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Spring 2024

Artists

Winter 2010

About the cover: Civility in Politics by Joe Ciardiello

Winter 2010 cover
Avid readers of the New York Times Book Review will undoubtedly recognize the illustration style on the Washington State Magazine Winter 2010/11 issue cover is that of Joe Ciardiello. “Civility in Politics” depicts three prominent WSU alumni at the Washington state capital: State Representative Sam Hunt ’67 (left), Secretary of State Sam Reed ’63, ’68 (middle), and State Senator Linda Evans Parlette ’68 (right).

Representative Hunt represents the 22nd District which includes Olympia and surrounding areas. He is chair of the State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee, serves on the Education Committee and the Ways and … » More …

About the cover:Stone City West by Robin Moline

WSM Fall 2010 cover art

The cover illustration for Washington State Magazine’s Fall 2010 issue—Cultivated Landscapes—pays homage to Grant Wood’s famous Stone City, Iowa painting of 1930. It was Wood’s first major landscape and is now on permanent display at Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum. Wood is most closely associated with the American movement of Regionalism and advanced figurative painting of rural American themes in an aggressive rejection of European abstraction.

Stone City, Iowa, Grant Wood, 1930

Stone City, Iowa was painted the same year as his seminal American Gothic. Wood by now had abandoned his earlier Impressionist-inspired … » More …

Summer 2010

World of Mateo

 

Anaheim VacationlandAnaheim Vacationland by Matthew Leiker, 2007, acrylic on board

 

The work of Matthew Leiker

WSU Museum of Art, May 18–July 2

 

The World of Mateo is filled with images of an American subculture known by no particular name but seemingly related to road culture, California style, album jacket graphics of the 50s and our affinity for Hawaiian island iconography. Mateo celebrates a time of Tiki lounges, drive-in theater refreshment cartoons, and a plethora of music that bubbles vibrantly with the hypnotic tones of the ukulele, inspiring his imagination to create … » More …

Winter 2006

An equation for beauty

The painter spends his days on the third floor of an ancient biscuit plant in a seedy section of industrial Ballard. The building, just a block from the Ballard Bridge, houses a collection of artists, mostly ceramicists whose main-floor kiln warms the warehouse through the winter.

But acrylic paint is the medium for Michael Schultheis, 39. A climb up steep wooden stairs, and we’re welcomed by Cesaria Evora’s alto voice singing in Portuguese from a paint-spattered boom box. “Ah, she’s wonderful,” says a similarly paint-spattered Schultheis standing at the door to his bright studio.

He is in the midst of creating paintings for a fall … » More …

Fall 2009

Kary Lamb Lee—Telling stories

Husky purple isn’t normally in Kary Lamb Lee’s palette. The Pullman-based illustrator was born in Pullman, and her family’s ties to Washington State University go back 80 years.

Still, she was happy to pull out the purple to create the souvenir poster for the 2009 Windermere Cup, a premiere boating event in the Pacific Northwest and a signature event for the University of Washington.

In fact, Lee’s poster says UW crew like no other. While previous Windermere Cup posters have highlighted the grace of rowing, or the beauty of Montlake Cut, or even the storied history of the UW rowing program, Lee’s captures all of … » More …

Summer 2009

Art Still at Large

An episode of the Antiques Road Show television program last winter stirred some memories across the Palouse and brought to mind one of the most influential alumni to graduate from Washington State’s fine arts program.

A woman from California brought in a painting of the Grand Coulee Dam under construction dated 1937. It was by Clyfford Still, an artist who taught at Washington State College from 1933 to 1941 and who earned his master’s of fine arts here in 1935. Still was a product of the West, having spent his childhood in Spokane and on his family’s farm in southern Alberta, Canada. While studying and … » More …

Spring 2009

Robert Helm, 65 – Acclaimed Northwest artist, teacher

Robert Helm, an acclaimed Northwest artist known for surreal imagery and exquisite craftsmanship, died October 21, 2008. He was 65.

Helm was born in Wallace, Idaho, and attended North Central High School in Spokane, where he met Tamara Kimpel. They married in 1966 and had a daughter, Brenna, and a son, Boone. He earned his M.F.A. degree at WSU in 1969 and taught at the University of Colorado before returning to teach at WSU from 1971-84.

Robert Helm, Iron Ground, 1991Robert Helm’s Iron Ground (1991)
From … » More …

Spring 2006

Growing as an Artist

IT’S AN ARTIST’S DREAM to be recognized by experts and curators and to have your work shown by an internationally-known museum.

Isaac Powell, a 26-year-old fine arts student at Washington State University, realized that dream last fall when his painting won a spot in a traveling exhibit that opened at the Smithsonian Institution.

His piece, Growthplate, took grand prize in the nonprofit VSA arts juried exhibit of young artists with disabilities. It also brought him a $20,000 award, which he says has already been funneled back into his art.

Lean, hip in black-rimmed glasses, and relaxed, he settles into his chair in his 12-by-12 studio … » More …