SummerArtshow 2009

That's a wrap!

2009-09-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

After nearly 4 months the Billy King Summershow is now closed. But what fun we had! Well moving wasn't fun but it went pretty smoothly thanks to Scott Morgan, Jeff B., and new guy Kelly. Six truckloads of the U-haul and we were done. The only hitch was the vinyl lettering which ha peeled the paint on the awning channel and will have to be repainted. The fun was the Visual Violins event, the original composers performance with musician Gordon Assadi that became a sort of closing party and celebration on Sunday the 20th...all went smoothly, about 70 people were in attendance, good snacks and drinks, a good time was had by all! So thanks to Allegra Properties, Rebecca and Boris for the opportunity and to the maintenance crew who helped keep the show running, everything turned out better than expected.

The 7,7000 sq ft space was so large that I brought over about 85% of the material in the studio plus my printing press, my easel, my flat files....and set up a studio for the quiet time. Being open 11-7 daily (Tuesday was my day off but usually I was there the whole time anyway) was a demanding schedule but in the late afternoons I found I had some time to paint. I managed to complete five Other People oil on canvas paintings and rework all of the When Vortex Collide series. Invariably though once I put the painting clothes on people came streaming through the doors!

Very rarely does an artist have a space so large to conduct there own 40 year retrospective. The impact on the viewer was quite noticeable as they always commented first on the space, then the colors of the artwork. Frequently there were enthralled to actually meet the artist. I gave many the story about my first trips to Mexico and South America where I saw artists and anyone of talent finding a local storefront or garage where they put there name over the door and dealt with whomever came in. Being an active member of the community and being accessible to the public were the two hallmarks of the Latin American approach to being a successful artist. Really that is the foundation of my annual shows. This years was number 23 and definitely the largest in terms of pieces shown and size of space. Sales were good too.

The theme this year was sending my work to other places; Taiwan, New York, Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, Culver City, Las Vegas, France, Baja Mexico, Portland Oregon and more. Local sales included Allegra, Ewing and Clark and first time buyer Suzanne Premo who is filling her Wallingford home with one on my works on paper called In the Studio. So now I'm off to NYC and Barcelona to meet up with family. To all those who put up with my onslaught of postcards and emails; it's over. Til next time at least. Thanks so much to all for a great 23rd annual art show!

Brent photos

2009-09-08T11:27:00.001-07:00

Photos of the Billy King

Summershow 40 years of ART!

Photos of the show by artist Brent Blake (r).
--
Brent Blake
P.O. Box 422
410 E. Main St.
Soap Lake, WA
98851
509.855.6131
soapblake@gmail.com

Mexican Cantina Gouache 5x7 1994 Handmade Paper Collection of Brian Landers

2009-09-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

Juan Peron Mob Scene 84"hx120"w 1974

2009-09-06T14:44:00.001-07:00

Live Music + ART Event Sunday Sept. 20 7 PM!

2009-09-06T11:54:00.001-07:00

Press Release Billy King Summershow

2009-08-16T08:22:00.001-07:00

Press Release for immediate release kill date Sept 21 2009

WHO: BILLY KING
WHAT: SUMMERSHOW: 40 YEARS OF ART!!

WHERE: 2001 WESTERN AVENUE AT LENORA 98121

WHEN: DAILY 11-7 JUNE 21-SEPT 21 2009

WHY: ARTIST BILLY KING 23RD ANNUAL ARTSHOW

Local artist Billy king celebrates 40 years of ART! at the new 7000 sq. ft. temporary showroom location on the corner of Western Avenue and Lenora. "I recognize how rare it is for an artist to have a space large enough to accommodate 40 years of artwork. Most of my work has sold, but this represents pieces from every decade plus new paintings and my ongoing print series." Included in the show are several new pieces from the 2008-2009 series , WHEN VORTEX COLLIDE . Oil paintings on wood, these pieces are designed to lean against the wall, rather than hang; a series of "leaner's" says the artist . New works from 2009 include brightly colored oils painted at the artist ' s studio in Mexico entitled, CHAPALA BOATS. New relief-print prototypes are being displayed; the inked plate is actually the common music CD transformed into a printing plate. " I like the circular shape, it really is universal..and like my use of the hollow core door for my larger oils, I've entered an area where form dominates style". Other works going back to 1968 include the Death of Juan Peron, Summer Lakes and other People. Open Daily 11-7 except Tuesday by appointment.

