The Tacoma Art Museum traced a creative line between past and present with their Bastille Day Celebration the evening of July 14. DJ Juvenal spun French hip-hop while a male Marie Antoinette and several beret-ed and scarved volunteers helped to keep the crowd following art museum etiquette. The event actually fell on Bastille Day, while most actual Parisiennes were sleeping (they are, after all, eight hours ahead of us), though I heard one very authentic accent commenting on the art and the events as I snooped through the galleries. 
The new art exhibit itself â€" "The Essense of Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas" is tres cool.  I literally had my breath taken away by one Vermeer-esque drawing, a Cupid sketch, and a Degas.  What I loved about the show was the range of artwork â€"s ome artists favored a studied, detail-oriented approach to their sketches (many of which were created to help the artists develop their painting ideas) while others used only a few deft strokes to convey their style. 
The “few deft strokes” style was employed later in The Big Draw, where seven Tacoma artists sketched dancers from Evergreen City Ballet on a 30-foot long sheet.  The audience was invited to participate, with pads of paper and writing implements handed out by the elevators. I was too chicken to do so, and the line for wine was too daunting for me to grab a glass that might help to lube up my inhibitions.  Even still, I thought the event was well organized, original, and very fun. â€" Jessica Corey-Butler