As we head into fall, our minds are abuzz about Art at Work: Tacoma Arts Month. What is Art at Work Month? It’s the entire month of November chock-full of hundreds of arts and cultural activities for you to participate in. Art at Work Month is dedicated to showing off the very best about our community and we want you to be a part of it.
One of the signature events that takes place in November is the Tacoma Studio Tour. This year’s tour features 55 artists and collaborative studios and allows the general public the opportunity to see the spaces in and tools with which local artists create their work, ask questions, and purchase one-of-a-kind creations. All studios will feature demonstrations of the artistic process or will have hands-on activities for visitors. Check out ArtAtWorkTacoma.com at the beginning of October for the full list of artists, schedule, and an interactive map where you can plot your tour course.
What: Tacoma Studio Tour
Where: 37 studio locations around Tacoma
When: November 3 & 4, 11 am – 5 pm
Cost: FREE!
Stay tuned as we’ll be bringing you a series of weekly posts featuring sneak peak samples of art from each of the participating artists! Here is this week’s highlight:
John McCuistion
A recent invitational show with a botanical theme challenged John to take his work in a new direction. He decided to focus on flowers, hand-building and then raku firing them. The first, second, and third firings were total failures. The forms evolved and opened up and he added glaze chips to the wet clay and then glass chips. After three months of trial and error he discovered the joy of successful work.
Dorothy McCuistion
Sea shells have been a recurring image in Dorothy’s artwork for several years. Growing up in southern California, shells resonate with vivid memories of trips to the ocean, but in the book “Shell Games” their pristine world is changing. Will the shells and the creatures that live inside them survive or will human-created pollution, symbolized by increasing bits of plastic trash, overwhelm their environment and doom them to extinction?
Diane Hansen & Lesli Jacobs-McHugh: bellaballs
Bella Balls are hand-blown glass floats, individually made by artisans in the Pacific Northwest, the designs originating from Diane Hansen and Lesli Jacobs-McHugh. Each Bella is made in the ancient tradition of Japanese fishing floats. These floats were used since the mid-1800s to hold up fishing nets cast in the Pacific Ocean, however, a special few floated off to world beaches, and we take this as proof that the ordinary can become an extraordinary treasure.
Pat Haase
Pat Haase started sculpting in 1994, carving directly into wood. Figure sculptures which convey a specific personality, mood, and setting delight Pat. Her awareness of posture and anatomy comes as much from teaching Yoga for 20 years as from her medical background. Currently, most of Pat’s sculpture is ceramic and includes many portraits. She also has cast works in bronze and kiln-cast glass sculpture.
Jessica Spring: Springtide Press
Jessica Spring is the proprietor of Springtide Press in Tacoma, where she designs, prints, and binds artist books, broadsides, and ephemera incorporating handmade paper and letterpress printing. Small finely-crafted editions consider historical topics and popular culture from a unique perspective. Jessica has an MFA from Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts and teaches at Pacific Lutheran University.
Juan La Torre
Juan La Torre, a Peruvian fine artist, works with both figurative and abstract art while trying to explore new media and techniques that inspire others to create. Juan says, “To say something with art is very important. Tell a story with it. Your art can inspire the imagination of more than one, with that you can change reality for something even better…Art is a shared experience.”
Art at Work Month is sponsored by Click! Cable TV, The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, Washington State Arts Commission, Weekly Volcano, and Premier Media Group.
