When you walk into the Venus Is Missing installation at Seattle Art Museum (through Jan. 4, 2026), you’re greeted by two bubblegum-pink sculptures set against dark-blue walls. One is a giant ball barrette, towering over visitors, and the other is a funky floating spaceship, angled up toward the stars and surrounded by hand-blown glass bubbles and a disco ball suspended from the ceiling.
With Pop Art know-how and a beam-me-up “portal,” multimedia artist Tariqa Waters — who was profiled in our first season of Black Arts Legacies (BAL) — invites terrestrial viewers to dive headfirst into an exploration of nostalgia, time and memory.
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As it happens, Venus Is Missing has landed during the ripest part of the current BAL season, amid our fourth year of showcasing Seattle’s influential Black artists, past and present.
Since I’m the lead writer for the project, June marks the culmination of my months of research, interviews and rabbit holes, when the result of all my crazed writing and editing sessions finally becomes available for public consumption. (See also: BAL video profiles by filmmaker Tifa Tomb!). Each year, BAL is an opportunity for me to learn more about artists I’m already familiar with and encounter a few completely new to me.
One artist who encapsulated both sides of that experience was the late photographer Al Smith, whose prolific photographic catalog of legendary jazz performers and Seattle life — specifically Black middle-class life — is a portal into another time. I’d certainly seen some of Smith’s work in articles and even on bus stops around town, but BAL (our special Black History Month edition) gave me the chance to get up close and personal with his photos. After viewing just a portion of Smith’s 40,000-photo archive, I feel like I understand and visualize the city’s history much more clearly.
The Museum of History & Industry maintains Smith’s vast archive, and several years ago made a push to identify the people, places and events the photographer caught on film. (Smith often wrote identifying details on the back of his pictures, but many went unlabeled.) I encourage everyone to explore MOHAI’s online collection of Smith’s photos because you never know what — or who — you might recognize.
On the other hand, a BAL artist already super-familiar to me was sculptor Henry Jackson-Spieker (featured this season). When I started as a full-time writer at The Stranger many years ago, his work was among some of the first I felt compelled to check out.
I remember going to a Pioneer Square art walk in February 2019 and almost getting physically entangled in his Sight Lines at Method Gallery. Taking in the installation, I had to be aware of my body, my bag, my hair in a way that I didn’t need to in any other gallery I visited that night. Henry’s installations are clever webs for viewers to find themselves caught in, and, in a way, they demand your immediate attention. Many of Henry’s pieces are completed only through your interacting with them.
This season of Black Arts Legacies also highlights two artists whose work I was familiar with only in passing. We kicked off Season 4 with choreographer Kisha Vaughan — which felt right, simply because her story is so unique.
Kisha didn’t actually attend a dance class until her early 20s, well past the age when many successful dancers and choreographers get their start. Yet today she’s a pillar in the city, committed to elevating the hip-hop dance community (and getting dancers paid gigs).
Pop culture often puts an age limit on growth and change, particularly in the arts, and particularly in an art form so physically demanding as dance. So to see Kisha not only learn but excel at her craft comparatively “late” made me wonder about all the other stories and abilities I’ve yet to tap.
As for the other performing artists recently featured, I’d heard about drummer Kassa Overall’s musical prowess, but I hadn’t actually taken the time to really sit with his work until writing his profile. And, boy, was I missing out.
It was such a treat to dive deep into his discography, which effortlessly blends the tenets of jazz and hip-hop, using rhythm as a throughline between the two. In Kassa’s music, it’s easy to see how both genres are kinda like different sides of the same coin, emerging from African diasporic musical traditions and deeply rooted in improvisation. His deftness on the drums gives his music a sensibility all his own — equal parts playful and serious.
Luckily, I had the chance to see Kassa in action at Jazz Alley a few months ago. He was on deck as drummer for NEA Jazz Master and saxophonist Gary Bartz. Seeing Kassa in the context of playing alongside one of jazz’s very best musicians only cemented my belief that he’s truly one of our generation’s greats.
The web of BAL artists points toward the future with strong roots in the past — evident in two new exhibits showcasing artists who’ve passed, but who live on in their work. At Cascadia Art Museum, the ecstatic paintings of Milt Simons (who I profiled in Season 3) are on display in Harmony of the Spheres: The Art of Milt Simons with Marianne Hanson and Paul Dusenbury (through Aug. 17).
Simons died in 1973 at age 50 and — because the painter/poet/musician was so underrecognized in his lifetime — I spent a lot of time in the UW Special Collections looking for firsthand documents and images of his paintings. Being able to see his works IRL will be a real delight.
And moving from one of the least well-known BAL artists to one of the best-known: Next month, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art will premiere Many Hats, One Spirit (July 4 - Sept. 17), a retrospective of works by sculptor and painter James W. Washington, Jr. (profiled in Season 1). The exhibit will also feature pieces by 30 current and former artists-in-residence at Seattle’s Dr. James and Janie Washington Cultural Center.
Black Arts Legacies is such a fun project for me because I can connect the community of Black artists with one another, constantly shaping my understanding of the city around me. I hope you all feel that way, too. And we have two more BAL Season 4 artists to be revealed over the coming weeks — so stay tuned!
