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Two weeks ago I reviewed Susan Seubert's half of the two-person show at Kittredge Gallery at the University of Puget Sound. This week's column focuses on the second half of the two-shows-in-one: Jessica Bender's mixed-media installation "Dejection," which fills the large front room of the gallery. My initial reaction when entering
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Look at this painting. It's by Seattle artist David Noah Giles who used to be Tacoma artist David N. Goldberg. Now look again. And again. You'll notice that at first glance you see a field of random blue and orange squiggles on a white background. Then you notice something you hadn't
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I usually know what I think of the art I see, and I can express my opinions fairly clearly. After all, that's kind of my job. But some art leaves me scratching my head. Such is the work of Blake Flynn at Childhood's End Gallery. Is it profound and inventive
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There's a lot of exciting stuff coming up in area art galleries. Flow will host a show honoring artist and co-founder of Puget Sound Sumi Artist, the late Mary Bottomley in October. In November and December they'll have a retrospective of Fumiko Kimura's artwork featuring pieces not shown in years and
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Politics and literary art come together with visual art with a musical sensibility in the new show by Jean Smith and David Lester of the rock duo Mecca Normal. It's good to see a merging of various artistic expressions such as this. Lester is a graphic artist; Smith is a
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Artists get no respect. At least not small town artists, at least not beginning artists. Andy Warhol got plenty of respect. So did Roy Lichtenstein and Willem de Kooning, and Paul Cezanne was venerated in his lifetime. Van Gogh, on the other hand, was ignored and laughed at by all
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The Woolworth windows on Broadway and on Commerce are filled with cloud-themed art, beginning with the northern most windows and an installation called "Fabrication" by Janet Marcavage. The walls and the floor are filled with boldly striped patterns in cherry red and plum, blue and white and a wonderfully soft
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Objets Trouvés is French for found objects, which very loosely describes at least some of the work or parts of some of the works by Reni Moriarity and Selinda Sheridan at Flow - another little gem of a show for this tiny gallery that's open only for Third Thursdays and
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Tacoma artist Holly Senn is going places - both literally and figuratively. Figuratively she's going places because at this stage in her career she may well be Tacoma's most successful up-and-coming visual artist. Literally she's going to Portland and Seattle, and who knows where she may go next. She's preparing for
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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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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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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