Wii Tennis, Beer, Pizza and Supporting Spaceworks…it doesn’t get any better than that! Won’t you join us? Here are the details:
Friday, April 26, 2013
Registration at 5:30pm, Tournament at 6pm
BLRB Office, 1250 Pacific Ave, Suite 700, Tacoma, WA
Bring your “A” game and retro tennis apparel (optional) to the 4th annual 2013 AIASWW Wii Tennis Tournament. Join Spaceworks staff, friends and supporters for a fun night of Wii Tennis at the cool offices of BLRB in downtown Tacoma. Spaceworks will appreciate your support through your entry fee of $20 for players or $10 for spectators, which includes both food & drink.
Please RVSP on our Facebook page or drop an email to: aia@aiasww.org
Presented by Emerging Leaders Group (American Institute of Architects South West Washington Chapter)
If you think about it, it’s almost dumbfounding, the number and quality of working artists who call Tacoma home. We’re not talking about a homespun enclave bookended by Seattle and Portland, but a respected community of artists, emerging and established, who exhibit regionally, nationally and around the world. Many of these pros barely make mention of the aah-mazing work they are doing, so as we ramp up to Cakewalk, the big Spaceworks fundraiser this weekend, we’re calling out some of those who have also been Spaceworks award recipients. This weekend, several of them will be donating serious art booty to the Cakewalk that you could win and take home!
This is just a small sampling, so come out this Saturday, meet and greet some of this town’s hardest-working creatives (in the studio and the kitchen), and buy tickets to win from a mind-bending array of art and edible creations that will be up for grabs! This is an all-ages event – refreshments provided, drinks available (21+). Cakewalk, September 15, 6-9 pm, 311 S. 7th St. in Tacoma. Tickets to win artwork or cakes ($20/$5). Entertainment by DJ Mr. Melanin and DJ Broam, dance performance by the BareFoot Collective, video installation by Kris Crews. For more info, click here. ADMISSION IS FREE!
Spaceworks artist and recovering golf addict Jeremy Gregory is emitting a glow these days; that special glow that says, “I have been hit by a meteor,” perhaps; or, “I have scored an astonishing art commission.” Gregory is working on the mother of all projects – a one-mile long mural at the much talked-about Point Ruston condo development on the Tacoma waterfront. “The name of the artwork is Paisley Water” and the original concept was by noted California ceramics artist Robert Gilbert, he says. Gilbert hired Gregory as an assistant, but liked his work so much he invited him to add his own inspiration to the waterfront trail, which will be executed in hand-made ceramic tiles. Tacoma artist Rachael Dotson is an assistant to Gregory.
Sculptor of words, Holly Senn, has a gorgeous, dreamily thought-provoking installation at the super-stylish Jupiter Hotel in Portland, OR, through October 2012. To support Spaceworks, Senn, who takes the leaves of cast-off library books and creates paper sculptures that vibrate with new meaning, is trying her hand at baking: “I’m donating a cake with a mini-installation on it inspired by Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s project, The Umbrellas.”
The Dome District Mural.
Chris Sharp has five words for his Cakewalk contribution: “Tiny painting. Urban. Lettering oriented.” Sharp, who shared a Spaceworks residency space with Jeremy Gregory (that would be the one with a skateboard quarter-pipe), is leaving his own signature on Tacoma – he recently led a team of painters in creating a wall-size Dome District mural for the Tacoma Murals Project. It’s a tribute to “the multitude of commuters, travelers and people who come to the area to find entertainment, go to work, and live.” Sharp was the inaugural recipient of the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation’s Foundation of Art Award, a $7,500 prize.
Oliver Doriss, the hardest-working man in the gallery business. Photo courtesy of GTCF.
This year’s recipient of the GTCF Foundation of Art Award, Oliver Doriss, will be taking the night off from his Fulcrum Gallery to DJ at the Cakewalk, and he’s gifting some of his fabulous glass babyhead cups, too. In addition to curating at Fulcrum, Doriss is a studio glass artist who produces his own one-of-a-kind sculptures, and has worked for the likes of Dale Chihuly and fashion designer Donna Karan. Thanks, Oliver!
Next door to Fulcrum, Tacoma’s beloved Fab-5 have found a permanent home – and energized a long-vacant commercial space – through the Spaceworks program. The group is currently wrapping up a super-secret graffiti project that goes up, down and around the insides of a corporate headquarters in Kent. This was a major commission, as in, they just shipped out 32 cubic feet of spraypaint – and that was the leftovers! “[It's] the craziest mural project we’ve done so far in scope and detail,” says the always-fab Chris Jordan. Begun last December, the project will culminate in a video documentary. Fab-5′s organization, FABITAT, is deeply admired for its free workshops that encourage underserved youth to develop and explore their identities through music, movement, visual arts, written/spoken word, and – new this year – photography. Congratulations, Fab-5!
