Since April 1st, we suspended our regular exhibition programming due to Covid-19; instead, we have converted our gallery into a studio residency program in order to support our local arts community during this crisis. Through the NORTON Experimental Residency Series, we have now supported 7 artists in our region in the last 6 months, where we are encouraging experimental approaches to making, sharing, and viewing work in an era of distance, vulnerability, and isolation.

Anastacia-Reneé: Alice is Spinning

August 11 - September 20, 2020

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Anastacia-Reneé (American, b. 1972, Kansas City, Missouri) (@Anastaciarenee5) is an award-winning writer, TEDx Speaker, Deep End Podcast co-host, and interdisciplinary artist. A 2020 Arc Fellow (Artist Trust) and 2020 Jack Straw Fellows Curator, Anastacia-Reneé was the Seattle Civic Poet (2017–19), and Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House (2015–17), she has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Mineral School, Hypatia in the Woods, and The New Orleans Writers Residency. Anastacia-Renee's work has been published widely.

Anastacia-Reneé received the 2018 James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award, which is funded by the Raynier Institute & Foundation through the Frye Art Museum | Artist Trust Consortium. The award supports and advances the creative work of outstanding artists living and working in Washington State and culminates in a presentation at the Frye Art Museum.

She will be working from our physical gallery space, from August 11-September 20, to continue developing her upcoming exhibition at Frye Art Museum, opening in January 2021, titled "(Don’t be Absurd) Alice in Parts."

An excerpt from the exhibition press release reads:

"Through her writing, performances, and installations, Anastacia-Reneé counteracts the erasure of marginalized identities in American society with an unflinching gaze directed toward collective liberation. She plumbs the depths of everyday experiences and emotions, charting the messy intricacies and difficulties that too often go unspoken as a way of transforming silence into language and action. In this exhibition, Anastacia-Reneé offers a rageful mediation on gentrification—of neighborhoods and its insidious effects on the body—as seen through the eyes of her multilayered and witty character Alice Metropolis."

During her NORTON residency, Anastacia will channel Alice via words, doodles of resistance, incomplete lists, confessions and paintings. 

See Alice in 9 Ounces here: https://youtu.be/mUWcwEPpNV8