Seattle artists again find a place in the Miami sun

If you were standing across the street from Miami's Aqua Hotel last week, you could have looked up at its second-floor sun deck and seen force fields filled with starlings soar and dive across four video screens sandwiched among the palm trees.

Alex Schweder's four-channel video "Folded Murmurs" was the bye-bye-blackbird signature piece of the second floor at the Aqua Art Fair, but suspended below the second floor and above the hot tub in the first-floor courtyard was another signature sculpture: Leo Saul Berk's fully three-dimensional version of a cloud.

"Cloud" hung in the air like a thought balloon in a comic strip. Ripe blue and made of plastic, it's a geometric cloud dissection that allows viewers to see not only below, above and beside the cloud, but into it, too.

Now in its second year, Seattle's Aqua Art Fair has helped situate the Northwest on the international art map. Collectors who don't normally visit Seattle galleries found themselves at the South Florida version of Switzerland's Art Basel fair accumulating gallery cards and ordering art from young artists they've never heard of before.

Take Susie J. Lee. She graduated last year with a master of fine arts degree from the University of Washington. Scott Lawrimore of Lawrimore Project offered to represent her, but not until her video "Constellation" created enough of a stir to sell out its five-piece edition and three artist's proofs did she grasp that she could have the beginning of a sustainable career on her hands.

Offers to show with New York, Paris and Los Angeles galleries added to the giddy perception that she might be a hot property.

"I haven't been to the beach once," she said during the show. "My priority is to see as much art as I can. I wasn't thinking that my own work would become a focus, and of course I'm thrilled."

Now in its fifth year, Art Basel Miami Beach has become the single most important art-world gathering in the U.S., not only for the fair itself -- 200 galleries representing more than 2,000 artists -- but for all the art it attracts to its base.

"That's the difference between Miami and Seattle," said Seattle producer and performing artist Matthew Richter, who, despite the pleasure of a sunny Florida day, couldn't resist the chance to bash his Northwest hometown.

"When Basel opens in Miami, everybody gets into the act," he said. "Somebody told me he saw an art exhibit at a McDonald's. In Seattle, during Bumbershoot, theaters and galleries close. They say, 'What's the use? Everybody's either out of town or at Bumbershoot.' "

The satellite sphere

Basel/Miami includes galleries from around the world, yet it has a distinct East Coast bias. Los Angeles is underrepresented but doing better than San Francisco, with only a small handful of galleries in the main fair.

Any galleries make the cut from the Northwest?

No, and that's the reason Seattle painter Jaq Chartier and her husband, Dirk Park, one of the founders of Platform Gallery, decided to create their own satellite fair with a strong Northwest edge. Last year, there were four satellite fairs, including Aqua. This year, there were 12, and the Miami Herald listed Aqua first after Basel.

Aqua had only 40 spaces. Nada, Pulse, Ink and scope each had a far larger range and depth of artists represented, but there were reasons why Aqua was such a crowd favorite.

Instead of being inside a hotel in the sweltering heat or in a tent on a field, Aqua had an inviting, open-air structure. The hotel rooms all faced open courtyards, and the rooms were remarkably stripped down, with wood or concrete floors and white walls.

Instead of booths, each of the 40 Aqua rooms was a believable gallery space, and were within walking distance of the main fair -- and the beach.

Putting the art to bed

Last year, the Aqua design issue was a double-bed headboard in horizontal strips of pine, built into the wall. Most Aqua dealers pretended it wasn't there or placed a white board in front of it.

Lawrimore, who hadn't even opened his gallery in Seattle yet, took the trouble to take out the headboard and commission Cris Bruch to make small, fetishistic replicas surrounded by aluminum, turning a key obstacle into art.

This year, a lot of dealers took out the headboard but Lawrimore left his in, adding a ledge and putting a matching box in front of it to create a bar, its glass top running videos and he standing behind it, serving wine.

Lee's "Consolation," featuring a slowed-down Bach prelude stripped to the right-hand melody line, hung above the headboard, a layered wooden base with a curlicue kink in it that represents a kind of curl in the score. Across its face, a piece of thread smoked in a horizontal progression that turned the string to ash.

