Heather Hart:

Carpentry, Drawing, Social Practice

Heather Hart describes her work as coming from a position of the in-between. “I love the slippage between a story I tell and what my listener hears,” she says. “I hope to create work that questions the idea of a singular read and asks visitors to take an active role in the art viewing process through participation.”

Her audiences aren’t just invited to view her drawings, but often to participate in their creation, and to not just walk around her installations—like the “Western Oracle,” the roofline of a large, craftsman-looking house jutting out of the ground in Seattle’s Sculpture Park as if a whole house were buried underneath—but to play music on the roof and climb in the windows. Her viewers can even have a hand in the building, rooting her art in the craft that inspired it. “Like traditional carpentry,” she says, “I always build with a team.”

In a collaboration with the artist Jina Valentine, Hart has co-created The Black Lunch Table, a traveling series of dialogues with local black artists and the community at large rooted in their observation that in public settings like school cafeterias, black students can tend to self-segregate. “We sit together,” she says, among many reasons, “because we share common backgrounds, face common challenges, and because we have a vested interest in our communal well-being.”

An extension of the Black Lunch Table, the BLT Wikipedia Hackathon, is a research and writing project that seeks to help communities like ours bring visibility to their artists of color by fleshing out their biographies on Wikipedia.

Hart will show a selection of drawings and have a Wikipedia hacking kiosk set-up at the Terrain Gallery (304 W. Pacific) throughout March. The gallery is open from 4-7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 1-7 p.m. Satruday. You can view Hart’s work online at heather-hart.com.

Ryan Ricard and Nick Pontarolo: 

CustomCraft Northwest

Furniture pieces made of reclaimed wood and metal often have a rich patina that can only come from decades if not centuries of use. For Ricard and Pontarolo, it’s nicks, blemishes and contours that come with use that make repurposed materials truly special. “Everything has a story,” they say, and by reworking and reimagining that story into a bench or a table or a coffeeshop bar, the pair believes they are “paying tribute to the men and women who originally either worked the wood or rolled the steel.”

Both Ricard and Pontarolo are from Spokane and have known each other for more than 25 years, and while the men hew their incredible furniture pieces out of metal, wood, stone, glass, they say the real secret is in their collaboration. They love creating with their hands, but “most rewarding is the time spent together building and brainstorming.”

They continue to grow and build a brand that is reputable for high quality work, reasonable prices, and to encourage all clients to come and get their hands dirty, to encourage each client to take part in their vision.

You can find Ricard and Pontarolo’s creations on instagram @customcraftnw