Raven Juarez & Asia Tail

Tacoma, WA

On view outside the entrance to the Bellevue Arts Museum

Raven Juarez

Asia Tail

Raven Juarez

Born and based in Seattle, Raven Juarez is a contemporary native artist, teacher, and presenter. Juarez attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and spent a year abroad in Florence, Italy, to study painting, drawing, print-making as well as Italian art and film history. She graduated in 2013 with a BA in the liberal arts, with concentrations in Child Psychology/Development and Visual Arts. Raven’s work is characterized by intricate designs blending the abstract into symbolic meaning to tell her stories. Created in a process Raven describes as “conversations with herself,” her pieces offer a glimpse into her subconscious and conscious wanting, wondering, memories, and dreams. In 2015, her first solo exhibition, Don’t Touch, was in Brooklyn, New York at The One Well in Greenpoint. Since returning to the Pacific Northwest, Juarez’s recent work has been shown in Tacoma and Seattle, Washington, notable shows including: Bloodlines curated by Tracy Rector at Bridge Productions, Protect the Sacred: Native Artists for Standing Rock (2016) curated by Asia Tail at Spaceworks Gallery, Moon Moan (2017) presented by Asia Tail and Raven Juarez at 950 Gallery, and yəhaw̓ (2019) curated by Tracy Rector, Asia Tail and Satpreet Kahlon at ARTS at King Street Station.

Asia Tail

Asia Tail is an artist, curator, and arts organizer based in Tukwila, Washington. Asia attended the Cooper Union School of Art in New York on a four-year full-tuition scholarship and graduated with a BFA and the Brandon Burns Stewart Memorial Prize for Excellence in Painting in 2014. Her studio practice includes oil painting, collage, beadwork, and other media. Asia was the recipient of the first Vadon Foundation Native Artist Fellowship, and was named one of Seattle’s Most Influential People in 2019 by Seattle Magazine. As an extension of her art making, Asia curates special projects and exhibitions, with an emphasis on Indigenous artists. In 2018, she co-founded yəhaw̓ with Tracy Rector and Satpreet Kahlon, curating the inaugural exhibition at Seattle’s ARTS at King Street Station. yəhaw̓ is now a growing collective of interdisciplinary Indigenous creatives which features hundreds of artists working in a variety of mediums across Coast Salish territories. Asia also works as a program officer at Seattle Foundation, and as a freelance arts consultant for local organizations. She is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and a proud member of the diverse Urban Native community in the Pacific Northwest.

for all before and after

Each line a lineage—many cut short—cascading continually in towards the earth. A consistent, persistent, downpour. Impossibly different stories, sharing the space and transforming it. Suspended in air like breath, or whispers, these gentle familiar echoes touch and shift in wind and light. Moon drops—tear drops—shining in grief or sparkling in joy.

The completed work is an acknowledgment of the beauty and bitterness of our shared experiences within community, what it means to hold a complicated past, and at the same time shape a future for our healed and empowered descendants.

With beadworkers Maya Lopez, Michael Anderson, Ashley Mocorro Powell, Kyle Maluy, Mike Vos, & Olivia Mathison

Fabrication assistance from Absalom Shantz

This project was made possible with generous support from Potlatch Fund, 4Culture, and the City of Bellevue.