http://billykingsummershow.blogspot.com

Billy King Summershow: 40 years of ART!
2100 Western at Lenora Seattle, WA 98121
June 21/September 21 2009
Daily 11-7 (Tuesdays by appointment)
FRIDAY HAPPY HOUR 5-7

Billy King +Studio
PO BOX 1903 Seattle, Wa 98111
206-340-8881

www.billyking.com
www.theloftgaleria.com
http://billykingstudio.blogspot.com
http://billykingsummershow.blogspot.com

the Death of Juan Peron: Casket View

2009-08-11T17:37:00.001-07:00

1974 pastel on craft paper 50"wx72"h

Collection of the Artist

Sold! on to Pennsylvania for LifeTek Corp. pictured G. Wicker

2009-08-11T17:19:00.001-07:00

Interview: Billy King's Magic Circus

2009-08-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

Billy King's Magic Circus

August 1, 2009

We went to the atelier of Billy King which is smack dab in what he refers to as “ Lower Belltown,” on the edge of the Market at Lenora and Western to see just what this artist cat had going on. I have been a friend of Billy’s since our days attending the UW in the era of the “Summer of Love.” Billy is fully immersed in the twenty-first century. I am notified of his many exploits through Facebook. He stays in touch with the world via billykingstudio.blogspot.com. He takes videos with his FLIP™ video camera. He has so many progressive ideas we would need a week just to touch on his interests. We stand in front of the back wall of the showroom and I ask…

EB: What does this wall represent?

BK: This is salon style hanging, my Wall of Small, and these are a variety of pieces from 2009, from the Chapala Boats, going all the way to the Skagit Valley scenes. There are faces, there are nudes, geometries, and it’s a little bit of everything. When I went to rich people’s homes, I would go the bathroom, and through the hallway I would notice that the works they liked the most were the small paintings, a little small Mark Tobey, not the big splashy paintings. Sometimes the really powerful art is done small. Small pieces can be more important than big and this is my attempt to create important art on a small scale.

EB: I never even thought about that but you have big art here also.
BK: Well, I don’t know if the big art is any more important than the small pieces. Every year I do a show, usually most of my new work and some of the old but this space is so big that I have forty years worth of art work down here that goes back to 1968.
(We stand around for a few seconds admiring ourselves in the camera and this gives Billy pause for a thought).

BK: I don’t understand why we don’t have more computer TV shows. We’d use this little camera; everyday we’d meet here and turn on the camera, and do a little TV shows. It’s so easy. Then once a day at three o’clock people go on line and we’re live.
EB: But we would need a place on the web.
BK: That would take care of its self. That’s the thing that is happening right now. It’s so democratic. All’s you need is a free blog and people will follow.

EB: What would you like to say on that web cast?
BK: Well, it’s everything from a kid’s show and clowns, to recipes, advertising and public alerts. What do people who don’t have a real job have to do at three in the afternoon?

EB: Let’s talk about art and you. People get to know you when they come in and talk to you. I‘ve known you for many years now but I don’t know where you were born.
BK: Coos Bay, even though some people think I was born in Spokane. I moved to Seattle in 1966 from Spokane.

EB: You went to the U then and that’s where we met.
BK: And I thought I was gonna join a fraternity and be a big man on campus. Like I said, I was from Spokane and within a week I had been sorta radicalized. By that winter, I was smoking pot and not much later taking acid. I went down to San Francisco. Joe Cain, Jeff, and I brought the peace sign back and by late 67, I had dropped out and moved to Pioneer Square. I was working on the railroad. I got my first studio in December.

