[image: 19-0514 at 8.45.27am-kateb.jpg] Kate Blairstone, War Helmet *The Flowers of Kate Blairstone* *Spring is full of solitary togetherness, private micro-oblivion gatherings of barely registered joy. Thank Spring for our ephemeral essences. Freed from the dregs of winter. Unfrozen smells. Recovered memories. Renewed moments of being. So - almost - unctuously unconsidered, all of it again suddenly - not really - but we can hope. Spring! All the luminous poppings. Yellows, greens, aquas, golds, i.e. the essences of color. Color being all and only about the color beside it. Colors beside colors. To absorb color a person has to first assemble difference, and from there, build complement and dissonance. At the very least a person begins by finding pattern, a way to meaning.* Kate Blairstone is a master of vibratory visual, a-aural jazz. Her language is color and pattern translated through flowers. Do we need more flowers.*1 There was already a Georgia O’Keeffe. A Beverly Hallam. Plenty of flower hunters among us all along and still. But Blairstone’s work is new, relentless, at times radical, at times oddly cool-ly vintage. She somehow manages to be more current than timeless while describing flowers. She starts with brushes then loads the hand-printed line work into her laptop and begins layering more digital on top. Some of her Instagram posts spell out her process in hypnotic, quick repeating constructions. Kate Blairstone has only began working in her current media in earnest, full-time, for a few years now. Already, as of earlier this spring, her work is side-by-side with that of Kyler Martz and Shepard Fairey, at the State Hotel in Seattle. She recently did the cover art for the inaugural issue of Kitchen Table Magazine, nailing in blues, maroons and golds the Pacific palette. She designed everything from the menu illustrations to the entry tile mosaics at Solo Club in Portland, the recent reincarnation of the former Wildwood Restaurant, an early miner of Pacific Northwest ingredients. Ethos and ambiance underpinning rigorous composition. Structural weightlessness. Plain unfettered delight. If you are not unhinged momentarily in the smallest good way by her work - well, you might just be stuck in winter. Come get un-stuck at birdloft this Saturday. That is the only risk in trying her first gallery art show. Kate Blairstone’s flowers are amazing, inspiring, beyond sound. She’ll be showing less than a dozen images, each a signed hyper-limited edition print run of ten. One run will be printed on three-foot by three-foot silk - try a one-ounce scarf. Kate Blairstone, Flowers, opens Saturday, May 18th, from 4pm to 8 pm At birdloft, 2915 South 12th Street, Tacoma 98405 *1*Do you love flowers. Does anybody secretly not love flowers. Do you need to see question marks to hear them. For instance - pushing deeper into a lilac bush among the soft piled cones, wanting just a bit more olfactory evidence - chasing spring among lilacs. Has anyone not wanted more evidence of spring. * J e f f L i b b y *b i r d l o f t* *d e s i g n + c r a f t + m a t e r i a l s* <https://www.etsy.com/shop/birdloft>