This week, I got to chat and interview Meghan Trainor, who is the curator of the M. Rosetta Hunter art gallery. She grew up in Seattle and is a visual artist who has done artwork in New York and here in Seattle. She became the curator after the previous curator, Ken Matsudaira, stepped down after 20 years since the pandemic happened.
What is the history behind the art gallery? It was named after the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Seattle Central College, M. Rosetta Hunter, “A community of people who were interested in the liberatory praxis around education really lifted up the school. We are really excited to return to that after the pandemic,” Trainor responds. Trainor says the highest goal is “To bring a service to the community through the arts and what is important to the people that lifted us up.” Rosetta Hunter’s daughter is excited that the school is carrying on her legacy through this art gallery. The gallery is also a part of the Student Leadership team at Seattle Central College.
The answer to the previous question led to my question: What was your particular interest in this art gallery? Trainor replied, “The educational community that is centered around the liberatory praxis or multicultural education.” Although the previous answer did have more information on why she was interested, this answer still gives an understanding.
What is your favorite medium/genre of art? As a new media artist, she likes using tools in a larger mechanics system. Now, she is into low-voltage mechanical batteries to help light up different artworks that focus on computational strategies and the aesthetics of digital processes. She mentions that an art piece that was made by Julia Fist that shows a Fast Fourier Transform algorithm was purchased by Seattle University not long ago. There are so many artists that she mentioned that all have installations involved with the piece, but she also likes the paintings and the sculptors as an art style.
Have you made artwork in the past? She mentions that she has worked with bogg batteries in different art pieces displayed on her website, which is linked at the beginning of this article. She has also done art pieces for the art gallery called Witancraeftlic, which was curated by Ken Mastudaira back in 2018.
Do you have a favorite painting or painter growing up? Her favorite artist is Ellsworth Kelly. He created the artwork Black Panel. The panel is shown as a black canvas in the museum that expresses no meaning of the piece because it is just a blank canvas while also conveying complex meaning about the canvas, which “lit a fire under me to really delve further into contemporary arts and the challenging parts of art,” Trainor replied.
What have been your favorite exhibitions you have done at the gallery, present or in the past? Although it was a difficult question for Trainor to answer at first, the one that had a significant impact on the gallery was the YouthBuild Community Stories, which happened January 3 to 26, 2023, and was a cross-campus exhibition with students from South Seattle College; the artworks were made of carpentry, poetry, and photographs.
The poems the students made would later be translated into braille; the gallery is about inclusivity and showing students’ artworks. She ended up saying that she loved all of the exhibitions that the gallery has made, but Tina Bell, the recent exhibition, is “an important show to the community and to build up this legacy that’s just been buried for so many years.” She adds that Tina Bell should have her own statue across from the famous Jimi Hendrix statue in Seattle.
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As Rhiannon had done journalism in the past for her high school. She hopes to continue that path through the Collegian.
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