"Juan Alonso: Grey Matters," Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, WA. Through Nov. 28.
Regina Hackett in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer tells gay Cuban immigrant Juan Alonso's story. "Juan Alonso paints smoke. His blackened tendrils in ink and pencil, currently at the Francine Seders Gallery, are a tribute to his father's ironwork and the pots his mother decorated in floral patterns. Hovering in space as if on the edge of dissolution, they are a bridge between the two parts of his life, as a Cuban and as a U.S. artist....'I was drawing and painting. I never had a lesson. Nobody taught me. I made a good living with music, but it wasn't my music. I wanted to do something that would be my own.' In 1979, he moved to San Francisco, worked in a frame shop and played in coffee shops. In 1981, he moved to Key West for the sun, the beach and the presence of so many other Spanish speakers. In 1982, in a new relationship and committed to his painting, he moved to Seattle. His rise was not meteoric. For three years, he ran a frame shop on Capitol Hill and mounted shows for neighborhood artists. He was experimenting with Cuban scenes, but they failed to connect to the core of his experience. He kept painting."
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