Mimi Allin – A Poet’s Recap

During the August heat wave, Seattle performance artist Mimi Allin offered Tacomans an imaginative escape to the beach with her one-woman show, Seaside Opera, at Tollefson Plaza. Allin performed the piece several times a day over the course of a week, in the process engaging with spectators who were alternately entertained and confounded by her rhythmic activities – both actual and mimed – involving props such as rubber lobsters, a pail and shovel and a lifeguard stand, all to the sounds of music such as Claude Debussy’s La Mer. Allin is known for her original performance works – for instance, showing up at Green Lake every Sunday for one year, to both give and receive poetry to strangers. Here are her impressions of her Spaceworks-supported time in Tacoma.

*  *  *  *  *

I must say, I was most delighted & surprised
to see how respectful & open & kind the Tacoma public is!!
I arrived every morning to find my lifeguard stand unharmed in any way.
Between sets, I left my radio & record player & binoculars in the
middle of the plaza
and no one took or harmed anything.

At times there were inquiries…
What are you doing? What’s this here? Who’s in charge?
To my responses, I heard, “That’s cool.” “I like it.” “Thanks for being here.

*  *  *  *  *

I’ve had a bit of time to process my work in Tollefson now
& have some thoughts about the space & the people I encountered
& even James Sinding’s letters
which over the course of a week became many things for me.

At first Sinding’s letters were a way to engage & advertise the self.
But strange, I thought, without instruction all these people know what
they have to do,
make & photograph a message to their friends, mothers, partners..
I was not surprised at the wish to make larger, more pubic statements,
but became interested in the permanence & impermanence of our
feelings, words & actions.
The work of finding & placing letters was the important thing, I thought,
but the attention is being paid the result, the word that is spelled out.
But that word so quickly goes away, a letter or 2 are taken by someone else
to spell something else nearby & soon the meaning of the first phrase
crumbles away.
I began to see how quickly everything changes, is assimilated,
mutates, feeds something else.
The web of living.

Monday and Tuesday were tough.
Not only was it ungodly hot, but I was sick with a sinus thing
& there were 2 reporters waiting while I set up,
which put a little pressure on.
Sniffle sniffle achooO!
I overdid it at first & performed for 2 straight hours,
but thankfully was able to sleep a lot that night & all week
& so was feeling pretty much all better by Thursday.

On Wednesday, when the weather cooled off a bit,
I felt so much more comfortable & began noticing then the responses I
was getting,
the feedback to my movement–smiles, questions, laughter.

Thursday was a high point for me.
There were lots of interactions that day
& I was feeling good & knew what I wanted to accomplish.
During the earlier part of the week,
I was sometimes worried
about whether or not I was big enough for the space
& did I need a sit-down audience
or was my quietly & persistently unlocking the space enough?
Unlike Occidental Park in Seattle,
Tollefson has very little incidental traffic
and so perhaps a beacon was what was needed?

By Thursday, however, I’d determined what I was doing was indeed enough,
& was, in ways, better that whatever bolder visual work I was then imagining
would better solve the Tollefson puzzle.
With my own energy, in my own way,
I was activating & engaging all those spaces, big & small, that make
up Tollefson.
And I began to see in the casual movement of the adults & children around me,
as they went about rearranging letters & spelling out their names,
a record of their comfortability with me.
I was not unseen, not forgotten, but accepted & understood. A
comfortable & moving piece of the space.
No one questioned what was happening. It was performance. In
Tollefson. Of course.
That simple realization did a lot to change my feelings about what I
might be accomplishing in Tacoma.
There are many ways in which a place may be activated, brought to
life, made more free.
In becoming more and more free myself, I believe the public became
free along with me.
Alas, there is much more to be done toward personal & public liberation,
but I am happy & proud to have played a part in doing this work in Tollefson.

-Mimi Allin

Barbara De Pirro’s Eco-Art

Plastic & Light, 2009, at the Museum of Glass. By Barbara De Pirro

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans produce more garbage than any people on Earth – more than 250 million tons of municipal solid waste per year, or 4.6 lbs. per person per day. Add to that the hundreds of millions of tons of refuse generated by American industry, and the specter of our national waste problem becomes nearly overwhelming.

