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Nancy Thorne Chambers' installation "A Story Place" is the culmination of a lifelong dream for the Olympia artist. A retired therapist, illustrator and self-taught ceramic artist, Chambers has long wanted to create a life-size storybook world. Imagine this: an 8 by 10-foot diorama featuring 30 life-size woodland creatures - anthropomorphized bears,
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Everybody knows not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Tacoma Art Museum certainly does. In this case, the gift horse is a bucking bronco, or lots of them - the 295 works of Western art from the Haub Family Collection donated to TAM, plus more than $15 million
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"Pop Departures" at Seattle Art Museum is a look back at work by the leading pop artists of the 1960s and a jump forward to more contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Margaria Cabrera and Mickalene Thomas who continue to follow in the footsteps of those bad boys. There are whole
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Over the past year Salon Refu has established itself as the edgiest art gallery in Olympia, if not the edgiest south of Seattle. But being in the avant-garde is not enough for gallery owner Susan Christian; she also insists that the art in her gallery be skillfully crafted - no
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It's here at last - the brand new Haub Family Collection of Western American Art in the new galleries designed by Olson Kundig Architects - open to the public at the grand opening celebration Saturday, Nov. 15. The new wing doubles the museum's gallery space and places the Tacoma Art
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Simon Kogan is locally famous in Olympia for his World War II memorial on the Capitol Campus and for the larger-than-life statue of a pregnant woman, "Motherhood," at Percival Landing. He is also well known as a teacher of private art classes. At the moment the works of his students
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For lack of a better term, I'm tempted to call Nathan Barnes' paintings pop surrealism, but his paintings are about 10 times better than most of what falls into that category. And yes, there really is such a thing. You can find it on Google and Wikipedia. Among famous artists
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In many ways Gary and Deborah Boone operate B2 Fine Art Gallery more like a museum than a commercial gallery - much to Tacoma's great good fortune. They have held survey shows of the best of children's art from around the world, not once, not twice, but three times with
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It has been 100 years since Picasso and Braque invented the technique of collage. In more contemporary times the technique has degenerated to either warmed-up Kurt Schwitters or to bizarre and often comical combinations of surrealistic imagery, which tend to be more gimmicky than artistic. Notable exceptions have been the
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I was visiting Lisa Kinoshita at Moss + Mineral and she said I absolutely had to visit the new shop next door, Mod Curio. She said they had some cool stuff, and boy-oh-boy was she ever right about that. The new shop, which opened for Art Mingle Sept. 18, is run
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New works by some old favorites in pen and pencil, metal and dirt can be seen at Moss + Mineral through most of the next two months. I saw the announcement and was so intrigued with a drawing by Jeremiah Maddock that I had to see the show. I wasn't
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Olympia painter Barlow Palminteri tops the list of Juror's Choice Award winners in the 12th Annual Juried Local Art Exhibition at Tacoma Community College with his painting "Trailblazer Landscape." Palminteri has made a big splash in the area art scene with his realistic interior scenes (part Phillip Pearlstein and part
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I have long been fascinated by Lisa Sweet's paintings. They are bizarre, pop-surrealist images of torture, death and martyrdom painted with skill and quirky humor. Lately she has added painted wood sculptures to her repertoire and along with that an amazing amount of playful depth, both literal and illusory. Sweet teaches
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Marita Dingus is one of Seattle's most unique and well-known artists, renowned for works made from scrap materials such as bent wire and often depicting and commenting on the African American experience. For years she made art about the institution of slavery including a monumental, room-size figure of a slave
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It's been a long time since I've visited Art House Designs in Olympia. Since I was last there they have remodeled with larger display spaces, and the place is jam-packed with art. Susie Engelstad, Mia Shulte, Simon Kogan, Tom Anderson and Rose Nichols are just a handful of the many
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The "NW Contemporary Art Quilt Exhibit" at American Art Company is always loaded with beauty. This, the 12th annual installation, is no exception. Not only is almost every quilt on display of the highest quality, the manner in which they are displayed is excellent as quilts are grouped by color
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There was quite a lively discussion at the Old Post Office Wednesday night when the New Neighborhood Council sponsored a panel discussion on graffiti with representatives from a good number of community groups. On the panel were City Art Administrator Amy McBride; Judi Hyman, president of the Downtown Merchant's Group;
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There's a show at B2 Fine Art Gallery called "Evolution of Line & Form: Exploring Jackson Pollock Inspirations." Six painters and one photographer are featured, including former Tacomans David Noah Giles and Catherine Swanson whose abstract paintings lift the show to a higher plateau. I'm tempted to say everything else
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The Plinth Project down at Percival Landing in Olympia is a fabulous idea that so far has never quite panned out as I had hoped it would - although hope remains, as witnessed by the finer pieces in this year's crop of 13 sculptures. When they rebuilt the boardwalk downtown, the
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The Brick House is now showing a retrospective of drawings and paintings by longtime (retired) University of Puget Sound art professor Robert Vogel. If you have ever studied in a university art department you will recognize the style of Vogel's art. This is not meant as a put-down but merely