EB: I didn’t think anybody at that time had a job.
BK: I’ve always had a job of some sort up till 1994-95 when I started making a living as an artist. I was a bartender and a cab driver, a swamper, janitor, everything, ad sales. I’ve done all that kind of work, plus painting but I moved to Pioneer Square by ‘68. It was a gay district by night and a wino district by day and it was incredibly wild and crazy.

EB: People don’t realize that sane people didn’t come down to the market.
BK: The busses didn’t stop on First Avenue. It was bum heaven down here. There were six hundred and some taverns in the downtown Seattle area. The place was just crawling with alcoholics. Most of the people who live here now are imports, people new to town.

EB: But don’t you think that’s what they are trying to do now, move out all the people who don’t fit into the vision of modern downtown.
BK: I mean there are hardly any Type A personalities left in The Pike Place Market and that’s what the Type B’s used to go into the bars to see operating and acting out. They were the ones who made bars interesting. Now they are full of Type B personalities and it’s sorta boring. Raise your voice, circulate from group to group, or hustle drinks or whatever type A’s do and that’s not happening anymore. Type A’s were alcoholics, and drug addicts and winos, dine-os, dingbats, and aristocrats. The aristocrats would come slum. That’s how I met Victor Steinbrueck, Ibsen Nelson and Fred Bassetti, the famous architects who renovated the Market. They would come slum in the Market, hang out at the Victrola or the Hideout and maybe get us to sell em a couple of joints. That’s how those people became part of that underworld of the Pike Place Market.

EB: Yeah, people used to come to the Market to buy horsemeat.
BK: Only the poor people would come down, get the beat up onions, and beat up apples. There were a lot of heavy thumbs down here in those days. This was a low-end market area but it was extremely romantic. There were bars everywhere, there were views of the water, things were extremely inexpensive and it was as close as we had to anything that wasn’t like the rest of the United States. It was a little bit like Europe, a little bit like New Orleans. When we had our festivals, like the old soapbox derby, it would bring out all the shut-ins, people who never leave their rooms. We could actually drink beer from a brown paper bag and the cops wouldn’t say anything. This was the Magic Circus. There was a dividing line that went right down the center of First Avenue and everybody knew about it. Once you crossed that dividing line you weren’t allowed to run your game in the Pike Place Market---no pimping, no dealing, no racial attitudes. None of the bullshit was allowed to happen. When you went on the other side, shit happened, fights happened, there were problems.

The dine-os were the guys looking for the best food at the cheapest prices. You could get 2 eggs, hash browns and a cup of coffee for forty-five cents. There were lots of places where you could eat breakfast served all day. And you could get fried smelt. Seattle was a steak and baked potatoes town in those days. No one ate salmon. Only hippies ate salmon. And then the 80’s happened, and people started coming downtown, that’s when the Market sorta caught on and became extremely popular, and it hasn’t died down since.

EB: You used to be mayor of the Market, right?
BK: I was mayor of the Market, an invented job, in the 70’s on into the 80’s I eventually appointed a new mayor who has had the job for a long time, Michael Yeager. I appointed him based on his mirth, birth and girth.

EB: In Pioneer Square you were instigative in creating a gallery scene down there.
BK: You know studio space was so cheap then. You had your studio and you knew where there were two or three others that you could get if you got thrown out of this one, which happened all the time. The whole thing started in Pioneer Square that was old town in the 60’s. It started up in the Market in the 70’s. The new scene was the Belltown art scene and that really was in the 80’s. Belltown became an art center and there were some real powerhouses that embraced Belltown.

EB: You used to throw parties in the Market.
BK: I was the partymiester. We used to have Beggars Banquets in the Market. George would give us 20 bucks and you’d end up with a couple of pounds of shrimp and some baked chickens and a lot of vegetables. We had a giant mirror that came out of the Green Parrot and we put that food down out in my studio behind the old Bistro, and I’m talking drinking and drugging and nudity that is still talked about to this day. Nobody was working. The Market was full of hippies who liked to drink beer and party and smoke pot in the daytime. One of the groups that got started was the crafts people. Joe Desimone said “if you’re making the product then I’ll rent you some space.” So there’s some guy up there making fur bikinis and someone making belts and that was part of the urban hippie thing, a different kind of longhaired person.