Shelton-based artist Barbara De Pirro has found a way not only to reclaim and re-imagine cast-off material, but to elevate it into art – oftentimes, the kind of vibrant and stunningly original art sought after by gallery and museum curators. Certainly, making art from recyclable materials is not a new idea. But De Pirro began exploring the possibilities back in the early 1980′s – long before others picked up the thread. Her early work included assemblages and vessels made from found objects, and furniture that she deconstructed then reconfigured for new use. Today, her work is conceived less for function than for contemplation: when, for instance, elegant “biomorphic” spheres are crocheted from discarded plastic bags then grafted like clusters of buds onto huge, living trees, to unsettling effect.

vine plastica, by Barbara De Pirro

The result: a kind of gorgeous détente between human beings and nature.

Building organic forms “presents a huge challenge when creating with these unnatural materials,” she says. For one observer at least, seeing synthetic buds “growing” along the trunk of a wild tree, or a crocheted “snake” similarly nestled among branches, has a cathartic effect: Perhaps waste may be put to high aesthetic purpose, after all.

San Juan Island, WA, by Barbara De Pirro

For Spaceworks Tacoma, De Pirro is creating a literal universe from her vast cache of materials. Opening Oct. 9 at 912 Broadway, vortex plastica is a multi-dimensional installation featuring “a web-like form, a spun nest, a whirling tornado and a solar system filling the void, cross-lacing the [exhibit] space.” “My intent isn’t to create an installation of piles of plastic garbage, but to create forms that draw people in visually then rattle them a bit when they see that it is all created out of discarded plastics,” she explains.

The inspiration behind the piece is a dire one: the North Pacific Gyre, one of the world’s largest ecosystems, is also host to a trash vortex the size of Australia (commonly known as the “Pacific garbage patch,” it has been brought to public attention by Al Gore and scientists). Locked in a circular pattern of oceanic currents, the gyre’s huge, floating island of man-made debris, mostly plastics, is an environmental catastrophe for marine and bird as well as human life.

De Pirro's fungal "buds"

Discarded plastics are much more abundant now than earlier in her career, says De Pirro. “Most of my materials come from friends and family; they have been saving things for me for years. Plus, when doing an installation, I gather from the local community, pulling them into the process as well.” (The Habitat for Humanity Re-Store is a favorite.) She even recycles her own work, salvaging finished installations for raw material. Unfortunately, the glut of low-cost fodder is no cause for celebration: “There is an endless source that needs to be reused.” vortex plastica, 912 Broadway, Oct. 9, 2010 – Jan. 5, 2011. www.depirro.com

A Forest of Captured Memories

Solace and Solitude, by Sisy Anderson and Scott Huette

Trees and slow-turning “leaf mobiles” become metaphorical vehicles for human memory in the Scott Huette and Sisy Anderson art work, Remembrances. This mixed-media installation, which opens on Oct. 9 at 9th & Broadway, suggests that by our ability to shade discrete memories, and to shed those that do not serve us (“as a leaf falls from a tree in autumn”), human beings create the psychological space needed to generate life anew.

Remembrances is a collaborative work that fuses Anderson’s training in both Eastern and Western brush painting with Huette’s knowledge of photography, from 21st-century digital to 19th-century processing techniques. The site-specific piece is structured around three 15-ft. hanging scrolls, each bearing a different perspective of forest imagery that evokes a shifting sense of distance and the passing of time. A series of vertical mobiles made with leaves that are hand-painted on one side with photo transfers on the reverse, further conjures the sense of being within a woodland of captured moments.

The Eugene, OR-based artists and life partners profess a life-long appreciation for nature; the inspiration for Remembrances came while the two were traveling together, “Where we do our best thinking,” says Huette. “We got into a conversation about how seasons represent different aspects of the human psyche. Both of us have a profound interest in and love of Eastern mysticism, especially Taoism and hatha yoga.” A core idea of the work is how certain memories seem to enhance life, while others may inhibit it in some manner – yet humans possess the capacity to prune and trim the personal narrative, as it were. The cyclical nature of the seasons, of transformation, death and rebirth, offers “a metaphor for our personal journey.”

For Anderson, a passage about trees from Herman Hesse’s Wandering provided a point of departure: “Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” They are sentinels that tower over the human drama, silent, impassive and long-lived.

