On the rare occasions a space opens up at ’57 Biscayne, it is filled immediately, and we are always forced to turn away potentially awesome creative neighbors. Such is the demand for the diminishing supply of artists’ work space in Seattle (and most major U.S. cities). When Good Arts LLC formed to buy our building in 2015, it did so with the express purpose of creating new art space wherever and whenever it could. One space was built out of the second floor lobby in 2016, and now four additional spaces are being created in the downstairs storefront at 108 Cherry, which has been largely vacant (and playing host to pop-up art and music events) the past two years.

The Good Arts Arcade will consist of two retail spaces and two artists’ studios which share a street entrance and open onto a shared central gallery.

The Arcade will provide affordable space for the making, exhibiting, and selling of a range of creative goods, and foster a supportive community for the makers and sellers.

Flanked by the new Cherry Street Coffee House to the west, and the entrance to ’57 Biscayne Artist Studios to the east, Good Arts Arcade is perfectly situated for creative collaboration, fabulous combined events, and synergistic marketing opportunities. The location is well situated for foot traffic from the nearby light rail station, ferries, Pioneer Square park, and a planned streetcar stop at First and Cherry. A parklet will be installed on the street in front of the entrance, providing additional outdoor community space and a potential pop-up show venue.

We are seeking creative community builders–artists, gallerists, and human-scale retailers–to work, grow, and collaborate in the Arcade. Floorplan and prices here: GoodArtsArcade

’57 Biscayne and the Good Arts Building welcome Czech artist Edita Pattova, presenting Neon Dreamer, an interactive painting and video installation, on the first stop of its West Coast tour. Neon Dreamer will be up for one night only, Thursday, August 3, from 5-9 PM in the under-construction Good Arts Arcade at 108 Cherry Street.

Inspired by the neon lights of Times Square on a visit to New York, Edita created a grid of nine oil paintings depicting an imaginary American city. On it, she projects an original video game, inspired by Pac-man, which visitors can play singly or competitively, becoming the dreamers chasing their dreams, beer, money, and each other through the neon-lit painted city streets, while dodging the authorities and other hazards.

Don’t miss the return of 100 under $100,  Thursday, September 7 from 5-9 PM.

This is the FOURTH annual iteration of this event, and we keep getting better stuff.

Take home affordable art that very night. There will be 100 original pieces of it gracing our walls that night—but not for long! Start a collection, round out an existing one, fight over stuff, have fun!

Watch this space for preview images and more on the evening’s events.

UPDATE: The studio has been rented. If you are interested in hearing about openings in the future, please sign up for our mailing list.

Available July 1: A  220-square-foot interior space, with 14-foot ceilings, two long clean white walls, and one lovely exposed brick wall (which you can and may hang stuff on). It also has a cute dutch door entrance and is located mere steps from a utility sink.

$370 a month includes utilities, as well as shared amenities like wifi, a kitchenette, a hallway gallery, a comfy and professional waiting area for your big-time visitors, two utility sinks, and nice clean restrooms.

We are looking for a new community member to create alongside other artists, craftspeople, and art-related enterprises in a building that is dedicated to supporting creative enterprises. We organize biannual (at least) shows and open studios, and we share information, expertise, marketing tips, and fun.

If this sounds right for you, please contact Jane to see the space.

Come see this fun show of fake album covers for made-up bands. The invited artists, all 33-1/3 of them, were quite inspired by the project (repressed fantasies of being a rock star perhaps?) and came up with bands and artwork that run the gamut: funny, naughty, surreal, satirical, political, and just plain weird.

The gallery will be open from 1-6 PM on Friday, May 26 and Saturday, May 27. It’s at 108 Cherry in the future home of the Good Arts Arcade, a planned mini-retail complex for makers, and of course right in the heart of Pioneer Square.

