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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Tacoma artists are going hatty. For this weekend's Proctor Arts Fest (10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday) 15 local artists have made 14 giant "hats" to adorn the old-fashioned-style lampposts at the intersection of N. 26th and Proctor Streets.
This afternoon I went along to Proctor wine bar Pour at Four, where Metropolitan Market (the event sponsor) was holding a reception for the Hats judging. The hat sculptures could be of any material, but had to be wind-proof, rain-proof, lightweight, and able to be fixed firmly to the lampposts. The result was a Seussian selection of hats animal, vegetable and mineral. Claudia Riedener's "BzzZZZz" was an enormous beekeeper's netted hat, and Di Morgan-Graves produced a fun purple octopus knitting while playing a drum on its gold top hat (my son's favorite, that). There was an orca-tail hat, a chicken hat, an alien spider hat and a birdcage hat.
Here's the octopus:
Winners of the $200 prizes were:
Becky Frehse, for Most Colorful ("Rain Hat," an upended umbrella over metal tubs, from which melted icewater will run during the festival
James Ceccanti, for Tallest Hat ("Red Hat from Mars," a five-foot-high flower-like appendage)
Teresa Owens and Mary Kralik, for Most Outrageous ("We Worked our Tails Off," the orca tail with various other tails dangling therefrom)
Jurors were Kyle Dillehay, John Butler and Bonnie Cargol.
Here's Rick Semple and Jori Adkins in a trial run of Ann Meersman's bat Hat. (Their medieval princess "Veiled Hennin" is above.)
For the actual mounting at 7 a.m. Saturday, the local fire department has volunteered its services.
Hats on High! is an initiative of (naturally) Tacoma artist Lynn di Nino. "The intention was to get more local artists involved with the festival," said organizer Elayne Vogel. The rest of the festival includes the usual local vendors, a juried art competition, dance from Dance Theater Northwest, the farmers' market, pet parade and so on.
The Hats will only be up for Saturday, but if you really like one, they're for sale: see Giardini Gifts for payment. Then go home and think hard about exactly where to put it...
Bamboo and I have been arch-enemies for a long time, ever since a house I owned in Melbourne had a back-yard full of it.
So it's nice to walk through a grove of eight-foot-high bamboo knowing it's rootless and can only proliferate at temperatures above 1500 degrees F.
I'm talking about the current Bryan Rubino show at Fulcrum Gallery. The glass artist, whose name will be familiar to many from his 2006 copyright tiff with Dale Chihuly, has been working on this bamboo series for a couple of years now out of his Shelton studio, and Fulcrum owner Oliver Doriss--who worked on Rubino's glassblowing team years ago when he first broke away from Chihuly Inc.--is pleased to be the first local gallery to show Rubino's work in a while.
Says Doriss: "No-one else will touch Bryan's work right now. But my view of Chihuly's lawsuit is that it's funny. Chihuly started the lawsuit without actually putting copyright on his ideas."
Doriss is a fan of Rubino's work, and for good reason: his work is well-made and, mostly, aesthetically excellent. "Odysseus' Garden" is Fulcrum's biggest show to date, and completely fills the front and middle rooms of the Hilltop space. The central theme is the bamboo: tall canes of glass, varying from around 1-3 inches in diameter, set into floor-boxes in "groves." Not all the colors work equally well: the blood-red "Crimson" at the front is fiery and strong, but the green looks a little odd and the "Autumn" set in the middle room (olive to brown to gold to tangerine) reminds me of Walgreens holiday decorations. But the clear glass "Winter" grove opposite the red is stunning, catching the light and playing with the street scene outside. None of the groves has the same floor-box: Rubino seems to be experimenting with what works and what's necessary (the neon bamboo, for instance, need boxes which hide the transformer) and some look better than others. (The fake black sand is the most Vegas-casino-ish, the solid boxes the most elegant.)
On the walls are some glass flowers that erupt very Chihuly-esque from their spurting stamens, and on pedestals are a variety of glass sculptures: clear, bubbly "Ocean Life" forms that combine octopus and starfish in a swaying curve of arms; cane-work vessels that imitate Lino Tagliapietra (one of Rubino's mentors,) some agave-shaped "Florals" that would make great board-room decorations.
It's a bit of a mish-mash installation, but completely worth seeing.
"Odysseus' Garden" is up at Fulcrum Gallery through August 17. Thursdays 6-9 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays 12-6 p.m. and by appointment. 1308 MLK Jr. Way, Tacoma. 253-520-0250, fulcrum.oliverdoriss.com
