In his current exhibition "Disintegration" at Bellevue Arts Museum, John Grade conjures up objects of uncommon beauty. Combining forces with Mother Nature and Father Time, Grade presents sculpture before, during, and after the work takes a walk on the wild side. This is the story of the travels of five pieces of mixed media sculpture. The documentation of the work, presented in photographs in the exhibition, is necessary to fully understand the process and locations of the work but not necessary to appreciate their formal beauty. Grade responds to nature and landscape that he has come in close contact with during numerous rigorous journeys. He hikes into remote areas, fraught with danger and adversity, and appears to be on a perpetual vision quest, and I say that not in a pejorative way. I am very impressed with the pure research quality of these treks and the resulting work. Exhibition curator Stefano Catalani, in his dense article in the show's accompanying catalogue, refers to "nature as a tool" for Grade. Indeed it is as each piece is carefully and extraordinarily crafted and then placed in harm's way somewhere out in the wild to be changed or finished. The recently deceased Robert Helm, one of the Northwest's best and most enigmatic artists, once said that "there is something very positive about a little rot." The way Grade looks at and incorporates the natural degradation of material and life cycles is the genius of the work. "Cleve" is an installation that you walk through to experience. It has been revived from a less successful installation at Davidson Contemporary Gallery where you could see the backside of it, removing the willing suspension of disbelief and making it more movie-set like. Here you walk into the narrow passage while the light quality changes above and next to you. The goat-hair nodules turn from translucent to opaque, glowing blue to flat hairiness. In the text, you find that Grade experienced physical dangers within a northwestern ice crevasse and a slot canyon, a rather unique geographic feature in the arid areas of the Southwest. There is a slight sense of entrapment but it needs to be much longer and tighter to physically affect most viewers. The lacey forms of "Host" are displayed with accompanying photos in picturesque locations. Cast from cellulose and topped with ground seed, the latticed arced sections were mounted in a forest in the northern Grand Canyon, but did not draw the anticipated birds to "work" on the piece. The insects and squirrels did find the work to their liking and, then later the wrens arrived. It is shown here, in Grade's words, in a state of "arrested development." There are two new works in the exhibition. "Meridian" is a large, white open cylindrical form that is suspended from the ceiling in a side gallery. There are hundreds of cast, slightly bulging square panels attached to an internal framework, each panel having a line from its center, which is then affixed to the dark perimeter walls of the gallery. It is a mesmerizing sight to come upon. You can walk about it and then into it. The lights make it glow like some luminous pod from beneath the sea. This pristine piece will first be coated with cellulose and casein and then placed at a mouth of a slot canyon in northern Arizona, spanning a chasm. In time, the interior structure will implode, allowing the tethered units to bump down into the canyon and float up on the thermal updrafts. The entire tangled mass will then be removed and hoisted high into the sequoias in northern California, where the rains will transform it again. "Fold" is a non-regular cylinder, lying on its side in the gallery. Made of thousands of varying sizes of square open units secured with a resin binder, the next home for the work will be in the Nevada desert, buried for two years. The materials in the piece are two different kinds of wood, one attractive to termites and one not. As the local insects come running, "Fold" will change according to time and appetite. After its tenure in the dirt, Grade will bring the remnants above ground for review. The only question that I still find unanswered is how Grade determines the "life" of each piece. I can appreciate that the work, like "Collector," being located in Willapa Bay to grow marine life and oysters, but what is the thought behind then strapping them onto a pick-up truck like longhorn cattle horns and driving them to Utah and allowing birds to eat the remaining encrustations? Each of the pieces here, and also "Seeps of Winter," the best installation yet in Seattle's Suyama Space, has what appears to be a rather arbitrary scripted course of events. I like the idea behind this but why those locations? Yes, Grade traveled there but then what? Maybe it is not fair to ask this question, as all art is fiction anyway so why not make up the work's itinerary, but everything else about the work is so thoughtfully planned and executed that I want a more rational schedule of demise. Milton Freewater . . . Milton Freewater is an arts writer living in Seattle, Washington. "Disintegration," is on view through November 30. Bellevue Arts Museum is located at 510 Bellevue Way NE, in Bellevue, Washington. For more information, please call (425) 519-0770 or visit the website www.bellevuearts.org.

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