Unicorn Petting Zoo at Live Paint, in May

Photo courtesy of Live Paint.

Okay, so there won’t be any unicorns to feed pixie dust-sprinkled carrots to, but little ones will still find plenty of fun at A Kids’ Fairy and Wizard Interactive Theater and Art Event, on May 3, 7, 10, 11, 17 and 18 at Live Paint. For a limited time, tickets are just $8 per session – that’s 50% off! – when you order online. Live Paint is a “family-friendly theatre, art and special events company,” and the brainchild of local educator and actor, Cindy Arnold.

Arnold has been throwing family-friendly creative events all winter at Live Paint’s Spaceworks residency studio on the Hilltop. She’s stepping it up a notch with this event, co-presented by LivingSocial. Check out the invitation, and sign up!

From LivingSocial: “Your little fairy prince or princess has spent afternoons in the garden searching for gnomes and nymphs, but all he or she’s found have been squirrels and spiders. With today’s deal from Live Paint, you can give your darling an enchanted evening, and you don’t even need to search under toadstools. Pay $8 [limited-time only!] for a ticket to a fairy and wizard spring interactive theater and art event for kids (regularly $16). A fun-filled family event geared toward children ages 3 to 8, the spring show shares tales of magical fairies and wizards. Incorporating theater, story, and art, this show takes kids on a journey through a magical forest in need of help. Kids will create a craft project to use as a prop to help save the day, and then take it home. Shows will be held May 3, 7, 10, 11, 17, and 18 at 5:30 p.m. at the colorful studio located on MLK Way. Attending is a great Mother’s Day activity, since even pixies aren’t as magical as bonding with your baby.” Live Paint, 1314 MLK Way in Tacoma. Individual sessions May 3, 7, 10, 11, 17 and 18; info at 206/732-0224 or 253/756-2169.

Landau Associates Delivers the Dirt on Tacoma, Artfully

Landau Associates office staff turned out for the Spaceworks display opening March 30, 2012. Left to right: Theresa Turpin, Eric Weber, Lauren McIntire, Sierra Mott and Sarah Weeks.

For environmental experts, taking a core sample out of the ground may be akin to retrieving a time capsule of an area’s history. And as a recent geo-study by Landau Associates reveals, while growth and development in Tacoma is often described in terms of the changing skyline, some of the city’s most important work over the past 20 years has actually taken place at grade or below the earth’s surface.

Landau Associates, an environmental services and consulting firm, has created a Spaceworks installation at 11th and Commerce that provides a fascinating glimpse into this underground world. Photographs of real core samples collected during subsurface investigations in downtown Tacoma have been enlarged to nearly 400 percent of their actual size, and wrapped around 3-dimensional models. These forms, combined with text and photographs of Tacoma, reveal the physical and mechanical features of the earth below the city’s sidewalks and buildings – and a slice of local history.

Core values: earth samples from downtown Tacoma tell a story of the city's past. Photo courtesy of Landau Associates.

The core samples were taken just down the street from the display at one of Landau Associates’ project sites – the Sauro’s property at 1401 Pacific Avenue. This four-block area possesses a complex social history: It has been used for a mix of commercial and industrial activities since the 1880s with tenants including a dry cleaners, an electroplating company and a hatter’s facility. Investigating the underground conditions at this site helped make it possible for the City to determine if people and the environment were potentially at risk and to develop a strategy for returning the site to beneficial reuse. Most recently, the City has completed a public parking facility which is helping to generate revenue until a larger development plan is prepared for the site and surrounding properties. The Sauro’s property is an example of how cleanup and redevelopment can transform a perceived problem into a community asset.

Tacoma continues to be a success story in the making: Thanks to a multi-agency and multi-disciplinary effort, hundreds of acres of contaminated land are being turned into safe and usable properties for the benefit of all to enjoy.

Landau Associates is an environmental and geotechnical engineering, environmental permitting, and natural resources consulting firm celebrating their 30th anniversary this year with offices in Edmonds, Tacoma, Seattle, Spokane, and Tri-Cities, WA and Portland, OR. Their Spaceworks installation is at 11th and Commerce through June 30, 2012.

Check Out Tacoma City Ballet- It’s Not Your Mother’s Ballet!