If there were a contest for gallery design, Lawrimore walked away with it this year.

"This is a Seattle gallery?" a man beside me asked incredulously, looking around. He appreciated the wit of Bruch's shiny red metal quote marks, subtly claiming ownership of whatever art hung inside them, in the best Duchampian mode.

For Aqua Art Miami, Chartier and Park picked six Seattle galleries (Lawrimore, Greg Kucera, James Harris, Howard House, Platform and Davidson Contemporary) along with Seattle's "Sudo Island," Michael van Horn's virtual world project, and Soil, a Seattle artist collective. Other Northwest galleries this year included Portland's Motel, Elizabeth Leach and Small A Projects, as well as Vancouver's Blanket. The rest of the Aqua Art lineup leaned heavily toward the West Coast but recognized up-and-coming galleries from Chicago (Lisa Boyle, Bucket Rider and Tony Wright's Bodybuilder & Sportsman), Boston (Allston Skirt) and Houston (Inman).

On the whole, Seattle galleries cleaned up. James Harris packed a lot into his space without crowding it, and the response to his artists was gratifying.

Who sold?

"Everybody," said Harris, standing Sunday night with gallery assistant Carrie Scott, both looking dazed. "But it's not just about sales. The connections and contacts for artists are crucial."

Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney, praised Steve Davis' tender yet stark portraits of youthful felons at Harris. Roy McMakin (also showing at Basel) drew his own audience to Aqua, but once there people also bought Claire Cowie, Patrick Hoderfield, Jeffry Mitchell, Mark Mumford, Mary Ann Peters and Claude Zervas.

There wasn't a single artist in the James Harris or Lawrimore lineup who failed to shine. Nearly as solid in the shine department were the wares at Howard House, Platform, Kucera and Soil.

Despite having a number of artists who deserved the limelight, the space at Davidson Contemporary never quite came together. The artists lacked visual cohesion. Hung together almost at random, they failed to ignite a conversation. Strong in Seattle, this gallery needs to think about presentation on the road. There's no reason for it to be Aqua's weak link.

The magic of magic

Themes these fairs shared?

"Magic tricks," said Seattle artist Susan Robb.

Well, yes. Last year, there were dozens of chandeliers, with Fred Wilson's shiny black beauty being the pinnacle. This year, things flew through the air, including a cigarette pack that wowed the crowd at Basel, and vertical rows of thread spools turned into Mona Lisa through a viewfinder at Flow.

Considering that the country is three years into a nightmare of a war, politics in art was muted. Stepping up to the plate at several fairs was Martha Rosler. She's famous for photo collages that linked carnage in Vietnam with cozy comforts on the American home front.

Thirty years later, the same types of collage work equally well, with Southeast Asian rice paddies replaced by desert sands.

After four days of speed looking, some artists wilted.

"How many words for saturation can you think of?" asked Debra Baxter, rhetorically. "If there were a way to puke art, I'd be doing it right now."

"It's inspiring, exciting and disgusting at the same time," said John Sutton.

Next year, however, both plan to return.

Reporting from the fairs tended to concentrate on money (a lot changed hands) and kooky performances, including a young artist who showed up at Aqua dragging a cabbage on a leash.

The cabbage dragger had nothing on Robb and her performance partner, Ben Beres of SuttonBeresCuller. She wore a ball gown and he a military uniform. Both donned monkey masks. With their furry heads held high, they sailed into parties and proceeded to mess with people.

"I was all over the guys," said Robb, "running my fingers in their hair and down their shirts."

"I was all over everybody," said Beres. "We were monkeys. That's what they do."

These monkeys moved to a constant camera flash. Wherever they went, they drew crowds armed with cell phones that snapped pictures. At 5 in the morning, Robb was still the darling of all she surveyed, but Beres found himself thrown in the ocean, monkey mask and all. Even in the world of fake primates, aggressive flirting with strangers works better for females.

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