Cloud Hands, by Scott Huette

For Anderson and Huette, collaboration is like a complex duet. “I have a tendency to become overly technical, mental and rigid in my creative process, which I see as one of the challenges of working with technology,” says Huette. “Sisy’s tendency is to approach the intuitive, emotional and fluid as a starting point in her creative process. The challenge is in marrying these two processes into a unified whole.” In the finished piece, “All elements are balanced, well designed and thoughtfully composed between emotional, energetic and technical aspects.”

In Remembrances, a work created for the Artscapes track of Spaceworks Tacoma, every detail was considered, including the choice of leaves. “We specifically chose to work with the leaves of the Big Leaf Maple for this project,” says Huette. “As a deciduous tree the Big Leaf Maple well represents the shedding and letting go process that we wanted to communicate. In addition, the leaves are beautiful, with a great deal of variety in color. They are quite large, making them the perfect size for our installation.” Remembrances, 9th & Broadway, Oct. 9, 2010 – Jan. 5, 2011. www.studiocartouche.com; www.studioyugen.com.

Gaga Over Seaside Opera

Under balmy skies, AK Mimi Allin concluded a week of performances of her Seaside Opera at Tollefson Plaza last night. On Monday and Tuesday, the solo artist soldiered through multiple performances in 90-degree heat, as spectators watched from under red table umbrellas, or sat amidst the colorful phrases lining the plaza’s steps (part of James Sinding‘s ongoing, interactive art piece, Letters). “One guy at the Marriott [overlooking Tollefson Plaza] came and watched three times,” says Allin. At another point, skateboarders paid a call and ended up sticking around, making graceful jumps and scrolls around her performance area for hours (the opera was 15 minutes long, performed on the half hour throughout the day). At her final performance last night, small clusters of young people amassing for a flash mob event preceding the Lady Gaga concert at the T-Dome watched curiously, some even trying out their own dance steps to the vintage music on Allin’s turntable.

With bobbed brown hair, a red-and-white lifeguard tee, and a red linen skirt, Allin looked a bit like an F. Scott Fitzgerald character as she undulated near a weathered wooden lifeguard stand, creating movements that brought to mind a seaside boardwalk of the 1920s. Using a windchime of clattering white cadiz shells as an instrument, she gesticulated, variously, as a child searching for seashells in the sand, an old-time barbell lifter, a woman looking afar off for a ship coming in from sea, and a kind of dreamy, flamenco-inspired dancer. The poet’s ability to focus and create an area of silence around herself was admirable as girls of all ages trussed with construction scene tape and dressed in sky-high heels, skirts like sausage casings and enough silver metallic makeup to set off a metal detector flowed into the plaza from Pacific Ave.

After Seaside Opera concluded, Allin said she was pleased with her week’s work, the interactivity that outdoor performance allows and the welcome (though admittedly thin on some days) that Tacoma had extended to her. Then she went to load up her gear as young men and women dressed for an evening of Gaga followed the cameras to a readymade mob scene.

In other Tollefson Plaza news, Alexander Keyes‘ splendid blue sculpture, Wave, has been removed from the site, after over-zealous artgoer’s apparently mistook it as part of the Letters installation and dismantled it (Wave bore a resemblance to a huge erector set; visitors removed parts of it and then reconfigured them alongside the original work). Keyes is philosophical about the experience: “I’m always excited to see how people react to my installations, as it is never as I expect. It did look like a big toy, so I find it a little humorous that people played with it as such. My intention was to get people [into Tollefson Plaza] and interacting with the space, so I count this as a success. Every time this happens though (it has before with a previous piece), I build larger in order to make it harder and harder for people to move, so that is what I plan on doing next! Vandals need a challenge.” We are saddened to see Wave go, and hope to see large-scale bronzes from Keyes in the  future.

Alexander Keyes' Wave before the destruction

Dancing Amidst Catastrophe

Thick is a site-specific performance for Tollefson Plaza created by Tacoma-based choreographer Carla Barragán and Bqdanza dance troupe. This original work, a response to the oil spill tragedy on the Gulf Coast, mourns the environmental disaster while celebrating the grace and beauty of the region’s birds, sea creatures and myriad other habitants. We talked to the Ecuadoran-born choreographer about how an abstract work of art such as a dance piece grows out of a concrete natural (or unnatural, as it were) catastrophe.

