Debra Van Tuinen at Arts Walk

By Alec Clayton

Note: When parts of this article were published in two different publications, OLY ARTS and the Weekly Volcano, I decided publishing it on my blog was duplicitous, but on second thought, I think it needs to be published as a single article. 

Debra Van Tuinen’s latest paintings in oil over acrylic are the culmination and apotheosis of a long and ongoing career in art. They are large (many up to 88 inches in height), bold and brimming with color. These larger paintings are from her latest series. Each painting in the series — and you can expect to see as many as 20 to 25 of them in this spring Arts Walk, plus many of her smaller works in encaustic.

Typically the larger paintings are two colors only, swathes of a bright color such as white, yellow, red or blue, over a field of a darker color. Free flowing like waves washed upon a beach, the bright colors are applied in wide and rhythmical strokes that vary from transparent washes to places where the paint builds up into heavy, opaque ridges.

These paintings are abstract but inspired by nature. In addition to these, Van Tuinen will be showing a large selection of her latest works in encaustic on wood panels. Local art lovers know she has been famous for her encaustic paintings for decades. These latest ones are abstractions based on waterfalls and other elements of nature and employ sumi painting techniques and dark passages reminiscent of Franz Kline’s black and white paintings but with complex layering and transparencies.

Van Tuinen was already well known in the Olympia area when I moved here in 1988, and she’s been working tirelessly ever since. Many locals will remember her studio down by the Farmers Market and the large encaustic painting that for years hung over the reception desk at the Olympian office when it was on 4^th Avenue. She has also shown her work in galleries all over the states. When I visited her studio to see her latest works, she was getting ready to send paintings to Atlanta. Her work is represented by galleries in Bellevue; Portland; Bridgehampton, New York; Calgary; Denver; Los Angeles; Vancouver, BC; and London, England. This is big time, folks. She's the real deal. Just now as I am finishing this article I got an email from Van Tuinen saying, “My gallery in LA just called yesterday and they love the new work.  He is presenting 14 of the large paintings to his client and collector. I am feeling really good about this because I am painting what I love and worked toward for so many years.”

She will be showing at Waterstreet Café during Arts Walk. Also showing at Waterstreet will be sculpture by Bob Coble.

Arts walk is Friday, April 27, 5-10 p.m. and Saturday, April 28, noon-8 p.m. Waterstreet Café is at 610 Water Street, Olympia.

Review: The Pillowman

By Alec Clayton

Published in The News Tribune, April 27, 2018

from left: Andrew Fry, Jacob Tice and Christian Carvajal, all photos by Dennis K Photographer

“The Pillowman” at Tacoma Little Theatre is a dark and brutal comedy not suitable for children or for the squeamish, but brilliantly written by Martin McDonough and staged by director Blake York.

This is the first play set outside of Ireland by celebrated Irish playwright McDonough, author of the Academy Award-winning “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri” and the plays “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.”

Jacob Tice and Christian Carvajal

Sean Neely and Jacob Tice

The setting for the play is a bleak police interrogation room in an unnamed totalitarian state (there are hints, including some character names, that it is somewhere in Eastern Europe). Katurian (Jacob Tice) and his brother Michael (Sean Neely) are brought in for questioning about a string of gruesome murders of young children. The cops who question them in a gallows-humor spin on a good cop-bad cop routine are Tupolski (Andrew Fry) and Ariel (Christian Carvajal). The reason the brothers are suspected is many of Katurian’s short stories resemble the murders. When Katurian finds out, Michael, whom Katurian describes as childlike and "slow to get things,” is there and being kept by the police in another offstage interrogation room, Katurian is infuriated.

All the four major characters are complex and multi-layered men, and each, with the possible exception of Michael, turns out to be quite different than they at first seem. The “good cop” is sly, manipulative and cold-hearted beneath his kindly exterior, and the “bad” cop, who is anxious to torture and brutalize both Katurian and Michael, turns out to have a heart after all.

