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A visit to Bill Colby's latest exhibition at The Gallery at Tacoma Community College is like a trip to the beach. The gallery is filled with - by my cursory count - 44 bright paintings dominated by clear blue water and clear blue sky complemented by rocks of bright orange.
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Artist and gallery owner Susan Christian worried that it might not be kosher to exhibit her own paintings at her own gallery, Salon Refu, but many friends coaxed her into it so she set up a show of her own paintings - not her most recent work but some odd
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This show must be seen. New York artist Benjamin Entner's installation "Ego Sum" from the Contemporary Arts Center in Las Vegas has now traveled to Olympia and can be seen at the gallery at South Puget Sound Community College. This new version of the show is called "Mining the Ego," and
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Three outstanding fabric artists are represented in the latest show at B2 Fine Art Gallery. The show is called "Nature in the Making: Geo-Tiles" and is subtitled "Geology Interpreted through Woven Textiles." Participating artists are Stacey Harvey-Brown all the way from the UK, Agnes Hauptli from New Zealand, and Tacoma's
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Moss + Mineral is an easy-to-overlook design store tucked away in a small space on Ninth Street near a bail bondsman. They show art and photography by some of the area's best. Featured through July (no closing date set) are works by Carlos Taylor-Swanson (fine woodworking); Claudia Riedener (ceramics); the
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The last show at Olyphant Art Supply in Olympia before they close their present location and move to another spot in the heart of downtown features six paintings and one ink drawing by Tavner Castle. The brothers who run Olyphant seem to have a knack for discovering talented new artists, or
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Ellen Hochberg's installations "Boxes" and "Educating Girls" in the Woolworth windows are identity art. They put out there for your contemplation questions of how girls see themselves and how they are seen by others. As conceptual art they are interesting if not earth shattering; aesthetically they are like well-conceived minimalist
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Matika Wilbur's "Project 562" is an ambitious and fascinating photographic study of Native American culture and an equally ambitious artistic project of which Tacoma Art Museum is fortunate to be able to present to the world the inaugural exhibition. Wilbur is a Native American with connections to the Tulalip and Swinomish
Arts
Prints are not what they used to be. Not that artists do not still make etchings, lithographs and silkscreen prints, but what they do with these and other print media - often in inventive and never-before-thought-of combinations and employing new digital technologies - can be like nothing ever before seen. Frank
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As theme shows culled from a museum's permanent collection go, "Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots" is not half bad. There are works that have been shown at TAM multiple times before, like Gaylen Hansen's iconic "Kernal Riding Through Snakes" and William Ivey's "Blues and Whites," and that's all right
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Erin Dengerink's installation "The Hole in Your Heart is a Portal to Another Dimension" is a mixed media installation of small, whimsical arrangements comprising a surreal landscape that delivers a message of hope to the heartbroken. That's what the description on the Artscapes website says. To me it is a delightful
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The exhibition called "Wet" and subtitled "Abstract Expressionism in Fluidity, Movement and Space" at B2 Fine Art is a retrospective of work by Chuck Smart with some works by other well-known artists thrown in - like Yakime Brown, who is beginning to make a splash in New York; Judy Hintz
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Susan Christian continues to show the strongest art to be seen in Olympia in her little "Project Space" at Salon Refu. Her latest show is "Thomas Johnston Palmpeset II, Paintings and Photography." This is some powerful stuff - most notably "Envelop," the painting used on the posters and invitations. It is
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The biting, satirical, outrageous feminist art group Guerrilla Girls will present a live performance sponsored by Tacoma Art Museum and University of Washington Tacoma. The event is called Guerrilla Girls: Not Ready to Make Nice. What they will do is anybody's guess, but rest assured it will be provocative, entertaining
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Art is most effective when it can evoke the essence or the spirit, of a person, place or event without necessarily looking like that person, place or event. More often than not it is most effective when it does not look like the subject because illusory depiction often detracts from
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Michael Kaniecki draws with authority. Folks like me who have spent a lifetime in and around college art departments might say his figure drawings are like the stuff you see in every figure drawing class, and there's some truth to that; but Kaniecki does it better than most. He has a
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"The Meaning of Wood" at the gallery at South Puget Sound Community College is one of the best theme shows I have seen in a long time. This spacious gallery in the Kenneth J Minnaert Center features sculptures, paintings and drawings from many artists in a wide range of styles,
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The exhibition at Museum of Glass by Jen Elek and Jeremy Bert is a colorful and interactive show of glass sculptures combined with about 50 large, refurbished neon letters that visitors can rearrange to their hearts' content. The show fills two of the larger galleries in the museum. It's like an
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There's something otherworldly about Gary Lappier's photography show, "Sent From Somewhere Else," at Fulcrum Gallery. That does not mean the pictures are of fantasy scenes or that they're surrealistic or dreamily atmospheric. They are simple, straightforward, black and white shots of the B&I Market on South Tacoma Way. What is
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If you plan on doing some gallery hopping in the coming weeks, I suggested you wear some springy shoes because there's a lot of hopping to do, starting with "The Art of Wayzgoose" in the University Gallery at Pacific Lutheran University through April 9. The exhibition represents six years of