: Phase #2 – Gathering Pollen.  In 2010 Beverly Naidus was awarded the Royalty Research Foundation grant (from the University of Washington) to create a community-based, eco-art project entitled Eden Reframed.  This public project will remediate soil, offer a permaculture designed “food forest,” and share the stories of Vashon farmers and gardeners in sculptural story hives.  The exhibition will display various proposals and explorations of the project’s form and content.  During the month of January, Beverly Naidus will be in residence in the gallery collecting stories about what has inspired Vashon farmers and gardeners to plant seeds. 

Naidus is currently on sabbatical from UW Tacoma where she has taught art for social change since 2003.  Her work has received recognition in the New York and Los Angeles art worlds, and has been written about in several books.  She has exhibited her work internationally and travels frequently to give talks and workshops.  She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame (New Village Press, 2009). Her local involvement includes being a founding member of SEEDS along with her husband, Bob Spivey.  She shares her home with her husband and their teenage son, Sam, three cats and her housemate, Jenny Bell. Her websites are www.beverlynaidus.net, www.artsforchange.org and www.edenreframed.blogspot.com.

Shahreyar Ataie will exhibit a new site-specific installation at VALISE gallery entitled Sheep. Shahreyar states about his work, “It is an interesting psyche that can burden a source of food and clothing with enumerable psychological, cultural, and spiritual meaning. From surrogate sacrificial offering to a symbol for our desire to find the meaning of life, from Abraham and the fortunate Isaac to Jason and the adventurous Argonauts, sheep have played a pivotal role in the development of human history. It is this love-eat relationship that I am interested in - this total indifference to our simile for innocence- this idyll that we pillage repeatedly without remorse- this relationship that we take for granted and use.” 

Ataie states that he believes long drawn out Biographies only serve to irritate the reader, in this spirit of focused brevity he presents his own: “Shahreyar Ataie lives on Vashon with his wife Jutta and two cats Gianni and LittleMan.”

VALISE gallery is open every Saturday from 10 am – 5 pm, on Thursday evenings from 5-8 pm, and by appointment.  To call for an appointment, please contact Beverly at 206.463.4223. VALISE is located at 17633 Vashon Highway SW, on Vashon Island, just a quick ferry ride from West Seattle, Washington. Click here to find us on the Vashon Map.