McDonough’s writing is intricately and beautifully constructed and full of surprises. The story is both bleak and funny, with hints of Tom Stoppard and Franz Kafka, and even Grimm’s fairy tales, which are alluded to by Katurian. The jailhouse setting reminds me of Theater Artists Olympia’s production of George Orwell’s “1984.”

Tice is proving to be one of the South Sound’s most versatile actors, totally different in every role he takes on. As Katurian he appears to be sponge-like, adapting his personality to suit the situation from moment to moment, and achingly vulnerable throughout. His character is never off stage.

Carvajal plays Ariel as an almost insane brute, bursting with constrained nervous energy. It’s worth the price of admission just to watch the way he smokes a cigarette (no actual smoke).

Fry plays Tupolski as one of the kindest and most normal of a group of bizarre characters, but audiences can sense his underlying sadistic streak.

Seattle actor Neely, new to Tacoma stages, is simply stupendous as Michael. His physical quirks and hesitant manner of speech perfectly express the psyche of an abused person. Neely and Carvajal each auditioned only for their particular roles and no other, and each said Michael and Ariel, respectively, were dream roles.  

There are four other actors who do not have speaking roles, who are excellent but about whom I shall not say anything because the scenes they are in should come as a surprise, and I do not want to spoil it. It’s a great bit of staging by Blake.

“The Pillowman” is not recommended for children younger than 13. There is as much profanity as in a Tarantino movie, and there is violence, blood and a gunshot. Yet despite all the gore, there is much humor and a heartfelt look into the complexities of human beings.

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through May 6

WHERE: Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 North I Street, Tacoma

TICKETS: $20-$24, pay what you can May 3

INFORMATION: (253) 272-2281, www.tacomalittletheatre.com

Olympia Arts Walk 2018

"These Three Things" metal sculpture by Lisa Geertsen, courtesy of the artist.

Lisa Geertsen A Show of Hearts

by Alec Clayton

Published in the Weekly Volcano, April 26, 2018

Seattle metal sculptor and blacksmith Lisa Geertsen will be the featured artist at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts during Olympia’s Arts Walk Friday and Saturday, April 27-28. Her show will continue until June 22.

She will be showing about 40 pieces from the “Show of Hearts.” The works are sculpted metal hearts — not Valentine’s hearts but the organs that beat in the chests of humans and other animals. Many of them are wall-hanging pieces, and others are free standing. They range in size from one to five feet in height. There will even be one as small as three inches that she will be wearing as a pendant around her neck at the opening.

She began the series in 2005 and hopes to create 100 pieces before moving on to something else. She says she’s about halfway to reaching that goal, and works from the beginning to current pieces will be included in the show.

“I began this project with ‘Release Your Heavy Heart’, an interactive sculpture I made for a fundraising event,” Geertsen says. “This spawned the idea of the heart series. These works stem from words ... song lyrics, common phrases, books, poems, names of plants, things I hear people say ... I begin with the words and interpret them into metal. This is my challenge and I love it.”

Geertsen’s work ranges from architectural fabrication to site-specific sculptures. She is the owner of Firelight Forge. She is a blacksmithing instructor and Metal and Stone Sculpture Studio Manager at Pratt Fine Arts Center since 2007.

Outside the Center, Student Orchestra of Greater Olympia’s “Pet the Instruments” will perform, while a Hand’s On Children’s Museum activity will take place in the Black Box.

Olympia’s spring Arts Walk is two days of art, entertainment and a wide mixture of activities in hundreds of venues all over downtown.

Saturday will be the dedication of the Music Out Loud Mosaic, mosaics embedded in the sidewalks honoring local music legends Vern Eke (design by Jennifer Kuhns), Steve Munger (design by Nathan Barnes) and Bert Wilson (design by Michele A. Burton). There will be a walking tour of the mosaics beginning at noon Saturday at the corner of 4th Avenue and Chestnut.