EB: What made you move part time to Mexico?
BK: I’ve been going to Mexico since the early 70’s and I find if you are gonna live successfully in Seattle you have to get a little sunshine in winter. I go ten days to seven months to Mexico. It has great beaches; great food, great weather, great history, varied topography and the people are nice. I like the pace, plus to leave the Northwest and discover the colors of Mexico, as I did in the 70’s, completely changed my career as an artist. Mexico also has this attitude that if you are an artist find a space and put your name above the door and deal with who comes in the door and that’s why I’ve done this show. I’m available; I’m accessible as an artist. You who likes art, we’re gonna meet and talk about my art. There doesn’t have to be a director or somebody in between. That’s something I learned from Latin America.

EB: You are going to have this place for how long?
BK: June 21 through September 21, but I am talking to Allegra Properties. They have several vacancies and I see an historic opportunity bring artists who are displaced by the economy back into downtown Seattle into these empty storefronts. To encourage them to have a non-profit center for the arts something halfway between the Sculpture Garden and the Market that local residents could go to after work that doesn’t require then to buy a drink, that could actually be intellectually entertaining and not necessarily expensive. For some people this could be a major art experience of their lives.

Because of the size of this space and the prominent location, people think that I’m some sort of big deal. And that’s part of the humor of the thing. We talk about the origins of the art about the ideas. Sometimes I give instruction to kids who are interested in how to paint. It’s real interactive, it’s what the applause or the love the entertainer feels, being able to interact with people and being in a room with my art is very positive.

---

Billy King’s Summershow 2009 “40 Years Of Art”, is at 2100 Western Ave. until Sept. 21. You will stop in and take a look. You will sit down and chat with Billy. He is in the showroom everyday and has a formal opening every Friday from 5-7 PM.

2009-08-06T18:12:00.001-07:00

Chapala Boats oil/canvas 4"x6"

Chapala Boats oli/canvas 4"x6"

Chapala Boats oil/canvas 4"x4"

The official showroom photo

2009-07-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

This photo is by photographer Catherine Bassetti

Billy King, Fred Bassetti and Deborah Parker

2009-07-07T22:32:00.001-07:00

Invitation to view billyking.com's Picasa Web Album - Summershow 40 years of ART!

2009-06-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

You are invited to view billyking.com's photo album: Summershow 40 years of ART!

Summershow 40 years of ART!

Jun 19, 2009
by billyking.com

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Grand Opening/Friday Happy Hour 5-7

2009-06-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

This Sunday the 21st of June we officially open the Billy King Summershow 40 Years of ART! 1-5 pm. Wine and snacks. Plus on Friday the 19th we will have a cocktail social hour or two starting at 5pm. I'll put out some wine and sodas and chips, but the good news is that World Market is across the street and has an extensive collection of Wine, Beers and Snacks imported from all over the globe. Get what you want! Good prices too....so don't fight traffic, stop by and relax, chat, kick-back....the couch awaits you!

2100 Western Avenue at Lenora plenty of pay parking and after 6 pm parking is free on the street. 206-340-8881 billyking50@yahoo.com

2009-06-14T19:46:00.001-07:00

Billy King +Studio
PO BOX 1903 Seattle, Wa 98111
206-340-8881

Billy King Summershow: 40 years of ART!
2100 Western at Lenora Seattle, WA 98121
June 21/September 21 Daily 11-7
Tuesdays by appointment

www.billyking.com
www.theloftgaleria.com
http://billykingstudio.blogspot.com
http://billykingsummershow.blogspot.com

