Image: Blake Blanco, All that gleams against the tides, 2026. Oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist
The Frye Art Museum in Seattle is presenting a new work by the Seattle artist Blake Blanco as the latest instalment of its Boren Banner Series. On view from 14 October 2026 to 18 April 2027, the work is reproduced as a large vinyl banner on the museum’s east façade, facing Boren Avenue.
Blanco’s contribution is ‘All that gleams against the tides’ (2026), an oil painting on linen. It takes as its starting point an Italian Renaissance engraving of 1543 showing Danaë and the infant Perseus being cast out to sea by Acrisius, and sets classical mythology against the visual language of the digital age.
His process begins in a virtual-reality studio, where he makes digital sketches that he then translates into paint on canvas. According to the museum, he reduces his subjects to simplified shapes rendered in vivid synthetic colour, suggesting a world that feels more plastic than organic, and the project continues his inquiry into what it means to be human as the line between the natural and the manufactured grows less certain.
The Boren Banner Series is a public art initiative presented twice a year to showcase artists from the Pacific Northwest. Participating artists either create new site-specific work or show a piece not previously exhibited, displayed as a 16-by-20-foot banner on the museum’s most visible public-facing wall. Blanco’s banner was organised by Alexis L. Silva, the Frye’s curatorial assistant, with support from Frye members and an award from 4Culture.
In January, the museum’s Art History Lecture Series will turn to the Perseus myth in art.
