posts by Alec Clayton
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Susan Christian returns to Salon Refu (now the studio of artist Lucy Gentry and renamed LGM Studios) with an exhibition of new paintings and constructions called Take a Break. In Christian’s most recent previous exhibition, she showed a group of long, thin paintings that were all about …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Dry Powder is billed as a comedy, and yes there is a lot of humor in this tale of high-finance shenanigans. But there’s a lot of searing drama as well, as Jenny (the versatile Helen Harvester), Jeff (the comedic Ryan Holmberg), Seth (film actor Brian S. Lewis) …
By Alec Clayton [quote]Arts Walk is a preview for my Olympia friends and collectors of my new collection of work. – Debra Van Tuinen[/quote] Barlow Palminteri, featured artist for Arts Walk at Art House Design, is well-known for his realistic, sharply focused paintings of interiors, often peopled by friends. The people and objects in his …
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS John Logan’s dramatic two-man show Red at Olympia Little Theatre is engaging, intelligent and highly intense. It is a tour de force for actors Christopher Valcho as the painter Mark Rothko and John Tuttle-Gates as his studio assistant, Ken, and for director Jim Patrick. At an hour …
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Carol Hannum is an underappreciated local treasure. Her art has been shown in museums and galleries and is in private and public collections worldwide, including many in Lacey and Olympia, and she has taught at South Puget Sound Community College. And yet a glance at her resume …
By Alec Clayton The angst, artistic sensibility and intelligence of the great abstract-expressionist painter Mark Rothko will be on display — raw nerve ends and all — when Olympia Little Theatre brings to the stage John Logan’s dramatic two-man show Red, directed by Jim Patrick and starring Christopher Valcho as Rothko and John Tuttle as …
Visual Art Review by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Photo: “Poised” pastel by Barbara Noonan, courtesy Childhood’s End Gallery Barbara Noonan’s work at Childhood’s End Gallery was announced like too many other landscape displays — pretty, predictable and unimaginative. But when one visits the gallery in person, the work communicates a surface quality and an …
By Alec Clayton September promises to be a stellar month for events at Olympia’s Orca Books. Richard Robbins will read from his book Body Turn to Rain: New & Selected Poems. Other readings include Atrophy by Jackson Burgess, joined by musical guests Jesse Branch and Mortimer, and Craig Holt from his Hard Dog to Kill. …
By Alec Clayton Browsers Bookshop has a full schedule of art exhibits, book readings and book-club discussions in its newly remodeled event area upstairs. The art exhibit for August will feature paintings by Olympia’s Brett Rude, a self-taught artist whose work relates to the color-field artists of the mid-20th century. Browsers hosts, not one, not …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The subtitle “the stage mother of all musicals” only begins to hint at what this campy musical is all about. It is a parody on just about everything, from Gypsy and Mame to The Bad Seed and all About Eve, and most of the female actors belt …