Spaceworks Tacoma: I read the proposal you wrote for Thick – it seems heartfelt. How did the piece develop during the ongoing oil spill?
Carla Barragán: A catastrophe of this magnitude affects us all. I experienced feelings of dread as this event unfolded, yet with time I felt more empowered by dealing with it through my choreography…The piece that emerged is a celebration of fauna – in a very abstract manner – the movement has hints of the animals in full life as well as in agony. The dance itself is not a narrative of or political discourse about the oil spill.

BQdanza on the rails at Tollefson Plaza

ST: Do you have a connection with the Gulf Coast?
CB: We all have a connection with the area. The waterways and oceans of the world are all interconnected. Systems are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, if one system hurts, all systems are compromised, especially the balance of the ecosystems in the long term.

ST: How do you think art and artists can help open people’s eyes to the natural world?
CB: My choreography is not literal and it is usually multilayered. I never try to teach through my work. I use themes that move me…but not to convince audiences of anything except to be open to art. [An audience can be moved by] the dancers’ truthfulness while they perform. I take the dancers through genuine experiences through which they will be connected to the work; I rarely just give them “the steps.” I give them a problem to solve and/or a situation that they can engage in emotionally. The result is an authentic performance that tends to stir the viewers’ emotions. If the resulting art is strong enough to open people’s eyes to the topic of the dance, that is fantastic. Humans have a way of coping with problems that come to them, by simply forgetting as quickly as possible. Art can be a reminder if it touches the right chords.

Another way artists help open people’s eyes is by doing their work, even work that is abstract, and talking about it, like us right now. That is the way conceptual work gets the attention it does, by the verbiage that supports it. It is not my mode of working, but at least in my work, Thick, it might help people know, understand and mourn the environment by watching something inspired by this disaster.

ST: Can you tell me about the soundscapes involved in Thick?
CB: I have selected nature and bird sounds that come from a variety of sources. By random circumstances, I ran into my old time collaborator and friend Luke Smiraldo who told me about his poem “Internal: Reflection on the Gulf Spill as the Hemorrhage Continues,” and we both decided it was perfect to include in the soundtrack for Thick. Despite the traffic [on Pacific Ave.] governing the sound environment, audience members may pick up some parts of the poem and of wilderness sounds while passing by.

ST: You write in your performance proposal that Thick isn’t a literal retelling of the oil spill incident. How does this non-traditional narrative mesh with contemporary movement and music?
CB: As I started explaining earlier, my hope is to give each artist/dancer participating in the project an opportunity to search out a connection with the marine ecosystem and honor the animals affected by the disaster. They engage their imagination with these images of birds and other marine animals that they research themselves, and they reproduce kinesthetic expressions. They will not be mimicking the animals, but some resonance of the animals’ behavior may be caught in the movement. At the same time, the movement will be affected by the structures in the plaza which the dancers will be performing on and around.

A BQdanza performance

ST: Please tell me a little about your Ecuadoran background.
CB: I was born in Quito, Ecuador, to a talented family of contemporary artists. I left at 16 but have gone back several times to live, teach and/or visit, and I still feel extremely passionate about Ecuador. I breathe the culture into my work….I have also lived in New York for 10 years, in Palo Alto, Seattle, and in Mexico. I love Tacoma! I teach theater at a unique elementary school in Spanaway, called Elk Plain School of Choice. It offers all the arts and sciences to kids and I love seeing how art transforms people of that age.

Thick, Tollefson Plaza, S. 17th & Pacific Ave., Sept. 16, 2010. Performances (15-20 min.) at 5:30pm and 7:30pm. Free.

Spaceworks Artists Events

Summertime. With a slew of art sales and events taking place every weekend, we’d be immobilized by the choices if we didn’t have tips on the most interesting people and places to see. A sure bet: three Spaceworks pop-up stores that have been working it to fill their spaces with artfully crafted goods, and a gallery exhibit of chastity belts by artists (more on that later).

