• Kelly O

Chihuly Garden and Glass just opened Monday, so this is the first weekend to check it out. The art experience is a mixed bag, but there's plenty to see and to think about regarding art, culture, and class. Or watch the watchers: Folks love to get worked up about Chihuly.

For this week's paper, I talked to Buddy Bunting about three of his new breakthrough paintings on display at Prole Drift. There's a gleaming prison basketball court abandoned in the sun, a motel room in Flagstaff made on a piece of cardboard using just a handful of brushstrokes and leaving the rest of the brown paper showing through, and a portrait of the rocky area of Grand Ronde as if it were a dessert melting.

We only had space in the print edition for Bunting to talk about three paintings. Below is one more, with his commentary. The painting, oil on paper, is called The AA Meeting, from 2009, and it is just a little, haunting thing, measuring 6 by 7 3/4 inches.

• Courtesy of the artist

That is in Seattle, it’s—I don’t want to say it’s a secret—but most people see my work and think it’s in a faraway place. That painting is called The AA Meeting. They have these meetings. I don’t actually know what the hell they’re doing, but there’s always a guy standing up talking to these people. I’ll see it when I'm walking around at night.

It was one of the first I did looking into an interior space. It had this Edward Hopper-like quality. Also the abstract arrow thing, and the receding lights.

I look up there and see these people, and they look kind of interested and kind of bored, like they were sent to this meeting. It’s sort of the beginning of an idea that was in one of the drawers of my flat file in my studio.

The whole interview is called "The Crazy Light of Desert Prisons".

A tip last week suggested that Bumbershoot organizers One Reel may not be including American Poster Institute's Flatstock at this year's festival. I sent out an e-mail last Wednesday, and One Real Associate Director Aubbie Beal responded to my e-mail late yesterday with this statement: "It's true that Flatstock is taking a break from Bumbershoot this year due to current space constraints. However, we are hopeful that we will find a mutually agreeable, suitable location for them next year, when new spaces become available after the Next 50 Celebration has ended."

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• Images courtesy the artist
• The Widow

To make their pictures, [Chesser and his collaborators] bring together 10 or so people for a few days at a chosen location, usually wildernessy. Each "camp" has a theme—one was focused on hunting and the female element, another was called The Death of False Optimism—and they pre-create garments, sets, situations. For some pictures, the staging is based on, say, a Caravaggio painting; other times it's improvised ("It's dawn, grab whatever you have and let's go to the edge of the canyon").

A full story on Seattle artist Adrain Chesser, including looking at his remarkable early series I Have Something to Tell You and links to where he's showing in the city now, here. His web site here.

• "I have something to tell you."

ARTINFO's top ten favorite mean things that have been said about Dale Chihuly.

Aaaaaand the Chihulyseum at Seattle Center opens Monday. It'll cost you 19 bucks to get in.