ART AT WORK MONTH >>>

Last weekend several dozen Tacoma artists opened their studio doors to the public as a part of Art at Work: Tacoma Arts Month. I called upon my "artistic" friends to get some recommendations and out of the dozen or so studios I visited – two artists stood out.  Here's a quick glimpse into their work.

R.R. Anderson - Comic Artist Extraordinaire

Walking into Anderson's studio is like walking into a person's mind ... an insane person's mind.

It's a floor to ceiling organized hodgepodge of framed comics, news clippings, antique tools, stacks of finished artwork and books.  Among his collection: a full-on geological display, a batman figurine drowning in a jar of rice, and a typewriter labeled "This typewriter is haunted".

Anderson's affinity for the bizarre isn't solely expressed through studio décor; it's also ever-present in his comic creations.  

Anderson's response to the legislative candidate who recently said, "The Girl Scouts of America are training little girls to be a bunch of lesbians and abortionists." Note the penis-shaped cookie monster.

Like the one above, most of Anderson's comic strips on display in his studio (and available for view at Feedtacoma.com) scrutinize Pierce County politics.  All politics aside, however, Anderson says, "I'm not trying to save the world. I'm doing what I can to stay connected to how the world really is. Ultimately my work is about friendship, need, and other timeless values."

Anderson's work can also be seen in a zine produced by C.L.A.W. (The Cartoonist's League of Absurdist Washingtonians) - a secret society of fez-wearing comic writers. The free zine can be found at several downtown coffee shops including Amocat.

Also upcoming for Anderson is the release of his book, 100 Tacomics: The Secular & Apolitical Cartoon Life of Tacoma and her Moral People(s) which chronicles the last few years of Tacoma through comics.

A celebration of Anderson's book release will be held at King's Books on Monday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. Anderson will be there to sign books and Jeff the Ice-cream Man will provide free Mexican ice-cream.

MICHAELA EAVES - The woman of many mediums

Judging totally on first appearances, Michaela Eaves encompasses the emerging Tacoma artist: she's young, a little quirky, a little hipster, and I'm betting she has a way better record collection than I do.

First off, the studio she shares with several other artists is - simply put - badass. It features high loft ceilings, old brick interior, and huge paned windows that wrap around half of the room, perfectly framing UWT and Tacoma's awe-inspiring smoke stacks.

She's been there for the past two years and has truly found a home in the Tacoma art scene.  "I love how nice Tacoma is to its artists," she said. "Seattle? Not so great."

Michaela's works range from pen-scratched Tim Burton-esque drawings to mystical children's watercolors.

"I used to really want to do illustrations for children's books, but they don't like boobs," she said pointing to the watercolor of a topless nymph.

Me? I think it's pretty damn good (does that make me a nympho?).

Moving on in the tour, Eaves shows me some stained glass-like acrylic paintings, a half-painted door in the works for an upcoming food-bank charity event, and a dozen or so sinister Santa's carved out of driftwood. "I showed these to my mom who asked, ‘Why does everything you make have to be so creepy?'" she tells me.

My favorite of Eaves' pieces are black-ink-drawings stained with coffee. She had these and several other drawings available as prints.

You can check out more of Michaela on her website. For prints and commissioned work you can email her here. 

LINK: Tacoma Art at Work events

BRING ON THE WEEKEND >>>

Really, you don't need me this week. The weekend is here, and - more than any weekend in recent memory - the possibilities are beyond plentiful. You could pretty much walk out your front door, pick just about any direction to point yourself, walk, skip or run, and end up on the doorstep of a local event, festival or noteworthy shindig happening somewhere in the South Sound.

Unless you live in Spanaway. Then I'd recommend staying inside and playing Xbox like normal. (Oh snap.)

Anyway, even though you really don't need me, the fact is they pay me to be here. So, just like every week - in the regular feature we like to call The Prefunk - I offer up a weekend primer for you and your liver... with a picture of an alcoholic household pet thrown in for good measure.

24 HOUR COMICS DAY @ COMIC BOOK INK

Saturday - Sunday

What's more fun than taking photos of your pets while they drink beer because you're drunk and because they don't know any better and just want to please you?

Plenty of things. One of those things, for the sake of this column, is the 24 Hour Comics Day.

