Washington University Press Search Results Page

Tengautuli Atkuk / The Flying Parka

The Meaning and Making of Parkas in Southwest Alaska

By Ann Fienup-Riordan, Alice Rearden, and Marie Meade

Parkas are part of a living tradition in southwest Alaska. Some are ornamented with tassels, beads, and elaborate stitching; others are simpler fur or birdskin garments. Although fewer fancy parkas are sewn today, many people...

Skidegate House Models

From Haida Gwaii to the Chicago World's Fair and Beyond

By Robin K. Wright

In 1892 seventeen Haida artists were commissioned to carve a model of HlGaagilda Llnagaay (the village of Skidegate on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia) for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The Skidegate model, featuring twenty-nine...

Full Light and Perfect Shadow

The Photography of Chao-Chen Yang

By David F. Martin

This is the first study of the work of Chao-Chen Yang (1909–1969), an important Seattle photographer who gained national prominence in the mid-twentieth century.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Yang received his art training at the...

Emily Carr

Life & Work

By Lisa Baldissera

Emily Carr (1871–1945) gained prominence when female painters were not recognized internationally. Her work reveals a fascination with questions inspired by the Canadian sea, landscapes, and people, reflecting a profound commitment to the land she...

Iljuwas Bill Reid

Life & Work

By Gerald McMaster

Few twentieth-century artists were catalysts for the reclamation of a culture, but Iljuwas Bill Reid (1920–1998) was among them. The first book on Reid by an Indigenous scholar details his incredible journey to becoming one...

The Boathouse

The Artist's Studio of Dale Chihuly

By Leslie Jackson Chihuly, David B. Williams, and William Warmus

This book features an exclusive glimpse into The Boathouse, the private working studio of artist Dale Chihuly, and into the history of its location on the shores of Lake Union in Seattle. Inhabited for thousands...

Stomp and Shout

R&B and the Origins of Northwest Rock and Roll

By Peter Blecha

Long before the world discovered grunge, the Pacific Northwest was already home to a singular music culture. In the late 1950s, locals had codified a distinct offshoot of rockin' R&B, and a surprising number...

The Art of Ceremony

Voices of Renewal from Indigenous Oregon

By Rebecca J. Dobkins

The practice of ceremony offers ways to build relationships between the land and its beings, reflecting change while drawing upon deep relationships going back millennia. Ceremony may involve intricate and spectacular regalia but may also...

Transformations

The George and Colleen Hoyt Collection of Northwest Coast Art

By Rebecca J. Dobkins and Tasia D. Riley. Foreword by John Olbrantz

Since the 1980s, Oregon-based art collectors George and Colleen Hoyt have amassed one of the finest private collections of Northwest Coast art in the United States. Transformations traces the history of contemporary Northwest Coast Native...

Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast

By Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Aldona Jonaitis

Inseparable from its communities, Northwest Coast art functions aesthetically and performatively beyond the scope of non-Indigenous scholarship, from demonstrating kinship connections to manifesting spiritual power. Contributors to this volume foreground Indigenous understandings in recognition of...

Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park

A Place for Art, Environment, and an Open Mind

By Mimi Gardner Gates

The Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, where Alexander Calder’s The Eagle soars over Puget Sound, Roxy Paine’s stainless-steel Split glistens in the rain, and Richard Serra’s Wake beckons visitors to walk within its towering...

Painful Beauty

Tlingit Women, Beadwork, and the Art of Resilience

By Megan A. Smetzer

For over 150 years, Tlingit women artists have beaded colorful, intricately beautiful designs on moccasins, dolls, octopus bags, tunics, and other garments. Painful Beauty suggests that at a time when Indigenous cultural practices were actively...

Art of the Northwest Coast

By Aldona Jonaitis

Originally published in 2006, Art of the Northwest Coast offers an expansive history of this great tradition, from the earliest known works to those made at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Although non-Natives often...

Emerald Street

A History of Hip Hop in Seattle

By Daudi Abe. Foreword by Sir Mix-A-Lot

From the first rap battles in Seattle’s Central District to the Grammy stage, hip hop has shaped urban life and the music scene of the Pacific Northwest for more than four decades. In the early...

The Lavender Palette

Gay Culture and the Art of Washington State

By David F. Martin. with an essay by David Chapman

The first study of how gay and lesbian artists influenced and established a regional cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking publication chronicles and contextualizes pioneering gay and lesbian artists...

New Deal Art in the Northwest

The WPA and Beyond

By Margaret E. Bullock

From December 1933 to February 1943, as part of a sprawling economic stimulus package, four federal programs hired artists to create public artworks and provide art-making opportunities to millions of Americans. When this initiative abruptly...

Haboo

Native American Stories from Puget Sound

By Vi Hilbert, Jill La Pointe, Thom Hess

The stories and legends of the Lushootseed-speaking people of Puget Sound represent an important part of the oral tradition by which one generation hands down beliefs, values, and customs to another. Vi Hilbert grew up...

Proud Raven, Panting Wolf

Carving Alaska's New Deal Totem Parks

By Emily L. Moore

Among Southeast Alaska’s best-known tourist attractions are its totem parks, showcases for monumental wood sculptures by Tlingit and Haida artists. Although the art form is centuries old, the parks date back only to the waning...

The Whale and the Cupcake

Stories of Subsistence, Longing, and Community in Alaska

By Julia O'Malley. Foreword by Kim Severson

From fish and fiddleheads to salmonberries and Spam, Alaskan cuisine spans the two extremes of locally abundant wild foods and shelf-stable ingredients produced thousands of miles away. As immigration shapes Anchorage into one of the...

Looking for Betty MacDonald

The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I

By Paula Becker

Betty Bard MacDonald (1907–1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. Readers embraced her...