MetalUrge festival in downtown Tacoma

Q: How many arts festivals can you fit into one weekend?

A: Five.

This weekend, look out for free festivals left, right and center as the South Sound mixes art and sunshine. Tonight in Tollefson Plaza and Tacoma Art Museum, the MetalUrge festival celebrates the summer-long, city-wide metal art intensive with SOTAbots (5 p.m.), the Iron Artist competition (6 p.m.), a handbell choir (6:30 p.m.), a participatory aluminum pour (ongoing) and more. 5-8 p.m. tonight. Free. 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma. 253-272-4258 (TAM), www.tacomaculture.org (MetalUrge)

Go local at Proctor

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Yes, it’s hot – but by the time 6 p.m. rolls around, we’re seeing the kind of balmy evening we can only dream about in Tacoma for 11 months of the year. And what better way to enjoy it than in the shade of a cool tree watching someone else sweat it out?

Tonight at 6 p.m. the dancers from Metropolitan Ballet of Tacoma are putting on “Summer Dance in the Park,” a short, free presentation of contemporary choreography in South Park. Choreographers include MBT’s director Damaris Caughlan, Yuka Ilno of Oregon Ballet Theatre and Artur Sultanov of LINES

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Galen McCarty Turner, “No Vacancies.” Photo courtesy Mineral.

Want some art that’s provocative in more ways than one? Then peep through the windows at Mineral and Gallery 301. It’s not often you get a group show that’s both strong in theme and high in quality, and luckily for Tacomans, there’s two of them right now next door to one another on Puyallup Avenue. Best of all, they tackle moral and sexual issues that most exhibits stay away from. In “Entrance Denied” at Mineral, 18 chastity belts (male and female) line the walls

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What happens when you mix a furnace with an aerosol spray can at a party?

You have a blast. (Heh, heh.) And that’s what will happen at the first ever Hilltop Arts Night Out next week. The Hilltop Artists in Residence (student glassblowers at Jason Lee Middle School) are collaborating with the Fab Five hip-hop organization to hold a kind of open house, only much more fun. Glassblowing demos (that’s the furnace bit), graffiti demos (that’s the spray cans), live MCs, breakdancing battles, tagging tutorials (we hope they’ll teach NOT to tag

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I went along to the Joel Show on Saturday night full of high expectations, with a bit of uncertainty thrown in. Joel Myers, as blogged above, is an incredibly powerful dancer (Spectrum, DASS Dance etc) with some choreographic talent that could go far. His Joel Show is a self-produced evening of his own dance and his own choreography with an eclectic mix of professional and student dancers of the ballet-contemporary type. This show, held at Tacoma City Ballet’s ballroom, was the fourth of the annual shows.

The only trouble is, with a self-produced show there’s not a whole lot of standard control, and what starts out as a cozy Tacoma-ish friends-and-family vibe can easily become an excuse for artistically dubious self-indulgence.

Myers, as the beginning, end and middle of the show, danced as terrifically as ever. “The War at Home,” set to a violent Prokofiev piano sonata played with clarity and force by Monty Carter, showed Myers’ phenomenal physical control. Alternating between extremes of slow tension and rapid muscle movement, Myers created a frantic ballet vocabulary, 10 fouettes becoming desperate staggers, or grand jetes becoming punches.

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Lauren Osmolski and Amy Pomering, “The Guardian,” part of “Entrance Denied” at Mineral. Photo courtesy Lisa Kinoshita.

Sin and Chastity Belts at Mineral

Local artists reinvent the chastity belt (computer mouse? Flowers?) in "Entrance Denied" at Mineral, and reinterpret the seven deadly sins next-door at Gallery 301. 12-5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday through Sept. 5. Free. 301 Puyallup Ave., Tacoma. 253-250-7745, www.lisakinoshita.com

Auburn’s ArtRageous

The City of Auburn’s ArtRageous: Artists in Action Fair features over 30 hands-on art activities and demonstrations by local artists in media from potter

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The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, which supports philanthropic activities, has recently awarded $405,910 to 42 Pierce County nonprofit organizations. In the first of five categories (Arts and Culture, Basic Need, Education, Environment and Neighborhood/Community) eight local arts organizations benefitted from the biannual grant money: Artist Trust, Arts Impact Puget Sound, the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts, the Northwest Leadership Foundation, the Northwest Sinfonietta, Tacoma Art Museum, the Tacoma Opera Association and the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra.



The funding was determined by a new framework, say Community Foundation officials, rewarding organization that “focus on root causes, identify systemic

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The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, which supports philanthropic activities, has recently awarded $405,910 to 42 Pierce County nonprofit organizations. In the first of five categories (Arts and Culture, Basic Need, Education, Environment and Neighborhood/Community) eight local arts organizations benefitted from the biannual grant money: Artist Trust, Arts Impact Puget Sound, the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts, the Northwest Leadership Foundation, the Northwest Sinfonietta, Tacoma Art Museum, the Tacoma Opera Association and the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra.



The funding was determined by a new framework, say Community Foundation officials, rewarding organization that “focus on root causes, identify systemic

Read more »