Look Up Here: 5 Years of NW Urban & Contemporary Art

Look Up Here contains 33 urban & contemporary artists from the Pacific Northwest who have shown at Bherd Studios Gallery over the last 5 years. As excerpted from the Foreword by David Francis... "The range of media is extensive, from aerosol spray, acrylic, and oil paint, to stencil, pen & ink drawing, collage, sculpture, photography, encaustic, and street-based installation and performance. In just five years, Bherd has created a rich mixture of both lowbrow and highbrow that they bring together under the "urban and contemporary" umbrella. Looking at the artwork and reading the texts of the 33 artists included here, it's also apparent that there's a strong focus on nature that we might expect from the Northwest. Beyond the obvious connection with birds, there's also a fascinating hybrid or cyborg quality to much of the flora and fauna where organic shapes are grafted on to humans, machines, or robots. Nature also appears as a series of scientific specimens, and there's a wonderful, collective take on the 19th century (Victorian period), with gothic horror, ornate frames, and steampunk paraphernalia."