Seattle University Art Collection

Learn more about the artists in Seattle University's art collection donated by Dennis Evans and Nancy Mee.

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Tsutakawa fountain in the quad

Artists

Artist information provided by Matthew Kangas.

Guy Irving Anderson (1906-1998)

“I sense a preordained order in the Universe” sums up the artist’s philosophy and aesthetic leading to his association with the “mystic” wing of the Northwest School. Privately tutored by Eustace Ziegler, Anderson gravitated to La Conner in the Skagit Valley where he remained for decades. His paintings were consistently tied to the male figure symbolizing humanity and its ties to ancient and Classical myths such as Adam and Icarus. Unusually large and painted on dark brown tar paper, Anderson’s art was the least widely hailed beyond the region although he was part of an international touring show organized by the United States Information Agency in 1957. He received a scholarship from the Tiffany & Co. Foundation in 1929 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975. A two-part retrospective survey was held at Seattle Art Museum and the Henry Art Gallery in 1977.

Bill Baber

The graduate of the University of Washington School of Art focused on ceramics for his degree but over the years has become better known for his expertise in bronze-casting found objects into conglomerations of pedestal-size and large-scale sculptures. With his Seattle debut at 55th Street Gallery in 1977, Baber went on to numerous gallery, museum and competitive exhibitions throughout the Pacific Northwest. Featured in the Seattle Art Museum Washington Open in 1979, he was also included in various invitationals and juried shows at the Bellevue Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Whatcom Museum, and Center On Contemporary Art, Seattle. Since 2007, he has had annual shows at Gallery IMA in Pioneer Square.

Keith Beckley

Beckley is part of the original stable of artists at the seminal Linda Farris Gallery in Pioneer Square in the 1970s. Along with Dennis Evans, Charles B. Luce, and Jeffrey Bishop, he was featured in New Ideas #1 at Seattle Art Museum. His work was acquired by the museum at that time and praised by art critics in Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Artforum in 1979. As one critic wrote, he “eschews applied coloration altogether and sticks with materials picked up at the corner hardware store: brass and copper wire, string, thread, fake marble, glass (shattered) and Plexiglas.” His art is also in the collection of the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

Jeffrey Bishop

Jeffrey Bishop is one of a number of artists who spent periods of time in Seattle, developing his style and career before his moving to New York permanently in 1994. Before that, he was part of an influential cohort of graduate students at the University of Washington School of Art who became the founding stable of the Linda Farris Gallery. Alternating between sparse installations and intimate abstract watercolors, the artist progressed to large-scale canvases (some eight feet wide) which alluded to maritime symbols, geometric and mathematical designations, all united by cool greens, grays and browns. With several solo exhibitions in New York, he was elected to the American Abstract Artists in 2016 and included in group exhibitions in New York, Ecuador, Germany, Greece and China.

Michael Brophy

The Portland-born and educated artist uses landscape painting to confront environmental dilemmas—often with great wit. With his exceptionally large oils on canvas (ten to 20 feet wide), Brophy has made a career out of drawing attention to the legacies of the powerful timber concerns in the region. His work refers to logging, industrial harvesting, clear-cutting and the housing tracts that follow. Later works prophesy the effects of climate change on the urban environment and renewed dangers of nuclear proliferation. A touring retrospective was organized by Tacoma Art Museum in 2005. Brophy was included in the survey Outward Bound which toured Asia in 1999 and Many Wests: Artists Shape an Idea, organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2023.