Curating
Finding Home
Finding Home honors the Chinese immigrants of the American West. The exhibition touches on the history of racism and violence against the Chinese in America – specifically Tacoma's exclusionary past – but it also offers artists' views into Chinese immigrants finding a sense of home and hope and persevering despite hardship. The exhibition explores the spiritual, the mythical, and the laborious path of these seekers of the American dream in a counter-narrative to the conventional picture of America's history.
Reorient: Journeys Through Art and Healing
Reorient: Journeys Through Art and Healing focuses on themes of history, immigration, cultural pain, and the process of finding sanctuary and healing in artistic practice. The featured artists, Victor Kai Wang, Suchitra Mattai, Jean Isamu Nagai, and Tuan Nguyen work in non-traditional media to share personal stories of history and heritage.
Howl
Howl, curated by Lele Barnett and Amanda Manitach, is a survey of female-identifying and non-binary artists who work in large-scale material and voice. From hanging gardens to tensile textile walls, ephemeral text tracings to punk-poetic shout-outs, the exhibit encompasses a range of material expressions as elegant as they are aggressive, spanning the softly ecstatic to blunt-force unapologetic.
Salish Coast Elementary School — Public Art Selection
For Salish Coast Elementary School, Lele Barnett collaborated with ArtsWA and the school's Art Selection Committee, which included students, staff, parents, and volunteers. She learned the school is not only a special space for students but also a public library, YMCA, and town gathering place. Port Townsend, known as an art community, values place-based learning, making it important to engage students and the community with regional artists.
