The semi-monthly Tripod slide-shows at Gallery Madera in downtown Tacoma always have an array of quirky, fascinating pics, but this Friday the extremes are wild – and locally connected. Mady Murrey will show slides of the new not-so-public art at the Mary Bridge hospital extensions, nationally syndicated cartoonist Chris Britt will show and tell the life of a political cartoonist, and Oregon’s ‘Barbie Lady’ LaVonne Sallee will expose the cutesy doll in daring and sometimes bizarre vignettes that’ll make you look at dolls in a totally different light.

Of all of these, the Mary Bridge shots are perhaps the most useful to Tacomans, who won’t actually ever see this art unless they or a young relative happen to be sick enough to be admitted to the hospital. I blogged earlier about this work, which is Northwest in theme and vaguely ocean-based, including mosaic murals by Jennevieve Schlemmer and Mauricio Robalino, glass by Diane Hansen and Native Northwest art by Shaun Peterson. The one work you can see without even going in is the skyway window full of blown glass bubbles by the Hilltop Artists (visible from the emergency drop-off if you walk underneath). Even so, it’s still worth seeing up close in a photo to spot the cute glass sea-creatures hidden in the floats like a “Where’s Waldo” picture.

Chris Britt is an editorial cartoonist for the Illinois Times of Springfield, Illinois, and has been syndicated since 1991. His award-winning work skewers politicians and public figures, pointing out the ironies of gay marriage, the gun debate, presidential illiteracy and more with goofy characters and detailed sketching. He’ll present “Slinging Ink: The Life of an Editorial Cartoonist.”

The third in the Tripod trio is LaVonne Sallee of Marquam, Oregon, otherwise known as the “Barbie Lady” for her extremely inventive art installations deconstructing the skinny, boringly-beautiful doll and reinventing her as a hairy tree-hugger, a topless Halloween angel, a bag lady, a circus clown, the White Witch, a prehistoric warrior, Lady Gaga and even Jesus.
She picks up material for her ‘altered Barbies’ from yard sales and thrift stores and lets her imagination go wild with clay, plaster, paint and more.

Even more cool is the fact that she’s the sister of Tacoma concrete-art diva Lynn Di Nino, co-organizer of the Tripod series and a quirky found-media artist in her own right.

The Tripod Show runs 7-8:30 p.m. May 17. Donation $5. Madera Furniture Company, 2210 Court A., Tacoma. 235-572-1218, maderawoodworking.com Read more »

It’s an ironic place to display immaculately beautiful art about stunningly beautiful places – a low-slung, badly-lit hallway about five feet wide. But on the other hand, hanging Aki Sogabe’s blossom-filled papercuts at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center is definitely appropriate, because in her meticulous, gorgeous work Sogabe exemplifies the APCC spirit: Northwesterners with Asian heritage mixing their traditions with their locale.

Just up in the APCC gallery (read hallway) and showing through June, with an artist reception next Thursday, Sogabe’s show traverses 26 of her originals and reproduction papercuts, or kiri-e. Begun in China, this ancient art form first inspired Sogabe when she was in middle school, but she only got serious about it when she moved to Washington from Singapore in 1978. Cutting with an X-acto knife, the Bellevue-based Sogabe works with both black and white cuts, occasionally gluing onto colored paper for a watercolored-print effect.

Sogabe’s work inevitably invites comparison to the Northwest’s other beloved papercutter, Nikki McClure. But where McClure uses her faces and composition to tell a narrative of nostalgia, wry appreciation or just earthy living, Sogabe’s work stays in a purely aesthetical plane. With a very Japanese appreciation of simple beauty, she cuts rivers, mountains, flowers, birds and cats, making their visual appeal the hero of the story.

The best works at APCC are in a quietly minimalistic vein: “The River,” where flowing white paper curves over a background fading from teal to baby blue, with almost tangibly feathery, dangling maple leaves; or “Hummingbird,” framed in the center of the picture by delicate black leaves. Read more »

TAM free festival and paper installation

Celebrate Tacoma Art Museum’s 10^th birthday in its new Pacific Avenue building with a free community festival tomorrow. Activities include a community paper art installation and more. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. May 4. Free. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma. 253-272-4258, tacomaartmuseum.org

Vashon Art Studio Tour

Vashon Island’s many artists open up their doors this and next weekend in the annual spring studio tour. The self-guided driving tour is free and features 23 studios in media including blown glass, jewelry, woodwork, candles, pottery, tile and mosaic, sculpture, prints and painting. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. May 4-5, 11-12. Free. For maps see vashonislandartstudiotour.com or most island businesses. For ferry schedules see wsdot.wa.gov/ferries.

