On Pike and Nowhere: The Man Who Painted Seattle As We Really Were

Barnes only drew from human experience, never from photos. He called his documentary body of work Drawing on the Run. Some series chronicled his travels across Mexico, Cambodia, and New Orleans, but many are scenes from Capitol Hill. Series like Seattle Celebrities, Vermillion, and Pike and Nowhere are full of familiar faces: Lelah Maupin, Bethany Jean Clement, Timothy Rysdyke, Mimi Allen, Siolo Thompson, Kelly O, Casey Weldon, Ezra Dickinson. Liz Orth, Lisa Prank, and Zoe Scofield. And places: Chop Suey, the Royal Room, Vito’s, Bait Shop, Bimbo’s, Cha Cha, Cafe Racer, Vermillion, The Annex Theatre, Noc Noc, Comet Tavern, Pony, the Frye Art Museum.

I find myself returning to a passage from Chris Kraus’s 1999 essay “Pussy Orphanage”: “When an artist dies before his or her time, who manages the estate and how, becomes vitally important.” She continues: “Altruism aside, how is it that any artist’s work will come to survive for others in the future? Works of art, after all, are mute and can’t speak for themselves.”

Barnes’s chosen family—the poets, artists, bar owners, and hell-raisers—are speaking for the art. A retrospective of rescued work will be on view at Vermillion, a place he loved, through October 3. It is aptly titled The road goes on forever and the party never ends. The man chose his family well.