Mary Coss Studio
I’m excited to announce the publication of my Artist Spotlight Video which is produced in support of the SOLA Award. I am truly fortunate to have this profile created by an amazing team of Sean Anderson, Manon Etchegoingberry and Jay Koh of the Communications Leadership Graduate Program at the UW. Their thoughtful questions create a well told historical storyline of my trajectory as an artist. You can watch it here.
I am just finishing up a new Public Artwork! My sculpture, Emerge, is based on an architectural column that contains a tree bursting from within. The site for the art is in an urban setting adjacent to a large park. The work addresses the duality of the built environment and nature, located at Piper development and inspired by the nearby tree groves of Marymoor Park. My intention in combining images of nature with architectural structure creates an unexpected experience that entices people to stop and consider the relationship between the two. The site named Piper takes its name from the Piper Willow, Salix drummondiana Hookeriana piperi, recently renamed Hookers Willow. With this renaming of the tree, I have added pods to the catkins,in the form of Forbidden Fruit. They are both cast in bronze. The sculpture is lit both inside and out, where it is uplit from its concrete seating base. It is nearing completion and will go into exterior storage near the site. Emerge will have a year of aging prior to installation in order to promote the development of the rusty patina natural to corten steel.
I am honored to be a featured artist in the 5th edition of PublicDisplay.Art (Volume 2 Issue 1)
This Seattle based Art newspaper, produced by One Reel, supports critical writing on the arts in Seattle. They also show artwork in pop up galleries. Congrats One Reel on this cool venture.
I’m pleased to announce a new partnership with Bellevue College Climate Justice Faculty Development Lead Dr. Sonya Doucette and Artist and BC Instructor Chris Oliver. We’ve received Grant funding from the Student Environment Sustainability Fund for research and development of new art projects with a focus on climate and the impact of global warming. Fibonacci Footprint is a transdisciplinary collaboration between artists and scientists that explores a climate justice issue that considers both ecological and social ethics. Mentor artist and scientists work with students to both research climate topics and create art projects that are then presented in an exhibit and panel discussion. The goal is to increase public understanding about the complexity of the climate crisis as a step toward climate solutions. The work will be exhibited at Bellevue College in January of 2024.
Artist Participants include Kite Arner, Carol Rashawnna and myself. I’m collaborating with psychologist Jennifer Parada, geologist Charlie Keller and student Tristan Martin. More to come…
Residency: October 4 – 15 & November 1 – 17
Sound the Siren Exhibition: November 17 – December 12
I am excited to start my new venture as Bellevue College Resident Artist! I am maintaining a dual purpose residency over the next 6 weeks. While I create artwork, I will host students in conversation about the concepts, inspiration and fabrication of the art and discuss the preparation for exhibition. These conversations will continue through to the exhibit. I look forward to working with students in the sociology, political science and art departments! I will also facilitate voter registration by providing interested students with a QR code, so that they can register online to vote.
I explore current topics and memory with a critical eye. I challenge our expectations and social norms in order to analyze their effects on our present state and to consider our future impact. Sound the Siren is artwork examining ideas of social justice. There are tendrils to civil rights, free speech, feminist ideology and a host of other topics. The work has a societal basis and generates conversation about history, empowerment, anger, empathy and integrity.
Digital sound art by Mary Coss pairs with striking steel “Ghost Log” sculpture to tell stories and history of Dickman Mill Park, accessible via QR code.
Thank you to Rosemary Ponnekanti for this insightful article on my recent sound project, Ghost Timbre. Read it here
Learn about Ghost Log and listen to my Ghost Timbre sound collage on this podcast feature with Jack Straw! My exhibit at Jack Straw Cultural Center opens tomorrow, July 8th with a reception at 7pm. I hope you can join us!
Ghost Timbre Exhibition July 8- August 19, 2022
Jack Straw Cultural Center 4261 Roosevelt Way NE
Opening reception July 8, 7-8:30 pm Visit by appointment Mon-Fri 10-5:30. Please schedule all attendance and get details at 206-634-0919 or jsp@jackstraw.org
The City of Tacoma celebrates 2022 Historic Preservation awards and Dickman Mill Park and Ghost Log win Outstanding Achievement in Partnerships Award.
The project also won the Washington ASLA Award of Honor for General Design, Public Ownership. You can learn more about the project here.
I’m delighted to announce that I have a new Public Art Project to be installed at Piper in Redmond. Piper is located in a developing urban setting adjacent to Marymoor Park. My proposal addresses the duality of the built character of this neighborhood within the larger Northwest ecosystem and nearby Park. Emerge is an architectural column that transforms into a tree. The base of the column is cast concrete, which reads as an architectural plinth. The base serves as a footing and a gathering place for people to sit.
I’m so grateful to be selected to go to Perugia this fall to exhibit at Palazzo della Penna Museum! Artists, chosen by the panel, who will exhibit in Perugia this September: SEATTLE ARTISTS/ARTISTI DI SEATTLE Humaira Abid, Iole Alessandrini, Mary Coss, Paul Goldstein, Malayka Gormally PERUGIA ARTISTS/ARTISTI DI PERUGIA Paolo Lattaioli, Sandford & Gosti, Tonina Cecchetti, Vilma Lok, Kim Hee Jin
A Cross Generational Talk on the Creative Process Listen here
Vashon Center for the Arts
March 10 @ 7:00 pm
Visual Artist Mary Coss will exhibit at the Gallery at Vashon Center for the Arts during March of 2022 in celebration of International Women’s Day. Her feminist perspective and compelling creative work is carried on through her female lineage.
