show

New Date for Solo Show!

Art For Sale, creativity, Exhibition, Film, Gallery, Installation, Narrative

I have a BIG update ~ my solo show in Seattle has been moved up two months!

So now, “Loving & Letting Go” opens Thurs. July 3rd, 5-8pm at SlipStitch Studios. We have also scheduled a screening of my film and an artist talk later in the month. Then the show closes on August 2.

Of course, you are welcome to visit during gallery hours ~ Wed-Sat 12-5.

Additionally, I am scheduling private tours of the exhibit (on all days). If you’re interested, please DM/text/email me!! I’d love everyone who wants to see this exhibit to get a chance to experience it.

Thank you kindly.

ELIAICHI KIMARO
Loving & Letting Go

SlipStitch Studios
604 2nd Ave, Seattle
Gallery Hours: Wed – Sun, 12-5pm

EXHIBITION EVENTS

OPENING RECEPTION
July 3, 5-8pm
First Thursday Pioneer Sq Art Walk

SCREENING & DISCUSSION
A Lot Like You
July 10, 5-7:30pm
(Doors at 5, film at 5:30)

ARTIST TALK
The Narrative Throughline
July 26, 3-5pm

CLOSING RECEPTION
Sat., Aug 2, 5-8pm

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

Loving & Letting Go is a multidisciplinary body of work by Eliaichi Kimaro that reflects the emotional terrain of a life in transition. In a short span of time, Kimaro’s closest relationships have shifted — her daughter left for college, her husband relocated for work, and her parents are 9,000 miles away.
This body of work explores the emotional dichotomies shaping her life in this moment — presence and absence, intimacy and independence, acceptance and grief. Each piece holds opposing forces in conversation — stillness and motion, geometric and organic, light and dark — reflecting the tension between loving from afar while learning to let go.
Loving & Letting Go is both a personal meditation and a universal invitation to sit with complexity and to find beauty within life’s contradictions.

The Art of Daily Practice (Solo Show & Artist Talk)

Art For Sale, creativity, Exhibition, Gallery, process

In February, I will be exhibiting my latest work at one of my favorite art venues in the Pacific Northwest ~ Vashon Center for the Arts. Together with the gallery manager, Lynann Politte, we came up with a show idea about the ritual of daily practice.


In 2023, I challenged myself to create one small painting every day. I dusted off my smallest sketchbook and let go of any expectations of perfection. My only goal was to show up & play ~ experimenting with materials, color, form and technique. Pretty soon, my journal paintings broke free from covering the whole page, and these bold, colorful forms started to emerge.

This exhibit will include a sampling of my journal pages and some of the larger pieces they inspired.

In my Artist Talk, I will share new research findings about how engaging regularly in a creative practice, regardless of skill level, transforms our brains and bodies. And I will reflect on the most surprising take-aways from my daily writing and painting practice.

Vashon Center for the Arts
19600 Vashon Hwy SW
Vashon, WA 98070
Opening Reception: Fri Feb 2, 5-8pm.
Artist Talk:  Sat Feb 17, 2pm.
Exhibit dates: Feb 2-25
Gallery Hours: Wed-Sun, 12-5pm

Artist Spotlight

Art For Sale, article, creativity, Exhibition, Gallery, process
What fun to answer questions that aren’t solely focused on my art.
Thank you to Columbia City Gallery!!
(See original post HERE).

🤩 Artist Spotlight: Eliaichi Kimaro has been with Columbia City Gallery for 7yrs. Her newest work can be seen in our “Sanctuary” exhibit thru 1/7.
eliaichi kimaro
. . . . . . . . .
Favorite Seattle neighborhood
• Columbia City, Seward Park ~ happy to love where I live.

Favorite Seattle restaurant & menu item
• El Kiosko’s carnitas burritos, Marination’s spicy pork kimchi fried rice, Chucks Hop Shop’s fries, Hey Day’s pesto bacon toast, King Donuts’ chocolate old fashioned.

Favorite Seattle park
• Seward Park

Favorite style of house
• Craftsman

Favorite movie theater
• I love(d) Seattle’s Landmark theaters ~ esp. Harvard Exit, Egyptian, Seven Gables

Who would play you in the movie of your life?
• Octavia Spencer could pull off my blend of funny + earnest.

