Chase Gallery

The mission of the Chase Gallery is to exhibit works that engage the public, bring people to a new outlook on contemporary issues, feature innovative artwork, and provide space for people of all backgrounds to share their perspective through art. The gallery showcases rotating exhibitions throughout the year, championing local Spokane artists and their work.

The Chase Gallery, located inside Spokane’s City Hall, is currently open for visitors whenever City Hall is open to the public and for First Friday receptions. Stop by and see the gallery Monday – Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (gallery access may be limited Tuesday mornings) and the First Friday of each month from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.

WHAT IF YOU STAYED: The Art of Tesla Kawakami

JULY’S FIRST FRIDAY OPENING RECEPTION: July 11 – 5:00 – 7:30 PM

AUGUST’S FIRST FRIDAY RECEPTION: August 1 – 5:00 – 7:30 PM

(Enter City Hall through the sliding doors on N. Post St.. Chase Gallery is on the lower level) This exhibition runs for 2 months.

City Hall, lower level
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
Dates: July 4 – August 29, 2025.
Open and free to the Public. Hours 9am – 5pm, M-F

The Chase Gallery at City Hall is proud to exhibit the artwork of Seattle-based artist, Tesla Kawakami (they/them) from July 4 through August 29, 2025. Meet-the-artist receptions with live music will be held as part of Spokane’s First Friday events on July 11 and August 1 from 5pm to 7:30pm.

About Tesla Kawakami:

Tesla is a contemporary mixed media artist based in Seattle, Washington, whose oil paintings explore themes of nostalgia, destruction, identity, and transformation. Drawing from their life in the Pacific Northwest, their work is deeply influenced by the region’s whimsical landscape, the ongoing impacts of climate change, and their experiences as a queer person.

A 2023 graduate of Western Washington University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Tesla was unanimously selected as the Outstanding Graduate for the College of Arts. Their distinctive visual language incorporates diverse techniques and visual references, creating vibrant works that resonate with emotional and environmental significance.

Tesla’s partner and cat are frequent subjects in their paintings, reflecting the intimate personal dimensions of their artistic practice. Their work has been featured in a duo exhibition at fruitsuper in Seattle (2024) and in group shows including Surge at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner (2023).

Artist’s Statement:

In a world where departure often seems the only rational response, What If You Stay poses a radical question: what happens when we choose to remain and bear witness?

This exhibition represents four years of artistic inquiry, tracing an evolution from broad documentation of climate devastation to an intimate exploration of the entanglement between queer identity and our endangered natural world.

My work employs contrasting techniques—photo transfers that preserve memory, masking that conceals and reveals, reductive scratching that simulates erosion—all serving as metaphors for our complex relationship with environmental change. The signature neon acrylic underpaintings create a visual vibration beneath direct oil applications, producing landscapes that pulse with an unsettling vitality.

Throughout my lifetime, I have witnessed the normalization of ecological catastrophe. Floods, wildfires, and extreme weather events have intensified in both frequency and severity, yet our collective response has calcified into a numbing apathy. This exhibition confronts our emotional paralysis by transforming overwhelming climate data into scenes of unexpected aliveness.

The intersection of queerness and ecological consciousness forms the heart of this collection. Both experiences involve navigating spaces of marginality and discovering resilience in inhospitable conditions. Both demand we reimagine relationships with bodies—our own and the Earth’s.

What If You Stay is not merely documentation of loss, but a vibrant testament to persistence. These works invite viewers to consider what remains possible when we refuse the impulse to look away, when we commit to seeing clearly the beauty still unfolding in damaged places.

For more information about the exhibit and other Spokane Arts events, please visit www.SpokaneArts.org or contact Program Director, Jeremy Whittington.

SIMULA: the Art of Sarah Barnett

SEPTEMBER’S FIRST FRIDAY OPENING RECEPTION: SEPTEMBER  5 – 5:00 – 7:30 PM

OCTOBER’S FIRST FRIDAY RECEPTION: OCTOBER 3 – 5:00 – 7:30 PM

(Enter City Hall through the sliding doors on N. Post St.. Chase Gallery is on the lower level) This exhibition runs for 2 months.

City Hall, lower level
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
Dates: July 4 – August 29, 2025.
Open and free to the Public. Hours 9am – 5pm, M-F

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sarah Elizabeth Barnett is a painter from North Texas currently based in Pullman, Washington. She earned her MFA from Washington State University in 2022 and is a recipient of the 2023 Artist Trust Fellowship Award. Creating highly representational yet distorted oil paintings, Sarah explores themes of mortality, self-preservation, the human body and technology. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and is currently represented by Gallery110 in Seattle. Alongside her studio work, Sarah presently teaches at Washington State University and Big Bend Community College, privately mentors young artists, and creates murals in her community.

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

In Simula, I present a collection of paintings that explore the uncanny space between the organic and the synthetic—where the human body, scientific progress, and spiritual inquiry intersect. Including recent and earlier works, this exhibition reflects my ongoing investigation into the evolving relationship between mortality, technology, and identity.

Borrowing its title from the notion of simulation, Simula questions what happens when reality begins to dissolve into abstraction—when life is mediated through machines, surveillance systems, and digital replicas. Influenced by transhumanist ideology, anatomy, medical imaging, and science fiction, these paintings examine how far we are willing to go to transcend our biological limitations—and at what cost.

The works include references to contemporary scientific institutions like CERN, depictions of surveillance cameras, surgical procedures, and cosmic phenomena like black holes—all filtered through a deliberately intimate, painterly lens. Despite the technological imagery, each piece remains deeply rooted in the human experience, expressed through the softness of oil, the tactile presence of the body, and the emotional ambiguity of the unknown.

In creating these pieces, I ask: Why do we strive to change our physical nature? Are our efforts to preserve, extend, or reinvent life acts of progress—or symptoms of a deeper fear? Through distortion, realism, and surreal tension, Simula invites viewers to consider what it means to be human in a time when the line between real and artificial is rapidly fading.