The dog days of summer

“I’m starting to feel at home in the downtown space, as is Gracie [the milkbone-flipping chocolate labrador] who has been doing some napping outside the shop in the sunshine,” says Pottery Annex owner, Susan Thompson. “The four hours in the afternoon that I’m here fly by and without the distractions at home, I’m finding I’m getting some real work done. Another thing that I love about the space is all the natural light.  My tools and equipment at home are in the basement, and though I’m lucky to have that space, it is dark and cold. I have sold some pots and enjoyed visiting with curious drop-ins so all in all my first week has been pleasant.” On Aug. 20-21, Thompson will host the Fourth Annual Summer Sale of Pottery at her home studio in Tacoma, featuring eight clay artists. Click on http://www.susanskiln.blogspot.com for details. Or visit The Pottery Annex, 913 Pacific Ave. Hours: Mon.-Fri. 1-5p.m.

Last week, Jennifer Adams had a soft opening for her store, fly, at 904 Broadway. This was huge news for fans of Tacoma is for Lovers, Adams’ brainchild and a much-loved event for connoisseurs of indie and D-I-Y design. We love the goods by local artists including Mirka Hokkanen and Laurie Cinotto and will be making fly a frequent stop. Call for hours: 253.314.8358.

Affordable temptations line the shelves at fly

Driving down Pacific Ave. one night, we were thrilled to see Tiffanie Peters’ boutique, Chiffon, glowing like a beacon of indie fashion, with a full selection of styles hanging on the walls like the art that it is. Peters has a long-distance commute to Tacoma from Shelton – besides working a daytime job – so Chiffon truly defines “labor of love.” We heard the siren’s call of her fantastic sterling silver necklaces – as big as airy, jangly bibs – and were glad, in a way, the shop was closed. At least until pay day. Chiffon, 915 Pacific Ave., Thurs.-Sun. 11-6. http://www.tiffaniepeters.com.

Neon chastity belt with motion sensor by Galen McCarty Turner, 2009

Meanwhile, at Mineral (not a pop-up store, but a fixture at 301 Puyallup Ave. in the Dome District), owner and Spaceworks artist Lisa Kinoshita is setting up Access Denied: the 2010 Exhibit of Chastity Belts by Artists. Kinoshita says this year’s array of entries is “highly stimulating” and a “fantastic showcase for Northwest artists who looked at chastity from every conceivable angle, except the obvious one.” Look for wit and exceptional craftsmanship at this highly anticipated event, staged in a newly enlarged gallery space. Two preview events: Aug. 14, 11-5 and Aug. 19, 5-10; show runs through Oct. 9, 2010. Mineral, 301 Puyallup Ave. – Suite A, Tacoma, 253/250-7745. Summer hours: Thurs., Fri., Sat. 12-5. http://www.lisakinoshita.com. Running concurrently with Access Denied in the 301 Building (in Suite B), is Don’t Look, a boudoir vignette by Madera Architectural Elements (MAE), whose members are all Northwest artisans and fine craftsmen. For information on MAE, contact Lynn DiNino at 253/396-0774; lynndin@msn.com. In Suite C is the Val Persoon Gallery, featuring watercolor (www.valpersoon.com).

It’s going to be a hot summer.

Nostalgia for an Opera That Never Was

Picture a hot August day in the city. The sun is boring down like a laser beam, and the heat shimmers from the pavement in waves as you walk slowly down the street. Now imagine pausing for a moment on the sun-baked sidewalk – and an ice-cool, sparkling blue ocean wave rolls up and engulfs your legs and feet. You are transported by strains of music from another time. This is the mood A.K. Mimi Allin evokes in Seaside Opera, a site-specific performance piece created for Tollefson Plaza and funded by Spaceworks Tacoma. Allin describes the work as a “playful performance set to seaside operas. The plaza turns into a beach and the birds sing in opera through a record player. An aging wooden lifeguard chair rises from the base of the curved pink steps, which are now lined in blue waves.” Using costumes, flags, whistles and metal pails the artist performs to a mesmerizing cacophony of sea-inspired music and carnival sounds. Audience members may watch from the steps beside the plaza’s cascading pools where an array of wind-up water toys, miniature sampans, water guns and fishing rods invite play.

Poet Mimi Allin creates works laced with mystery and beauty

If the mere description of the 15-minute performance sounds like poetry, consider that Allin is well-known for her interactive poetry maneuvers, and earned her master’s degree in creative writing at the City College of New York, where she graduated summa cum laude. She also became the nation’s first “Corporate Poet in Residence” this year, when she convinced NBBJ Seattle, a global architecture and design firm, to “adopt” her for a two-month, on-site residency during which she created art which employees were invited to inquire about, engage and enjoy. The architecture firm did not pay her; the project was funded by a City of Seattle arts grant.

