Anne Siems



Anne Siems
Bird Medium 2009
acrylic on wood panel
54" x 72"

Seattle artist Anne Siems paints ethereal figures in celestial places with careful detail and refinement.  Her dream-like depictions allude to childhood memories, wonderment, and 19^th century ideas in scientific study, psychoanalysis and photographic portraiture.  Elements, as if from a cabinet of curiosity, surround the figure: birds in cages, flowers, trees, trinkets, and lace.  This exhibition entitled, Creatures, continues her development of an allusive narrative, placing poised figures in personal and secluded tableaus.  The figures evoke lost memories with an old world aesthetic.  They are delicately rendered and composed, caught in that photographic moment of motionlessness.  Harmonious in color, her works enchant us in their dreamy and poetic reverie.

Born in Germany, Anne Siems received her MFA in 1991 from Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin.  She has exhibited in the United States since the mid-1980s, at galleries in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  She recently completed a commission for Nordstrom’s, Denver, CO.  Her work is in various public collections including the Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; Boise Art Museum, ID; Microsoft Collection, Redmond, WA; Tacoma Art Museum, WA; and University Hospital, University of Washington, Seattle.

More examples by Anne Siems

Jan Reaves


Jan Reaves
Spume 2009
oil on canvas
73" x 43"

 Jan Reaves writes about her latest exhibition, Elemental Humour:

"My work explores the experience of the body through materiality and gesture. I locate and reveal the body as a repository and conduit for memories and projections, a condensation of coded information.  The drawings and paintings provide a site for conversations about the body as an ancestral and cultural vessel.  On the first encounter with the work, my aim is to have the work “recognized by the body through feeling” before it is read.

The work in Elemental Humour ricochets between a comic book and a medical text; intertwined with influences of Brancusi, Phillip Guston, construction sites, oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty, the writings of the Scottish psychiatrist, R. D. Laing, in his work, Knots, a Kamakura Esoteric Buddha with crystal eyes and the mystery of the ocean."

Northwest artist, Jan Reaves received her MFA from the University of Oregon in 1983.  She has shown her work nationally over the past 30 years in numerous group exhibitions.  Her work has been included four times in the Oregon Biennial since 1985.  Other exhibitions include Western Oregon University, Monmouth; Western Michigan University; Kalamazoo; St. John's University, Jamaica, NY; and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, CA.  She has won various awards including the Juror's award for the 2001 Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum.  She has taught art throughout the Northwest and at U of O since 1998.      

More examples by Jan Reaves

Upcoming 2009 Exhibitions:

June 4 - 27
Connie Kiener – Recent Ceramics
Marlene Bauer – Small Works on Paper

July 2 - August 1
Michael Brophy – Recent Paintings
Gallery Group Show – Paintings, Sculpture, Works on Paper