ArtSEA: As the leaves fall, new Seattle artwork areas are blooming

Let’s head North, to Ballard, for a few more exciting new art spaces to add to your to-see list. There’s Assembly, a coffee shop-meets-creative marketing agency office-meets-gallery and event space. “We are that third space for new and exciting businesses and brands and creatives to debut their creations to the world that perhaps aren’t big enough for the SAM or whatever the popular new coffee shop is,” founder Molly Hawkins told me over email. “We want to be known for hosting the little guy, newbs and the folks who are just about to break out!” A show by local artist/designer Shogo Ota, featuring his many eye-catching posters for local bands, is opening this weekend. 

Rounding out our list is YOLTEOTL Press, a new Indigenous-led printmaking studio and gallery. Housed in the BallardWorks building and named after the sacred responsibilities and gifts of the painters and printmakers of the Mexika-Tenochca people, the space will offer workshops in printmaking and other art forms, exhibits and community events.  

“As a Native artist, I see not enough Native art spaces, yet the level of appropriation of art is incredible,” writes owner and printmaker Ixtlixochitl White Hawk (Nahuatlaca Tenochca, Otomi and Tarascó) in an email. “When I moved back to Seattle, 8 years ago, I promised my child our own art studio and gallery. A place where we could create and dream anytime of the day and night.” 

While not literally open day and night, YOLTEOTL Press will open its doors during workshops and community events — like the Indigenous Peoples Day “art build” on Oct. 7 — as well as by appointment and during the monthly Ballard Art Walks; mark your calendars for the next one October 8. 

Pioneer Square’s and Ballard’s art walks are happening next week, so I want to make sure to put some other local art events on your radar: 

< Local writer and former City Hall reporter Josh Feit will be reading from his intriguing new poetry collection, called Shops Close Too Early and inspired by Seattle’s urban planning debates and documents (think: zoning code, housing density, transportation infrastructure) at Phinney Books tonight (Sept. 29, 7 pm).

< Through Friday, the literary festival Bibliophilia “brings the page to the stage” at the Seattle Public Library, with “Vonnegut” (Sept. 29, creating a Kurt Vonnegut-style play based on audience suggestions) and a “Quiz Show” (Sept. 30, with games, prize packages and live reading and performance).

< Artist Tiffany Danielle Elliott discusses I promise I won’t scream, her participatory sound installation  — in which Elliott explores how to store sound vibrations — at Jack Straw New Media Gallery. The work deals with the effects of suppressing screams and “silent screaming.” (Sept. 30, 7 pm). 

< As part of “Indigenous Corps of Discovery Presents Don’t Go North!” artist DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren created a tour that provides an indigenous retelling of The National Nordic Museum’s current exhibit about the 19th- and early 20th-century history of the American West and northern Norway. (Sept. 29-30, 6-8 p.m.)