Let's begin with the gent on the left, name of Tom Blue, an artist whose brush records Seattle's fleeting past. Not just Seattle, but those billboards and signposts and iconic roadside attractions across Puget Sound that we instantly recognize as landmarks. Ten or twenty years later, these images ring a bell inside our head, and that's Tom, there, the bell-ringer, guardian of our nostalgia.
On the right, posing in front of Blue's "Our Town." is real estate developer Charlie Staadecker, one of half a dozen or so candidates for mayor of Seattle, Longtime patron of the arts, longtime civic leader, in many respects the "best" candidate for mayor, best-qualified candidate, if by "best" we meant the most congenial. Were Charlie Staadecker the mayor of Seattle, I would be proud to have him in my living room; you would be, too.
His earnest slogan is "Believe in Seattle," but the unfortunate reality is that Charlie has to print his own newspaper for the city's political reporters to take him seriously. You want to tear you hair out, knowing that Charlie, the most decent of men, who (in the John O'Hara model of civic life, would be the good guy in a shoot-out) is going to be roadkill.
Tom Blue, on the other hand, was persuaded to release enough paintings to make a viable exhibit, titled "From Another Time.". And the juxtaposition of these two good men, each with his own vision, begs the question: who has the better vision?
Woodside Braseth Gallery, 2101 Ninth Ave Seattle, 206.622.7243
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