Rain, Water, Horses, And Basketball
Seattle artist Robin Layton’s new exhibit showcases her award-winning work
By Seattle Mag December 5, 2024
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Seattle magazine.
Last year, Robin Layton had a one-woman show set to music with live performers. This year, it’s a fine-art exhibit.
Layton, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, artist, and photographer, will again showcase her work — although in very different fashion — during a month-long exhibit at Seattle’s Slip Gallery starting in December. “FLUIDITY” celebrates three of Layton’s widely recognized photo book essays: hoop: the American dream, the lake, and rain, as well as her newest body of work, The White Horses of Camargue, which debuted at July’s Seattle Art Fair.
Visitors will have the opportunity to explore Layton’s unique and vintage mixed-media works. Her limited-edition books will also be for sale.
Layton first gained notoriety back in 1995, when she shot the iconic photo of a grinning Ken Griffey Jr. sliding across home plate (“The Smile at the Bottom of the Pile”) to clinch the Mariners’ first playoff berth in their history.
“It’s been awhile since I’ve had a solo exhibit in Seattle,” says Layton, who was named one of Seattle magazine’s Most Influential in 2020. “The reason it’s called FLUIDITY is because I have all facets of my work on display. I’m always looking for creative ways to express my art.”
The exhibit runs between noon and 6 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays from Dec. 12 to Jan. 4 at Slip Gallery, 2301 First Ave. in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. An opening reception is from 6-9 p.m. Dec. 13.
Follow Us
AANHPI Month: Where to Celebrate, Eat, and Learn Around Seattle
From festivals and museum exhibits to food tours and historic neighborhoods, here are a few ways to mark the month across the region.
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month—known as AANHPI Month—is observed in the U.S. each May. It began as a weeklong observance in 1978 and expanded to the full month in 1992. Asian, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in the United States extend back much further, including to the late 16th century, when…
Black Panther Park in Skyway Becomes First Black Panther Park in the World
The new community garden honors the Black Panther Party’s legacy of food justice and the Skyway neighbors who helped bring it to life.
On a sunny Sunday earlier this month, at the corner of 75th Avenue and Renton Avenue South, the community gathered for the opening of Skyway’s Black Panther Park. Inspired by the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for School Children program that compelled the federal government to provide breakfast in schools, Black Panther Park is a community…
Rearview Mirror: A Family Coming Apart, SIFF, and My First Fashion Show
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
The Family House A house can hold a lot, and Seattle Rep’s Appropriate knows that. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony-winning play, directed here by Timothy McCuen Piggee, drops the Lafayette siblings into their late father’s hoarded, falling-apart Arkansas plantation home for an estate sale, and lets the whole thing crack open from there. The sibling dynamics are…
Studio Sessions: Raili Jänese
The Kirkland painter brings a playful eye to daily life and the little rituals of being human.
Artist Raili Jänese pays close attention to the small stuff. It might be a goose on the move, a rabbit in the yard, or a person lost in the rituals of coffee or cooking. The Estonian-born artist, now based in Kirkland, makes colorful acrylic works that turn everyday behavior—human and animal alike—into something funny and…