Arts reporter and critic Rosemary Ponnekanti keeps you in touch with the arts and culture scene with the help of other News Tribune writers, critics and editors.
Rosemary Ponnekanti is the arts reporter at The News Tribune, and has been a classical music nerd nearly all her life. Besides spending way too much time in galleries, museums and concert halls, she occasionally brings a whistle or double bass to Celtic jam sessions, and insists on singing "Happy Birthday" in four-part harmony.
Other contributors include:
> Arts & entertainment editor Craig Sailor
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Just visited Two Vaults Gallery in the Merlino building downtown to see the show that opened tonight, and whaddayaknow, I was in it! Well, sort of. The show, "ICON-cepts," invited over 38 local artists to create an icon celebrating a personage important to Tacoma. It's the brainchild of concrete art diva Lynn di Nino and Two Vaults owner Paula Tutmarc-Johnson, and it's a really fun show: there are at least four Dale Chihulys (maybe more, hard to count,) plus three of Lynn herself (hmmm, did this show get juried?) plus figures as diverse as St. Therese of Lisieux, Barack Obama, the Holy Trinity, a salmon, Frisco Freeze, the Hundredth Monkey, and Pierce Transit Bus Route No. 1.
Here's one of Dale, by Lynn:

And a very rocking 100th Monkey, by Claudia Riedener:

And then there's me! Initially I'd thought I didn't make the cut as a Tacoma icon: well, I realize I'm not up there with Obama, or even the Monkey. But I got kind of sad that Derek Young of exit133.com was given a halo, and Kevin Freitas of feedtacoma.com was made an archangel. Then I wandered down to the back gallery and lo and behold, Dorothy McCuistion had canonized my notebook!

Dorothy has made a delightful print of my spiral-bound, featuring a pair of rosy-pink shades sporting speech bubbles with phrases from my reviews. (I'm so glad someone reads them!) Beneath is a tiny red toy bicycle (ode to my cycling exploits?) and the whole icon is surrounded by cheery sunshine. I can't quite work out the bluebird in a toy cage--some biting reference to my soul? Or just decoration? And I'm not sure about some of those words... did I really write "art salad?" (Maybe that referred to Dorothy's co-op gallery.)
But oh boy, I so *totally* want those sunglasses: pink with paisley patterns. And a red bike: mine's boring gray, really.
So thanks, Dorothy. Who, by the way, has a neat set of bike-themed prints pegged up in Impromptu Gallery just down the road from Two Vaults--monotypes riffing on the theme of bike wheels turned lime-slices turned manholes...
ICON-cepts is up for the summer, it seems. It's not all great art, but some of it's very clever--like chalk-mad R.R. Anderson's "Icon for the Iconoclast," a blank chalkboard triptych--and it deserves far more space than the two small walls it's been allocated.
Two Vaults is at 602 S. Fawcett St, Tacoma.
