Photographer Mary Randlett, who moved to Queen Anne as a young teen in 1938, isn't the most famous person to have walked the hallowed halls of Queen Anne High School. That mantle probably belongs to Hank Ketchum of Dennis the Menace renown.
But through her life and work, Randlett has reflected the ever-elusive Northwest soul like nobody else who spent his or her formative years on the Hill. At 83, she has long been regarded as a Northwest artistic treasure.
The just-published "Mary Randlett Landscapes," by the University of Washington Press will only enlarge her reputation.
The black-and-white images within the 118-page book exhibit "the eye of an artist and the soul of the poet," as author and art critic Deloris Tarzan Ament once wrote of Randlett.
The book's timing is excellent.
We grab our rain-wet compensations where we can. As we head toward winter solstice, it's good to be reminded of the Northwest's austere beauty and subtle gradations of light. Randlett has the summarizing eye of the Chinese calligraphers and Japanese haiku masters. Her pictures urge us to look, really look, for the primeval moment and to share her joy of discovery.
"Landscapes" contains three introductory essays before we get to the heart of Randlett's work. At first blush, one is tempted to mutter: Enough with the words, let's get on with it.
It turns out, though, the essays by actor-photographer Ted D'Arms, artist Barry Herem and the late poet Denise Levertov are pure gold, shedding valuable light on Randlett and her work and the place we call home.
Seven of Levertov's poems accompany the images.
Over the years Randlett has become synonymous with the so-called Northwest School. Her iconic images of Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson and Morris Graves are famous. Her portrait of poet Theodore Roethke contemplating a rose shortly before his death in August 1963 circulated worldwide. Randlett gained access to these people because her mother was Elizabeth Bailey Willis, curator, art dealer and support system to a number of artists who went on to international fame.
Randlett, from the get-go, was always the outdoors type. She grew up in Seattle and Bainbridge Island and the San Juans, learned to sail as a youngster and swam in Puget Sound as a matter of course.
So it's no surprise Randlett's landscape images deliver a lovely shock of the familiar: the Skagit River in snow; cormorants drying their capelike wings; raindrops plopping; scenes of Everett Slough and Shi Shi Beach; clouds in various configurations, and a coastal-hills clearcut wreathed in ground fog that reminds us of the Somme battlefield; a single coot trailing its wake toward the dark reflections of three dock pilings.
As Levertov puts it in her essay: "Randlett's tribute to the great beauties of this area stimulates the resolve to preserve them.... The other, timeless, factor in her work's importance is that these are compositions - that is, they are harmonious yet dynamic dispositions of forms and values, and in that sense are abstractions, not illustrations ... that is, autonomous works of art."
The book is published in conjunction with an exhibit of Randlett's landscape images at the Tacoma Art Museum, which runs through May 18, 2008. On, Dec. 2, at 2 p.m. the Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library staged a Randlett book signing. A few local poets, including Tim McNulty, showed up to read some poems.
Randlett, who lives in Olympia, remains ever passionate about her work. Here's a snippet of a letter to Levertov included in the book: "I was happy as can be, all alone, searching, finding that beautiful light and then seeing what forms emerged - and the backgrounds of subtle forms - bare trees - happy, happy."
"Landscapes" is a long-in-coming paean to a remarkable artist.
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