March 3, 2022 - April 23, 2022 —

You’re Welcome and I’m Sorry Edward H Coffin and Sara Coffin

March 3, 2022- April 23 , 2022 Opening Reception: First Thursday, March 3, 5-8PM
Gallery hours: Saturdays, 12pm-3pm and by appointment. Email specialist.gallery@gmail.com or DM us on instagram (@specialist_sea) for inquiries.

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Children don’t consent to life. Making one myself, there is an aspect of guilt. I’m sorry comes to mind regularly. Then, You’re welcome and I’m sorry.  My wife and I didn’t accidentally get pregnant while having sex. We went through a lengthy in vitro fertilization. I have no excuse. I created you, my creature. 

When I had a psychotic episode in my late 20s, my narcissistic fantasy was that if I were a good enough artist, I’d be entombed in secret lower levels of the Met museum in New York with other approved geniuses. I’d have my DNA and memory preserved like Ellen Ripley in Alien Resurrection, then shot into space in a chrome bullet coffin, where alien technology could resurrect my consciousness. Later, I rewatched the film and was shook by all the failed Ripleys, locked up in a chamber living tortured lives, half alien, half human, unsuccessful. 

I know from my experience with psychosis that minds are delicate. There is no real me, but a scaffold that is built over time and changes, or can be completely dismantled and reassembled. Taken apart to be put back together. This, I think, is what trauma means.

Your story is that having a family made it nearly impossible to continue such an immersive art practice process, one deserving of entombment at the Met. You are new and just six weeks old, and I can understand how even if there is time, my attention is different, scattered. 

I don’t know how you feel about death. We have these works from now and 40 years ago, and maybe within them there is a feeling of knowing. We are so alike, in our anxiety and self-consciousness, our fear of conflict. I know what it’s like to be inside your mind, a thing that transgresses the boundary of individuality, or ideas of self. I know the coping mechanism that is an immersive art practice. In these prints I see a generative healing, or a wound constantly tended.

This work we made at the same moment in our lives. Mine is now, yours is then. Perhaps the real genetic material is this, and it went into me. Now it is my turn to give, without consent, the gift (and struggle) of a creative life. And if you become an artist, well…

You’re welcome, and I’m sorry. 

Edward H Coffin’s Statement: I went to New York in 1976 to attend grad school at Pratt and become a "famous artist” with the optimism of youth and the necessary confidence required to be a creator of new things. My wife worked to support us then and now as I chased my dream. After my MFA in printmaking, I carted my portfolio through Chelsea and got into a medium level gallery. We wanted to have a baby, and my parents offered us space on the family farm so we left Brooklyn and returned to Redmond in 1981. I built a studio with logs from the property where we lived and tried real hard to have a baby. Three years later we had the miracle of Sara.

Now 38 years later, Sara and her wife are living in that same studio space with a brand new baby girl.

Sara has been through my early work and found an emotional connection with these prints before you now. They are presented with her new work, created in the same space where she grew up, and during the same period of life. I'm thrilled at the prospect! 

Edward H Coffin received his BFA from the University of Puget Sound in 1976 and MFA in Printmaking from Pratt Institute in 1979. He works in printmaking, photography, and sculpture and lives on his family’s farm in Redmond, Washington.

Sara Coffin’s Statement: I grew up in my dad’s studio; he let me experiment with everything. I’ve lived in Seattle, Chicago, New Haven, and New York, and now I’m back home. When I left for bigger cities, the possibilities felt greater there, but I think those ideas have become outdated. The opportunities feel more exciting here on the farm, where we have the beginnings of a sculpture park, a large studio, and family, blood and beyond. 

Sara Coffin lives on their family’s farm in Redmond, Washington. They hold an MFA from Yale University (2016) and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008). Recent exhibitions include Pit Stop at Double Garage in Seattle and Dude I almost Had You, curated by Alex Stevens for Other Places Art Fair in LA.