The Gallery at Kerry Hall
TEMPO/TEMPUS: rhythm and time in visual art
Tempus (Latin): Time, season, moment
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.” Martha Graham (1894-1991), dancer, teacher, and choreographer
The pulse, the heartbeat, of a building — or an arts organization and the work of the artists within it — can be described as rhythmic expansions and contractions through time. Music and dance are readily associated with tempo and movement, and theatre, of course, unfolds narratives through time. But how does visual art express rhythm, speed, or the sense of time unfurling?
For this inaugural exhibition of the Seattle Theatre Group (STG)’s Gallery at Kerry Hall, I drew inspiration from the past and present of the building, built in 1921 to house the young Cornish College of the Arts (then called the Cornish School) and its founder Nellie Cornish, a musician and educator, who believed in a holistic education that involved all of the arts. In 2024, STG became Kerry Hall’s new owners, dedicating it to community-centered arts programming in the spirit of its mission to make “diverse performing arts and education a vital part of the region’s cultural identity while preserving the vibrancy of our historic venues.”
To celebrate the decades of music and dance that animated these spaces and in honor of Nellie Cornish, who lived here one hundred years ago, “Tempo/Tempus” showcases womxn artists — all Cornish faculty or alumni — whose works of art express ideas about rhythm, movement, vitality, and the passages of time.
To echo Martha Graham, who once taught in this building, these artists — Nikita Ares, Gala Bent, Monyee Chau, Chloe King, Alissa Dymally Williams, and Ilana Zweschi — uniquely translate energies and quickenings into action and expression. Through drum beats and markings with pencil on paper (Bent), projected image and refracted light (Dymally Williams), rhythmic and/or automatic painting (Ares and Zweschi), and vibrant socio-biographic narratives (Chau and King), these works of art capture fleeting moments or connective histories. Collected together, here and now, they help us reflect on this season of change and continuing creative force.
Gayle Clemans
art historian, writer (The Seattle Times, Urban Glass Quarterly, The Map as Art, etc.), and professor at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University
FEAUTRED ARTISTS
Nikita Ares (b. 1996, Cagayan de Oro, Philippines) is a Seattle-based visual artist whose work explores movement, energy, and the emotional landscape of the self through abstract painting and drawing. She immigrated to the United States when she was 17 and received her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2018. Her work spans studio painting, public art, and community-centered workshops, including murals that enliven spaces with vibrant presence. Ares has created outdoor murals across Washington and beyond, and she continues to expand her practice through collaborations and socially engaged projects.
Website: nikitaares.com | Instagram: @kita.licious
Gala Bent is an artist who pursues a hybrid mix of studio-based practice and project-based illustration with inspiration supplied by science, music, theology, poetry and contemplation of natural forms.
She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts from State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY) Buffalo, New York in 1999 and has exhibited her work nationally ever since. Bent was a finalist for the Neddy Award in 2012, and was awarded the Westfjords Residency, in Þingeri, Iceland in 2017. Her work can be found in the Microsoft Art Collection, the Jordan Schnitzer Print Collection, Portland, OR, and the Washington State Art Collection as well as many private collections in the US and beyond.
Bent is currently a full time faculty member at the Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University and lives with her artist/photographer husband Zack Bent and her sons in Seattle, WA.
Website: galabent.com | Instagram: @galabent and @galabent_illustration
Monyee Chau is based on Coast Salish/Duwamish land with a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts. They explore journeys of collective healing through their lens as a queer Asian Diaspora, utilizing storytelling as community building for the path to liberation. Monyee uses multiple mediums to speak to themes of labor, diaspora, and community care.
