POKING OUR WRITERS WITH A STICK >>>

Weekly Volcano visual arts critic Alec Clayton toured the exhibition Andy Warhol's Flowers for Tacoma, which opens Saturday, Nov. 3 at the Tacoma Art Museum. Warhol's purposal to turn the Tacoma Dome into a giant flower was nixed 30 years ago. This TAM exhibit examines the original proposal in the form of letters, drawings and paintings, plus more than 100 works of art by the Pop Art master. The art includes early illustrations from the 1950s, photographs, paintings, lithographs both black and white and hand-colored, photographs of Andy at work in The Factory and more.

Clayton's review of the Warhol show will appear in the Nov. 8 issue of the Weekly Volcano. We begged Clayton to come clean with early thoughts on the show.

If you thought you knew Andy Warhol you may be in for a big surprise. I know I was. There are many pieces in this show that I had never before seen, not even in reproduction.

We've all seen many of the silkscreen flowers with fluorescent paint, ink, and pencil in all their hypnotic repetition and funky-acid colors - the superimposed line drawings like chalk and the layered look like 3-D images seen without the glasses. There are many of these displayed in this show, and they are breathtaking. But there are also things such as a tiny and very expressionistic painting of flowers in a pot that is totally unlike anything I've ever seen by Warhol. And there is a series of lithographs displayed in a line along one wall with another line-up of the same lithographs as hand-colored by the artist.

Exciting, to say the least. Pick up a copy next Thursday for the full review. In the meantime, check out Clayton's review of Don Tiller's landscapes at Childhood's end Gallery.

LINK: Alec Clayton previews the Warhol exhibit

LINK: This week in the arts