From 10 a.m. Saturday morning (tomorrow, for those playing at home) to 10 a.m. Sunday morning (a full 24 hours for those still playing at home), "several" member of CLAW (Cartoonists' League of Absurdists Washingtonians) will gather at Comic Book Ink to celebrate 24 Hour Comics Day, challenging themselves to complete a 24 page comic in 24 straight hours.

Believe it or not, this isn't the first time it's happened. In fact, 24 Hour Comics Days, and similar complete-a-comic-in-24-hours competitions, go down all over the country, all over the world, and perhaps even all over the universe...

Even more astounding, this isn't even the first time it's happened in our neck of the woods. Comic Book Ink hosted its first ever 24 Hour Comics Day last year. Apparently they weren't scared off.

According to a release on the official CLAW website:

"This is our 2nd Year issuing the challenge," said store owner, JOHN MUNN, "And our Homegrown Heroes, the Member of C.L.A.W., have returned to the challenge that 2 of them COMPLETED last year...and they are bringing more of their numbers. And when I say, "Returned to the Challenge", it means we have offered them a chance to be on public display again..doing what they do best..Creating Comics while continuing to be Absurd. We are also excited that C.L.A.W. are going to be once again using this event to promote their SCHOLARSHIP FUND!"

CLAW's scholarship fund goes to help students with a passion for cartooning, helping to pay for tuition, books or art supplies. Local superstar cartoonists RR Anderson, James Stowe, Mark Monlux and others are all expected to join in the festivities. You're invited to come see the action firsthand, and even cheer are fearless competitors on if you're so inspired.

It's not the only thing going on this weekend, but it's certainly one of the most unique.

PREFUNK: Like any good editor of any good alt-press rag, faced with an event like the 24 Hour Comics Day/Competition, I did what was natural. I assigned this event to the intern, obviously asking her to show up in the middle of the night for full effect. If all goes as planned we should have a report with pictures of the comic depravity here for you on Spew as soon as our young intern can come to grips with what she's witnessed, and put those observations to paper.

That said, my guess is nothing primes a person for an event like the 24 Hour Comics Day like Mt Dew in mass quantities. Like you're hydrating for a big game or long hike, I say start now, drinking Mt. Dew from a sports bottle up until the 10 a.m. comic kickoff tomorrow morning in an effort to make sure the levels of sugar and caffeine in your system are optimal by the time the true meat of this competition rolls around. From 2 a.m. - 6 a.m. Sunday morning is when the winners will be made and the losers will fade. If you need to (and I suggest this to fans as well as competitors) consider a Mt. Dew IV.

See you next week. And good luck to all 24 Hour Comics Day competitors.  

WE WENT TO THE 25 NEW FACES IN INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL >>>

Film: Putty Hill

Rating: Three and a half out of four stars

Director: Matthew Porterfield

Starring: James Siebor Jr., Dustin Ray, Charles Sauer

Where We Saw It: The Grand Cinema

Does It Screen Again?: Hell yes - Thursday, Aug. 26, 7:30 p.m. at The Grand

It's difficult for me to describe the fascination with which I viewed some of the scenes in Putty Hill. From the opening moments, in which a young man in Baltimore takes a break from a paintball game to be interviewed by the omniscient cameraman, Putty Hill announces itself as something strange and different.

It's a good thing the kid and many other characters are interviewed because, without it, we would have a very difficult time understanding just what is going on. The characters in this movie - much like how it would go in real life, and how it never goes in the movies - rarely feel the need to talk about how they're feeling. Slowly, as more characters are introduced and interviewed, we learn that a young man named Cory has recently died of a heroin overdose. Now, his family and friends are preparing themselves for his funeral.

A masterful scene near the beginning of the film serves as a mission statement and an example of how little needs to be said in the defining of a person. As a man gives another man a tattoo, they chitchat about the funeral and other things. What we learn: the tattooist was Cory's uncle; he learned how to perform tattoos in prison; he was convicted of second degree murder after a man raped his pregnant wife (of which he says "You can fill in the rest").

None of these confessions feel forced or fake, and indeed there is never a wrong move from an actor in Putty Hill. I am shocked to learn they were even actors, that there even was a script.

Putty Hill feels unflinchingly like life.

The film is handled with a heavy dose of naturalism, interspersed with some flights of fancy (such as a graffiti artist's spray-painted message being accompanied by subtitles so we can more easily understand them).

