Scott Fife Bear Season
May 27 to July 2, 2025

Link to images from the exhibition
The Stranger: Review

My Friend the Bear
Down in the bone myth of the cellar
of this farmhouse, behind the empty fruit jars
the whole wall swings open to the room
where I keep the bear.  There's a tunnel
to the outside of the far wall that emerges
in the lilac grove in the backyard
but she rarely uses it, knowing there's no room
around here for a freewheeling bear.
She's not a dainty eater so once a day
I shovel shit while she lopes in playful circles.
Privately she likes religion—from the bedroom
I hear her incantatory moans and howls
below me—and April 23rd, when I open
the car trunk and whistle at midnight
and she shoots up the tunnel, almost airborne
when she meets the night.  We head north
and her growls are less friendly as she scents
the forest-above-the-road smell.  I release
her where I found her as an orphan three
years ago, bawling against the dead carcass
of her mother.  I let her go at the head
of the gully leading down to the swamp,
jumping free of her snarls and roars.
But each October 9th, one day before bear season
she reappears at the cabin frightening
the bird dogs.  We embrace ear to ear,
her huge head on my shoulder,
her breathing like a god's.

–Jim Harrison
from Shape of the Journey

Scott Fife has been exhibiting his sculptures and drawings since 1976 in galleries in Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and Vancouver, BC and in museums including the Frye Museum (Seattle), the Tacoma Art Museum, the Boise Art Museum, the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (Spokane). His work was included in the 2008 Art on Paper Biennial at the Weatherspoon Museum of Art in Greensboro, NC. The Missoula Art Museum, Missoula, Montana hosted a solo show of his work in the winter of 2010, and one of his sculptures was included in the Seattle Art Museum exhibition "Kurt" in the spring of 2010. His sculptures are in many collections including Microsoft, Safeco, Swedish Hospital, the City of Seattle, the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Boise Art Museum