Daughter Roxy Coss is an internationally renowned jazz saxophonist-composer, releasing her sixth album on March 25th, entitled Disparate Parts (Outside in Music). Roxy is also the Founder and President of Women in Jazz Organization (WIJO), which works to level the gender disparity in jazz.
In this debut public exchange, they will discuss their individual and collaborative explorations through the creative process, and examine similarities and differences of how they each transform conceptual ideas of inspiration into finished art.
Both mother and daughter have distinguished voices in their respective fields, creating work with a social conscience while working as activists, mentors and educators. Their parallel careers occasionally cross paths and unfold into artistic collaboration through the lens of a shared aesthetic and value system. They will discuss diverse aesthetic challenges such as maintaining an authentic vision while navigating themes of social justice, reaching and developing an audience through visceral and allegorical means, balancing concept and technique, and their love and fear of pushing boundaries.
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by one of the Seattle areas thoughtful arts and culture writers, Brangien Davis. She wrote a beautiful article, A ‘Ghost Log’ appears on Tacoma’s Waterfront for Crosscut. The cliff notes are in the PBS video version.
This week I am in Mothership sound studios! Thank you Alma Mater Tacoma. I’m thrilled to explore a new medium…sound, as a new way to approach storytelling. The podcast is called Timbre…lines.
We’re exploring timbre here. That is timbre as in sound, or the character or quality of music or voice. It’s how you recognize the different sounds or voices that you hear.
We are recognizing different voices of the local people and the communities that rely on the stately cedar tree for sustenance, sanctuary and livelihood as we navigate these waters.
I’m in the studio (left) with Amber Sterud Hayward, Puyallup Tribal Language Program Director. I also spoke with historians and preservationists Brandon Reynon (Puyallup Tribal Historic Preservation Officer) and Michael Sullivan (Artifacts Consulting). Claire Keller-Scholz (Tacoma Parks) speaks about the fire in the episode Up in Flames and Rebecca Solverson (Public Art Specialist for City of Tacoma) turns the table and starts to interview the artist, 😉that’s me, Mary Coss. This week I recorded the first half of six episodes. More to come! The series will be published later this year.
The current issue of Sporklet Press features Silent Salinity: Net Loss as part of this months poetry review.
Poet and editor Rae Gouirand curated the issue and embraced the project. Gouirand and Coss spent time as Artists in Residents together at Willapa Bay AiR when the artwork was first in development. The photo left shows a detail of the salt encrusted wire text by Coss. The text is written as a journal entry by scientist Roger Fuller and contemplates the state of the estuaries. The issue includes the writing along with several reproductions of the large 10′ artwork, which references a fishing net.
Coss and Fuller took part in discussions regarding global warming and the rising salinity levels in the estuaries. Their three year exchange resulted in a large body of artwork featured in a series of four changing exhibits. You can read more about Silent Salinity here. Fuller currently heads up Stewardship at Padilla Bay Reserve.
Detail of Silent Salinity: Net Loss
Are you listening? A note about Timbre…
Take time to closely listen to the sounds around us. I’ve been thinking about how sound is temporal, but beyond that some sounds are timeless in a way, for instance the sound of waves lapping on a shore or the sounds of the wind in the forest. It gives me chills to consider that my ancestors could listen to some of the same sounds I hear today. Others of course change through time. My newest project is called Ghost Timbre. This sound piece will include historical sounds that would have been heard at Dickman Mill and the surrounding natural environment, mixed with interviews that offer historical perspective from Puyallup Tribal members and mill owners and workers. My research took me further into the uses of cedar and the lands of the local indigenous people. I recently went on a cedar gathering with the Puyallup Tribe. This sustainable practice creates unique sounds which will be mixed with familiar sounds of the forest in this work. The cedar stripping from the tree is fresh and exhilarating. The practice honors the cedar with a prayer, offering and thanks. The trees chosen withstand the scar and live on.
Ghost Timbre will accompany my Ghost Log at Dickman Mill Park. This is Puyallup land. Traditional homelands of the Puyallup tribe. The integration of Lushootseed and twined baskets in the Ghost Log and related sounds in Ghost Timbre are a small step in allyship, in helping to lift their voices and celebrate the history and experience of the Indigenous people. Small steps in ongoing work.
Thanks to the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Port of Tacoma, and City of Tacoma Historic Preservation Office and Office of Arts for supporting this project.
I have received a contract to propose new artwork, a permanent exterior sculpture for the Uptown neighborhood at 100 Roy Street in Seattle.
Rise is an abstracted column transformed into a tree. Columns standing alone read as monuments. In context, they transmit the weight of the structure above to the structural elements below. This is a form of compression that is inherantly contradicted in my design. The column has been released from its physical function and shattered by nature itself, in the form of a tree. The tree seems to have grown within the column and bursts through at its seams. The corten steel artwork combines the built environment with nature.
This “tree” is abstract and represented as lacy cut sheet metal in the form of Cedar Bark. The shoots are tipped with bronze cast buds. The base of the column is cast concrete and reads as an architectural plinth. It serves as a footing and a gathering place for people to sit. It will be lit inside to feature the lacy shadows cast at night, in addition to the natural sunlit shadows of the day.
Public art making is a long process, with many hurdles and challenges. It’s satisfying to finally get through all those hoops and to have a sculpture built that remains true to your vision. I am happy to share that my sculpture Surge, at Bainbridge Island High School, has made it through those hoops. Fabrication is starting. Thanks to Mike Sweney of the Washington State Arts Commission for shepherding me through the process.
