Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Gary Larson, whose
Far Side
animal antics have netted international fame and great
fortune, lives in Seattle. A good number of underground comic-book artists live here,
too - among them the legendary Peter Bagge
(Hate),
Jim Woodring
(The Frank Book)
,
Charles Burns
(Black Hole)
and Roberta Gregory
(Naughty Bits)
. It could well have
something to do with the fact that Fantagraphics, a major and influential publisher of
underground comics and graphic novels, is based here.
VISUAL ARTS
Museums and galleries in Seattle offer a visual-arts experience as varied as the
rest of the city's culture. The newly expanded Seattle Art Museum has a substan-
tial European art collection, a range of modern art that's well suited to its new ex-
hibition spaces, and an impressive collection of native artifacts and folk art, espe-
cially carved wooden masks. There are also several exhibition spaces around the
city devoted to contemporary Native American carvings and paintings. A consid-
erable Asian art collection is located at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volun-
teer Park. More experimental and conceptual art is displayed at the University of
Washington's Henry Art Gallery and at the Frye Art Museum.
A specialty of the Puget Sound area is glassblowing, led by maverick artist Dale
Chihuly, whose flamboyant, colorful and unmistakable work is now on display at a
new museum in the Seattle Center.
Pushing the envelope of contemporary art is the specialty of several younger
galleries around town, notably Pioneer Square's Roq La Rue and the Center on
Contemporary Art, which has three venues (Ballard, Belltown and Georgetown).
These unconventional spaces display provocative, boundary-distorting artwork of
all kinds, usually by unknown or underground artists.
Monthly art walks are as common as Starbucks in Seattle. You can wise up on
the galleries in Pioneer Square, Georgetown, Fremont or Ballard.
Cinema & Television
Seattle has come a long way as a movie mecca since the days when Elvis starred in the
1963 film
It Happened at the World's Fair,
a chestnut of civic boosterism. Films with
Seattle as their backdrop include
Tugboat Annie
(1933);
Cinderella Liberty
(1974), a
steamy romance with James Caan and Marsha Mason; and
The Parallax View
(1974)
with Warren Beatty. Jessica Lange's movie
Frances,
about the horrible fate of out-
spoken local actor Frances Farmer (she was jailed on questionable pretenses, then insti-