What’s your go-to comfort food?
• Bibimbap, waffles.

Where’s the coolest place you traveled?
•  Gombe National Park ~ Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee reserve. Met her son, sat in the house she built with her mom in the 70s and talked with her fellow researcher for several hours. And spent whole days observing and walking amongst chimps in the wild.

Favorite karaoke song
• Faithfully, Killing Me Softly, The Jeffersons theme song

What’s your best Halloween costume?
• Morpheus (The Matrix)

Continue reading →

Origin Story – The Offering

Art For Sale, creativity, Exhibition, Gallery, Narrative, Origin story, process, Story, Works In Progress


The Offering (48″x48″): I love pieces that develop in their own time. As these paintings grow with me over months, my challenges, wishes, joys and sorrows get embedded in the layers. The painting becomes a time capsule that captures who I am and how I’m feeling as the piece evolves.

I love some of the color and energy in the earlier versions, but these passages, while pretty, were meaningless. I relish paintings where the struggle leads me to unknown places and pushes me beyond my capabilities. At their best, my paintings feel like an archeological discovery, as if I’m unearthing something that’s always been there. The finished piece is something I never could (or would) set out to paint. So these origin stories remind me of how a painting came to be…

 


June 15, 2023: I am both here and not here…a meditation on impermanence that is resonating with me today. And so I embedded it in the first layer of this 48″x48″ piece.

 


June 18: Starting to build up surface history that I can later work back into. Happy to be working large once again…

 


June 22: Working on large pieces in a small studio makes it hard to stand back and view the painting from a distance. So posting progress pics on Instagram scales down the image, allowing me to troubleshoot compositional problems and figure out where the piece wants to go next…🤓

 


June 25: Very early stages yet, but after a brief TimeOut, we’re starting to listen to each other…

Continue reading →

Upcoming Feature Show

Art For Sale, Exhibition, Gallery

SANCTUARY

Columbia City Gallery
Exhibit runs Nov 15 – Jan 7

Featured Artists: Tina Albro, Patrick Connelly, Carol Berger Hershman,
Eliaichi Kimaro, Leslie Nan Moon,  Rupa Palasmudram

Opening Reception
Sat., November 18
5 – 7pm
Columbia City Gallery
4864 Rainier Ave S., Seattle 98118
Light refreshments will be served.

 

Artist Statement
Since the pandemic, I’ve come to a deeper understanding and appreciation about the role of art in my life. Making art is no longer an ‘if I have time’ matter. It has become as integral to my well-being as my daily writing practice. Art helps me repair and restore the parts of my soul that are beyond the reach of words.

This collection of new works includes examples of loosening up, digging deep, trying new things, and letting go ~ all creative risks I’ve taken this past year in the comfort and safety of my studio.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

 

Scanning the Room

Activism, Art For Sale, collaboration, creativity, Exhibition, Gallery
I’m honored to be a participating artist in “Scanning the Room” at Vashon Center for the Arts (May 5-28). This invitational exhibit, co-curated by June Sekiguchi and Lynann Politte, presents works from 20 Asian American Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander (AANHPI) artists that speak to identity, politics, or experience of how AANHPI artists view their place in predominantly white spaces.
.
.
You can take a 3D tour of the exhibit HERE.
.
And here’s a short reel of our opening night. Thanks to all who came out!! It feels wonderful to be back in spaces where we can gather, discuss, and celebrate the arts!
.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by eliaichi kimaro (@elikimaro)

Upcoming Solo Show!

Art For Sale, creativity, Exhibition, Gallery

What a dream ~ my first solo gallery show!!! I am delighted to share that Scarlet Ibis Gallery will be exhibiting my work this November and December.

This will be the debut of the Stacks series I painted this summer ~ wonky, colorful stacks of all sizes to brighten our dark winter months.

Scarlet Ibis Gallery is located in a brilliant yellow building which was built in 1929 to house the Station Master for the railroad.

Opening reception will be Saturday, November 12 from 5-8pm, as part of Georgetown Art Attack.

