Sixty-one years have passed. It is simply hard to believe in May of 1961, Gordon Woodside rented a large old home on First Hill, built art walls and painted the modest building. We printed a few hundred flyers and made a list of all the people we knew who could afford to spend a few hundred dollars. Not a very long list! And opened a fine art gallery dedicated to the artists of our region.
So much has changed since then. We have been through thirteen Presidents, the end of the Cold war and the dawn of the information age. We have seen the hyper-revolution of the technology age and it’s effect on nearly every aspect of our lives.
Throughout all of this growth and change, the allure of art has remained. People collect art for many reasons. They wish to display art on the walls of their home or business, however the desire to collect art runs far deeper than that. There seems to be a need to connect with the unique, the handmade and to journey to a place where original ideas, craft and beauty are necessary to subordinate speed and quantity.
We are proud and honored to exhibit so many of the Major Artists from this region for over 60 years; Morris Graves, Paul Horiuchi, Guy Anderson, Mark Tobey, William Cumming, Kathleen Adkison, James W. Washington, Jr., Margaret Tomkins, Kenneth Callahan, George Tsutakawa, Carl Morris, Hilda Morris, Richard Gilkey, Ambrose Patterson, Katherine Ace, Victoria Adams, Susan Bennerstrom, Lisa Gilley, Patty Haller, David Kroll, Jared Rue, Gerard Tsutakawa, & Malei Young.
As Seattle’s oldest fine art gallery, our future goals are to maintain the hard-earned reputations of the nationally renowned regional artists and to continue to exhibit and promote the immensely talented emerging artists from our region.
The friendship, encouragement, and patronage of our clients has been equally important to the success of our artists and gallery, for this, we are very thankful. We celebrate this Anniversary in honor of the founder of our gallery (Gordon Woodside 1927-2007) and the great Northwest artists that have gone before us.
– John Braseth, Director, Woodside/Braseth Gallery
