It’s easy to feel like you’re slacking if you aren’t actively worrying about the harrowing global concerns currently grabbing headlines. But this newsletter is here to remind you that taking time for art is not only mentally restorative, it’s essential in a wider sense.
Choosing to spend time with art — to affirm its value even in a chaotic world — is an act of resistance. It’s a vote for creativity, curiosity and interest in different perspectives as some of the best human qualities in our quiver. And yes, it’s a means of giving our doomscrolling brains something much more fulfilling, maybe even revelatory, to chew on. So let’s do it.
Art x NW (formerly ArtSEA) is a weekly arts and culture newsletter from Cascade PBS. Read past issues and subscribe for more.
We’ll start with a beautiful new show at Seattle Asian Art Museum, Geometry of Light (through April 19, 2026). This immersive installation by Pakistani American artist Anila Quayyum Agha was inspired in various parts by Islamic art and architecture, Kara Walker’s cut-paper silhouettes and Richard Serra’s monumental metal sculptures — a diversity of influences that reflect an artist with a panoramic view.
As José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s outgoing deputy director, said at the press preview, “The whole space is the artwork.” It’s true: The exhibition envelops viewers in articulated shadows from the moment you walk in. Though there are few individual art objects in the show, their impact feels expansive, thanks to the artist’s clever manipulation of light and her choice to wash walls in vivid turquoise and pink.
Agha’s large-scale sculptures in laser-cut and lacquered steel are fully adorned in delicate, organic flourishes like those found in Arab mosques, tombs and palaces. Having grown up in Lahore, Pakistan, Agha felt the sting of sexist discrimination — women were not allowed inside many of the architectural marvels she admired. In response, she creates wondrous, suspended spaces that invite everyone in with the embrace of shadows and the shine of light.
But about that light — the bulbs are deliberately harsh and hard to look at, suggesting difficult truths behind pretty facades. See also the piece “This Is Not a Refuge,” a white houselike structure with no entrance. Its floral designs suggest an invitation, but as Diaz said, “It’s an architectural structure that can never be inhabited.”
Agha, on the other hand, welcomes visitors inside this exhibition, which feels peaceful and sacred. At times the lines and colors converge in a way that makes it seem like you’re embedded inside an immense stained glass window. She hopes people will stay a while, whether alone in silence or gathering for communion.
And speaking of places to commune with art — have you been to Pioneer Square’s First Thursday Artwalk lately? It has become a truly happening scene, bubbling over with people viewing and admiring and debating about art.
If you go tonight, check out Refuge, serene architectural paintings by Seattle’s Whiting Tennis (at Greg Kucera through Nov. 1 and a compelling pair with Geometry of Light); and Xavi Bou’s The Beauty of Bird Flight, an astounding photographic mapping of flight patterns (at Foster/White through Oct. 25).
The final episode of Art by Northwest: Season 2 is here, featuring Spokane artist Reinaldo Gil Zambrano.
On our first chilly day of shooting this episode, we met up with Gil Zambrano in the Browne’s Addition neighborhood of Spokane. Populated with stately mansions from the 1880s — many of which have since been subdivided into condos and apartments — it’s where the artist first landed in Spokane seven years prior, and where he grew to love taking walks.
With a deep interest in architecture, Gil Zambrano paid a lot of attention to the surrounding homes, including their windows, doors and porches — which his artist brain often anthropomorphized into faces — as well as to how they squared with the American dream he harbored while growing up in Caracas, Venezuela.
He was telling me all this as we walked along the sidewalk, cameras rolling, when all of a sudden a deer wandered into our view. “Look, a deer!” Gil Zambrano said. “Right here!” Appearing out of nowhere, the animal was something of a magical guest amid our camera crew.
And the moment was utterly fitting in terms of Gil Zambrano’s work: intricate woodblock prints tracing themes of home and featuring all manner of magical-realism moments and creatures.
His signature style is instantly recognizable: bold black lines and striking figures, intricate cross-hatching for shading and depth, surreal elements and little surprises (think kites, hot air balloons and paper airplanes). Gil Zambrano’s use of isometric projection sometimes makes for a topsy-turvy feeling, as in an M.C. Escher print. But the stories he tells visually are largely domestic, whether that means a barrio building or the memory of a favorite Venezuelan soup made by his grandmother.
Gil Zambrano’s first drawings were on the walls of his childhood home in Caracas. He says his parents gave over one of his bedroom walls for his creative experiments — and those early murals remain some 30 years later. “I mean, they’re really bad murals,” Gil Zambrano admits. “But my parents really want to keep it because it’s a reminder of how I started.”
Now he’s both a muralist and woodblock printer with a busy nonprofit — the Spokane Print & Publishing Center — which he co-founded to bring more people together around his favorite art form. His love of printing, presses and desire to build connections with the printing community worldwide led him to the Hello, Print Friend podcast, on which he’s now a co-host.
Hello, Print Friend has since taken Gil Zambrano to a print residency in Thailand, and to another new way of gathering community: directing documentaries.
In addition to short video visits to various print studios around the world, he’s made two recent films. Grabando Oaxaca, about printmaking in Oaxaca (screening online Oct. 4 at 9:30am PDT via St. Michael’s Print Shop in Newfoundland, Canada), and Impressions of Resistance: Printmaking in Puerto Rico.
“I have been in printing studios across the U.S., Mexico and other places around the world and it’s the same vibe,” Gil Zambrano says. “It’s a sense of generosity and openness from the people who love this process.”
Watch the episode right now, and look for my written profile of Gil Zambrano tomorrow morning.
Catching up on Season 2 of Art by Northwest? Check out our recent profiles of forest-floor photographer Melinda Hurst Frye and wildlife illustrator Justin Gibbens.
Finally, if you can’t seem to get out of your head, try watching other people deeply attuned to their physical bodies. There’s a ton of dance to see this weekend, and it might just inspire an experimental leap of your own.
< At On the Boards, esteemed dancers Eiko Otake and Wen Hui present What Is War (October 9–11). Otake is from Japan, Wen Hui is from China. Both grew up in the postwar era and hold powerful memories of the experience in their bodies. Together they share the physicality of these histories in deeply moving movement and video projection.
< Pacific Northwest Ballet opens its season with a treasure chest of Jewels (through Oct. 5), the beloved trio of Balanchine ballets with lush costumes and sparkling music by Fauré (Emeralds), Stravinsky (Rubies) and Tchaikovsky (Diamonds).
< Velocity Dance Center presents Out There (Oct. 2-4 and 9-11), a “West Coast experimental dance festival” featuring avant-garde artists from LA, Seattle and Vancouver. DJ sets follow, so you can get a move on too.
Looking for more regional arts coverage? Watch Art by Northwest, the new television series on Cascade PBS featuring artists from all over Washington. Season 2 episodes are releasing weekly from August 7 through October 2.
