Category: Exhibitions

Current

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Dig Deep Gardens 19028 Vashon Hwy SW

Surge Oct 14, 2023 – Feb 17, 2024 Museum of Northwest Art

Witness Tree In partnership with the Skagit Climate Science Consortium, MoNA is bringing back Surge: Mapping Transition, Displacement, and Agency in Times of Climate Change, an exhibition drawing attention to climate change and its tangible effects on the Northwest’s Coastal communities.

Upcoming

Flight Gallery San Antonio, TX February 2024

Fibonacci Footprint Bellevue College Gallery Space January 2024

Funded through Bellevue College Office of Sustainability, artists and scientists partner with students to research and develop new artwork that explores a climate justice issue that considers both ecological and social ethics.

Like Mother Kirkland Arts Center 2024

Public Art Contracts

Mind’s Eye 2024

My poem written in bronze script and embedded in a park stairwell in Seattle speaks to leaving home.

Forbidden Fruit 2024

Forbidden Fruit is an entry sculpture on an art trail at a new Redmond development adjacent to Marymoor Park. It transforms a column into a tree, in essence transforming the built environment into the natural environment. The cast bronze willow catkins are housed in podlike forbidden fruit honoring the namesake tree Hooker’s Willow. (the previous classification name was Piper’s Willow, the name of the development).

Past Exhibits

All in All at Museum of Museums

curated by Tommy Gregory opens April 13, 2023

Icosahedron at PublicDisplay: Gallery

March 2- April 23 2023 at 805 First Ave Seattle

Choice

Vashon Center for the Arts March 2023

you can virtually visit the gallery here

Sound the Siren

Bellevue College Resident Artist

Residency: Oct 4 – 15  &  Nov 1 – 17 2022

Sound the Siren Exhibition: Nov 17 – Dec 30

Gallery info here Resident info here

Migrazione/Migration

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Artist Mary Coss discusses her installation with translation by artist Jodi Sandford at Press Conference

Migrazione/Migration opened September 3, 2022 at Museo civico di Palazzo della Penna in Perugia, Italy. This exhibit of sister cities Seattle and Perugia was a joint effort by a group of artists representing both cities. The juried exhibit covered artist costs including travel, shipping, and materials. Mary Coss exhibited The Shape of Passage which included a poem written in both languages integrated into an ethereal installation made from Tulle. It was covered by local press and television.

Call to Arms

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Amazon Warrior Shield

March 4-27, 2022

Artist reception March 4th 5-8pm at Vashon Center for the Arts

Call to Arms  throws down the gauntlet to the patriarchy and questions gendered power dynamics through a twist of materials and imagery.

Mary Coss’ allegorical work explores contemporary social issues and existential questions. By altering the context of ideas, objects and tropes the viewer is provoked to consider their assumptions. She questions what we think we know, and invokes double standards and unspoken truths.  

Coss frames her critique with modern and historical references. She usurps our imperfect past as she unearths feminine strength through the subject matter and the materials used. Cast bronze, traditionally used for monuments and body armor, is contemporized through her visceral adaptations. Her use of the female body shows both its power and vulnerability. The material itself attests to the fortitude and strength of the women it portrays. Historical weaponry is transformed into armor for our time, or for some dystopian future. Ancient shields take on a modern battle. 

Coss presents conflicting ideas and recontextualizes common objects to reveal stereotypical thinking.The grand scale of a ten foot tall pelvic bone upholstered in wedding gowns stuns the audience while luring them in with the intricate delicacy of the gowns. The taboo of purity is juxtaposed with the primal scream of birth. Through these contrasts of materials and ideas Coss compels us to consider the deeper meanings layered in the work.

Silent Salinity

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Saturday Dates added!

November 20, 27 and December 4th, 2021 11am-7pm. Join us!

A new chapter of Silent Salinity opens Saturday November 13, 2021. Join us At Enter/Return:Allusive Constructions, a pop up Gallery by Tommy Gregory and Casey Arguelles Gregory in Columbia City. Reception Saturday 4-7 at 4860 Rainier Ave S. 

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Through December 5th Silent Salinity returns at Enter/Return: Allusive Structures

Coming in 2022

I’m excited to announce two solo shows in 2022

I’ll be celebrating Women’s History Month in March by installing my feminist artwork in the exhibit Sound the Siren at Vashon Center for the Arts. This will be the first time all of my bronze work with an underlying feminist theme will be exhibited at once. More neon too! March 4-27, Artist Reception March 4th, 2022 5-8pm

Also! at Vashon Center for the Arts: My daughter Roxy Coss and I will be doing a Talk on the Rock Thursday evening, March 10th: A Cross Generational Talk on the Creative Process In this debut public exchange, we will discuss our individual and collaborative explorations through the creative process, and examine similarities and differences of how we each transform conceptual ideas of inspiration into finished art.

The Beautiful Bellevue College Gallery re-opens in 2022 after closure due to the pandemic. My exhibit Witness will open in late September as school opens. Sept-Nov 2022

Like Mother tours to the White River Valley Museum in Auburn. This thoughtful group show explores Mother Daughter relationships through the work of artists.