Medieval music at the Revels Salon Read more »

Sad news – Flow gallery, on Puyallup Avenue in Tacoma’s burgeoning Dome district – is about to close. Owner Andrea Erickson announced the news yesterday, saying she intends to spend more time on her own art.

“I want to thank all of the artists and patrons that have been part of our Flow experience over the last couple years,” said Erickson in a general email. “It has been a lot of fun and we have enjoyed meeting and working with you all.”

The closing is the second in about a year for Tacoma’s gallery scene, which saw Sandpiper close recently …

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If you don’t look now, “Look Here” will be gone. A salon-style art exhibition featuring 14 Tacoma visual artists, “Look Here” is a one-night art stand in a temporary space on Earnest S. Brazill Street in Tacoma’s Hilltop, happening next Thursday.

The brainchild of artist Victoria Johnson, the salon features work by Johnson herself as well as Bill Colby, Lynn Di Nino, Karen Doten, Kristin Giordano, Lisa Kinoshita, Janet Marcavage, Yuki Nakamura, Nicholas Nyland, Frederic Quinn, Betty Sapp Ragan, William Turner, Emily Wood and Otto Youngers, and ranges over sculpture, printmaking, painting, ceramics, photography and mixed media.

Says Johnson: “Artists …

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The Jan Collum Ballroom in the historic Merlino Building is perfect for a party: a sweeping balcony, gold Art Deco molding, the exotic whiff of ballet resin in the air. So that’s exactly what Tacoma City Ballet does every six months or so – transform its main rehearsal space into an elegant party scene filled with dance, music, fine art, film and food. On this Saturday, the next soirée has an added bit of fun: a masquerade ball.

Along with work by local photographers like Bill Hinsee, Jessie Felix, Denise Knudson and Scott Nelson, films by Ellington Tynes, poetry by Sandra King and original choreography by TCB’s Erin Ceragioli, Travis Goldman and Joel Myers, there’ll be live music by Touché: Eclectic Quintet, and guests are encouraged to dress up with masks.

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Inside Kittredge Gallery it’s very, very dark. Eerie blips and taps punctuate the stillness. And in the center of the room is a kind of temple created by light, inhabited by seven inscrutable ceramic priests. It’s “Kukai,” a brand new collaborative installation by Tacoma ceramic artist Yuki Nakamura and Vashon digital media artist Robert Campbell that redefines each art form into something both ancient and futuristic.

The set-up’s cleverly simple. Seven foot-high clay towers – beautifully made, like unusual chess pieces – stand on a dark, mirrored surface, which reflects their length down into eternity, and also …

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It sounds like a tenuous theme for a group show: Art with blue in it. But “Azul,” which opened last week at Tacoma’s B2 Fine Art Gallery, is anything but shallow. Instead it dives to sophisticated depths, sailing smoothly over diverse genres and media and covering a surprisingly wide range of emotion.

What helps is the gallery’s subdivided interior space. Usually problematic for the kind of group shows B2 likes to mount, the space this time helps the theme, offering quite separate visual areas for the half-dozen artists involved and allowing each of them room for more than the usual cursory one or two works.

The front room is occupied by Francisco Salgado and Susanna Rodriguez, and dives at once into the moody depths of the color. “Emocion Azul,” by the Mexican-born, Portland-based Salgado, is this show’s poster work and for good reason: The contorted, bunched muscles of this nude, sculpted in plaster and covered with tiny twigs in a coating of cobalt, speak eloquently of despair, confusion, depression. Just three feet high, this figure condenses human suffering into a wordless essence, prickly and naked.

Around the walls the Chilean painter Rodriguez captures the inhuman ambiguity of the city in moody Cubist works. Her bluey-gray buildings jumble together against angular clouds like tombstones or ship masts, occasionally lit with a harsh pink sunset or an eerily green shot of light.

Most of the other artists are local. Read more »