Installation view of Frye Parlor x Jayme Yen, Frye Art Museum (Image: Jueqian Fang/Frye)
Jayme Yen (Image: Colin Beam)
By Caroline Carr
The Frye Art Museum has long been one of the grandest spaces Seattleites could dare consider a third place. Short of a first Thursday, it is one of the only museums in Seattle to offer free admission, a personal value of its founder Charles Frye. In collaboration with a local artist Jayme Yen, the museum recently launched Frye Parlor, a new exhibit that engages in ambitious alchemy, fusing an art installation with a gathering space.
This new concept takes elements from a traditional art exhibit and places them in a lounge, inviting guests to stay a while, socialize, and see themselves as participants in the art. Located outside the museum’s cafe, the installation is Yen’s abstract take on Frye Salon, the ornate, floor-to-ceiling display of the museum’s founding collection.
On the walls of Frye Parlor, large banners of bright pink and green fabric flutter gently against distorted sheets of Mylar, all inscribed with descriptions that correspond to the paintings of the Salon. The reflective surfaces mirror a warped clone of the onlooker, transforming the viewer into an accomplice, as the intentionally brief sentences invite them to conjure their own notion of what a painting may look like in the absence of an image. Beneath it all is the spectral shadow of trees, calling back to the foliage that garnishes many of the Salon’s paintings.
When Yen looked at the Salon, she didn’t just view it, she read it.
“The way these paintings are arranged is like a text. Each painting can be thought of as a sentence, each wall like a paragraph, the whole space like an essay,” she said. During the opening, the artist invited the public to engage with the Salon as she had during her creation process. Guests circled the room, writing down the actions and subjects they saw and constructing sentences that expressed their interpretation of the art.
As an artist, graphic designer, and teacher, Yen approaches her work with an ethic of generosity. In her remarks at the Frye Parlor opening on March 27th, she wondered aloud, “How can viewers see or read themselves in art? How can the experience of art be welcoming and generous to the uninitiated?”
The Parlor’s setup is communal and inviting by design, with mobile seating blocks that match the surrounding art. This modular furniture will accommodate a variety of gatherings that will take place in the Parlor. Unlike the rest of the museum, Frye Parlor can be home to events, receptions, and everyday mingling.
Before the Parlor took shape, Yen took her textual representation of the gallery and turned it into a poster as part of the museum’s inaugural poster series in 2024. Yen then used her translation of the salon to explore “how text could become textile,” utilizing translucent fabrics and shadows to create an atmosphere of softness in the museum’s conversation with itself. With the help of Tamar Benzikry, Shane Montgomery, and Ingrid Langston, the project eventually developed into the expansive, experiential display it is today.
Yen’s art will remain in the space until March 2027, when the Frye will bring in a new contemporary, local artist to inhabit the parlor.
The Frye Museum is located at 704 Terry Ave. Learn more at fryemuseum.org.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