Possibly the largest and most exciting art exhibit during Arts Walk will be new paintings by Debra van Tuinen, truly one of Olympia’s best loved visual artists. She will be showing 50 or more recent paintings, many as large as 88 inches in height. They are bright and vibrant abstract paintings based on natural phenomena such as waterfalls and waves washed upon a beach, depicted in free flowing areas of nuanced colors applied in wide and rhythmical strokes that vary from transparent washes to places where the paint builds up into heavy, opaque edges. These paintings will be shown along with works by Bab Coble at Waterstreet Café.

In Sylvester Park there will be a free speech area. Smooth jazz guitarist Vince Brown will perform at The Mouse Trap and other venues. Artist Faith Hagenhofen will show work at Pete Lea’s Automotive. Chris Maynard will show his intricate feather creations at Capitol Florist. China Star’s art will be at the Brotherhood Lounge. Mia Shulte’s beautiful abstract paintings will be on display at Fosbre Academy, and all this is but a tiny fraction of what’s on tap for Arts Walk.

The famous Element of Spirit Luminary Procession will be Friday night at 9:30 and the Procession of the Species Saturday at 4:40 p.m. Complete details and a map to all activities and exhibitions are available at http://olympiawa.gov/city-services/parks/artswalk.aspx.

Arts Walk, April 28-29, various venues downtown Olympia

We Sit Together the Mountain and Me

Anne Appleby  at Tacoma Art Museum

By Alec Clayton

published in the Weekly Volcano, April 26, 2018

"Moving Trees," single-channel digital pojection, by Anne appleby, courtesy of the artist and Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco

There are artists with whom art lovers simply cannot connect. They can’t enjoy their work even though they understand and appreciate its importance. Picasso is a prime example. Surely everyone knowledgeable of art appreciates the importance of his work, yet there are many who, despite this appreciation, cannot stand the harsh distortions of some of his images. Mark Rothko is another artist we can admire, but whose paintings are boring to many people — some who do not like Picasso or Rothko or other acknowledged masters might even be ashamed to admit their dislike. I say all this by way of explaining my reaction to Anne Appleby’s art now showing at Tacoma Art Museum. I admire the work, dedication and intelligence manifested in her paintings, but they leave me feeling as blank as her mostly monotone canvases.

Appleby lays down layer after layer of paint — up to 20 layers, I was told — to create a luminescence that mirrors the light of the snow-covered mountains near her home studio in Montana’s Elkhorn Mountains. I can’t imagine any other artist being so close to nature.

“I think my role is to capture beauty. I think so because it's the central doctrine of so many religions — it's the reverence for the creator of the creation. It’s a feeling, like beauty, both inside and out,” Appleby says.

Many of her paintings are executed in multiple panels, each panel a square or rectangle of what appears to be a single, unmodulated color representing trees or mountains during different seasons or times of day. There are subtle modulations in color and texture, however, that can be detected only with extreme attention to detail.

I must confess that I am like the people who might be capable of appreciating certain masterworks even though they might not particularly enjoy them. The appreciation of art might be mostly intellectual, but the enjoyment of art rests on pure gut feelings.

I trust some of my readers — hopefully many — will be able to get the full contemplative and reverential effect of Appleby’s paintings.

“I’m interested in getting people to slow down a little bit, so they can see the world differently by awakening their sensibilities,” Appleby says.

One large gallery at TAM is filled with her paintings, most created within the past year or two. In addition to the paintings, there is a digital projection that runs on a 3-minute, 24-second loop called “Moving Trees.” The screen hangs from the gallery ceiling like a room divider. On it we see trees slowly moving in the wind as snow drifts down. Like some of the paintings, but perhaps even more compelling, this digital image creates the feeling of standing among the trees on the mountain and being engulfed in nature.

I hope readers of this column will take the artist’s advice and “slow down a little bit, so they can see the world differently.”

