Excerpt: "Two years ago, Lawrimore Project didn't exist and Scott Lawrimore was just another assistant at somebody else's gallery. He has a nondescript background: grew up in a trailer park in northern California, once made a drawing of Scrooge that got him placed in art classes, ended up with a master's degree in art history, came to Seattle to work and moved up the gallery chain, ending at Greg Kucera Gallery.

Now, Lawrimore is historic.

Ken Allan, an art historian at Seattle University, compares Lawrimore to some-one like Walter Hopps, who schlepped slide projectors to collectors' L.A. homes in the 1950s to spread the gospel of abstract expressionism. Or to Richard Bellamy, the man who stood behind minimalism in its very early days, but quickly lost his Green Gallery in New York to bankruptcy.

"I think that, in the end, Scott will have developed one of only two art spaces here in Seattle that were distinct from what everybody else did," Kucera said of his former protégé the other day.

The other gallery Kucera was referring to was run by Donald Young, who put everyone e... [ Read all ]