Columbia City Gallery has long had a commitment to the Seattle south end community. The mission of the community area of the gallery is to showcase artists who reflect the ethnically diverse south end neighborhood and to present exhibits that express unique viewpoints of special groups or topics of particular concern to the community. There are seven exhibits shown in the community gallery space each year.
Community artist groups make contact with Columbia City Gallery through direct networks and contacts or through artist “calls” with Artist Trust. A committee reviews proposals and applications are evaluated based on artistic excellence and consistency with the mission. Every year there’s one exhibit that showcases youth and often these shows include art created by local Seattle public school students. Some past shows have featured work by BIPOC Pratt scholarship artists, students from Coyote Central (the LGBTQ identity show), and “Farewell”, a show curated by Byron Au Yong that illustrated personal moments of leave taking and the public ramifications of migration from an Asian perspective. Other recent shows were Art of the Protest with Seattle Print Arts and the Resting Place, focusing on the Filipino community and dealing with grief. Two upcoming shows will be the Pacific Northwest African American Quilters Association and the Brain Injury Alliance.
The current show, “Caring for Humanity” is unusual in that it is an exhibit of the work of one artist, Jayashree Krishnan, whose watercolor portraits and stories from health care workers around the world during the pandemic is timely and compelling. Jayarshree began the project in May 2020 when she painted the portraits of two of her cousins who were doctors working 13-hour shifts and experiencing a huge amount of stress. When she posted photos of the pieces on social media the reaction was so overwhelmingly positive that she was motivated to keep going. The first portraits lead to a contact at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, who sent her photos of health care workers, whose 38 portraits she then painted and which eventually became an exhibit at Virginia Mason. Since then, the project has expanded to include portraits of health care workers around the US and the world as well as their personal stories. Jayashree is finishing a book of the portraits and stories that will be available in the next few months. As of the end of February she had painted over 150 portraits, prints of which are all on display in the community gallery space, together with text from some of the stories. Almost all of the portraits focus on the eyes, because so much of the rest of the face is covered in PPE and also because she believes the eyes convey so much emotion. This is the first time all of the portraits have been seen together, and Jayashree’s reaction was that it was a bit “surreal”.
Jayashree was motivated to start and continue the project based on her belief that the health care workers putting themselves and their families at risk during the pandemic should be seen and heard and their stories told. Her hope is that the portraits cause the viewer to take a moment to reflect on the sacrifice of the health care workers and to also say thank you for their essential, life saving work, often under very difficult conditions. She’s been very gratified by the positive response from the people whose portraits she’s painted, who have told her how important it’s been to them for their work to be recognized during such a dark time, and how grateful they are to tell their stories. Jayashree says that the project has been therapeutic and helpful to manage her own emotions during the pandemic and believes this project is one of the most meaningful she’s ever done.
Read some of the recent news articles about this project.
Follow Jayashree on Instagram: @jayashreeart, or check out her website: www.jayashreekrishnan.com.
“Caring for Humanity” runs through Sunday, March 21st.