The Tacoma City Ballet (TCB) is a gem of a dance company that makes its home in the grand ballroom – a kind of sun-filled cloister – at the Merlino Art Center, above the Grand Cinema. Who knew? TCB will be presenting Spring Dance Extravaganza, seven original and dynamic dance works spanning traditional and contemporary styles, at Theatre on the Square, April 20-22. After attending a recent TCB Choreographers’ Talk and dance preview by Artistic Director Erin Ceragioli, Resident Choreographer Travis Goldman and Assistant Artistic Director Joel Myers, I honestly can’t wait.

Practice makes perfect at TCB. Young ballerinas watch from the sidelines. Photo courtesy of TCB.

The spring showcase features TCB’s terrifically versatile dancers in an eclectic repertoire accompanied by live music. Erin Ceragioli (that’s “Miss Erin” to you) has forged a reputation for innovative choreography and has had seven original ballets chosen for performance at Regional Dance America/Pacific festivals. She brings to the company her mastery of the classical ballet of five international schools through years of study with many world-renowned artists and master teachers. The 2011-2012 season marks Miss Erin’s 25th year with Tacoma City Ballet. We chatted with her via e-mail about the upcoming Spring Extravaganza – which is definitely not your mother’s ballet! Congratulations, Miss Erin and TCB!

Spaceworks Tacoma: Hi Miss Erin. As a non-dancer, I have to say that every time someone rises en pointe without breaking a toe I am still filled with wonder. Do you remember the first time you stood on your toes?

Erin Ceragioli: I was eleven years old, but I don’t remember what I felt at the time. That was a while ago!

ST: At a recent choreographers’ talk you gave with Joel Myers and Travis Goldman, dancers performed three tantalizing excerpts from Spring Dance Extravaganza. I think audiences will be surprised by the range of original dance being performed by TCB.

EC: I think they’ll be surprised as well – I’m not sure that Tacoma really knows what Tacoma City Ballet can offer aside from The Nutcracker!

TEDx is Coming to Tacoma

If you like getting TED, the celebrated series of mini-video lectures by world-renowned brainiacs, artists and out-of-the-box thinkers, delivered weekly to your inbox, then you’ll love TEDxTacoma, an affiliated event coming to the Museum of Glass Hot Shop Auditorium, April 17. Tickets are spendy at $65 and $100 a pop, but it’s cheaper than a college course, and a heck of a lot more fun.

TEDxTacoma has rounded up some of the region’s best and brightest including:
Kathleen O’Brien, a nationally recognized leader in the field of sustainability
Paul Rucker, Creative Capital grant recipient, award-winning musician and visual artist
Joe Kane, journalist (The New Yorker, Esquire, National Geographic) and author of Running the Amazon
Joe Mirabella, a campaign manager at Change.org
Donald Byrd, Artistic Director of Spectrum Dance Theater
Patricia Talton, President/CEO of the Northwest Leadership Foundation
Janine Terrano, founder of Topia Technology and other leading-edge internet companies
Salvador A. Mungia, a past-president of the Washington State Bar Association and partner at Gordon Thomas Honeywell, who promotes providing legal services for those who, because of their economic situation, are easily exploited.

About TED
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. At TED, the world’s leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

About TEDx, x = independently organized event
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program.

Smokin’ on the Water: 2012 Urban Art Festival

Tacomans festivate at Urban Art Festival 2011 on Thea Foss Waterway! Photo: Lisa Fruichantie

The Urban Art Festival Crew of 2012 has been busily crafting their eighth annual event, which they swear will be the biggest and BEST alt-stravaganza yet! On the weekend of June 30 to July 1, the festival will be jammin’ at Dock Street Park on Thea Foss Waterway.

Of course, it’s the talent and grit of our local artists who make this event happen, and applications are now open for those wishing to participate as a vendor or performer. To get the lowdown on this year’s festival, we chatted with event and volunteer coordinator, Lisa Fruichantie.

Cool as all get out: Lisa Fruichantie.

TACOMA ARTS: Hi, Lisa, pleased to meet you. Before we talk about the Urban Art Festival, please tell us a little about yourself. You are frequently pegged as one of the most creative, civic-minded – and busy – artists in Tacoma.
LISA FRUICHANTIE: My “careers” all tend to be quite circular and complimentary of one another. First and foremost, I work as the Senior Projectionist of the Grand Cinema. Through Transcendence Designs, I work as a fashion and costume designer, and a consultant. This work obviously goes hand in hand with my three other ventures, which are also stage- and costume-related: for Northwest Staging Sound and Design, I enjoy work as a stagehand, video and lighting technician, event planner and production manager. I also serve on the boards of two non-profits: MLK Ballet and Local Life.

