On March 5, Seattle’s Roq La Rue Gallery will present two solo shows from artists with distinct aesthetic sensibilities. Sam Wolfe Connelly (who was featured in HF Vol. 32) continues his exploration of the subtly sinister with a new series of drawings and paintings called “And Here I Lay.” Often set in (nearly) empty houses in remote locales, his work takes on the quality of a mysterious shadow one sees in the corner of one’s eye. It has an ambiance of foreboding that can’t be easily explained. The cityscapes in Liz Brizzi’s concurrent show, “Anagrams,” are desolate as well, but her busy mixed-media work departs greatly from Wolfe’s sparse paintings. Brizzi combines digitally manipulated photography, collage, and painting on wood panel to create portraits of unpopulated metropolises that look familiar yet alien because of their stillness.
Sam Wolfe Connelly:
Liz Brizzi:
Sometimes our crassest jokes reveal our hidden anxieties, while other times we create beautiful rituals surrounding that which we fear. It's human nature to make light of death in order to not be consumed by the often incomprehensible idea of mortality. Examining a spectrum of responses to this difficult subject, Seattle gallery 
Kai Carpenter