Unfortunately, the film comes close to wearing out its welcome due to its insistence on shunning artificial light. There are some scenes that are so dark that we can't see anything for minutes at a time. I understand the director's intentions, but at a certain point this naturalism becomes antagonistic.

Nevertheless, Putty Hill is a unique and, at times, mesmerizing depiction of how everyone grieves differently. Is it cold of these people to seem so remorseless after the loss of Cory? No. In some ways I suspect they admire Cory for escaping a place they cannot: Baltimore, drink, life, and all of it all over again.

LINK: 25 New Faces In Independent Film festival schedule

LIFE IMITATES ART ONCE AGAIN >>>

Yesterday's Lady Gaga flash mob in Tollefson Plaza was preceded with a press release claiming that the "special event ... will have approximately 300 flashmob participants." The event even had a Tacoma permit number: 10-118.

At approximately 7 p.m. considerably less participants than predicted began to dance in Tacoma's cement space, orchestrated by Vik Chopra, president of DNF Media & Management. They performed to a mega mix of Lady Gaga's hits "Bad Romance," "Poker Face," "Telephone" and "Just Dance."

The Weekly Volcano dispatched photographer Ariane Michelle of AMK Photography to capture the mob. Check out more of her photos in our Photo Hot Spot.

CLOTHING. CULTURE. CONNECT. >>>

Tacoma's a city that gets all damp in the pants over anything that's made with local love - from clothes to music to art. John Crouch, one of the founders of a new men's and women's skate culture clothing store in downtown Tacoma, knows this. He's also privy to the fact that clothes, music and art can bleed into each other within a community, creating a site-specific urban underground culture. Its grand opening party tonight features live music by Tacoma-based acts Pioneers West and DJ Platelunch.

Bleach, with the slogan - "Clothing, Culture. Connect." - aims to maintain cohesiveness with the downtown area's artistic element. 

"It has a clean ring to it, it's an important chemical to clothing and to keeping things clean, it's the name of a great Nirvana album (in my mind the best one) and it has a nice ring," says Crouch regarding the store's name, which is located in the spot formerly occupied by The Cool. "We want our store to keep a clean crisp feel and we thought the name suited us in so many ways."

Crouch, a graduate from Wilson High, explains that he and his ownership team of Tacoma natives have opened Bleach as the flagship store of Imperial Motion, a Tacoma-based action sports clothing brand founded by Eric Wicken, and Steve and Spencer Goetz.  Along with the Imperial Motion brand, Bleach will carry Independent, Creature Skateboards, Santa Cruz Skateboards, Matix Clothing, Krew, DVS Shoes, Lakai Shoes, LRG Clothing, OBEY, Volcom, Bleach Clothing, Alternative Apparel, Loser Machine, Cons and Converse Shoes and more to come. Largely a clothing store, Bleach will also boast a skate hardware section on a back riser that will otherwise be used for bands, DJs, and as a display area for local art. 

The store got off to a rock start on its first day of business when the downtown store was broken into Aug. 11.

"Nothing was stolen, they left blood on the broken window and it looks like it was either vandalism or they got scared away," says Crouch. "It was 9:30 p.m. when they committed the crime and there were people out on the street. The alarm went off and they ran."

That incident won't be on the minds of Team Bleach tonight when Pioneers West rocks the joint.

"The guys are personal friends of mine, I love their music and I think it's fitting for our style and what we're doing and they are from Tacoma," Crouch adds.

Drop by Bleach tonight and connect with Tacoma's new addition to downtown.

Bleach Grand Opening

Featuring Pioneers West and DJ Platelunch
Friday, Aug. 20, 5:30-10 p.m., all ages, no cover
1934 Pacific Ave., Tacoma
bleachlife.com
After party at Top of Tacoma Bar and Cafe

HOMETOWN GEEKHEROES UNITE AS ONE! >>>

A sculptor. A poster artist. A film critic, and a team of filmmakers. Eight women on roller skates.

What do all of these things have in common? Not a whole lot. And that's just how Comic Book Ink owner John Munn likes it.

"All these different people go together like a kind of great big geek gumbo," says Munn of the first in what he hopes to craft into an annual tradition: Comic Book Ink's Homegrown Heroes signing.

Saturday, June 19, at 2 p.m., this eclectic array of ingredients will cram into Munn's comic shop to meet, greet and sign autographs for their fans, each other's fans, and whoever else shows up.