Fab-5 graffiti artist Kenji Stoll currently has an installation in the Woolworth Windows.
“I am donating a piece of art. I don’t have a photo of it. I’m also making a cake. All my other projects are in various stages,” says Spaceworks artist and renowned printmaker, Lance Kagey. Last year, with his creative partner, Thom Llewellyn, Kagey launched Rotator, Tacoma’s first coffee-table art magazine. He switched mediums for the Cakewalk: “I can say the art I’m giving is very different from what people may expect from me. Yes. Edible, I hope. If all goes well it will be a bit Alice-in-Wonderlandish. But it might end up, just a cake.”
Breaking new ground is Tacoma’s terrific writing center, write@253, a Spaceworks project modeled after Dave Eggers’ wildly successful San Francisco literary lab, 826 Valencia. Hot off the press is the first issue of The Hilltop Times – a neighborhood paper written and produced by young write@253 participants! With free workshops by guests such as award-winning author, Peter Bacho, and a summer Bard Camp for children K-6, write@253 is helping to keep the language alive! Watch for write@253′s surprise gift at Cakewalk!
“Semi-Automatic” by Michael Kaniecki
Just in – a knockout Cakewalk donation by artist Michael Kaniecki, drawn from his remarkable installation of drawings, Semi-Automatic. “I am donating nine of my drawings completed during my Spaceworks residency for the Cakewalk. Each original 9″ x 12″ drawing has been folded into a cube and mounted onto a board forming another 3 x 3, three-dimensional grid ready for hanging on a wall. It’s a lightweight drawing sculpture and I love it. Hope someone else will love it too and take it home with them.” We do, we do!
Jessica Spring is an artist’s artist: she joins consummate craftsmanship as a printmaker with a wickedly humorous, literary sensibility. Her work is in numerous collections including that of the British Museum. “I’m taking off teaching this fall to finish up several new books,” she says. With Chandler O’Leary (below), an artist with whom she frequently collaborates, Spring is making a gift of a limited-edition print, Prop Cake, part of their Dead Feminists series.
Janet Marcavage found time to create a Spaceworks installation this summer in between exhibits in New York City and Port Townsend, WA. Warp and Weft I is one of the fabulous artworks that will be available at Cakewalk on September 15 – it’s a beautiful, delicate piece that is best appreciated up close and personal. The print fittingly relates to Janet’s current Spaceworks installation in the Woolworth Windows.
Sculptures by Claudia Riedener at an exhibit at Gallery 301.
Four Spaceworks artists – Chandler O’Leary, Diane Hansen, James Sinding and Lisa Kinoshita – have been awarded public art commissions through the PA:ID (Public Art:In Depth) program presented last year through the City of Tacoma and taught by artist and educator, Elizabeth Conner. Artists Bret Lyon, Claudia Riedener and Ed Kroupa have also received public art commissions after completing the course. “What we are doing is investing in artists who have accomplished a level of success in their studio work to teach them intensively about public art – what it is, what it entails, how one has to not only be a good artist, but also think about the site, the community, get projects engineered, and get permits,” Amy McBride, Tacoma Arts Administrator, told the Weekly Volcano, last year.
Each of the seven artists has received a project award in the amount of $25,000; two more recipients have yet to be announced. The commissions are as follows:
Diane Hansen – A St. Passageway, Sound Transit
Lisa Kinoshita – STAR Center, Metro Parks Tacoma
Ed Kroupa – The Esplanade
Bret Lyon – Foss Waterway Seaport
Chandler O’Leary – Old Town Dock, Metro Parks Tacoma
Claudia Riedener – 66th St. Overpass, Sound Transit
James Sinding – Pacific Ave. Underpass, Sound Transit
Watch for new works by these artists throughout the city in the coming year – you may spot their work at the Cakewalk, too!
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Art at Work Month, our 10 in 10 series is spotlighting a decade’s worth of fabulous things about Tacoma.
Woolworth's, a 1950's superstore. Photo courtesy of Tacoma Public Library
The Woolworth Building. It’s an anchor of Tacoma’s downtown, a box-shaped receptacle of local lore, and a bastion of nostalgia for those who shopped at the famous five-and-dime or filled up at its homey lunch counter before it closed to the public in January 1994. It’s one of Tacoma’s best-loved buildings, with a varied past. Today, Woolworth’s broad storefront windows provide a unique, open-air exhibition space for art, and no longer advertise the inexpensive household goods that attracted windowshoppers from 1950 on.
