The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Conference is coming up in Seattle from March 28-30. It’s a big deal for clay artists around the country, and many local galleries are mounting clay-based shows (see Critic’s Picks on Friday for details). But for a handful of local clay artists, it was the spur for a unique collaboration with Hilltop-based women’s help center Catherine Place to offer women a creative, therapeutic and bonding experience through clay.

“Clay is something we go to when we’re stressed,” explains Jana Fisher, the artist behind the collaboration. “Many of our strong friendships came about through clay; it’s important to have that going through transitions. And Catherine Place is all about helping women through transitions.”

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Metamorphoses at UPS

You don’t have to have studied Latin to appreciate “Metamorphoses.” The play by Mary Zimmerman, based on Ovid’s writings of ancient Roman myths, hinges on an eternal truth – that nothing is permanent, including love, lust, riches and power. Some tales are familiar, like King Midas or Orpheus and Euridyce, now given a modern spin. Theater arts students at the University of Puget Sound open their production of the play tonight, directed by John Rindo. 7:30 p.m. tonight, then Feb. 25, March 2 and 3. 4 p.m. March 1, 2 p.m. March 3. $11/$7. Norton Clapp Theater, Jones Hall, UPS, 1500 N. Warner St., Tacoma. 253-879-3419, tickets.pugetsound.edu

Celebrate Asia with the Seattle Symphony

The Seattle Symphony presents its fourth annual Celebrate Asia concert tonight at Benaroya Hall, including gender-bending violin virtuoso Hahn-Bin playing Tchaikovsky, Chinese pipa player Jie Ma and the Cuong Vu Group playing the jazz-inspired new work “One,” as well as the winner of this year’s Celebrate Asia Composition Competition, Kay He’s “Legends of Old Peking.” Taiko drumming, Indian and Balinese music and a Lion Dance will begin at 6:30 p.m.; concert 7:30 p.m. Feb. 24. $17-$74. Benaroya Hall, 200 University St., Seattle. 206-215-4747, www.seattlesymphony.org Read more »

In an announcement this week, the Tacoma Art Museum was one of 58 cultural organizations in five states to receive 2012 grants from the Paul G. Allen Foundation, a non-profit granting organization founded in 1988 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Jo Lynn Allen. This cycle of grants totals $6.6 million, focusing on Native American communities and innovative projects.

The Tacoma Art Museum received $75,000 to organize their 2014 exhibit “Art, AIDS, America,” a collaboration with curator Jonathan Katz at the Brooklyn Art Museum. The show is intended to travel around the country.

“It’s an early grant, but …

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Trío Lucero del Norte play at Tacoma Art Museum

To complement Tacoma Art Museum’s current exhibition of Mexican folk art, Trío Lucero del Norte will play son huasteco and other traditional dances from the Huasteca region of Mexico this Sunday afternoon. Ticket price includes gallery admission. 2 p.m. Jan. 7. $15/$10 members/$5 students. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma. 253-272-4258, www.tacomaartmuseum.org

Saxophonist Patrick Lamb at Jazz LIVE at Marine View

The Jazz LIVE at Marine View concert this month features saxophonist Patrick Lamb, whose music fuses funk, soul, R&B and jazz. He’ll be backed by a …

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It’s all happening at Tacoma Art Museum this Sunday: The annual Let It Snow free community festival also includes the second annual 20/20 Identity and Portrait Project, featuring 20 local individuals sharing stories and photographic portraits in anticipation of the major photographic exhibition Hide/Seek coming to TAM in 2012.

The festival ushers in winter with music from bell choir the Rainier Ringers, dance performances from Metro Arts and Grant Elementary students, make-it-yourself pop-up holiday cards or ornaments and more. You can also walk across Pacific Avenue to the new ice rink, co-sponsored by the museum. All museum entry is …

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If you have any connections with the South – Texas, Arizona, Mexico, Southern California – you’ll know how gorgeous Mexican folk art can be. Filling the space with blood-red vermilions and royal blues, with grinning skeletons and pious saints, with tin and papier-maché, it’s somehow larger than life. But we don’t get to see a lot of it up here in the Pacific Northwest. Fortunately for Tacomans, as of last weekend, there’s a whole gallery full of it at Tacoma Art Museum, complementing and expanding their usual Dia de los Muertos offerings of giant lobby tapetes (sand paintings) and community ofrendas (altars).

“Folk Treaures of Mexico” brings to Tacoma a smattering of historical and contemporary Mexican folk art from the Nelson A. Rockefeller collection housed in the San Antonio Museum of Art, which has the country’s largest quantity of this genre. At over 3,000 objects the Rockefeller collection is way to large to travel completely, but the TAM exhibit gives a delicious, spicy-hot taste, with a broad range of media and period.

It’s also a wide range of size. The art starts tiny, with a mirrored case full of thumb-sized clay figurines roping cows and carrying market goods, through painstakingly tiny straw mosaics so shadowed and subtle it looks like a painting at four feet away, past long woven rebozos and an intricately yarned ceremonial “tapestry” all the way to giant eight-foot demons made in the 1980s by the famed Linares family, constructed of papier-mache and painted in grinning black, red and blue. Read more »

Gig Harbor Film Fest

The annual Gig Harbor Film Festival runs this weekend, featuring a gala appearance by Julie Andrews plus features and shorts by regional, national and international filmmakers. October 14-16. $40 3-day pass, $75 gala or $8/$6 per film. Galaxy Theatre Uptown, 4649 Point Fosdick Drive NW, Gig Harbor. www.gigharborfilmfestival.org

Tacoma Art Museum tapetes

This Sunday, watch artists Fulgencio Lazo and Jose Orantes install two giant tapetes (sand paintings) on the floor of the museum’s lobby area in honor of Dia de los Muertos, coming up at the end of this month. Schools and community …

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Felt artist Janice Arnold at BAM

The newest show at Bellevue Arts Museum, “Travellers: Objects of Dreams and Revelations,” features new work by Olympia felt artist Janice Arnold: a 20-foot-high, seven-foot-square Mongolian yurt made of fire-inspired handmade felt. Opens today, then 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, noon-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. $10/$7/free for under-six. 510 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue. 425-519-0770, www.bellevuearts.org

Summer Stadium pottery sale

The annual Stadium district summer sale is on again, featuring pots, bowls, vases, sculptures and more in both recent work, older work and seconds by local potters. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. today, 10 …

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