They’ve exhibited in museums including the Wing Luke Museum, Bellevue Art Museum, Museum of Northwest Art, Mori Art Museum, and Copelouzos Museum. They have spoken and given keynotes at institutions such as Harvard Graduate school of Design, New York University, University of Idaho, and the University of Washington. They have been awarded as one of the 100 Changemakers by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the 4Culture 2021 Arc Artist Fellowship. Their work is in collections such as the Museum of History and Industry, NYU, and Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
Website: chinesebornamerican.com | Instagram: @monyeeart
Chloe King (b.1999, lives and works in Oakland) is a multidisciplinary artist who works between painting and photography. King’s work is born from her experience as a mixed-race queer womxn from a small, predominantly white town and explores notions of identity, power, and perception through vibrant and chaotic textiles, plants, and camouflaged figures in dystopian settings and misleading backdrops. King received their B.F.A in 2021 from Cornish College of the Arts, and is currently pursuing a dual degree (M.F.A & M.A) at California College of the Arts. King has participated in residencies at ARTS at King Street Station, (2021), Specialist Gallery (2020), and Chautauqua School of Art (2020). King has also participated in a number of shows and public art events including, 2024 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition, Somarts, San Francisco, CA, Fools Gold, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA (2024), Cheek and Hole, Specialist Gallery, Seattle, WA, Public Dreams of Fractured Futures, Wa Na Wari, Seattle, WA (2022), TIME CAPSULE, Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, WA (2021), CVA School of Art Student & Emerging Artists Exhibition, Chautauqua, NY (2020).
Website: chloekingstudio.com | Instagram: @kinggtingg
Alissa Dymally Williams is a new media artist, local curator, and arts administrator hailing from Washington D.C., and based here in Seattle. Anchoring the image as a focal point in her work, Williams moves into an interdisciplinary practice that culminates in video installation, photography, and site specific work. Her current work pushes against the archetype of the image through varied methods of manipulation and moves to question the source of her iterative and ephemeral relationship to the image, space, and subsequently the photograph as object. By way of concept, material, and her own cultural perspective and consumption, Williams aims to transform the viewer’s perception of the image and upend the construct in which we consume it.
Alissa Dymally Williams works in an arts admin role at Mini Mart City Park, a local arts organization and is currently an artist in residence at Actualize AiR, located in the heart of downtown, which has new works of hers on view in a two person exhibition, ICONS, by Williams and Noelle Whitaker. Most recent in Williams’ curatorial endeavors is ‘Interrogating The Anthropocene’ an exhibition of all video works, on view and open to the public through April 2026 at Museum House, a residential building located in First Hill.
Instagram: @Sainteliss
Ilana Zweschi is a Chicago based artist represented by Foster/White Gallery in Seattle. Her work is held in the collections of Meta, Microsoft, and the Port of Seattle, and she received the DASH artist grant in 2022. She has exhibited nationally, with notable group shows including Tiger Strikes Asteroid in New York, Museum of Museums in Seattle, and Out of Sight: A Survey of Contemporary Art in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been published in New American Paintings, interviewed by Youngspace, and featured on the opening page of the Culture section of Seattle Met.
Zweschi graduated summa cum laude from Skidmore College in 2011 with a BA in Art and Mathematics minor. In 2014 she earned an MFA in painting from the University at Albany, SUNY, where she received the Departmental Thesis Award.
Website: www.ilanazweschi.com | Instagram: @ilanazweschi
Curator
Gayle Clemans is an art historian, curator, and writer with frequent contributions of art criticism and journalism to The Seattle Times and Glass: the UrbanGlass Quarterly. Her essays appear in a variety of publications, including journals, exhibition catalogs, Smarthistory, and the award-winning book, The Map as Art. With a BA from UCLA and a Ph.D. in modern and contemporary art from the University of Washington, Clemans is now professor at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University, where she teaches art history and critical arts writing.
Clemans also conducts material research and art-making, which grounds her in the creative practices she researches and writes about. In the realms of speculative fiction and creative non-fiction, Clemans writes short stories and novels that gravitate towards symbolism, institutional critique, and the importance of locating deeply personal experiences within larger socio-historical contexts. In the end, it’s all about the creative practices of people and the stories woven around them.
Website: gayleclemans.com | Instagram: @gayleclemans
Questions?
Please contact us at stgece@stgpresents.org.