ABOUT TO OPEN THE 40 YEARS OF ART! SUMMERSHOW

2009-06-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

Yes! we are nearly there, working on the inventory as we speak...oh how i miss Kinko's reliability-anyway I have several people to thank; Allegra Properties for providing the space...Thanks you Boris and Rebecca!; also the lovely wifey Deborah Parker who keeps me upright and in position...Thom Laz, Yogi, Buddy Foley, they really helped with the move from studio to gallery..hey buddy I'm so sorry about the 6 stitches on your finger...my bad!; John Dickinson, thanks for the flooring, Alchemy furnishings for the couch arrangement....and many more....
OK see you soon
best regards
billy king

BELLTOWN ART WALK JUNE 12TH

2009-06-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

Stop by my new place when do the Belltown hop Friday night.....my palce is on the botom right corner..where Belltown meets the market!

Update on the Signage etc.

2009-06-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

Bob Morgan from Redmond based
Washington Screen Print motorcycled over to bring me my vinyl gallery signage and now it is up and in and on! Thanks to volunteer Scott Morgan (no relation) who immensely helped me with the install! Thank you Scott! Thank you Bob!

The Wall of Small

2009-06-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

Deborah had a good idea; put all the small pieces on the back wall....I thought it over and then Voila, here it is, my new pride and joy! The Summershow gallery is almost ready; filling 7,000 sq ft is easy but tiring...but we are almost there. This year I am part of Belltown Art Walk on the 2nd Friday of June 2009. My unofficial official opening. See you there...

The New Showroom

2009-05-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

Fantastic! It's really an incredible showroom, over 7,ooo square feet of class A retail on the corner of Western and Lenora. I feel so blessed. I can really organize and put forth one of my better shows. This will be my 23rd annual artshow at a prime downtown location. This is really it, how people have come to know my work and its evolution. Sales are generally very good so I've been able to support myself for over 20 years with this one annual show. I hope that this year is just as viable as all the rest. i certainly have the great location! I'm just one block north of the the Pike Market. I'm on the path to the Lenora Street Waterfront Elevator and all the tourists that brings. I'm on the pedestrian path to the Art Institute and the multitude of lower Belltown condos, apartments and the new water-view Sculpture Park. Plus so many to-the-trade types use Western Avenue as their commuting route home as it feeds right into the the battery Street tunnel; they pass in front of my location 5 times a week. So once I install the exterior signage the space should advertise itself. Yippee!!

The interior is in great shape; lots of track lights, carpeted floors with spacious inset tile and vinyl flooring sections, one of which I will use for an oil painting area. Yes right off the bat I have a triptych commission to complete for a couple in Portland, Oregon! Lots of window, an alarm system, air conditioning and a back room storage area where I will set up the etching press. I have some new ideas for printmaking that I want to introduce at this show. My wife Deborah suggests I have enough room to actually teach some art classes...what do you think/ Anyone interested?

The extended title for the show is Billy King Summer Show: 40 years of ART! so there will be something from every decade starting with the 60's. And I will introduce a new series of works on wood that are color-field vortexes. From Mexico I also have large and small versions of a new series titled Chapala Boats...well come by and see the whole production.

This really is an opportunity to clear out my earlier work. So I'm bring all my rolled up works on paper as well as all the oversize block prints.
Yes I'm in the mood to make the customer happy so make me an offer I can't refuse and I'll load you up with something from now, from then and something from way back. Yes, Lets clear out the inventory!

I wonder too if the space can be used for events. It has two bathrooms, there is public parking in the garage across the street, we are near several fine restaurants, the waterfront and the public market....if you know of someone looking for a different/art gallery environment for their celebration let me know. I will be competitive in price.

My wife Deborah will be in Europe this fall and I will join her in September or October for a month. If you are an artist or curator and would like to be considered for a show let me know. Or maybe its a fashion boutique for a month, lots of possibilities. OK so I'm on to the next project now that the Summer Show blog is started; I'm writing a letter to several of my furniture store neighbors on Western Avenue, want to invite them to put some of their product for display on the gallery floor. It's all good..might be open by 1st Thursday June 4th...come by and take a look...it's cool inside.