"We have so many different cool things going on here. Sculpture, web-comics, self-publishing, poster art, Derby Dames," continues Munn. "Every one of them have their own niche, and the fans of each get to experience something new."

Read more...

BRING ON THE WEEKEND >>>

I'm going to be brief. The weekend is basically here, I've got a wedding to attend later this afternoon at the Museum of Glass, and Monday marks the official start of summer. There's really very little time to fuck around. The time for freedom is here.

Even though my iPhone weather predictor is calling for rain all weekend, I won't be deterred. That fucking thing is never right. Plus, raining or not - it's the weekend, which by very definition is SO MUCH better than the workweek.

Here's your Prefunk, a weekend primer for you and your liver - with a complimentary picture of an alcoholic household pet thrown in for good measure.

Enjoy.

DIRTYCHANGEUP, NAKED BACON, ZE KRUSTACEANS @ BOB'S JAVA JIVE

Saturday, June 19

Mmmm... bacon.

If it's been a while since you've checked into Bob's Java Jive - say, years and years perhaps - the time has come for you to re-acquaint yourself.

Trust me. It'll be quick. Not much has changed, unless you go back to the smoking-chimp era.

Saturday, you'll have a prime chance to see the Jive in all its glory when three hardworking, relatively modest bands fill the beer-serving coffee pot with a few of their friends, a few regulars, a bartender or two - and, voila! - the entire place feels packed. Tacoma's DirtyChangeUp and Seattle's Naked Bacon are both jam bands (didn't see that coming, did you?); while Tacoma's Ze Krustaceans lean a little more in the surf direction - and just might steal the entire show.

PREFUNK: If you want to be a real rebel, smuggle in your own Red Vines and get at the snaking early, so you're not tempted to buy a handful of them from the bar after two or three PBRs. I can tell you from experience: Heartburn City. It's a bad scene.

As they say, "Licorice before beer, you're in the clear. Beer before licorice, you're probably going to vomit frothy red stomach bile onto a Teddy Haggarty painted wall after the last band."

CANNON BALL TRICYCLE DOWNHILL RACE

Sunday, June 20.

OK. This one has already been touched on a couple times by the Volcano, by writers far more worried about "professionalism" and "accuracy" than me.

The Cannon Ball Tricycle Downhill Race, allegedly organized by T-Town's infamous TW the custom vintage bike maker, will go down Sunday. You can find all the info you need here, here and even here.

PREFUNK: Drinking and driving is never, EVER cool... unless you're on a pink, powder-coated tricycle and wearing assless-chaps and a top hat. Just sayin'. Do your homework, and come prepared!

See you next week.

ONE STUDENT'S STORY >>>

Think it takes ink to make a lasting impression? Parents can make one, too.

One University of Washington-Tacoma student considers getting a tattoo. She asked her parents for their opinions. Discover the outcome here.

JOE MALIK: SLOUCHING TOWARD UTOPIA >>>

I heard last week that the Liquor Control Board (LCB) and Tacoma PD worked together to shut down a party thrown by a group of under/overground show organizers. These folks throw some of the best arts events in Tacoma - consistently and proudly.

From a legal standpoint, it sounds like everything happened by the books. The proverbial state knows what it can and can't get away with. There probably won't be a lawsuit. And there will probably be more underground shows like the one that got shut down.

Let's just move on, shall we?

No.

MARK THOMAS DEMING: PUT ON SOME TAFFETA >>>

The party, which will benefit the Boots ‘n Breeches therapeutic horsemanship charity, will begin at Doyle’s tonight at 6 p.m.

After a round or two, everyone will jump on their bikes and ride to the Robert Daniel Gallery.

Big Al Brewing will provide the beer.

Cycles Gladiator, a bike-themed cabernet sauvignon, will be the vino.

The Fucking Eagles, James Hillborne and the Painkillers, and Naked Bacon will provide the tunes.

Volunteer chefs will deliver the food.

Organizer TW will deliver the calendar girls.

Read the full story here.

[Doyle’s Public House, Saturday, Sept. 26, 6 p.m., 208 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.7468]

[Robert Daniel Gallery, The Fucking Eagles, James Hillborne and the Painkillers, Naked Bacon, Saturday, Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m., $15 (includes show and food), 2501 Fawcett Ave., Tacoma, 253.227.1407]