Urban Design Coffee Klatch, May 25

What: Urban Design & Public Art Coffee Klatch
When: May 25 10a.m.-11a.m.
Where: Amocat Café, 625 St. Helens Avenue, Tacoma

Making history: the Prairie Line Trail extends from Dock Street to South 25th St.

The Prairie Line Trail, a $5.83 million rails-to-trails project to link major downtown Tacoma destinations via a pedestrian and bicycle path, is now underway. The design team chosen to create a public art plan for the project, Todd Bressi and Thoughtbarn, will host an open discussion of the trail’s art component on Wednesday, May 25, at the Amocat Café.

The half-mile, two-acre Prairie Line Trail is a historic rail corridor that runs through several landmark areas: the University of Washington-Tacoma campus, the historic Brewery District, the Museum District and the Thea Foss Waterway. The project’s $30,000 public art planning budget is partially funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). “The Prairie Line Trail will be a vital component to our culturally vibrant downtown. The NEA’s support will insure that public art plays an instrumental role in defining the trail’s identity,” says Amy McBride, City of Tacoma Arts Administrator. Todd Bressi and Thoughtbarn (the duo of Lucy Begg and Robert Gay) were selected for the public art commission through a national competition. Please join us in welcoming these innovative designers to Tacoma!

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Thoughtbarn's CO2LED project (Arlington, VA) with Jack Sanders and Butch Anthony

Todd Bressi is an award-winning Urban Designer and Planner who brings a foundation of research-based design and a public participation approach to the Prairie Line Trail project. He edited the outstanding design journal, Places, for a decade and teaches planning and design courses at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has won national awards and been published in numerous professional magazines. Bressi received a B.A. in Urban Studies from Columbia and a Master of City Planning from UC Berkeley. www.artfulplaces.com

Thoughtbarn, the Austin-based collaborative team of Lucy Begg and Robert Gay, is a multidisciplinary studio that champions the artful design of everyday spaces through buildings, urban strategies, public art installations, and furniture.  Some projects of note include a solar-powered way-finding system for the Lance Armstrong bikeway, and a house which can be fully recycled.  Invention, collaboration, and resourcefulness are at the core of their practice. www.thoughtbarn.us

Opera Alley Partners with Spaceworks Tacoma

Ruby and George Chambers in Opera Alley.

Opera Alley is a romantic niche of the Theater District tucked away at 7th Street and St. Helens Avenue. It is one of Tacoma’s most intimate, atmospheric corridors, preserving history in century-old buildings that once played host to bars, bordellos and the behemoth presses of the Tacoma News Tribune (in the 46,000 sq. ft. Ledger Building). The Passages Building, at 708 South Broadway, once housed the Savoy Theater, where Sarah Bernhardt performed in 1907.  Today, these beautifully restored structures bustle with fresh life: specialty boutiques, salons, a café, a yoga center, professional and creative services, and small, independent enterprises. Thanks to a visionary effort spearheaded by property owners Ruby and George Chambers, this once neglected area is successfully reclaiming its genteel charm to the pleasure of visitors and downtown dwellers alike.

The Chambers are Spaceworks’ newest partners, donators of prime Opera Alley real estate to be used for three-month Artscapes exhibitions. Ruby (who owned the beloved brick-and-mortar home emporium, the Ruby Collection), says, “It’s a great opportunity for me to be able to give back. It’s all about mentoring and helping [artists]. I think when I was so busy running my business, I didn’t have the time. I feel so fortunate I have the ability to do that now.” She closed shop in 2007; Ruby’s is now an online presence with a showroom to open soon in the Ledger Building.

George and Ruby recently opened up 708 Opera Alley to the artist Acataphasia Grey, for her surrealist peephole installation, Tea for Short Expectations. Spaceworks “gives artists the opportunity to show their work in a way they want to, and not necessarily be dictated to by a gallery owner, ” she says, as a visitor ogles a linen-and-china tea party set for zombified stuffed animals and dessicated-looking taxidermy beasts. Unlike property owners who communicate with tenants through a management company, she adds, “I have the opportunity to connect with [the artist],” and their creative process.

Tacoma's past and present converge in Opera Alley.

The Chambers describe the Ledger Building, which they own, and the Passages Building, which they co-own, as having “heart and soul” – almost every finished space in these landmarks is leased at a time when downtown office space is at 40% vacancy, says Ruby. George, who is a professional boatbuilder and woodworker, does many of the improvements: “To bring back the integrity of the buildings is really rewarding,” beams Ruby, and their strategy is helping to keep rents affordable. Creative entrepreneurs are drawn to the architecture’s historic interest and value to the surrounding community. The couple continue to develop their Opera Alley spaces; ideas being floated include an underground speakeasy with a New Orleans-style garden courtyard. As for art, they are particularly open to green-friendly proposals that utilize non-traditional space, such as an outdoor mural, a vertical wall-covering mosaic of plants, or a rooftop installation that neighbors at nearby condos and the Municipal Building can enjoy.

New Video by Holly Senn

Check out Holly Senn’s new video about her Spaceworks installation, Composites. The installation is on view 24/7 thru June 30 at the Woolworth Windows (11th and Broadway, downtown Tacoma). 