Here are the Original Artists who will be fabricating bands and album covers for the upcoming show, Original Hits by Original Artists:

Gabriel Campanario
Amanda James Parker
Jed Dunkerley
Kelly Lyles
Romson Bustillo
Paul E. McKee
Paul D. McKee
Eric Eschenbach
Dara Solliday
Savina Mason
Chris Rollins
Jeff Scott
Sandy Nelson
Jane Richlovsky
Rainer Waldman Adkins
Karin Bolstad
Marne Cohen Vance
Nia Michaels
Liz Ewings
George Abeyta
Paula Wong
Krisna Schumann
Sarah Dillon
Elizabeth Arzani
Henrietta’s Eye
Jeanie Lewis
Morgan Cahn
Nathan Vass
Matthew Potter
Megan Reisinger
Hadar Iron

THAT’S 33-1/3! (or thereabouts)

R.I.P. the album cover, sort of. We said our goodbyes to that roomy square-foot of substantial cardstock, with its fantastic artwork — maybe by Warhol or Dali or Mapplethorpe —to name just a few. We also said our goodbyes to the hours of contemplation of the cover-art while the music spun on a nearby turntable, a unique synthesis of the aural with the visual with the tactile — a feast for the soul. Then the album cover was demoted in both size and importance, a mere afterthought of a booklet cover, encased in brittle plastic. Now stripped of its physicality entirely, it’s relegated to the ether where its low-rez pixelated remains live out their diminished existence barely visible on tiny hand-held screens. Until now! With LP sales now at a twenty-eight-year high, the album cover (both genuine and fake) is back!

Original Hits by Original Artists, opening May 4 right downstairs on the first floor of the Good Arts Building, will pay proper homage to the art of the album cover, both past and present—without the album. The exhibit features covers for dozens of fabricated albums cut by bands that exist only in the artists’ imaginations. The show will be on view May 4 – May 31, 2017 at 108 Cherry Street in the Good Arts Building (downstairs from ’57 Biscayne).

A Release Party and reception for the artists will be held First Thursday, May 4, 6:00 -10:00 p.m. followed by the Upstream Music Fest, May 11-13, when there will be actual live (if unrelated) music on site, programmed by Upstream during the run of the festival. One of a handful of free venues in the neighborhood, it will be open from 4-8 PM with music on May 11 and 12; and 1-8 on Saturday the 13th, with music from 4-8. The exhibit will also be open on the last two Fridays and Saturdays in May, from 1-6PM and by appointment.

Original Hits is curated by artist Jane Richlovsky of ’57 Biscayne which, incidentally, was named for a Joni Mitchell song lyric. For this show Richlovsky and fellow artist Dara Solliday invited approximately thirty-three and one third artists to unearth those long-forgotten catch phrases that had once sparked a reply of “That would make a great band name!” and then create a full-size old-school 12-inch LP album cover for this hypothetical hitmaker. Artists include Romson Bustillo, Kelly Lyles, Nia Michaels, Jed Dunkerley, Gabriel Campanario, and Richlovsky, showing fake album covers in paint, collage, repurposed tin, textiles, wood, and who knows what else.

About the venue: The Good Arts Building was purchased by an artist/developer partnership, Good Arts LLC, in 2015, with the mission of promoting the interdependent prosperity of artists and other neighborhood businesses and institutions. ’57 Biscayne Studios are located on its second floor.

Guest artist and honorary Biscaynito Amanda James Parker has installed her video homage to peep shows of yore in the storefront beneath ’57 Biscayne studios. More here, at the Good Arts Building website.

We’re super-excited to announce that we’ve filled the cute new nook of a studio with the lovely Celeste Cooning, cutter of intricate patterns in Tyvek and much more.  She will be settled in by our next open house, December 1st in time to celebrate the holidays. Welcome to the community, Celeste, and we look forward to future co-inspirations and collaborations!

That the studio had a line-up of fabulous and personable artists ready to take it before it was even built speaks to the utter dearth of affordable cultural space in this town. Good Arts is looking forward to building some additional work & gallery spaces on the street level of the building in the upcoming months. Please join our mailing list to keep abreast of developments. While we’re at it, let’s hear a shout-out to those who are working to create affordable space elsewhere in the city: Sam Farraizaino at Equinox, Timothy Firth at Common Area Maintenance,  and many others, most of them artists themselves.