Live Paint Makes a Splash on the Hilltop

Cindy Arnold works a young audience at a cooperative preschool in Seattle. Photo courtesy of Live Paint

When Live Paint founder Cindy Arnold held her first open-theater workshop on the Hilltop last weekend, she knew she’d chosen the right place for a creative homebase. The informal session not only attracted college students, performers, writers and artists who showed up to talk about their projects and trade feedback, but, “A man who came in, said he was retiring and had always thought about taking up acting.” It was the kind of neighborhood response Arnold was looking for as she undertakes a Spaceworks residency at 1314 Martin Luther King, Jr., Way.

Cindy Arnold at work. Photo courtesy of Live Paint

Starting Feb. 25, Live Paint will offer theater workshops for adults every Sat., 1-3pm, free of charge. Arnold promises a relaxed environment for actors wanting to read for an audience or to perform improv, dancers looking to bounce around ideas, and writers seeking feedback on scripts in progress. As for the soon-to-retire planning engineer who expressed a desire to take the stage, he received information on how to produce and perform a monologue. “We are very committed to it being free,” says Arnold.

Live Space’s founder has combined her twin passions of acting and education (“Everyone in my family is a teacher”) for about 15 years. Following a teaching stint in New York City she traveled to Southeast Asia to explore the emerging field of multiculturalism; working with children in Vietnam and Thailand, “I saw similarities in the human experience.” Teaching, acting, music and travel inform her work in the theater.

“It’s a big step to have a performance space,” she says, and a place “to connect with the community.” Live Paint occupies a building recently vacated by Toy Boat Theatre – a local acting group led by Marilyn Bennett who completely transformed the large property on MLK Way from dead commercial space into a vibrant theater house that successfully staged numerous plays and readings. Arnold, who has organized events at the Tacoma Public Library and will be participating in a live event at KBTC studios in April, is planning a variety of family-friendly activities for the Spaceworks space including a Winter Festival event on Mar. 10, “fairy classes” the week of April 23, and a Spring Festival in May (exact times and dates to be announced). “It’s really an organic experience,” she says of the programming. Live Paint, 1314 Martin Luther King,  Way, 253-756-2169.

Goldfinch on the Wing

Front row: Aaron Stevens; middle row: Emily Peterson, Paul Hirschl; back row: Mikey Bergstrom, Steve Norman. Photo: Drew Shapiro

“Goldfinch is looking for a space to record a new record. It has been four years since our last full-length record was released and we have a lot of new material that we’d like to get out to our friends, family and fans,” declares lead singer, Aaron Stevens. Spaceworks Tacoma is helping move the process along by awarding the band a three-month artists’ residency through March 31, at 1310 Martin Luther King Way.

Birds of a feather (l to r): Hirschl, Bergstrom, Stevens, Peterson and Norman. Photo: Steve Hardin

Seasoned vets of the live music scene, Goldfinch plans to keep a low profile while laying new tracks at the practice space, and the studio will be closed to the public except for Third Thursday gallery walks and possibly other special-event nights. “We will not be selling anything,” says Stevens. But the musicians will not be maintaining a zendo-like purity, either: “I’d like for this record to be primarily recorded live with the full band playing, and then come back and add any additional layers and sounds that we’d like to have on the record.” The band has even considered making the record available free of charge once it is complete: “I believe that Goldfinch’s art is intended to be a gift to our community” – illustrating one more reason why they are among the area’s best-loved musical artists (but believe us, the music is worth the money).

Loving the Ravaged Mind

"Atrophied" by Maria Olga Meneses

Disconnected Fragments is a photo documentary about an 88-year-old woman, Livia Maria Escobar, living with the disease of dementia. The photographer, her daughter, Maria Olga Meneses, has recorded her mother’s devastating illness through a series of portraits interspersed with photographs of the natural world that place her (and by extension, all of us) metaphorically within the broadest spectrum of the life cycle. This exhibition of streaming images is on view at the Tollbooth Gallery, 11th and Broadway, through Feb. 29.

"Faded Connections" by Maria Olga Meneses

The exhibit includes casual, lifelong snapshots of Escobar in her prime; but it is Meneses’ black-and-white field photographs that provide an unexpectedly harrowing underpinning; sometimes out of focus, or quavering, they articulate a psychological fragility, “How I envision the brain being atrophied through the process of dementia,” she says. “The images depict my interpretation of confusion, loss of language [and] personal withdrawal from social contact.” The camera offers a vehicle by which she can participate in Livia Maria Escobar’s increasingly solitary journey.

"Mama, 1940." Photo courtesy of Maria Olga Meneses

“My mother has been suffering from dementia for about 15 years, and I have been taking care of her for the last five years. I have seen the devastation of a beautiful person [who goes] from begging God to keep her from losing her mind when she first experienced the symptoms of this disease, to the present moment when she hardly knows me.” The artist has not turned away from the hallucinations, violent behavior, delusions, depression, agitation, and feelings of persecution that mark the progression of the illness; on the contrary, with courage and compassion she has entered deeply into these final stages of life with her camera.