posts that will be on the front page
By Alec Clayton A collection of 50 small Sumi artworks from 22 members of Puget Sound Sumi Artists fills the walls at the Fifth Avenue Loft Gallery. “There’s a good cross section of traditional sumi-e and contemporary mark-making in the show, which more and more of our members are trying,” says artist, teacher, calligrapher Sally …
Annual festival showcases world-class cartoonists, and now includes a wedding! By NED HAYES Olympia’s Comics Festival returns on Saturday, June 15. This free exposition was created in 2001 by Danger Room proprietor Frank Hussey and has grown tremendously over the past 19 years. This year’s day-long festival expo will feature more than 50 tables with …
By NOAH SHACHAR Some movies win Academy Awards, are nearly forgotten and hardly spoken about again. Some movies are simply boring, while others are entertaining or insightful. But a few movies ignite themselves in a blazing pyre to emerge as a phoenix from smoldering ashes ever livelier, more passionate and mesmerizingly intriguing — growing and …
By Billy Thomas The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, one of Olympia’s premier performing arts spaces since 1985, has announced their recipient of the Anacker Scholarship for the Arts. The scholarship is provided each year to a graduating high school senior from Thurston County who plans to study and pursue a career in the …
By Molly Walsh Belfair – home to a population of about 4,000 – boasts quite an art scene, with the Salmon Center being no exception. As the headquarters for non-profit organization Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, the 38-acre Salmon Center is a certified organic farm and hub of environmental education and art for North Mason …
By JONAH BARRETT Intersectionality is not a new word — it was first coined by black, feminist scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989 to describe how discussions of feminism and racism often left out black women — but it’s recently made its way into the mainstream vernacular. At least that’s true in queer spaces, especially …
By KAREN LUNDE Back in the mid-1920s, the Liberty Theatre, a vaudeville house, contained a Wurlitzer 2/9 theater pipe organ. After a renovation in 1948, the Liberty became the Olympic Theater. In the 1980s, it was completely rebuilt and evolved into The Washington Center for the Performing Arts. Throughout the building’s evolution, the mighty Wurlitzer …
By CHRISTIAN CARVAJAL Back in 1991, the population of Olympia was seven-tenths of what it is now, and stunning social paradigm shifts remained over the visible horizon. Legal, same-sex marriage in Washington State was a generation away — yet our town was already demonstrating its support of what came to be known as the queer …
By MOLLY GILMORE With her bright smile and warm personality, Jacque Dennee-Lee — who’ll serve as marshal of the Capital City Pride Parade on June 23 — helped many in Olympia find comfort with LGBTQ+ people. Dennee-Lee (whose first name is pronounced “Jackie”) worked from the early 1980s to 2010 as a bus driver with …
By ALEC CLAYTON This year’s Capital City Pride award for activist of the year goes to Cameron Combs, activist, trans man, writer and president of the Pizza Klatch board of directors. Combs grew up in Thurston County and went to Tumwater schools. “I know firsthand,” says Combs, “what it’s like to be an LGBTQ+ youth …