posts by Alec Clayton
by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Olympia’s ever-surprising art gallery Salon Refu is instituting story time for the holiday season. Local poets, writers, storytellers and, as gallery owner Susan Christian puts it, “people of good will and excellent language skills” will read their work every Thursday through Sunday in December. During the month of December …
by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS From the coauthor of Late Nite Catechism comes the holiday comedy Sister’s Christmas Catechism: The Mystery of the Magi’s Gold for a one-night-only performance at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts. The Center calls the play “CSI: Bethlehem,” a holiday extravaganza. This comedy-mystery features “Sister,” a woman out …
by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS In December, when most theaters are doing holiday shows, Theater Artists Olympia (TAO) presents Molière’s 17th-century farce The Physician in Spite of Himself. TAO’s version of the French comedy, as adapted by Philip Wickstrom and the TAO collective and directed by Pug Bujeaud, is set in Louisiana in the …
by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The Native American Art Exhibition at South Puget Sound Community College (SPSCC) features a wide variety of works by regional Native American artists. Look for paintings, basketry, carved wood pieces, textiles and mixed-media art curated by Mandy McCullough. McCullough is an Ojibwa from White Earth, Minnesota, who has created …
VISUAL ARTS REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Works from three major installations come together in the show Tracing Genetic Inheritance: Recent Work by Geraldine Ondrizek at The Evergreen State College art gallery. This is a highly unusual, beautiful and intelligent exhibition that combines science and art in ways that should open the mind …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Now showing at Olympia Family Theater (OFT), Elephant & Piggie’s “We Are in a Play!” is a small play that packs a big wallop for kids. I was not familiar with Mo Willems’ series of Elephant & Piggy children’s books before reading about them in the program. …
VISUAL ARTS REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The exhibition of drawings and paintings by Kathy Gore Fuss at Salon Refu offers proof positive that practice makes perfect. When she started plein air painting in the dense forests in and around Olympia, then later at the gritty, industrial Port of Olympia, she found her …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Quoting director Scot Whitney’s notes in the program for Harlequin Productions’ The Two Gentlemen of Verona, “Probably no one had argued that it is (Shakespeare’s) best work. It’s not…The jokes are often cheap, strained or downright corny. And though Shakespeare always played fast and loose with time …
Olympia’s fall Arts Walk 2016 takes place on these days: Friday, October 7 (5-10 p.m.) Saturday, October 8 (noon – 5 p.m.) Think of Arts Walk as a weekend-long street party, with live music, theatrical performances and the conversion of downtown Olympia into one big gallery. It’s a showcase for the best of local arts and culture, …
by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Two Olympia-area artists have been chosen to show work in the bicoastal exhibitions Coast to Coast West in Seattle and Coast to Coast East in New York beginning in October and sponsored by The National Association of Women Artists and Women Painters of Washington. These artists are Susan Flora …