Allin says Seaside Opera was inspired by the physical space of Tollefson Plaza, its proximity to water and her passion for sailing on Puget Sound (and around the world). “I can smell the water from Tollefson and long for it. And, it being summer, I wanted to capitalize on the water element of the park. How wonderful, I thought, to bring the beach right up into town!” The idea of opera developed after she bought a $5 record player and scoured Goodwill for vintage classical recordings. When her kindergarten teacher died earlier this year at the age of 102, she left Allin a tiny, leather-bound book entitled 100 Operas, which further spurred her interest. Seaside Opera, Tollefson Plaza, S. 17th & Pacific Ave. Aug. 16-21, 2010; 10-15 minute performances occur daily, on the half-hour,  from 2-7pm. http://www.thepoetessatgreenlake.blogspot.com

Please, No Four-Letter Words

Tollefson Plaza has “James Sinding” written all over it. That, and a plethora of words and sentiments posted by anonymous Tacomans. On Saturday, the artist drove a shiny Kenworth dump truck to the plaza at S. 17th and Pacific Ave. and deposited five sq. yards of large, wooden alphabet characters, the raw material for his art installation, Letters. Then he let the public have at it – and a melée ensued. “The opening of Letters went better than I could have ever thought,” says Sinding. “Kids and adults swarmed the pile of letters immediately after the dump truck pulled away. Within an hour the pile had been smeared along the steps with new sayings every minute.” Renegade scribes have been hard at work ever since.

Anonymous Tacomans speak their minds at Letters.

The long, shallow steps that curve around Tollefson Plaza form the perfect message board for the installation; the architectural equivalent of lined paper, they present an easy-to-read billboard for drivers passing by on Pacific Ave. Letters is an ad hoc performance piece that changes daily, with anonymous actors embedding private thoughts into public space. There’s a lot of so-and-so loves so-and-so, as well as floating bits of poetry. Without a mediator (or Spellcheck, for that matter) Sinding checks daily for unwonted comments: “There have been some messages that I would rather be left unsaid. But I have kept a close eye on that.” He wasn’t the first to write a message, as might have been expected: “It’s funny – I have been so amused watching others write their mind that I have not written anything yet.”

One wonders how much alphabet might be absconded with as souvenirs from the site. Warren Caves, owner of Tacoma Art Supply, traded asides with Stephanie Stebich, director of Tacoma Art Museum: “She asked me, ‘You want some letters, Warren? You can have some!’” laughs Caves. The art supply and TAM are both adjacent to Tollefson Plaza so the hapless letters would be easy pickings, but neither party was in the market. While checking out the scene, Caves says he spotted individuals picking all the blue “M”s and “W”s out of the alphabet scramble and building a three-dimensional, house-of-letters sculpture using the letters’ angles to hook onto each other. The artists turned out to be TNT art critic Rosemary Ponnekanti and her young daughter, Bianca, creating the only alphabet architecture on the site. As of this writing, there are still plenty of candy-colored characters left on the steps, though “it does seem like there are less and less words, sayings, and letters as the days pass,” says Sinding.

Eat, Play, Rove – the Block Party Wrap-up

When Spaceworks Tacoma threw out the welcome mat for its July 29 Block Party, art lovers set their cultural GPS for Theater on the Square and a celebration of the art exhibits and pop-up stores opening downtown. Shorts and sunglasses were de rigeur as the mixer kicked off with a full lineup of live entertainment on the outdoor stage, fresh catered noshes and a beer garden in which to ponder all of the above (City Council members David Boe and Marty Campbell were among those convening in the outdoor amber hall). Lucky for those who missed the neighborhood shindig, most of the art will be on display through late September.

Judi Hyman takes a break from art-seeing

We started our art walk at the corner of 950 Pacific Ave. where Bloodlines, a luminous installation by Mary Coss, Pamela Hom and June Sekiguchi forms the metaphorical heart of the art beat. This magnum opus is actually three separate works in one, intertwined seamlessly around issues of cultural and creative inheritance – and the holiness of the human body. It’s a lot to digest at one sitting (we’ve already planned a return visit). Down the street at 913 and 915 Pacific Ave., two pop-up stores opened their doors for business: at The Pottery Annex, clay artist Susan Thompson spun magic at the wheel between ringing up sales and chatting to enthusiasts about her fabulous, functional vessels. Next door, at Chiffon, fashion designer Tiffanie Peters was still unpacking boxes from her collection – but no problem, visitors simply pawed at her beautiful, hand-made jewelry, displayed like works of art on the wall.

