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:
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"Freeing Silvia Baraldini," a documentary about an 1980s political activist showing at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival Friday and in Olympia June 18, was made by former Gig Harbor and Olympia resident Lisa Thomas.
Thomas grew up in Gig Harbor (1990 graduate of Gig Harbor High School) and attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia where she was a member of the Olympia Film Society.
So who is Silvia Baraldini? According to Thomas and co-filmmaker Margo Pelletier:
Silvia Baraldini, anti-war, anti-racist activist was sentenced to 43 years in prison in 1982 in part for her participation in freeing Black Panther, Assata Shakur from prison. “Freeing Silvia Baraldini” revisits the decisive events, political and personal that forged the young Italian immigrant into an American radical. In the 1980’s when hundreds of politically minded people folded back into the comforts of American society, Silvia deepened her commitment to revolutionary struggle. She became the National leader of the May 19th Communist Organization.
The filmmakers, both based in New York state, spent eight years making the movie. Pelletier, director of the movie, said she came to New York in 1979 to be an artist. But, exposed to the social conditions and radical elements of New York City, she also became an activist.
A turning point came during a demonstration in 1981 against apartheid at a New York City airport. "It went kind of badly. Several of us went to prison," Pelletier said. She was convicted of criminal trespassing and resisting arrest. She served six months on Rikers Island.
Pelletier says she chose Baraldini as the subject for her first film because the Italian activist "could not tolerate injustice." Baraldini was eventually released from prison and now lives in Italy.
For Thomas, the motivation was to preserve history. She wanted to document the politics before they were lost.
"The more I started to look into it the more I thought, 'This story has to get out'," Thomas said.
The documentary will show Friday in Seattle at 7:20 p.m. at the Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave. and at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 18 at the Olympia Film Society, 206 5th Ave. SE in Olympia.
It may be tiny, but there's a lot of art going on at the Telephone Room over the next week.
The one-room gallery inside the North-end house of artist Heide Fernandez-Llamazares is having two open houses: one today, to close the current show, and one next Wednesday, to open the next. The gallery, which Fernandez-Llamazares and co-organizers Ellen Ito and Marty Gengenbach call the world's second-smallest gallery (what's the smallest? The Tollbooth, of course), measures just 12 1/2 square feet. It's an original room in the Dutch Colonial house, built with curvy shelves to accomodate those wishing to have a private conversation on the black rotary dial phone (which still works, by the way.)
Since the room is pretty unusable for anything else, the artists decided to convert it into a gallery. It can fit about three medium-size flat works, lots of small ones, or maybe one medium installation (can't wait to see that, maybe the tiny room crammed with giant balloons a la Western Bridge?!) And since it's in Heide's house, you have to email to set up an appointment - unless there's an open house.
Which there is, tonight. The current show "Home Sweet Home," featuring Laura and Paul Komada of Seattle and Noal Nyland of Lakewood, is almost over - last chance to see it is from 5-8 p.m. Paul Komada's hand-knit Mondriaan-ish geometry mixes cozy texture and strict form in a pleasing way. Nyland (brother of Nicholas) creates a mapped landscape of greens and gray-blues with quilted fabric, the pieces chopped out like deer-bites in a rose bush, calm but disconnected. Laura Komada's watercolors are simple but strong: My favorite is the untitled Big Foot next to a fir tree, their shadows looming far beyond the reality.
Next open house is for Jeremy Mangan, who just won the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation Arts Award, and who'll be creating a life-size 3D painting of a shot-dead old-west gunfighter in a pine box. (That'll make it extremely crowded in the Telephone Room, which fits about two viewers at a time.) Rumor has it that he'll also be leading a beer mug ice-carving session in the backyard, complete with local microbrews. That's 5-9 p.m. June 17. I'll be there.
So where is the Telephone Room? Email thetelephoneroom@gmail.com to RSVP and find out the address. You can also visit www.thetelephoneroom.blogspot.com for info.
