Casey Bruce and Frank Hussey of Danger Room

Casey Bruce and Frank Hussey: Heroes of Danger Room

by Christina Butcher for OLY ARTS Occasionally, we all stumble across real places that make us feel like we’re in a fictional world, places where we can do or be anything we want. Olympia has at least one of those places tucked right into the heart of the downtown area. You can feel the shift …

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Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe in Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at Harlequin Productions

Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe: Born for the Stage

by Kelli Samson for OLY ARTS With her jazzy voice, inflamed red hair and that mischievous twinkle in her eye, Harlequin Productions’s resident secret weapon has for years been none other than actor Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe. She’s currently gracing Harlequin’s State Theater stage as both Miss Erikson and Lady Saltburn in Present Laughter. She describes this …

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Emma's Revolution

Emma’s Revolution CD-Release Concert

by Christina Butcher for OLY ARTS Emma’s Revolution, the hard-hitting duo of activist-musicians Pat Humphries and Sandy O., will hold a CD-release concert at Traditions Café and World Folk art to celebrate the release of their new album, Revolution Now. They’ve been creating and performing music together for 25 years, all while working to spread …

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Madison Lion, photo by Xandrabeast

Madison Elementary School Adopts a Lion

by Christina Butcher for OLY ARTS Although this year’s Procession of the Species has come and gone, the festivities continue to have a resounding impact on at Madison Elementary School. Earlier this spring, the student body adopted an iconic procession-art piece and joined the parade for the first time. “Participating in the procession was a …

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Capital Indie Book Con

Capital Indie Book Con 2

by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS Inspired by the sci-fi and fantasy conventions where she promotes and sells her work, Olympia author Lee French started her own convention focused solely on books. “I go to a lot of science fiction and fantasy conventions because that’s what I write,” French said in a phone interview Monday. …

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Pug Bujeaud

Pug Bujeaud: Superwoman

by Christian Carvajal for OLY ARTS For many people, theater is a way of life. For Olympia-born Pug Bujeaud, it began as a way of staying alive. “I had social anxiety before those things were talked about,” Bujeaud says. “I was so shy in high school that I would walk around the outside of the …

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Pigs on the Wing

Pigs on the Wing Take Flight

by Adam McKinney for OLY ARTS The Wall, a flamboyant, nearly 90-minute concept album, is a towering monument of self-indulgence — and in this case, that’s a good thing. It’s a textbook example of a band given free rein to follow every tangential whim and conceptual side street, but the resulting record is chock-full of …

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"Phoebe 1," oil on wood panel by Peter Scherrer

REVIEW: Jean Nagai and Peter Scherrer

VISUAL ARTS REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Salon Refu ends its brief but amazing history as the only gallery in South Puget Sound to rival major galleries in major cities by offering a two-person show of works by Jean Nagai and Peter Scherrer. The gallery closes its doors at the end of this …

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Susan Christian

Susan Christian: Painter and Gallerist

by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS One might think, if one pored through painter and gallery owner Susan Christian’s biography, that she’s the kind of creative being one might expect to have seen hanging out with Picasso and Hemingway at Gertrude Stein’s salons at the beginning of the 20th century, or later at gatherings of …

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Charging, archival digital print by Joe Hedges

REVIEW: Joe Hedges at SPSCC

VISUAL ARTS REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS If Joe Hedges is trying to convey a message, I don’t get it. But as purely aesthetic objects and images, they’re fascinating; and perhaps that’s the point, that they make the viewer wonder what’s going on, what kind of future world we’ve entered. The largest and …

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