Gustav Sohon (1825–1903) was an artist, interpreter, and topographical assistant. Sohon executed some of the earliest landscape paintings of the Pacific Northwest. One of his first assignments was with Lieutenant John Mullan, who was surveying the country between the Rocky and Bitterroot Mountains for the Pacific Railroad Surveys led by Isaac Stevens.
Read about Mullan in “Lost Highway.”
Take a break and color your own Bryan Hall.
Tarah Luke ’05 drew this abstract version of the iconic clock tower at WSU for Washington State Magazine. Read more about her work in coloring books for adults.
Download the coloring page (PDF)
An alumna artist brings out the kids in us
Tarah Luke felt like her hands would fall off after completing 120 pages in adult coloring books over five and a half weeks.
Luke ’05 didn’t color the pages, though. The Seattle-based artist designed and drew the images featured in the four books. The Eiffel Tower, a marching band, an octopus, and a movie camera are just a few examples from the series of themed volumes divided into places, music, animals, and inventions.
Luke’s collection is part of a growing national trend. Adult coloring books, usually featuring complex patterns within images, have become an increasingly popular … » More …
We trace the history of Harold Balazs ’51, one of the most prolific public artists in the Northwest. Settling in Washington, he has made our corner of the universe a nicer place to be.
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“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled,” writes art critic and author John Berger in his 1970s Ways of Seeing.
Berger, a mainstay for students of art and Western culture, examines how a large part of what we see when we look at something depends on our habits and conventions, the things we think we know.
As men and women, Berger notes, we may see things differently. Our teachers, our books, even our communities tell us what we’re looking at and what it means. Children see things differently, again. Lacking preconceptions, they may recognize qualities in a work of … » More …
Boxes filled with vintage paper, new paper, old books, fabrics, and other precious odds and ends neatly fill Cori Dantini’s home art studio. Over the years she has collected thousands of items, knowing someday they would come in handy. “If you don’t have it, you can’t use it,” she says with a smile.
That “use it” moment came in 2008. Over a long weekend with her husband Liam and son Henry away and an art show on the horizon, Dantini began to layer vintage papers and words. She sketched a pencil drawing over the paper and added ink and color. A month later, her first … » More …
W. Puck Brecher
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013
Eccentricity and odd artistic behavior in the Edo period of Japan (1600–1868) proliferated as an aesthetic subculture that both resisted the rigidity of the Tokugawa realm and served as a source of moral and cultural values.
This study by Brecher, an assistant professor of Japanese language at Washington State University, delves into the complex role of oddballs and eccentrics as sources of artistic … » More …
Taking the road less traveled can lead to serendipitous finds such as the whimsy of Emil Gehrke's windmill creations.
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A small collection of lively illustrations Nate Taylor has created for his friend and WSU Classmate, fantasy writer Patrick Rothfuss ’02 MA as well as some of Taylor’s other work.
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A video of Pat Siler and his downtown Pullman mural.
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