If you're in the Seattle area, I highly recommend heading to Consolidated Works to check out Dazzle Camouflage, a new installation by Jason Puccinelli. He received funding for it from Artist Trust, which is how I first heard of. And Jason is joining us for a fundraising reception at the site, so I've gotten to talk to him a bit while setting that up.

The basic idea is that he's constructed museum dioramas, like you would see representing Stone Age culture or something like that, and combined them with a fashion shoot. In this case, the dioramas are representations of some questionable things, such as in the image up top. Other scenes are a slaughterhouse, a missile silo and a stock exchange. Opening night, he had fashion models pose and cavort in the scenes, covered in blodd, stabbing pig carcasses, and also audience members were selected to pose as well. I thought the fashion models weakened the effect, actually, because the exhibit works better as audience participation, the better to implicate the audience as they interact in the settings. The performed fashion shoots distanced the audience. It wasn't them.

There won't be the full on fashion shoot spectacle in the regular exibit, but a photographer will be on duty Thursdays thru Sundays 7:00pm – 8:00pm to take pictures of visitors to the installation. Which means you get a photo as a souvenier. It's supposed to be fun, and kind of disturbing that it is fun.

It's also the cover of last week's Stranger: