Maritime Fest

It’s all about the art of the boat: sleek hydroplanes, chunky tugs, elegant Tall Ships, and a whole bunch of music thrown in, along with some local artists and circus performers. Get the details of Maritime Fest in our cover story. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Aug. 28-29. Free. Dock Street, Tacoma. 253-318-2210, www.maritimefest.org

Lelavision and more on Vashon

Two energetic and original circus-based events are happening on Vashon this weekend. On Saturday night human jazz meets physical music as Christian Swenson performs with musical sculpture circus duo Lelavision at their studio. Then on Sunday a Vashon family hosts the …

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Tacoma artist Claudia Riedener has one of my favorite houses in the city. Outside there’s a fascinating jungle of plants that inspire her hand-made, nature-based tiles, and inside is like an exotic Asian temple filled with just those tiles, tendrilling up kitchen walls, bamboo-ing around the bathroom and generally making the walls as three-dimensional as they can get. Here’s a story I did on her last year.

But until now, if Riedener’s work inspired to you craft your own clay relief tiles, you had to figure it out for yourself. No more. This weekend Riedener is holding two …

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“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” 

Daniel Burnham? Perhaps. It’s certainly attributed to that famous architect who, with partner John Root, built one of the world’s first skyscrapers (Chicago’s Masonic Temple Building) and who developed the Chicago School of classical revival. Burnham and Root’s last remaining Tacoma building – the Luzon, at South 13th and Pacific –  was no little plan, one of the first buildings whose light steel frame allowed much greater height than masonry alone.

Equally big was the City’s plan to tear it down last September, protested hotly right up until demolition.

At the Luzon Memorial Show this week you can join with local artists to mourn the graceful, decrepit structure. Read more »