Boren Banner Series: Blake Blanco

Classical mythology meets the digital age in Seattle artist Blake Blanco’s Boren Banner. Working first in a virtual reality studio, Blanco creates digital sketches that he then translates into paint on canvas. In this new work developed for the Frye, Blanco takes inspiration from the Italian Renaissance engraving Danae and the infant Perseus cast out to sea by Acrisius (1543). The artist expressively distills his subjects into simplified shapes whose vivid synthetic colors suggest a plastic, rather than organic, world. The project extends Blanco’s ongoing inquiry into what it means to be human in a moment when the boundaries between the natural and the manufactured are increasingly unstable.

ABOUT THE BOREN BANNER SERIES

The Boren Banner Series is a public art initiative by the Frye Art Museum that reflects the Museum’s commitment to showcasing artists of the Pacific Northwest. Presented biannually, the series gives regional artists the opportunity to create new site-specific work or show a previously unexhibited piece at monumental scale in the form of a 16 x 20 ft. vinyl banner. The billboard-size work is prominently sited on the Museum’s east facade, facing Boren Avenue: the Frye’s most visible and accessible physical interface.