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Matthew Johnson's charcoal drawings and watercolors at Fulcrum are unassuming, unpretentious and traditional in style and execution. There's nothing to distinguish them other than 1) the unusual subject matter and 2) the skill of the drawings. Yet, I was drawn to them even from outside the gallery on the
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Mavi Contemporary Art is Tacoma's newest gallery. They opened last week (in the beautifully remodeled building that was for so long home to Two Vaults Gallery) with an outstanding exhibition of paintings and sculptures by William Quinn. Little known in Tacoma, Quinn has long been successful nationally and even internationally. He
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I checked out a few more installations from the Spaceworks Tacoma Artscapes project starting with The Blood That Runs Through Us...an Ongoing Dialogue by Mary Coss, June Sekiguchi and Pamela Hom at 950 Pacific Ave. It is fabulous. It obliquely addresses the theme of lifecycles, leaving much for the viewer
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The Donald Cole and Francie Allen show Women Concealed and Revealed at Blue Heron Gallery is worth the drive and the ferry ride to Vashon Island. I first became aware of Cole a few years back when I reviewed his show at ArtXchange in Seattle for another publication. I was tremendously
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The Spaceworks program is the kind of thing that's sure to put Tacoma on the map. You can no longer think of T-town as the stepchild of Seattle when it has things like this - open spaces and empty buildings enlivened with visual art, music and performance art. And not
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What does it mean to be naked? The Brick House Gallery encouraged artists to come up with their own definitions of the word with strong hints that they should feel free to interpret nakedness in ways other than the obvious (i.e., figures without clothing). But with very few exceptions the
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Here & Now, the latest show at Fulcrum Gallery, is an investigation of the styles and concerns of Tacoma artists of different generations, from Lynn Di Nino, born in 1945, to Ian Wheelock, born in 1997 - 16 artists in all including students from the Hilltop Artists in Residence Program. So
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Overall I'm less than impressed with the quality of public art in Olympia. OK, yeah, The Kiss by Richard Beyer at the Percival Landing boardwalk (Fourth Avenue and Water Street) is kind of fun. People love to get their picture taken with the kissing couple. But it's really silly and not
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Now showing at Childhood's End Gallery in Olympia are paintings by Chuck Gumpert and Alfred Currier, plus a group of the very popular half-man, half-bird ceramic sculptures by the husband-and-wife team of John and Robin Gumaelius. I'm going to limit my comments to the paintings by Gumpert and Currier, two
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I got a sneak peek at the Davide Salvadore exhibition at William Traver Gallery in Tacoma, and I'm glad I got to see it. Salvadore is a Venetian glass artist from Murano, the glass art capital of the world. His art reflects the colorful traditions not of Venice, but of
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Imagine my surprise when I walked into the 15th anniversary Neddy Fellowship exhibition at Tacoma Art Museum and discovered that the show was more than twice the size I expected. Normally they show two or three works each from each of the eight fellowship nominees but, being an anniversary show,
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It's Neddy time again. Every year I look forward to the Neddy show at Tacoma Art Museum, and every year I'm just a little bit disappointed. But along with the disappointment comes exhilaration because year after year the Neddy nominees seem to be split between some of the best artists
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Would you like to see why Jeremy Mangan won the 2009 Foundation of Art Award from The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation? A peek at his show at Fulcrum Gallery might provide a good clue. Mangan's paintings are inventive, thought provoking, humorous, technically marvelous and beautifully composed. What more can you ask
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Another one bites the dust. After four years (six if you count a previous incarnation), Paula Tutmarc-Johnson's Two Vaults Gallery will close its doors forever when their current show ends. "Our location, just two doors from The Grand Cinema, has proved to bring us a continued flow of art-minded folks. These
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The show is called Flow, and the drawings by Andrea Erickson and Maureen McHugh at mineral do present a nice flow of contrasting and blending styles. Their art is billed as calligraphic, which is highly descriptive of Erickson's sumi paintings, but McHugh's abstractions in ink are not so much calligraphic
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Guitarist David Lester and singer Jean Smith are the underground musical duo Mecca Normal. They are also visual artists, and they have curated and are featured in a month-long exhibition at the all-ages club Northern in Olympia. The show is called The Black Dot Museum: Political Artists from Vancouver, and
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What a wonderful find! An unheralded and untrained artist with innate talent, guts and sincerity is discovered, and you can see his paintings and sculptures at Tacoma Art Supply. Don't miss this. Tyrone Patkoski is half Polish and half Native American. He has survived homelessness and mental illness, has never studied
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There's a new gallery in town, and it's pretty cool. It's called The Brick House and it's in an old brick house on Fawcett between 11th and 13th. I had a hard time finding it because the only sign is neon and hanging in the window - not visible from
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Fulcrum Gallery continues to mount shows that make old codgers like me realize how out of touch they are. Ed Matlock's new paintings at Fulcrum are from a series based on the Mexican game Loteria, sometimes referred to as Mexican bingo. I never heard of it. And I'm only
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Lisa Sweet re-invisions and reinterprets medieval and early modern Christian iconography in a style borrowed from Jan Van Eyck and the Netherlandish artists, but makes it uniquely her own. There are certain artists whose works are instantly recognizable, starting with Van Eyck and leading up through Picasso and Pollock. Add Sweet