Arts
South Puget Sound Community College art professor Joe Batt has created a world of charcoal, wood and ceramic adults and children - mostly children. Digital media have taken control of their lives - a comically surrealist world not too far removed from the world most of us live in today.
Arts
December 1 is World AIDS Day, a day to remember the many who have died of this dreaded disease and the many still living with AIDS and HIV, a day to remember that the crisis is not over, that people are still suffering and dying all over the world and
Arts
Susan Christian paints patterns on sticks, and then she props them against walls or lays them on floors or puts them together in relatively rectangular shapes and hangs them like traditional modernist paintings. She's even been known to take photos of them lodged among branches in trees. To some people,
Stage
Presented by Pellegrino's Italian Kitchen and Open Road Productions, A Murder for Old Time's Sake is a musical murder mystery dinner theater extravaganza that just might have you laughing so hard you spit out your Tuscan Pork Loin (or Parsnip Steak Marsala). It's funny; it's got great music, and a
Stage
StoryOly premiered its monthly Story Slam Tuesday of last week with a dozen funny, poignant, and in at least one instance harrowing stories told by local storytellers. StoryOly is a project of Olympia Actor's League, hosted by Elizabeth Lord and produced by Amy Shephard. Community members come together every month
Arts
The latest exhibition in the art gallery at The Evergreen State College takes concentration and thought to comprehend. It is not a show that can be easily enjoyed for its beauty alone, but one that stimulates deep thought from those willing to put forth the effort. It is called "Sensations
Stage
Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana, now playing at Dukesbay Theater, is not an easy play to watch. It is tough, complicated and riveting, with a fascinating cast of characters, few of whom are nice people but a few of whom - notably the defrocked Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon
South Sound Cinema
The creepiest, nerdiest actor in all of filmdom is coming to Olympia as featured artist at the 32nd annual Olympia Film Festival. We're talking Crispin Glover, a.k.a, George McFly in Back to the Future and Layne in River's Edge. "We are delighted to be presenting both of (Glover's) completed films, two
Stage
Sixty years ago an unknown actor Hal Holbrook created a one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight!, which he performed at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954 and in a small Greenwich Village nightclub. He was 29 years old. The much revered actor - known for playing Abraham Lincoln
Arts
I must return to Tacoma Art Museum at least one more time to slowly peruse the "Art AIDS America" exhibition, which is likely the most affecting exhibition ever mounted at TAM and the most thorough exhibition on the AIDS epidemic ever mounted anywhere in America. There is simply too much
![[title of show] is top notch](/uploads/articles/26343-thumb_wi100_he100_cr1:1.1445556294.jpg)
Stage
I went to see [title of show] (brackets and lower case letters intentional) thinking it was the dumbest play title I had ever heard but also with the expectation, that based on what little I had heard about it, that it was probably going to be pretty good. It was,
Arts
Michael Dickter comes soaring into Olympia's Salon Refu with a show featuring paintings of birds and flowers, subject matter that is often snubbed with various "nesses" such as sweetness and preciousness. But there is little of the saccharine in Dickter's birds and flowers. The subject matter of his paintings is
Stage
Harlequin Productions' latest show, Recent Tragic Events, is one of the strangest shows I've seen in quite some time. It is billed as a comedy, and there is a lot of humor in it - insanely absurd humor - but it also addresses horrifying events and emotions in an intelligent
Arts
B2 Gallery is jam-packed with art for its fall pop-up show. Pop-ups? It's a new thing instituted at B2 this summer where, between the main or regular shows, they have exhibitions that are up for a shorter duration and sometimes with art that is priced more reasonably. They're like the
Arts
If I were allowed 6,000 words instead of 600, I probably still couldn't do this exhibition justice. The amazing thing about it is that it was locally curated, by Tacoma Art Museum's Rock Hushka with co-curator Jonathan David Katz from the University at Buffalo (New York). The exhibition is organized
Stage
At the end of 2014, Theater Artists Olympia produced a musical comedy called The Head That Wouldn't Die! which was probably the biggest hit of the season if not the biggest hit of TAO's entire history. In my Dec. 9, 2014 review I wrote: Theater Artists Olympia's original musical The Head That
Stage
Calendar Girls, adapted by Tim Firth from the movie of the same name, is a sweet and frothy comedy with a heartfelt underlying theme of self-acceptance and caring for others. Chris (Kathy Harris) and her best friend, Annie (Jane Brody), are fed up with the leadership style of the president of
Arts
If there are noticeable similarities between the works by the half-dozen artists now on view at Fulcrum Gallery, it is because they are friends who met while living in New York in the early 2000s and have continued to influence each other since - Patrick Berran, Ben Grasso, Jean Pierre
Arts
This year's faculty and staff art exhibition is one of the better shows they've had in quite some time and the best faculty exhibition since I've been reviewing them. The first thing to strike the eye when entering the gallery is Joe Batt's installation, "Oculus." It is a dramatic, inventive and
Arts
I regret that I did not get to see more work by Betty Sapp Ragan or get to know her personally before she died in May 2014. I reviewed a couple of group shows she was in, and I had the pleasure of visiting her studio during last year's Tacoma