EMILY COUNTS // Tender Echoes

On view October 11–November 23, 2025
Opening reception Saturday, October 11 (12–3 p.m.)

Nationale is delighted to present artist Emily Counts’ fifth solo exhibition with the gallery in ten years’ time. Tender Echoes celebrates the unconscious impulses of making in Counts’ stylistically energetic and otherworldly forms. This new collection furthers an intuitive exploration into a fierce and tender femininity through the medium of ceramics. These works pay particular honor to the artist’s quiet practice of drawing. The simplicity of quick sketches as the first stage of an actualized sculpture allows for an unencumbered fluidity. This type of mark-making eschews concrete concepts and instead commemorates fleeting visions, immediate feelings, and transcriptions of the unknown. Counts harnesses a prudent trust within herself through the artistic act of receiving these visions. From there, much like meditation, the drawings represent the birthing stage of her concepts and serve as honorable references for the final technical sculptures.

Busts of female figures are displayed alongside symbols of nature such as moths, cats, fruits, and flowers, narrating implied connections between the spiritual and natural worlds. Many of these objects share an innate symbolism as harbingers of growth, transformation, and life cycles. Where Counts makes them her own is through the fantastical addition of color, texture, and pattern exploration. A moth’s wing is adorned with a glittery spiderweb (or perhaps a crocheted motif) housing a single eye; a woman’s face is distorted, boasting two mouths, two eyes, a nose, and a curlicue flower all jumbled—though not beyond recognition. Thorny stems wilt and droop, nodding to a saccharine and inevitable end. As in life, symmetry is inescapable. Therefore, why not adorn what we can in a dripping abundance of gold, light, and the wondrous. In this way, Counts portrays the lilting rhythm and harmony between artist and subject.

Emily Counts was born in Seattle, WA, and currently lives and works in Tacoma, WA. She received her BFA from the California College of the Arts and also studied at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, Germany. Her work has been exhibited in institutions nationally including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Torrance Art Museum in California, Oregon Contemporary in Portland, OR, and in Washington at the Museum of Museums, the Museum of Northwest Art, and the Bellevue Arts Museum; and internationally including HAGD Contemporary in Aalborg, Denmark,  and Schönfeld Gallery in Brussels. She has received grants from Artist Trust, The Ford Family Foundation, the Oregon Arts Commission, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. She was an artist in residence at Raid Projects in Los Angeles, Plane Space in New York, and at the Varda Artists Residency Program in Sausalito, CA. Counts’ work is included in the collection of the Port of Seattle. She is currently represented in Oregon by Nationale and in Washington by studio e gallery.

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