- [Voiceover 1] It's about social justice issues.

It's about conversations.

It's about bringing the community together, and bridging those conversations.

- [Voiceover 2] Highlighting the local black artist.

(upbeat music) (instrumental music) [Voiceover 3] Her impact lives on in the incredible, the diverse kinds of arts, that we get to experience now.

- [Voiceover 4] She was fearless, she was a force.

I mean, she was a force in so many ways.

- [Voiceover 5] Curator Zoe Dyson, championed modern art, and was notably the first person to showcase Yayoi Kusama's work in the United States.

At her urging, in 1953, Life Magazine published a feature on Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson, and Morris Graves.

Four Northwest artists who would soon become known, as the influential Northwest School.

She would later be praised for waging her one-woman crusade, to have Northwest painters recognized on a nationwide scale, by Life Magazine writer, Dorothy Cyberlane.

- [Gordon Wooside] Well, when we first started the gallery was, the year before the world's fair.

And at that time there were, really only two galleries in Seattle, the Auto Seligman Gallery which revolved around Mark Tobey, and Zoe Dyson, who started the first legitimate gallery in Seattle.

Who was at that time colorful and controversial and wonderful.

And... - I actually discovered Zoe Dyson probably in 2016.

I didn't really know about her before then.

So who she is, is Seattle's first gallery operator owner for contemporary and modern art.

And, when I found that out, it was like, "Oh my God, you mean that was a black woman that did that?"

And yes, that's who she was.

And she operated her gallery in Seattle from 1950 to 1965.

And then her daughter picked it up and ran it until 1972.

- [Barbara Johns] She could navigate social circles in Seattle.

She commissioned the young, or very young, architecture firm Tucker Shields and Terry to build her a small home on the east slope above Lake Union.

It was on Lakeview.

And, the idea was that this would be a small home.

Very modernist, nothing quite like it in Seattle.

And it would also be a gallery.

And she opened that as a home and gallery in 1949.

Apparently she decorated in great taste.

White walls, but elegant furniture, and she was very elegant woman herself.

And her home became an attraction, really a salon for people to gather and talk as well.

- [Lucy Kirk] All right.

After the war, a very important person came to Seattle and that was Zoe Dyson, when she started a little gallery but she had most beautiful things.

And I think that people then began to be, you know, the more important and wealthy people could see things.

They donated them to the museum.

- [Vivian Phillips] I think it is very unfortunate that Zoe Dyson lost her home, to make way for the I-5 Freeway.

Because it had so much glass, it could not be moved.

So they had to demolish it.

I think that's really unfortunate, but it's replicated in so many ways today.

And I hope that people see that it's important to hold on.

And if you can't hold on, be sure to document it and make sure that those stories are made public.

(calm music) (background chatter) - [Elisheba Johnson] So people will be like, they'll get this like weird feeling.

I've had people be like, "Oh, this is so strange.

I feel like I'm in my family's house, or my grandmother's house."

So they feel really comfortable at home.

Sometimes people ask if they should take off their shoes.

- [Production Speaker 1] Yep.

You're good.

- [Production Speaker 2] Common marker.

Soft sticks.

(clapperboard clapping) - [Voiceover 5] Elisheba Johnson is a multimedia artist, curator and poet.

As a co-founder of Wa Na Wari, a center for black art and belonging in the central district, Seattle's historically black community, she helps to incubate and amplify black art.

- This house is been in Inye's family for five generations.

Inye is my partner, Jill Friedberg and Rachel Kessler and I.

And the four of us really wanted to see what could happen if we turned it into a gallery space.

His grandfather bought this house.

It's mostly been a place for family, but then always it was like a community space.

It was weird if the door was closed and his mom, Birdie, she was always cooking something and people were always here.

They knew that if they came here they could meet somebody they knew, and talk to, or.

So we kind of feel like we're just continuing that.

People will come in and be like, "I like this museum", and I'm like, "we're not a museum."

The art is an inquiry, right?

And curating is a thesis statement.

So, you're thinking about ideas, you're bringing the artists in to explore those ideas.

Those are the type of like curatorial decisions that you're just making, of like, how do I want somebody to feel in this space?

And, so then I'm like, what do I want people to feel about this work?

How do I want them to come into it?

(calm music) So, we will have large scale installations you know, film, video, you name it.

And you know, we also do like paintings and other stuff.

But, we do sell work, but that's not our primary goal.

Our primary goal is to really create a space with art for people to have dialogue.

(calm music) - [Lauren Williams] I think, what Elisheba saw in this work was that, you know, Wa Na Wari is a space for cultivating black life, and futures and things like that.

And perhaps like, in, excavating the questions that are in the artwork you see in this room, we can sort of move toward that in a different way.

But I'm also really excited to be in this space that's clearly connected to community, that has like a historical relationship with black history in this city.

- I think that's important for a lot of, like residencies, or kind of exhibits that happen, especially in intimate spaces, like houses, where so much of what you bring to it is, is influenced by where you are.

And so being able to physically alter and change spaces is important.

(calm music) - [Elisheba Johnson] Case 21 is our organizing work, where they're really looking at how can you scale up the model of what we're doing?

Maybe your grandmother is interested in keeping her home, her kids moved out, you know, maybe she can like rent that to an artist.

So we rezoned this house from a single family home to a community center.

Which was a very long process, but we wanted to do that so we could document the steps.

So if there were other black and brown folks that wanted to do similar paths, they could figure a way out to do that.

I think that art is a connector.

It welcomes people.

There was a woman that came up to us a couple months ago, and she literally said she wanted to live around Wa Na Wari.

A black woman.

So that her child had, you know could be exposed to black art.

(calm music)