UAF takin' it to the streets. Photo courtesy of Lisa Fruichantie.

TA: You are also the mom of three young boys, you create the freakin’ cool 253 heart hoodies, and you manage a burlesque troupe, the Gritty City Sirens. People will be forgiven for thinking you are an urban myth. And the Urban Art Festival (UAF)?
LF: My involvement with Urban Art Festival has been for seven of the eight years of its existence. I have worked predominantly as one of the festival planners, and as vendor coordinator of the performance and visual art.

TA: Please describe UAF for our readers, and what makes it different from other of Tacoma’s many street festivals.
LF: Urban Art Festival’s mission has always been to share, teach, and learn with our community through art and music and everything that encompasses. That mission in itself is very different from that of any consumer-driven, commercialized festivals you will attend throughout the year. Additionally, our goal has been to breathe life into areas of Tacoma often overlooked as not being “festival worthy” or “not ideal locations”.

The Many Words for Rain

Taking Tacoma's temperature: Michiko Tanaka at the Tollbooth Gallery, opening April 13.

Michiko Tanaka returns to the Tollbooth Gallery on April 13 with an interactive video installation about the weather, The Many Words for Rain. According to Tanaka, the installation at “The World’s Smallest Art Gallery” has three parts: part one features a “rain barometer” (shown above), with a movable arrow “that people can adjust to what they think the current precipitation is like.” This component of the installation will be wheatpasted on the back of the tollbooth.

Part two consists of images of clouds printed with zany words about the local climate, and will also be wheatpasted onto the video gallery. “This part will also be interactive as people will be invited to add their own comments about northwest weather.” Part three is a video loop about the water cycle.

 

Take a stroll down to the Tollbooth Gallery for this show…it’s the one chance you’ll have to control the weather. The Many Words for Rain by Michiko Tanaka, at the Tollbooth Gallery, 11th & Broadway, April 13-August 31, 2012.

 

Flying Without a Tightrope

Top of the totem: a bird figure in "Spring Mascot" by Elise Richman.

In the Pacific Northwest, totem poles are a part of the collective imagination. Majestic cedar poles aged and carved by First Peoples stud the coastal areas of Washington and Oregon all the way to Alaska and Canada.

But hey, what about that wooden bear ripped-by-chainsaw from a tree stump in some white guy’s front yard in Hoquiam? Is that a kind of “totem,” too? Does it express an unconscious yearning to tell a personal story; to broadcast the myths of the family clan?

"Pool 1," oil painting by Elise Richman

Tacoma artist Elise Richman seems to pose this question and others with her site-specific art installation, Spring Mascot, at the Woolworth Building. This whimsical, totem-inspired work is unique in both its composition (colorful bird sculptures and large bird paintings are spread out horizontally across the window instead of vertically in a pole configuration), and personal point of view: among other things, the gawky avian entities represent a tribute to “the often taken-for-granted heroics of caregivers and nurturers.”

Richman traveled to Alert Bay in British Columbia last summer to research totem poles. She was compelled “by their seemingly animated designs and vivid visual narratives. Totem poles loom and confront with an arresting and powerful presence.” Yet her sculptures vibrate on a surprisingly different, more delicate frequency than the stolid entities from centuries past.

“My bird paintings and sculptures act as surrogate self-portraits and guardian figures….[They] embody an openness and vulnerability that I value. Their gestures [and] postures are confident but also awkward. They model and defend the kind of receptivity that is only possible when we face the world with as much care, honesty, and hope as we can muster. The birds guard the act of letting one’s guard down.”

Music You Don’t Have, But Should

Music You Don’t Have, But Should is a locally produced podcast featuring original music from independent artists from throughout the world. The show is celebrating its first year of introducing listeners to “music you don’t have, but should” with a special two-plus hour retrospective show on Saturday, April 7^th. Tune in at www.musicyoudonthave.com.

During its first year, Music You Don’t Have, But Should presented 24 episodes featuring independent musicians and bands from Australia, Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, and Brazil, as well as from across the United States. Some of the indie artists closer to the Seattle-Tacoma area who will be featured on the April 7th show are Jeremy Serwer, Perry Acker, Ben Union, and Spaceworks artist Nate Dybevik, among others. The premise of the program “is to introduce independent regional artists who are well-known in their own areas to a greater, worldwide fanbase,” says producer Andy Hall.