In preparation for Spaceworks’ 2nd annual fundraiser NEON, artist Galen Turner installed a flashy, tongue-in-cheek Artscape in one of the Woolworth Windows. He used traditional, mechanical relays to make the neon lights glow in various patterns. You can observe the relay gears animating the signs by opening and closing electrical circuits creating a dazzling, flickering artwork.
Galen also made some original signs commissioned by Spaceworks specifically for this year’s NEON fundraiser. You can have your chance at winning them in the auction on June 10th, 2017. Buy your tickets now at
Katie Dean gives a printmaking demonstration during the Tacoma Studio Tour
Tacoma Studio Tour
October 14 & 15, 2017, 11 am – 5 pm
Are you a professional artist that lives in Tacoma and/or has a working studio in Tacoma? Do you want to open your studio to the public, demonstrate how you make your work, host a hands-on activity, and help raise the visibility of the arts in Tacoma? Apply to participate in our 16th annual Tacoma Studio Tour!
Visitors to Liz Pulos’ studio try a weaving project.
The Tacoma Arts Commission is seeking professional artists who are willing to open their studios to the public for the Tacoma Studio Tour, one of the features of Tacoma Arts Month this October. The emphasis of this tour is on raising visibility of the arts and providing artistic opportunities for the community to connect to the arts. We encourage artists to have work for sale. Studios will be open on Saturday, October 14th and Sunday, October 15th from 11 am to 5 pm. Artists can choose to be open on Saturday, Sunday, or both days. The Tacoma Arts Commission will produce extensive electronic publicity materials including email newsletters, blog posts, and an interactive website and map. We will also produce a printed brochure for the Tacoma Studio Tour. The studio tours are free to both the artists and visitors.
Due to very positive feedback from both visitors and artists alike, we will be bringing back the Studio Tour Passport this year. The purpose of the Passport is to encourage people to attend multiple studios and studios they’ve never been to before by incentivizing attendance. Studio Tour artists are encouraged, but not required, to donate a small art item that can be included in the prize packages.
Mark Hoppmann talks with visitors at his book arts and illustration studio.
A private entity, ART BUS, is working on plans to provide a bus tour of studio locations. Studio Tour artists will have the opportunity to opt-in to being a stop along the bus tour route for a fee. More information about this optional service will be provided to all Studio Tour artists later this summer.
Deadline for applications is Monday, June 26, 2017, 11:59 pm. Applicants will be juried in a competitive process by a sub-committee of the Tacoma Arts Commission and selected based on the quality of artwork and the overall diversity of the work presented, as well as geographic diversity of the studios.
Eligibility:
You must live within the City of Tacoma limits and/or your working studio must be located within the City of Tacoma limits
You must provide a demonstration of your art form and/or provide a hands-on activity for attendees
You must actively promote the Studio Tour to your own contacts
If you would like to be a guest at another studio, the above guidelines still apply. A studio is defined as a location where artwork is created on a consistent basis.
People who are members of historically disenfranchised racial, ethnic, cultural, and other identity groups are encouraged to apply.
Visitors to Jessica Spring’s studio make a keepsake on a vintage press.
To Apply:
Eligible artists interested in this opportunity must fill out the online application form and attach the following items via Submittable
Five Work Samples – Submit 5 high quality JPEG files of your past work. If selected for the tour, we will use the images in materials produced for Tacoma Arts Month. Images must be at least 300 ppi resolution. Images smaller than 600 pixels per side are not recommended
Artist Resume or Bio (if you have not participated in the Studio Tour in the past 2 years)
Please note: each artist in a group studio needs to submit their own application, work samples, and resume.
More than a concert: Symphony Tacoma’s Mountain and Sea gives artistic voice to Mount Rainier’s melting glaciers
Date: Saturday, May 13
Time: 7:30pm
Location: Pantages Theater, Tacoma
Tickets: stat at $19. Visit www.tacomasymphony.org or call 253-591-5894
The World Premiere of a new symphonic work. A multimedia experience featuring video, glass art and music. A symposium exploring changes to the delicate ecosystem of the Mountain and its glaciers. A collaboration between the Arts and the National Park Service. A once-in-a-lifetime educational opportunity for area high school students. Symphony Tacoma’s Mountain and Sea season finale is all this and more.