If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop by. Would love to see you there!! 😃

The Paths We Travel

Exhibition, family, Gallery, Narrative, Origin story, Story

Artist Statement

As a kid, I found it comforting to think about how wildly the universe had to conspire just so I could be here. I would lie in bed and think about all the serendipitous moments that had to happen just so my Tanzanian father and South Korean mother could meet, halfway around the world, and have me. I would think about the epic stories of love, betrayal, sacrifice, migration, survival ~ all the random encounters and deliberate life choices extending back generations that had to happen just so my parents could meet and have me.

And as I got older, made friends and met their families, I realized that everyone has stories that are epic in scope ~ even if their families have lived in the same town for generations.

Every one of us is the embodiment of the life stories of our parents, our grandparents, our ancestors. We carry their stories forward with us, whether we’re conscious of them or not. But make no mistake ~ we are all here because of these stories.

Making art is how I make sense of these stories I’ve inherited about who I am and where I come from…and the stories I’m now passing down. As a mother, I feel compelled to think about where I stand in this flow of cultural inheritance and legacy. These paintings reflect the internal and external landscapes that have been traversed just to reach this point where our paths could cross in this gallery, in this city, at this moment in time…

Currently on exhibit at
Columbia City Gallery (Seattle)
through Jan. 5, 2020.

Artist Statement

Exhibition, Gallery, Narrative, Story, Works In Progress

Eliaichi Kimaro

WEATHERED & WORN
Solo show

20190430_160723-01

Of the 40+ paintings in my upcoming solo show, 25 are new and exhibiting for the first time.

Weathered and Worn will be part of West Seattle Art Walk in May and June.
The exhibit will be up through the month of June.

NORTHWEST ENCAUSTIC
7150 44th Ave SW., Seattle 98136
OPENING RECEPTION
MAY 9, 2019
6-9pm

ARTIST RECEPTION
JUNE 13, 2019
6-9pm

Artist Statement (excerpt)

…This body of work hangs together loosely.  To me, they are more about the process, the journey of becoming.  They evoke the layered narratives that we all carry—as individuals in this present moment, and as the embodiment of our ancestors’ stories spanning generations and continents.   They represent new directions I am taking as an artist — using mark-making, texture, cold wax medium and organic materials to tell a story.  Some of these pieces came into being fully-formed.  Some were labors of love, with 2 or 3 completely different paintings existing beneath the surface.

While I am excited to share these paintings in their current incarnations, some of them will be radically transformed – melted, scraped down, carved into, painted over—when they return to my studio.  But as a lover of process, I believe that even our work-in-progress selves deserve an occasional spotlight…to be seen, witnessed and considered in our current state of being…and becoming.

Nine Elephants – Origin Story

Exhibition, Narrative, Origin story, Story, Works In Progress

Backstory:  Twenty years ago, I was reeling from the upheaval of my Saturn returns. So I rented a beach cabin and spent 4 days in silent meditation, writing about what values I wanted to guide my life choices.

photo by Zorn B. Taylor

I came away from that retreat having whittled my list down to nine values…values that my spirit animal exemplifies. I got a tattoo of 9elephants as a reminder of the Being I aspired to be.

The theme of 9elephants has since informed my activism and filmmaking. It’s the name of my production company. These values formed the cornerstone of our wedding vows 16 years ago, and the foundation of my parenting principles 11 years ago. And so I suppose it was just a matter of time before this recurring theme manifested in art form…

 

5/8/18 – Starting my new biggie piece (36″²) while watching Hari Kondabolu’s Netflix special that dropped today!!! Wood glue burn of my Chagga nickname written in Korean — which will hint at land masses in the final piece. The paint palette will simply be the colors of the Tanzanian flag.  And so it begins, again…

 

5/8/18 – End of Day 1: I’ve been having WAY too much fun painting a background watercolor.  Most of this will be obscured when this is all done. But I am a big believer that all the energy, attention and intention I pour into each layer will be felt in the final piece. The beauty is in the making…

 

 5/12/18 – Saturday morning, added layers of encaustic and oils to this Biggie piece today. Reminds me of Tanzanian kitenge cloth.

 

5/18/18 – After putting this painting in Time Out for a week, I had a huge AHA! moment while writing this morning. My way forward with piece suddenly became clear. And now, instead of playing hookie today like I’d planned, I am completely Obsessed with bringing my vision to life!!! Folks who’ve known me a while can probably see where this piece is going…

Continue reading →