Visual Wanderlust

"Oblivion," by Saul Becker. Gouache, watercolor & ink on paper

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” Martin Buber

“Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.” John Updike

"Hard Times (I)," by Saul Becker. Gouache, watercolor & ink on paper

Saul Becker is an American painter, from Tacoma, who is widely traveled and intentional in his movements, yet the psychological surveying he conducts of external and internal landscapes sometimes eludes description. His schooling and aesthetic curiosity have taken him from Lisbon, Portugal, to Halifax, Nova Scotia; most recently, he boarded a sailing ship for a three-week artist’s residency above the Arctic Circle.

“Travel and expeditions have become very important in my work, and it’s always tricky to talk about what that means specifically,” he says. Of the Arctic voyage, he notes, “I’m still trying to figure out what that experience means to me. I try to flesh these things out in the work I make. I think our relationships with the environment are much more involved and nuanced than we commonly think. My particular sensitivity happens to be obsessed with how I relate to places.”

Ruston Way redux.

The geography of Becker’s painting ranges from the hellish, primordial landscape of Oblivion (above top), to a Ruston Way scene where faded graffiti clings to a slab of Asarco smelter concrete like the remnants of ancient petroglyphs. The artist, the recent recipient of both an Artist Trust Fellowship, and a TAIP grant from the Tacoma Arts Commission, is currently working on a group of sculptures involving hand-collected plant specimens that are electroplated then installed in vitrines: “They are, in part, concerned with ideas about preserving nature, and inertia. I also think of them as being miniature landscapes.”

Becker has upcoming exhibitions in New York City and Chicago; Spaceworks Tacoma is helping support his current, frenzied output with a three-month creative residency at 1114 Pacific Avenue. The artist and his family moved back to Tacoma from New York: “I think my relationship with the world at large will always reference back to the Northwest. I grew up here, so certain relationships will always revert to a sort of baseline that is present here. In a way, travel always informs you as much about home as the place you are visiting.” And he still finds the local topography inspiring: “Landscapes are visible manifestations of our ideas and values concerning the world outside ourselves. How we relate to, and define, ‘nature’ is a pretty rich vein to mine. This is what inspires me to paint landscapes, and gently move landscape painting into a more critical dialogue.” For more information, visit http://www.saulbecker.com.

Spaceworks Tacoma: Round 4 – Call to Artists

Reach out and touch someone: art courtesy of Personal Power Company

Applications are now open for the Artscapes track of Spaceworks Tacoma! It’s been almost one year since we launched this award-winning program changing the face of downtown T-town; check out what the critics are saying about it, here.

Spaceworks Tacoma seeks summer storefront installations

Spaceworks Tacoma is seeking artists from Washington or Oregon to create temporary art installations for display in the windows of downtown storefronts from July 15 to Oct. 31, 2011.

“For this next round of installations, we’re looking for works that are particularly interactive and take advantage of the warm weather when there is more foot traffic,” says City of Tacoma Arts Administrator Amy McBride. Spaceworks is a joint initiative of the City of Tacoma, Shunpike and the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce designed to fill empty storefronts and vacant space with active art exhibits.

Selected applicants will receive a $500 stipend, all-inclusive. Applications for Spaceworks Tacoma: Round 4 will be accepted until May 23, 2011. Click here for full details and an application. For more information, contact Rebecca Solverson, Community and Economic Development, rsolverson@cityoftacoma.org, (253) 591-5560

BareFoot Collective Dance Showcase, May 14-15

BQdanza dance troupe will perform in "Ides of May."

The BareFoot Collective (tBFC) is presenting Ides of May, a contemporary dance concert featuring professional dance artists and upcoming dancers from Gig Harbor High School, May 14-15. In addition to spotlighting the work of budding student performers, Ides of May will debut new choreography by BQdanza director, Carla Barragán, and tBFC choreographers Katie Stricker and Michael Hoover. Stricker will take the floor with an all-female quartet in a dance piece that speaks to the language of sisterhood. Hoover will reprise a cathartic solo involving a whistling tea kettle, and introduce two new works, one of which melds dancers who span a diversity of age, professional experience and geographical locations from across the South Sound.

Perfectly poised: the BareFoot Collective. Photo: Michael Hoover

Barragán‘s dance company, BQdanza, was the recipient of a Spaceworks residency last fall. For Ides of May, the troupe will perform sections of an original work in progress, Nincompoopiana, fusing the arts of puppetry and dance. Nincompoopiana explores “the rebellion against the status quo through whimsical movement by five larger-than-life puppets,” according to a press release. “The Nincompoopian aesthetic movement began in the 1880s and it rebelled against the pretty and respectable. [BQdanza] restates this concept [by] introducing five archetypal characters that discover each other through simple and comic rapport.” Covered in “puppet skins” decorated with tattoo-like designs, the dancers look like otherworldly beings. They will do a roaming improvisation on the street, May 14, prior to the 7:30 show. tBFC organized this production with the support of a three-month Spaceworks Tacoma residency, including a free rehearsal space at 915 Pacific Avenue fitted to their specifications.

Ides of May, at 915 Pacific Avenue, May 14-15, 3p.m. and 7:30p.m. Seating is limited; advance purchase of tickets is recommended. Tickets are available online at www.brownpapertickets.com, and at the door on the day of the show ($12/$15). For more information, click www.barefootcollective.org.