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Like Mother at Vashon Center for the Arts

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Traces is a story of life, lineage, & loss. Starting with my daughters, this work traces my female lineage and gives voice to the lost identities of my foremothers. Covering more than 175 linear feet, the maiden names spiral backwards. Each name lost in marriage are honored here as in a family journal. The shadows cast, like the names themselves are ethereal. Like chasing shadows, or chasing ghosts, each name is but the name of a father.
Traces 2021; steel;  48”x48”x4″. Sold

Here is a 3D virtual tour of the Like Mother exhibit at the Vashon Center for the Arts curated by Kelly Lyles.

Witness at Aljoya Thornton Place through May 8

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  • Mary Coss at AlJoya Thornton
  • Within Eva Rovelleta cast bronze
  • Resident Ruth Fast with her photo
  • Glamour/Film Noir
  • Margaret Melvina cast bronze
  • “Selfie” Take a walk in her hat
  • A peek inside a Bronze hat
  • Photo

I’m using the hat as a period icon to examine the female experience in the 20th century to speak to the 21st century. I’ve been interviewing Elderly women at Aljoya Thornton whose timeless stories resonate today. They are featured in Witness on exhibit at the Residence Gallery. These women have seen so much change yet in other ways so little. Thanks 4culture for an Artist Project Grant for this work and to curator Anna Macrae for coordinating.

Guest Artist: Conversations

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Opening November 7th

Taking off the Gloves

J. Rinehart Gallery presents an exhibition of artwork in conversation. Featuring new works by Jaq Chartier, Katy Stone, Maggie Jiang, and guest artists Hernan Paganini and Mary Coss. On View in the gallery from November 7 – December 19, 2020.

Stay tuned! I’ll be taking part in the upcoming live-streamed Conversations.

“With a unique mix of materials, imagery and techniques, this exhibition combines the works of seemingly different artists in the same visual space, creating a new conversation between the works and the viewer as they interact.

Mary Coss’ bronze gloves paired with Meggan Joy’s digitally collaged floral hand gestures speaks to feminine ideals and modern strength within the rich symbolic nature of our hands. Joy’s fleeting floral collages flow into Katy Stone’s works on aluminium as her silhouettes of flora dance off the wall.”

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

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Groundswell exhibiting in “Departures and Arrivals” June 29-October 6, 2019
A group exhibit at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
photo detail Ian Lewis.

“BIMA offers an “intense session in art vocabulary” with this group exhibition focusing on the artists’ idiosyncratic approaches to abstraction. The roster is intriguing, ranging from textile artist Jono Vaughan to ecologically focused Mary Coss to UW professor and painter Denzil Hurley.” The Stranger recommended

Silent Salinity: after the dig. 950 Gallery

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Artifacts from the ruins What Remains have been catalogued and are now on view at 950

January 10 – February 21, 2019. Art and science meld in salt encrusted artifacts, a dystopian landscape, poetics of language and video projection in the new exhibit at 950Gallery in Tacoma. 

“I use the language of metaphor to examine contemporary issues. Silent Salinity explores the relationship between water, global warming and culture. Through a two-year partnership with spatial ecologist Roger Fuller, I examined the dangerously increased salinity levels encroaching on local estuaries, and on consequently our freshwater re-sources. The work in this show is inspired by these conversations and resulted in telling the story symbolically through the medium of salt.” 

SATELLITE EVENT
Art + Sci Salon : Mary Coss & Roger Fuller
February 7, 6 – 8PM at the Tacoma Art Museum

Surge at Museum of Northwest Art

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Surge     October 6, 2018-January 6, 2019    ​

Artist/Scientist Panel January 5

Cohost: Skagit Climate Science Consortium  and  Museum of Northwest Art

Artists and Scientists collaborate on Artwork about Global Warming.  Surge, an exhibition designed to draw attention to climate change and its impact on Northwest’s coastal communities, provides the forum for artists together with environmental researchers and educators to present the public with new perspectives on issues such as flooding, sea level rise and storm surge.

Working in partnership with Eco Scientist Roger Fuller, we’ve explored the effect of Climate Change on Salinity Levels in local estuaries, and consequently the impact on the flora and fauna.  I am exhibiting three installations in this show that tell this story through the medium of salt. Roger and I will be part of an artist panel to discuss the collaborations, the science and the art. 

Artist Scientist Panel  Saturday, January 5, 2019 at 3:30 PM – 5 PM

Museum of Northwest Art 121 1st St, La Conner, Washington 98257.

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TENACIOUS  August/September 2018 SUZANNE ZAHR GALLERY  Mercer Island Contemporary artists featuring  interpretations of “the feminine.”

Shift Invitational Exhibit  Aug 2-25  w/ Ed McCarthy 312 S Washington St.  First Thursday opening August 2

 

 

LIKE MOTHER (like Daughter) Aljoya Thornton Place  June 2-Sept 9, 2018