Bathrooms as Environments

Creatures from the Hole are a groundless, multi-dimensional film and poetry collective (often working en tandem with their live wing, The Daughters of Shit) who have toured fifty countries across Asia, Europe, and North America—doing public interventions and creating films and poems within every cultural and linguistic group they pass through.

Membership in the group ranges widely across object and subjectivity. Some of the most public-facing founding organizers include Mon Chi Chi, Friend1, The Twingo, and The Pink Thing.

Cynthia Brothers is the founder of Vanishing Seattle, a multimedia movement that documents and celebrates the disappearing institutions, small businesses, and cultures of Seattle—as well as the ones that are still here. Tom Eykemans is a designer, artist, organizer, and publisher who co-founded the Seattle Art Book Fair and started Tome Press to build community though creative collaborations.

“For A Good Time” recreates the multi-sensory experience of visiting a quintessential Seattle dive bar bathroom stall around the turn of the 21st century. Both reviled and revered, dive bar bathrooms have long been an unavoidable experience shared by countless customers, concertgoers, and employees alike. Usually filthy, at times romanticized, and imminently endangered in an increasingly gentrified and sanitized city, dive bar bathrooms also provide an anonymous platform for personal artistic expression.

Gizelle Hadeed and Isabella Rinald are Seattle-based performance and installation artists who have been a duo since 2021. Themes such as pop culture, gender roles, sexuality, sex appeal, and Americana are persistent in this collaborative partnership, built on the back of friendship and a shared love of the frivolous and ridiculous.

Elisa Maelen Law (M.A. Museology, UW) is a South Park based exhibit designer, public historian, and artist. Her most recent projects include the new Vashon Heritage Museum redesign, coordinating the First World Flight Centennial, managing the historic preservation efforts of the Tokeland Hotel, and she is particularly proud that her flower bathroom installation (‘Florence Pugh’) at Museum of Museums was, some say, the most popular Tinder selfie background of 2022.

“Lite-trinalia” reconstitutes Seattle dive bar bathroom scrawls into a glowing, pixelated hug.

Cara Jaye lives and works in Bellingham, WA, where she is Professor of Art at WWU. She received her MFA from CU Boulder and her BFA from Parsons School of Design, NYC. She studied printmaking at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Jaye’s work is varied in both interest and form. Her practice is rooted within drawing and expands into various techniques including encaustic painting, collage, conventional and alternative photographic processes, installation, printmaking, and embroidery.

The Bathroom Confessional When you enter the Bathroom Confessional you will be able to experience the sights and sounds of a new type of confession stall. Here you can express your bodily waste and at the same time alleviate emotional garbage, regrets, guilt and other trapped negativity. Vocal contributors are: Kay Bunton, Max Hautala, Jason Hetrick, Cara Jaye, Cindy Jaye, Mariah Tate Klemens, Cezar Mesquita, Hamsa Magsi, Cameron Nessman, Coco Overstreet and Mazzy Robinson. Your confession will be kept private; your confession is solely between you, the stall and your divinity. On this special seat you can confess any concerning matters great or small. No confessions will be recorded or monitored – all dialogue is confidential. After you confess you are rewarded with penance. Penances are suitably tailored to each visitor. If you would like to make your confession or your experience public you are invited to post your words, images or videos to Instagram at #theBathroomConfessional. The Bathroom Confessional was created by artist Cara Jaye, with superb technical support from Hamza Magsi. The welcome introduction is voiced by Kay Bunton.

You may also write your confession to this Google Doc and it will be transcribed for you.

Ben and Jed have been doodling together for the past 20 years and plan on continuing for another 20.

Alan Hurley is a self-taught outsider artist from the pacific northwest. He primarily works in both paint and with fabric/sewing.