First Thursday & This Week's Gallery Schedule

Hi folks. This is the last week IDEA Odyssey will have regular hours for its show, "A Sense of Place." We'll be open for First Thursday, 3 pm to 9 pm, and also Friday, 12-3 pm.
We hope you and your friends can stop by. For the rest of August, we'll be open by appointment only. You may contact us at ideaodysseygallery@gmail.com to schedule a visit.
Thanks!

Update to the Updated Gallery Hours

Sorry for the inconvenience but we had to change the Saturday hours because of volunteer availability.
Thurs., July 28, 12-6 p.m.
Fri., July 29, 12-6 p.m.
Sat., July 30, 3-6 p.m. only
First Thurs., Aug. 4, 3-9 p.m.
Fri., Aug. 5, 12-3 p.m.
Sat., Aug. 6, closed.

Updated Gallery Hours

If you haven't had a chance to stop by, or if you want to come back with friends, here are updated gallery hours for our "A Sense of Place" exhibition. Convenient for pairing with lunch, dinner, dim sum, shopping, soccer, baseball and more!
Thurs., July 28, 12-6 p.m.
Fri., July 29, 12-6 p.m.
Sat., July 30, 12-6 p.m.
First Thurs., Aug. 4, 3-9 p.m.
Fri., Aug. 5, 12-3 p.m.
Sat., Aug. 6, 12-3 p.m.

Deadline for Membership Applications Extended to July 18

It's not too late to join IDEA Odyssey and be a part of a new collective of emerging visual artists! Completed applications should be received by noon, July 18th. See the link for details.
Thanks!

Oh What a Night!

I came home last night exhausted and elated. I checked my email and for some reason, the message highlighted was from almost exactly a year ago, addressed to SuJ'n Chon, inviting her to a meeting with Minh Carrico and me to talk more about opening a collective gallery. And then on July 9, 2011, here we were with beautiful art from a diverse group of talented artists, a packed gallery of appreciative guests and people spilling out on to Jackson Street.
Mil gracias, maraming salamat to all of those who helped us give birth to this dream, who celebrated with us and who continue to help nurture IDEA Odyssey onward.
Carina

Gallery Hours

We're looking forward to welcoming you to tonight's grand opening!
If you can't make it tonight -- or if you want to come back with more friends -- our gallery hours are:
Thursdays and Fridays, noon to 6 pm
Sat., 7/9, noon- 3 pm
Sun., 7/10, noon-6 pm
Sat., 7/16, noon-9 pm
Sun., 7/24, noon-6 pm
We hope to add more weekend hours as volunteers become available.

See you IDEA Odyssey!

Thanks, 4Culture!

Great news! 4Culture awarded IDEA Odyssey a Group Artists Project grant of $3,000! This will help us bring you more exhibitions exploring culture, diversity and identity. Thanks to the Washington State Legislature for continuing the lodging tax in King County that funds this grant program, and to the grant review panelists who recommended us for the award.
4Culture hasn't posted all the winners just yet, but check out its blog to see all the wonderful ways it supports arts and culture in our community.

Membership Applications Now Available

Are you a visual artist looking for a high traffic spot to show your work?
Do you want to become part of a community of artists, eager to support each other's growth and success?
Do you explore culture, diversity or identity in your art work?
Do you want to work with other artists, residents, workers and businesses in the International District?
Then check out this opportunity to become a member of IDEA Odyssey Gallery.
We'd love to work with you to promote diversity, community and economic development through the visual arts.

Making progress: A volunteer effort

We have had quite an exciting week here at IDEA Odyssey thanks to a great group of volunteers. Juan Alonso, our esteemed juror, selected a great slate of artists and their work to showcase for our inaugural exhibit. Volunteers began preparing the gallery space, which included giving it a fresh scrub and painting a couple movable walls (also built by volunteers). Yet another team of volunteers has been working on our branding, logo, marketing, and fundraising efforts. 

It has long been our vision that IDEA Odyssey be an effort by the community for the community. If the last week is any indication, this vision is becoming a reality. Thank you for being a part of this venture with us.

Please mark your calendars for our grand opening on July 7.