Anne Appleby, We Sit Together the Mountain and Me, Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., through June 3, $13-$15, third Thursday free 5-8 p.m., Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave. Tacoma, http://www.tacomaartmuseum.org/

Hart James’s Zen at Allsorts Gallery

by Alec Clayton

Published in the Weekly Volcano, April 19, 2018

“Dog Head Falls.  Dissolving Rock.  Vermont Studio Center,” oil and charcoal on canvas by Hart James, courtesy Allsorts Gallery

Hart James is fairly new to the Olympia art scene. I first saw her work in 2013, at which time she was showing a group of flowery collages that verged on surrealism. Soon after she began showing solid, heavy landscapes perhaps influenced by Cezanne.  landscapes that were solid and somewhat heavy looking in a Cezannesque manner. Tree trunks and limbs were painted as strong angular marks that broke the canvas into flat fields of color, and mountains were slabs of heavy paint.

Over the past year she has been posting pictures on Facebook that indicate her painting has taken giant leaps forward, especially since spending a winter studying at the Vermont Studio School. Now South Sound art lovers get to see some 20 of these new paintings at Allsorts Gallery in Olympia. And they are stunners — vibrant, energetic paintings of mountains, lakes and rivers in a thoroughly modernist manner verging on conventional 1950s Abstract Expressionism. 

James’s latest paintings are in oil and charcoal on canvas, some stretched but unframed and others not on stretchers but tacked directly to the wall. They are gutsy. She attacks the canvas with an odd combination of gusto and finesse. Many of the ones in the front room are referred to in titles written directly on the canvas as “Sketches,” and there is clearly a sketchy quality to them. The paint application is thick in areas with large swaths of paint slathered on, and thin as water in other areas with washes of color that soak into the canvas run in rivulets. This group of paintings are the strongest and liveliest in the show. The paintings on stretched canvas in the other room have a more painterly, less sketchy look. We see more rocks and sky, and clearly defined mountain ranges and trees. Her use of charcoal enlivens the surface with angular and jagged black lines that in many instances look like dry brush or oil stick drawing.

There is a triptych called “Makah Spirits” that harkens back to earlier work. In general, I have a personal objection to diptychs and triptychs because that they appear gimmicky. If the artist wants a 24-inch by 54-inch painting, why not paint it 24-by-54 instead of three 24-by-18 panels? All that does is break the painting into three sections, and the edges between the panels add nothing. In this painting, however, the lines created by the edges add a needed stabilizing element to a painting that without those lines might be too chaotic. 

It is impossible to pick a single favorite painting in this show, but if I were forced to I would choose “December Sketch, Doghead Falls, Vermont Studio Center.” I see it not as a painting but as a drawing in oil and charcoal. The directness and spontaneity of this one is wonderfully uplifting. It looks as if she jotted down the shape of a mountain and a flowing river coming down from it in a few quick strokes, capturing the essence of the scene in one swoop of frantic energy, as if years of hard work and study coalesced in a momentary burst. This painting was done only four months ago. If it and others in the series are indicative of where James is going, she has arrived. She is also currently showing paintings in the gallery at South Puget Sound Community College and at the Department of Ecology.

Allsorts is a pop-up gallery in a private home. Hours of operation are limited.

Zen by Hart James, 5-7 p.m. Fri.-Sat, and during Arts Walk and by appointment, through April 28, artist reception 4-7 p.m. April 22, All Sorts Gallery, 2306 Capitol Way S, Olympia, https://www.facebook.com/Allsorts-Gallery,  323-254-6220

Catch Me If You Can at Tacoma Musical Playhouse

By Alec Clayton

Published in the Weekly Volcano, April 19, 2018

FBI agent Carl Hanratty, center, with the ensemble cast of “Catch Me If You Can,” photo by Kat Dollarhide

Catch Me If You Can at Tacoma Musical Playhouse is simply a lot of fun, from the opening song, “Live in Living Color” to wonderfully surprising twists at the end. Based on the film of the same title starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, this musical romp tells the tale of true-life con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. (Jake Atwood), who successfully conned people out of millions of dollars while getting away with pretending to be an airline pilot, a doctor and a prosecuting attorney, all before his 20^th birthday.