The building at 955 Broadway is a landmark of local history and architecture. In the 1800s, it was the location of the First Presbyterian Church (and of a freshwater spring that sometimes leaked inside. Trickles persist to this day.). The church’s minister condemned the racism aimed against Chinese railroad workers at the time, but to no avail; they were driven out of town in the 1880s.
Waiting for the doors to open at Woolworth's. Photo courtesy of Tacoma Public Library
In 1890, the church was replaced by a new altar dedicated to the world of finance: the Fidelity Building, designed by the great Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, of Burnham & Root. (Another of the firm’s structures, the Luzon Building on Pacific Ave., was demolished last year against the protests of citizens and preservationists.) Exactly six decades later, the Fidelity Building was razed to make room for Woolworth’s: such was the success of the New York-based retail chain that it could afford to tear down a handsomely embellished 12-story skyscraper and replace it with a four-story, post-Deco structure whose style was dictated by its brand image. The superstore of the future opened during United Tacoma Days, on Nov. 2, 1950.
The five-and-dime was located across from the sprawling Crystal Sanitary Market where fresh produce filled the stalls; and from the classy Rhodes department store. Other neighbors included small specialty shops, dressmakers and haberdashers. Tacoma’s theater district, one block away, came alive at night; by six o’clock the independent businesses would close, but the behemoth retailer would stay open later, selling candy to moviegoers. Woolworth’s quickly became an important fixture for those who lived downtown, a place where one could find anything – housewares, shoes, cheap jewelry, Simplicity dress patterns and fabric, toys, even pets – and still have enough left for a grilled cheese sandwich and a ‘shake at the 62-seat lunch counter. Continue reading →
Last Thursday was party time in T-town, and not just because it was one of the few scant days of decent weather we’ve had this summer. No, not even crazed climatological activity could’ve checked the migration of artists and Third Thursday faithful who made their way to the Hilltop to celebrate Spaceworks’ first anniversary. Since last summer, this award-winning project linking artists with vacant retail space has supported more than 60 art exhibits, residencies and performance spaces; helped out scores of artists with rent (they don’t pay any); and energized downtown Tacoma in the process.
Fabitat offers computer instruction in their creative lab.
In case you’ve been holed up in the proverbial cave, a cluster of new Spaceworks art and performance venues have sprung up like mushrooms in the fertile soil around 11th St. and Martin Luther King Way (long-time stomping grounds of the Fulcrum Gallery). Scads of young people crowded the sidewalk at Fabitat, Fab-5‘s headquarters for the urban arts. Tacoma, meet Generation Next! It took about five seconds to grasp what an important and electric scene Eddie Sumlin, Chris Jordan, Kenji Stoll and Katie Lowery, the collective genius behind Fab-5, have hatched on the Hilltop through their non-profit, arts mentoring and instructional lab. The Fabitat program is a magnet for youth who on this night were celebrating with art- and music-making outside, while talking art and clicking away on computers inside. The place looks fantastic; what had been a lifeless commercial space has been beautifully reanimated with art and dance studios, and throbbing wall-size murals by local youths.
An added treat: guest performances by a Fab-5 neighbor, DASH Center for the Arts. DASH (“where Dancing, Acting, and Singing are always in Harmony!!”) offers affordable performing arts education to the youth and families of Tacoma. Continue reading →
Artist James Grayson Sinding weaves magic with "Words."
Words, a new temporary installation by Tacoma artist James Grayson Sinding will drop in Tollefson Plaza August 6 at 2pm. Come be part of the installation as Sinding dramatically dumps hundreds of hand-painted wooden words, refrigerator-magnet-style, onto the plaza out of the back of a shiny dump truck. The public is invited to create messages, climb, stack, and otherwise interact with the new installation. Words will be in Tollefson Plaza through the end of August 2011. Tollefson Plaza is located in downtown Tacoma at Pacific Avenue and S. 17th Street.
Like last year's "Letters" (above), "Words" will be an interactive installation
In 2010, Sinding presented his colorful, award-winning installation, Letters, in Tollefson plaza. Letters was recently recognized by the prestigious Americans for the Arts 2011 Public Art Network Year in Review as an example of an outstanding public art project. This year a record 430 projects were submitted from across the country and only 47 were selected. A full list of projects and more information about Year in Review can be found at www.PublicArtNetwork.org.
Words is supported by Spaceworks Tacoma and the Tacoma Arts Commission’s Tacoma Artists Initiative Program (TAIP). The installationis presented in conjunction with the Tacoma Art Museum’s “Free Summer Community Festival: Best of the Northwest.” The event runs Saturday, August 6, 10 am-4 pm. Admission to the museum is free during the festival.