"A SENSE OF PLACE" DEADLINE EXTENDED!!

So all those of you who have been procrastinating about submitting your work, you now have time!

The deadline has been extended to Tuesday, June 7 at 5pm. All entries still must be delivered before this time.

Good luck!

Great news

The bill passed!

Advocacy for local arts

As you may already know, last week the Washington Senate Bill that would've kept 4Culture alive and thriving failed to pass by one vote. There is another Senate Bill in consideration to keep the fight to save 4Culture alive.

Would you consider taking a moment to write your Senators to help save this important vehicle for arts advancement?

In IDEA Odyssey News, we are days - perhaps hours - from getting the keys to our first space. We're one step closer to bringing this collective into its realized state and building a new arts presence in the International District. What possibilities await us?

In excited wonderment,
SuJ'n

What's Your Sense of Place?

We're thrilled that accomplished artist Juan Alonso has volunteered to curate our first exhibition, "A Sense of Place."
Place can mean so many things to different people. It can be geographic, the landscape we see in front of us, or the ones that appear in our dreams. It can be about community, inclusion, exclusion or all the fragile points in between.
Juan was born in Havana, Cuba and his father sent him to the United States when he was only 9 years old. It was the last time he saw his father. It was also the last time he was in Cuba. Still, memories of his family and the streets of Havana pervade his art.
What does place mean to you? We invite you to share a comment, or submit your work by June 3rd. Here's a link to download the Call for Entries and submission form. We'd love to see your place in our place.
Carina

IDEA Odyssey announces its first Call for Entry

IDEA Odyssey Gallery is proud to celebrate its grand opening by inviting visual artists to challenge themselves for its inaugural exhibition, A Sense of Place. This juried group exhibition will comprise a collection of work in painting, drawing, photography, video and mix-media that represents contemporary art exploring the varied aspects and roles of the artist within their culture and in society at large.

Be a part of the inaugural exhibition. Information on submission can be found here. 

Deadline: Requested materials must be received by 5 p.m. on Friday, June 3rd.

Art & Fear

This book is called an artist's survival guide, but it is more like a reality check. How many of you stop short of finishing work because it's not "good enough"? I do. All the time. I cannot seem to quiet that voice inside my head that tells me I'm a fraudulent wanna-be for attempting (or gasp, actually creating) a piece of work that is supposed to replicate my inner world.

A finished piece is, in effect, a test of correspondence between imagination and execution. And perhaps surprisingly, the more common obstacle to achieving that correspondence is not undisciplined execution, but undisciplined imagination. It's altogether too seductive to approach your proposed work believing your materials to be more alleable than they really are, your ideas more compelling, your execution more refined. As Stanley Kunitz once commented, "The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language." - Art and Fear, D. Bayles & T. Orland.

Art cannot be achieve the impossible; it cannot replace the depths of our minds. It can only represent, in its own forms, what - in its perfection - is the human imagination. Here's to the tension between the mind and the matter, and the courage to live in it.

What's the idea behind Storefronts Seattle?

Check out this article on why Storefronts Seattle is good for small business and community revitalization. IDEA Odyssey is proud to be a part of this win-win effort for Seattle Chinatown International District.

Fill Our New Space!

It's official: We'll be opening our doors at 666 S. Jackson Street, right in the heart of the International District! As part of the Seattle Storefronts project, we've been granted temporary residency at this fabulous location.

Come find out how to submit work for our first juried show, how to become a member and more about IDEA Odyssey at either of these two informational meetings:

Tues., May 3, 6:30-8:30 pm or
Sat., May 7, 10:30 am-12:30 pm
at Idea Space in the Bush Hotel
409 Maynard Ave. S.

(The entrance is at Hing Hay Plaza, just to the right of the main double doors. Look for the bright yellow walls inside.)

Please pass this along to other artists you think would be interested in joining our exciting odyssey.

Carina

What's an "idea"?

This evening, it occurred to me that I didn't know how to articulate what an "idea" was. Here is the opening few paragraphs of the Wikipedia to help out. It does a fine job giving a general sense; no need to recreate it.

