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Last night I dreamed a dream of painting. I had laid a large canvas on the floor, and I was down on my hands and knees drawing a jagged slash of vivid red across the canvas with a cattle marker. Cattle markers are a kind of oil stick (oil paint
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Olympia's Matter Gallery, named Best Olympia Gallery two years in a row, has moved a few blocks to Washington Street in the old Capitol Theatre building, one block north of the Washington Center for the Performing Arts. It's a modest-sized space that is nicely laid out so that even though there
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DHAKA, Bangladesh - A Maneuver Advisor Team with Force Package 22-1, 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade participated in Bijôy Dibôsh, or the Victory Day Parade, Dec. 16, 2021 in Dhaka, Bangladesh celebrating Bangladesh's 50 years of Independence. The 5th SFAB's MAT 5311 was provided a tour of the country led by
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I really like Alain Clerc's paintings, although not so much the ones on the left as you enter the gallery at Tacoma Community College. He's in a new two-person show with David J. Roholt, who's work I do not like as much, except for a group on the right side
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The latest show at the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is Best of the Northwest: Selected Painting from the Collection. Calling an exhibition "Best of the Northwest" is an exercise in hubris at best - an invitation for critics like me (and let's face it, everybody's a critic) to say, "They
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The Museum of Glass is celebrating its 10th anniversary with two days of festivities featuring food, music, and - get this - shattering glass. It's also celebrating the opening of a new exhibition featuring recent works by master artist Lino Tagliapietra. The celebration runs throughout the day and night on July 13
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This duo at B2 Gallery is a modern Vaudeville act in pastel, inventive, sometimes frightening and often moving. It's Ric Hall and Ron Schmitt, two artists who have now spent years collaborating on pastel paintings. I use the term "painting" because even though pastel is a chalk, a drawing media,
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I don't understand why Tacoma Art Museum seems to be on a glass art jag lately. Their newest show is "The Marioni Family: Radical Experimentation in Glass and Jewelry" (watch for my review in this week's Volcano). The adjacent gallery in the museum is a Dale Chihuly show. I respect
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I was quite surprised by The Marioni Family: Radical Experimentation in Glass and Jewelry at Tacoma Art Museum. I had previously seen a lot of glass by both Paul and Dante Marioni, mostly at the Museum of Glass, but what I had seen in the past was more traditional than
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I didn't want to like Christopher Mathie's art, but I can't resist the seduction of his lively canvases. I tried to resist because it's all so damn melodramatic - windswept rocky sea shores, birds of prey swooping across stormy clouds, gobs and slashes of paint more expressive than anything I've
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The best work of art I've seen in a long time is the "Oly Love" poster created by students of Olympia High School in response to the visit to Olympia by the hateful Westboro Baptist Church. I never really believe art by committee was possible - not real meaningful art.
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There are two circles of events which characterize Command Sergeant Major Brian Rikstad's service in the Washington Army National Guard as he nears the end of a 39-year career in uniform. The arc of his service began in the wake of the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980. He watched on
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The back room at Fulcrum Gallery is seldom used for art exhibits. It is usually a space for music and special events - the bread-and-butter stuff that allows DJ Broam, aka glass artist Oliver Doriss, to keep his gallery open. Currently on view is an installation of photographs by Sharon
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I cannot believe it took me five years to finally visit the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. The park opened to great fanfare in 2007. I wanted to see it from the day it opened but somehow never got around to it, and then I put it off year after
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Strange creatures both human and animal lurk in the front rooms of Fulcrum Gallery. The show is called Visions from the Other Side Surrealistic Portraits, a Group Show. Featured are works by Larkin Cypher, Kelsi Finney, Jeremy Gregory and Keith Carter. The work is inventive. Each artist has a personal, sometimes
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Late blooming artist Becky Knold has landed on the scene, and I suspect we can look forward to seeing much more of her. On July 19, 2011, I wrote about her in an article for the Spew blog called "Becky Knold: The Great Unknown." The opening sentence was: "Attention area
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With names like Matt Groening and Lynda Barry on the alumni roster, The Evergreen State College is known for fostering big time cartoonists and animators. A bunch of them will visit Evergreen tomorrow for what's called the Fishbowl Seminar facilitated by faculty member Ruth Hayes. PR for the event states: "Animation, comics,
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Fulcrum Gallery is getting weird. OK, they've mostly been weird for as long as they've resided in the little shop on Martin Luther King Way. Or if not exactly weird, at least more willing than most galleries to show works that are not exactly Norman Rockwell or Thomas Kinkade. But
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The latest show at Childhood's End Gallery features two old-timers, both well-known and well-liked in Olympia. Susan Aurand and Betty Jo Fitzgerald. If you've been paying attention, I've reviewed each of them multiple times over the years. This will probably be Fitzgerald's last show. She is elderly and living with severe
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Photographer Peter Serko has had a lot more on his mind lately than his art. His brother David died of AIDS in 1992 at the age of 32. "For 20 years I have wanted to do a project of some sort about my brother's life and death. I finally found