Bloodlines, a luminous meditation on the human body and mortality, at 950 Pacific Ave.

At 1114  Pacific Ave., filmmaker Isaac Olsen, photographer Joshua Everson and textile artist Meghan Lancaster held court in their new digs inside a bank building converted into a collaborative studio of gi-normous dimensions. The space features a spiral staircase, a shiny vault, a kitchen, corporate meeting rooms – everything except a Guy Friday. Not surprisingly, it is taking the artists some time to configure and utilize the space, though they gamely welcomed visitors on opening night. Stay tuned.

Live music, dance and spoken word poetry energized the crowd at Theater on the Square. The Warehouse provided musical acts including HAIL, a rock band made up of SOTA students; Luke Stevens, Makeup Monsters and Travis Barker. The musicians were still going strong as the sun went down. A hearty performance by Shakespeare in the Parking Lot left no question as to whether 9th & Broadway was the place to be or not to be. Meanwhile, writer/director Aaron Flett and assistant director Cassie Lindberg mingled with visitors on the set of Jesus 4 Less at 906 Broadway. The two were slipping mock bookcovers over some of the thousands of old books there (the movie’s setting is the inside of a Christian bookstore), in order to avoid copyright infringement. The film is being shot in the ornate interior of a former Moroccan furnishings store, an irony that was not lost on us.

Cassi Lindberg and Aaron Flett on the set of Jesus 4 Less

Where would a block party be without food? There were audible ah’s from people nibbling the free-of-charge gourmet pupus made by Affairs Catering, and life-giving iced tea provided by Tobin and Maureen of the Mad Hat. We were slowly melting from the heat when we ran into Jeff the Ice Cream Man, whose bike-powered cart was stuffed with the most fascinating ice creams we’ve ever encountered, including pico de gallo with chili (both freezing and blistering at the same time), and a creamy concoction the world has been waiting for, called “Ice Cream in a Tube.” Refreshed, we headed for the Woolworth Building to check out five installations by Zeit-Bike, meadow starts with ‘p,’ Joseph Songco, Gretchen Bennett and Lisa Kinoshita. These installations cover a lot of ground: eco-friendly bikes, deconstructive photography, Tacoma history, doomed bears, the interrelationship of art and play. Making a circuit of the large storefront windows, we thought about what an excellent art venue a department store makes, and how Woolworth‘s, the grand five-and-dime, is as always a most satisfying place to look at art.

Retail therapy at Jennifer Adams' store, fly

There were young people sitting on the ground listening intently to HAIL as we headed for three installations on Broadway. We viewed Ben Hirschkoff‘s work, which situates a translucent cloud inside a window; Tory Franklin‘s jewel-like rendering of the Russian fairytale, The Firebird; and Michelle Acuff‘s blue deer immobilized inside a raw, dystopic modern world. About this time we had a strange feeling. It was exciting to look at so much interesting art – and yet, we were beginning to feel as if we’d just consumed a six-course meal, heavy on the aesthetics, and it was now time for a digestif. So, it was with pleasure we ended up at Jennifer Adams‘ pop-up store, fly, for a dose of retail therapy. We were revived by Adams’ finely edited selection of artist products including squid boxer shorts by Kelsey Parkhurst, Stella Crumpton carryalls made from automotive vinyl, Slide Sideways paper products, and Ashley Mimura feather headbands and hairclips. New items are arriving weekly, so it’s wise to check in often.

HAIL takes the mainstage at the Block Party

Most inspiring to see was Tacoma’s legion of talented artists out in force: poets, painters, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, actors, printmakers, photographers, sculptors, and designers. These people, of varied ages and background, are reimagining our vision of downtown by changing what-ifs into what-is. It takes energy, drive and untold buckets of elbow grease to realize a visionary concept that can shift the outlook of an urbanscape. The Block Party offered a tantalizing glimpse of what happens when creative ideas are given legs. Many thanks to those who came out to show support!