In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images. Many philosophers consider ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. The capacity to create and understand the meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of human beings. In a popular sense, an idea arises in a reflex, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection, for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place.

As artists, our ideas formulate and materialize into works of creativity. Every idea is creative - whether or not it is manifested through watercolors, graphite pencils, words on a computer screen, or beautiful conversations over wine. To me, I imagine that we are all artists, each masters of our most cherished tools.

IDEA Odyssey: The Next Big "IDEA"

International Examiner has called us the 'The Next Big "IDEA"'!

The recently posted article is all about us, and gives the brief synopsis of how we came to be and what's coming up next.

Read the full article here:
http://www.iexaminer.org/arts/big-idea/

Opportunities Sprouting Up All Over

IDEA Odyssey Gallery aims to be a resource for emerging artists. In that spirit, we'll post information on various artist opportunities. Good luck!

Artist Trust's EDGE program helps artists ramp up the business side of their art through this intensive professional development opportunity. http://artisttrust.org/index.php/for-artists/opportunity/artist_trust_edge_professional_development_program_for_visual_artists The deadline is fast approaching: April 18th.


Bellevue Community College's Gallery Space is accepting proposals for exhibitions for its next academic year. http://bellevuecollege.edu/artshum/galleryspace/apply.asp Deadline is May 1st.

4Culture's ArtSparks has a call for submissions to bring a wide range of art experiences to Occidental Park in the heart of Pioneer Square. http://sitespecificarts.org/projects/artsparks-call Deadline is May 4th.

The James Washington Foundation is accepting applications for two levels of artist residencies. http://www.jameswashington.org/application.html Deadline is May 9th.

We'll be posting our own call for submissions soon, so stay tuned.
Carina

With the advent of spring comes new life

We had our first three artist informational meetings last month. It was our opportunity to connect with artists and to share our vision for IDEA Odyssey. We had some great initial conversations with folks about collective dreams for the gallery and the International District.

We have also been busy working behind-the-scenes on creative, operational, and funding fronts. It's been a lot of work for Carina, Minh, and myself. We look forward to when the gallery is fully functioning as a collective in the upcoming months! Based on conversations with artists, it appears there is a lot of interest for the artist-supported/artist-supportive gallery we envision. We suspect the membership will grow quickly once we're ready to officially come "on-line".

In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for a Call for Artists announcement in the upcoming weeks. This will be open to all artists in the Seattle area.

Finally, we will be holding two additional informational meetings next month. They will be on Tuesday, May 3 at 6:30 p.m. and Saturday, May 7 at 10:30 a.m. to accommodate those who were not able to make our March meetings. Details to come.

With the excitement that spring ushers in,

SuJ'n

More informational meetings scheduled

Thanks to those of you who made it out to our first informational meeting last weekend. We've got two more coming up:
Thursday, March 17, 5-7 pm
Idea Space in the Bush Hotel
409 Maynard Ave. S, Plaza Level

Friday, March 18, 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
Pratt Fine Arts
1902 S. Main St., Paint/Draw Building (little blue building with the number 3)

Who should come?
Emerging visual artists who want an affordable place to show their work with other diverse artists exploring culture, identity and diversity in their work. We've got a space in the International District through the Seattle Storefronts project.

Please pass along this information to people you think would be interested. Feel free to post a comment here, or email us at ideaodysseygallery@gmail.com

Thanks!
Carina

IDEA Odyssey is recruiting artists to exhibit

Hello friends,

Great News! Last week, we were awarded a Seattle Storefront space in the International District where, as a "creative enterprise," we'll be able to open an exhibition gallery. Now that we will have actual walls to offer, we'd love your help in recruiting visual artists working in various media who may be interested in an affordable, centrally located space to show their work with a community of artists. Our first artist informational meeting is scheduled for Sat., Feb. 26, 1-3 pm at the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

While we are primarily reaching out to artists in the King County area, there are opportunities for people outside of King County to participate as well, so please feel free to share broadly.

Thanks for all of your support and enthusiasm in bringing IDEA Odyssey Collective Gallery to life.

Best regards,
Carina, Minh and SuJ'n