Conceived by Music Director Sarah Ioannides, Mountain and Sea is a collaborative effort between Symphony Tacoma, Museum of Glass, Hilltop Artists and Mount Rainier National Park to create a cross-disciplinary multimedia artistic event culminating with the Symphony’s season finale. Commemorating the Centennial of the National Parks System, the project will engage area residents in music and glass art and raise awareness of the plight of Mount Rainier’s glaciers, which are melting at an alarming rate.
The capstone of the project is the multimedia world premiere of Fire-Mountain, a new symphonic work by Daniel Ott, commissioned by Symphony Tacoma. A musical portrait of natural wonders, Ott’s Fire-Mountain utilizes 155 musicians, including the 85-piece Symphony Tacoma and 70-person Symphony Tacoma Voices. The work will be accompanied by an art film produced by Derek Klein, multimedia director at the Museum of Glass. Projected above the stage during the premiere, the film will feature images of the mountain combined with footage shot at a recent glassblowing event in the hot shop, during which Hilltop Artist students created glass art using fire and ice in response to improvisatory music by Symphony Tacoma musicians.
Also on the program will be Grieg’s Suite No. 1 from Peer Gynt, featuring “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and Debussy’s impressionist masterpiece, La Mer. The concert, sponsored by Boeing and underwritten by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, will take place at 7:30pm Saturday, May 13 at the Pantages Theater in Tacoma. For tickets, visit tacomasymphony.org or call 253-591-5894.
Silent Sentinel
For the residents of Pierce County, Mount Rainier is a silent sentinel, always present on the horizon and guarding life in the South Sound area. In 2015, scientists released a sobering report warning of the rapid recession of the mountain’s glaciers—the largest on a single peak anywhere in the contiguous United States—and the ecological consequences that will soon follow. The geography of the region, with its mountains and valleys intertwined with the many-fingered Salish Sea, is unique in the world. Here, mountain and inland sea interact in ways not seen elsewhere.
Mountaintop Experience
On Wednesday, May 10, Sarah Ioannides will join the string orchestra students from Lincoln High School during a daylong field trip to Paradise on Mount Rainier. Symphony Tacoma has a special relationship with the Lincoln High students; string players from the Orchestra spend eight weeks during the school year embedded there as coaches and mentors. On this day, the students will trade their instruments for snow shoes as they explore Paradise, hear presentations about the extensive glacial system, and learn from Ioannides and Ott about the creative process and how an artist responds to external events to create art. Later in the week, the students will be guests of honor at the dress rehearsal, along with National Park Service officials. Lincoln High School has the highest rate of poverty of any school in Pierce County. Its thriving orchestra program, under the direction of Symphony Tacoma violinist Cynthia Iverson, is an important creative outlet and lifeline for students.
Not just a concert—an event
Prior to the concert, subscribers and donors will be invited to a fascinating Music Mixer panel discussion, held in Studio 3 at the Pantages, featuring Ioannides, Daniel Ott, climatologist Mike Warner, and Mount Rainier National Park Deputy Superintendent Tracy Swartout. The lobby will include informational displays staffed by NPS officials. Hilltop Artist students will also be on hand with displays of their glass art from the March 16 Fire and Ice event. The panelists will also participate in a post-concert question-and-answer session in the lobby, open to all.
“Art responds to life, and by building relationships in the community, art can serve as a catalyst for education, growth and transformation in a region,” stated Sarah Ioannides. “Through a process of community collaboration and working in multiple mediums, this partnership seeks to produce an inspiring experience, empowering participants to undertake an active role in protecting our region.”
Spaceworks Tacoma is partnering with the Downtown Tacoma Business Improvement Area (BIA) to find an artist or artist team to beautify a downtown icon in need of a facelift!
The location is in the skybridge over Commerce Street connecting the Park Plaza North Parking Garage (923 S. Commerce) and Transit Plaza/Theater on the Square (917 Broadway). This consists of the two interior walls, each roughly 85-feet long and 3-feet tall.
In preparation for Spaceworks’ 2nd annual fundraiser NEON, artist Galen Turner installed a flashy, tongue-in-cheek Artscape in one of the Woolworth Windows. He used traditional, mechanical relays to make the neon lights glow in various patterns. You can observe the relay gears animating the signs by opening and closing electrical circuits creating a dazzling, flickering artwork.
Tacoma Arts 