 It has been a very fruitful few years for the sculptural trio of John Sutton, Ben Beres, and Zac Culler. The boys have constantly delivered a series of installations, provocations, and general puckish events which have been critically applauded by the Seattle Art Critics. After their recent tour de force at the beleaguered ConWorks, I thought it would be helpful to provide a tour of their work from the past few years.\
 John Sutton, Ben Beres, and Zac Culler met at Cornish College of the Arts in the late nineties. As students of David Nechak and Cris Bruch in the sculpture department, they were thrown together at a very critical time in the history of the College. Chairman Greg Skinner was on his way to retirement and the financial stability of the College was as always in the state of critical flux. The lack of space in the old North Capitol Hill facility was cramped, at best, forcing the trio to look outside the campus for venues which could highlight their interest in installation. The first of these appeared in Duval WA, at the site of the former Horsehead exhibition. The piece entitled "Trailer/ Ground Zero" marked the debut of the use of a large found object, (a small vacation trailer), as the basis for construction of a site where the artists spent each weekend in the summer. Another piece was entitled "Raised Earth", where an installation of sod and tree was placed on a platform of raised stilts above the ground.
 In the fall of 2002, the boys were given an unique opportunity, create two installations. The first was at Consolidated Works, where they debuted the new Solo space and the second was at Suyama space, (one of the West coast's premier installation venues. I covered the entire process in this article;
"The Sculptural Firm of Beres Culler & Sutton", by Steven Michael Vroom
In August of 2003, I wrote about the piece "Trailer Park: A Roving Work of Art"
In December of 2003, I wrote about the first artist residency at Consolidated Worked in which the boys presented their recent body of work. "Residence: An Exhibition by Culler, Beres, & Sutton"
In February of 2004 the artists had a residency in Lincoln Nebraska, I wrote "Sutton, Beres, Culler (SBC) at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts"
In July of 2004 I worte: "Sutton, Beres, & Culler [SBC]
Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
 MYSTERIOUS SCULPTURES APPEAR ON BROADWAY: This event used the 2000 BFA thesis piece by Zac Culler that was placed in front of the Payless Shoe Store on Broadway which generated a lot of news coverage.
Culler told the PI:
"We do site-specific installations and performance art. We do a lot of street performances, using special-effect makeup ....
"We take to the streets and start walking around, all in an effort to get people to turn their heads and get them out of their daily routines. ... There was one that John did last summer, during the heat wave. He got into a suit, and at all the cafes that have outdoor seating, he'd take the ice water that was on the tables and start soaking himself. ... Most of our performance art is about getting people to look at things from a different perspective, just seeing something out of the corner of their eye and saying, 'What was that?'...
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"Last summer we built a mobile city park on the back of a flatbed trailer, with a tree and a bench and a water feature. We had live growing grass. We drove it all over King County, inviting people to enjoy it. We're going to do that again this spring. Again it had to do with the fundamental thing about head-turning and getting people out of their daily routine. There was a political aspect to it, about the amount of green space in an urban area and that sort of thing. But it was fundamentally about this idea of getting out of the gallery setting and getting it into the public eye more." Zac Culler
I found it all a bit arch, and not just too clever, but rather too knowing, with the air of something closer to a calculated publicity stunt than real guerrilla-style disruption. Often this kind of "mysterious" art arrives with a press release, or else a series of e-mails from "bystanders" suggesting I look into it.... I would just like to remind people that whatever guerrilla art is, it does not arrive with a press release. Emily Hall Stranger Art Critic,
Later she wrote:
I do get plenty of press releases for "guerrilla" projects, including the announcement by the artist so infuriated by the Broadway sculptures that she had to tag them. But I did not receive one for the sculptures themselves. My apologies for the sloppy intimation, and I stand corrected.
It was later re-caped in Seattle Magazine, December 2004 Vol. XIII #10 in a story subtitled: The Worst of 2004, starting on page 71, "A collection of the year's bonehead moves, bad blunders and silly mistakes." by Steve Hansen & Michael Hood with additional reporting by Kate Kelly, Sheila Mickout, and Sean Reid. This passage appears on pp 120-121 sub-subtitled: "Don't Call it Garbage";
"In April, four hug white wooden boxes, each with a plaster mold of an anguished human face, appeared on a Broadway parking strip..For days the dalies searched for deep artistic meaning by interviewing passersby and city officials. Finally mystery solved- it wasn't esoteric commentary it was a Seattleite doing what Seattleites do: recycling. Cornish sculpture student Zac Culler told the PI "For the past six or seven years I've made these really bulky sculptures...When I run out of room... I put them out on Broadway and they dissappear... For some reason they stayed there for 10 days and they really attracted a lot of attention."
 Which leads us to late February early March 2005. See the show card here. The trio created an installation in their studio space at Consolidated Works. This work was set in the backdrop of Executive Director Matthew Richter being fired and artist John Sutton resigning from positions at that organization. Two major reviews are listed below.
Read Three pranksters with a point, by Regina Hackett, Seattle PI Art Critic, 03/04/05
Read OBSERVATORY DRIVE Artists' Vapor Trails by Nate Lippens, Stranger Art Critic, 03/10/05
It is always enjoyable to see artists working to push into new territory and to both amuse and challenge the audience's perception of what art is in the twenty-first century
Read their resume here}
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