Local lore has it that in 2015, the first year of the Seattle Art Fair, when Vulcan’s Paul Allen was prime mover and blue-chip galleries descended on the Emerald City in droves, the fair’s VIP lounge was flush with free champagne and shellfish. Nine years on, after a pandemic and multiple tectonic fluctuations in the global art market, the Seattle Art Fair favors cash bars and regional galleries. With passes widely available, night one was thick with art-world regulars and civilians alike. METHOD’s Cole Devoy and exhibiting artist Megan Prince provide a case study in how the Seattle Art Fair is evolving, intentionally moving the marker away from commercialism and toward community. “I knew exactly what I wanted to show,” Devoy says. “I’m a huge fan of Megan Prince and [her] work.”
Devoy, purveyor of METHOD gallery, the alternative art space located in Pioneer Square that has exhibited experimental and installation art for more than 10 years, believes in “the importance of providing a platform for artists to experiment…offering a different space that’s more accessible.” With this goal in mind, Prince’s ongoing Remnant Bodies series was an ideal fit for METHOD’s Seattle Art Fair booth. Prince’s floppy fiber sculptures, made of deconstructed denim were draped around the booth like creatures basking in the artificial light. They continued to expand throughout the weekend run.
“All of my work is about relationships, community building, inviting [people] to be part of a community,” Prince says, “It’s life giving in itself, especially with all the separation we have.” Prince’s invitation in this instance was twofold: she collected donated old jeans and showed participants how to weave them into the sculpture, using the time to have conversations and make connections. Unlike the passive experience of examining art and meandering from booth to booth, people spent time seated on the ground, or standing and chatting as they worked. “There was a quietness that you created at the booth,” Devoy says with appreciation.
“The choice of denim was very specific for me,” Prince continues, “using remnant fibers as a way of valuing things from our past. The Jean Bodies are a large-scale response to that.” Also, “I love jeans. I wanted [to use] a material that is recognizable, readily available.” Devoy saw denim as a common denominator among viewers, “denim is an equalizer and a connector,” he explains. “People easily identified with it.” To be sure, an entire treatise could be written on denim’s place within American iconography. From its origins as a sturdy fabric for workers to its place as an indicator of conspicuous consumption, to its notorious impact on climate (the average pair of jeans takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce), denim has baggage. Prince is especially interested in this topic. “Zero waste is a huge part of my practice,” she says. “The production of jeans is one of the biggest polluters.”
The weighty fabric has contextual, aesthetic, and physical implications that led to a unique installation. “They’re weird, unwieldy forms,” Prince says. “They’re probably around sixty pounds, around 100-160 pairs of jeans. They’re super weird to carry.” The artist and helpers draped themselves in the sculptures, “A few of us were covered in Jean Bodies,” Devoy laughs. “Really for me it was about dealing with this white cube. We had some loose ideas, leaning into the existing shape… wanting to create movement that moved in a circular way up and around.”
The DIY ethos of METHOD and Megan Prince, with their mutual insistence on community, reuse and reclamation, were on par with other installations throughout the 2024 Seattle Art Fair. Michael Rakowitz’s iconoclastic Behemoth II was among the first artworks fairgoers encountered upon entering the Lumen Field venue. The piece is modeled after the Ulysses S. Grant monument in Golden Gate Park. It resembles a monumental sculpture that has been wrapped in a black tarp. In fact, the inflatable artwork reveals itself to be nothing but air, collapsing at timed intervals to highlight the nothingness at its core. Other featured artworks included Ralph Ziman’s awe-inducing SPOEK 1, an apartheid-era South African police Casspir vehicle bedecked from tires to turret in glorious beadwork, a piece only made possible by a massive community effort, and Tori Karpenko’s Invitation, a salvaged burned tree delicately stained and dramatically uplit.
The Seattle Art Fair and the galleries that exhibit there are undergoing a continuing shift, a response to all the prevailing pressures– pandemic, loss of prominent patronage, rising real estate prices, and the challenges of cultivating new collectors in an image-saturated world. What the fair seems to have tapped into this year, exemplified by denim and cooperation, is exactly the thing that has the power to carry Seattle’s art market into the future. Prince is gearing up to create at least ten more sculptures in her Jean Bodies series, some of which will be exhibited in the coming weeks at METHOD proper. As Devoy puts it, “I’m interested in how people experience things…we’re always looking for new ways to connect.”
Megan Prince has just been announced as the incoming Artist in Residence for Mini Mart City Park. She will be holding space and piloting the program in collaboration with MMCP for this new residency. In October and November there will be a used jean donation drop box on-site throughout Prince's residency for people to drop off their donations during open hours or by appointment.
Megan Prince will be holding a Jean Bodies Engagement there Friday, October 18th from 2-6pm.
