Thursday, November 29, 2012

Fumiko Kimura show, Fall Invitational Exhibition, Beautiful Angle and more ...

A few good things around town


by Alec Clayton
The Weekly Volcano
Nov. 29, 2012
Acrylic painting by Barlow Palminteri, Pierce College Puyallup
Note: I wrote this before seeing some of the work, and I confused the two shows on the Pierce College website, one at the Steilacoom campus and the other at the Puyallup campus. Forgive me, Ron Swarner and Volcano readers.

I did not get to see an art exhibit last week. So it's a good time to write an overview of what's happening in the South Sound art world.

The last two shows I reviewed were fabulous. They'll be showing for quite a while, and I highly recommend you see them. I'm talking about, of course, "Andy Warhol's Flowers for Tacoma" at Tacoma Art Museum and Ray Turner's portraits on glass at Museum of Glass.

Otherwise, there's the Fumiko Kimura show at Flow, held over through February due to "overwhelming response," according to gallery owner Andrea Erickson. I like to think the response is because of my review in the Weekly Volcano but it could be due to a nice article by Rosemary Ponnekanti in The News Tribune.

The show is a mini retrospective of Kimura's show with works from 1990 to 2005, many of which have never been exhibited, and also works by other sumi artists who have worked with or studied with Kumura. The gallery will be open Saturday, Dec. 8, 2-4 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 20, 5-8 p.m. and by appointment.
There are juried student shows at University of Puget Sound and Pacific Lutheran University, and probably the best non-museum show in the area, the Fall Invitational Exhibition at Pierce College.

In the Pierce College show you can expect to see work by some of the better artists in the South Puget Sound. Among my favorites are Barlow Palminteri and Becky Knold, both Olympia artists. Palminteri paints amazing portraits of himself and others in his studio, usually with images doubled and tripled by mirrors and stacked paintings - all brilliantly colored with lots of burning reds and oranges. Knold's quiet abstract paintings are the opposite of Palminteri's bombastic scenes, and she has a sense of balance and contrast and sensitivity to space that I suspect is mostly intuitive.

Figurative paintings by Robert Koch are being shown at Pierce County Steilacoom. Iwill review this one for the Dec. 6 Weekly Volcano.
"Street Musicians" watercolor by
Charles Salak at Pierce College Puyallup
Finally, at the end of the month Fulcrum Gallery opens a show of poster art from Beautiful Angle called "The Mystery/Myth Folio." And they're kicking it off with the Beautiful Angle Holiday Party & Show Opening Nov. 30. Beautiful Angle, the guerilla poster people, has been doing their thing for 10 years. The opening party coincides with their annual poster sale, and all money collected from the poster sale will go to Campus MLK to support their various programs. There will be plenty of food, drink, music, posters and the best crowd in town. Party starts at 7 p.m. Friday.

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