CORE 2025
Exhibiting contemporary art created by local artists!
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday - Saturday 12 - 6
and by appointment
CORE Solo Exhibitions on view
through October 25th, 2025
Pioneer Square Art Walk & Artist
Reception:
October 2nd from 6-8pm
With generous support from 4Culture, CORE gallery weathered the challenges of the pandemic. Our doors remain open and walls filled with innovative art created by local artists! Thank you 4Culture !
CORE Gallery Artists
CLUTCHES
Drew Dyrdahl
I am interested in using what is cast off by others to make something new. For me, it is my inspiration and my pleasure. I try to look at items through the lens of what they can become rather than what they currently are. It is how I reinvent and revive. I long to create beauty and intrigue out of things that were cast away and destined for the landfill.
I do tend to have a macabre side, but it is tempered with my sense of whimsy. Thus is born my “Little Creepers.” These little monsters are created from recycled children’s clothing, scraps, recycled buttons, salvaged trims, and stuffed with cotton batting made from recycled denim.
The Little Creepers are pieced together in my Creepery in Seattle -- deep in the belly of an old shoe factory….created late into the night and brought to life!
Recently, my Little Creepers have grown tired of being cooped up in the Creepery and they have come up with a devious scheme to attach themselves to handbags and make their way out into the world in order to get you in their clutches. They would love nothing more than to join you as you gadabout and they assure me that they have nothing but your best interests at heart…..silly humans.
THE QUIET LANDSCAPE
Tara McDermott
The subject matter of my work has grown out of an obsession with the natural world. I often travel to the wide open, empty spaces in rural or remote landscapes. Away from the city’s dense humanity, I can feel my personal space expand. And I take deeper breaths.
Each photograph is my attempt to recreate the experience of being in that place, wherever it may be. It’s not about a particular location, but more how it makes me feel. There’s a sense of wonder and magic, the unknown of what is over the next horizon. A sense of endless possibility not constrained by the everyday: expectations, deadlines, or to-do lists.
The movement of clouds flowing across the sky and the susurration of ripening grain bobbing in the wind become my companions. It’s about right here, right now. The photographs I take are a physical manifestation of what I like to call emotional landscapes.
In 2003 as a student at UW, I was accepted into a project at the dawn of the digital era. I was provided a digital camera, given 5 days, and asked to provide 500 images. I’m not sure whatever happened with the pics I took, but it started me on my journey exploring Washington state. My itinerary had me crisscrossing Eastern Washington and my love of rural landscapes began. With the payout I received I purchased a vintage Hasselblad 500c/m, a medium-format film camera. Yes, the irony is not lost on me. I still use this camera and the single, fixed, wide-angle lens for pretty much all my photos – it has taken all but 3 of the images in this show. The other 3 are taken with a $45 cheap plastic “toy” camera, the Holga, which gives diffused edges, vignetting, and light leaks, while still being a medium-format film camera.
All my work is analog, taken on slide film, and once developed, every other aspect is done by hand, by me. I scan, edit (doing color-correction and cleaning up dust and scratches), print, and frame all my own photographs.
I hope you enjoy the peace and serenity of these places as much as I enjoy showing you.