Atwood, a Playhouse favorite from musicals such as Footloose and The Addams Family, plays Abagnale as a 1960s playboy in the Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin mold. He is slick, smooth, expressive in his movement, and exudes an air of supreme confidence. Plus, he can sing and dance like nobody’s business.

Abagnale’s cons are so transparent (probably because they had to be simplified for the play) that it’s amazing anyone fell for them; yet in real life they did, over and over. And why did he do it? For fun, for riches, for women, and mostly to please his father, Frank Sr. (Jonathan Bill, also of Addams Family fame), who was himself a failed con man and a cad in an unhappy marriage to a woman he met in France while serving in the war. Early in the play, Frank Jr. catches his mother in an affair with his father’s best friend, and shortly after that his parents get divorced, and Frank Jr. runs away to begin his life of crime.

The play is kept simple and lighthearted throughout the first act with catchy show tunes like “The Pinstripes Are All They See,” a duet with Frank Jr. and Sr. in which the father explains to the son how women are attracted to a uniform; i.e., how appearances are all that matter. (The title comes from the ludicrous but funny notion that the Yankees are a winning team because of their pinstripe uniforms.)

Meanwhile, FBI Agent Carl Hanratty (John Miller) is hot on Frank’s trail, pursuing him as obsessively as Javert after Valjean.

In the second act, the story and the characters become much deeper and more layered, beginning when father and son meet in a bar and air their differences, a scene with a great duet on the song, “Little Boy Be a Man.”

It’s tempting to say that Atwood carries the show on his shoulders with his great stage presence and exuberance, but that would be to ignore other outstanding performances by the likes of Miller as Hanratty, who is like a slightly less frenetic John Belushi on a mission from God. Claire Barton is down-to-earth and lovely as Frank’s fiancée, Brenda. Her solo ballad “Fly, Fly Away” is show-stopping and heartbreaking. Bill underplays the senior Abagnale with heart, and he sings with mellow resonance. He might be a terrible father and husband, but audiences can’t help but like him. Michele Greenwood Bettinger is terrifically funny as Brenda’s mother. Three other actors who stand out wonderfully in supporting roles are Josh Anderman, Nicholas Bray and Cameron Waters as the trio of Hanratty’s underling FBI agents. And I can’t overlook the marvelous chorus of leggy showgirls in costumes by Jocelyne Fowler. I wish I could name them all; they are that good.

The story is resolved with more than one surprise ending and none of the feel-good ballyhoo expected of a stage musical. It is a satisfactory and believable ending, as it should since it is a true story.

The set by Blake York is a stunning ‘60s modernist, art nouveau-inspired airport lounge in sparkling silver with purple and blue lighting by lighting master John Chenault.

Catch Me If You Can, 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m., through April 29, Tacoma Musical Playhouse at The Narrows Theatre, 7116 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, $22-$31,

253-565-6867, http://www.tmp.org

A Condo to Kill For

Tacoma Little Theatre and The Social Bar and Grill present the murder mystery dinner theater A Condo to Kill For at directed by Karen Christensen with local actors Stacie Hart, George McClure, Brynne Geiszler, Kerry Bringman, Laurice Roberts, and Jennifer Niehaus-Rivers.

Dinner includes: Appetizer, Salad, Main Entrée (Meat, Chicken, Vegetarian/Gluten Free) & Dessert.  Coffee, Tea, Water and Soda are included, and alcohol is available for purchase at the bar or from your server.

A Condo to Kill runs May 17-20.  Thursday-Saturday performances will begin at 7:30pm, and the Sunday performance will begin at 3:00pm.

The Social Bar and Grill, 1715 Dock Street, Tacoma, WA.  RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED.

Tickets are $50.00 per person (includes dinner and show) and may be purchased online at www.tacomalittletheatre.com, or by calling our Box Office at (253) 272-2281.