By Anna Schlecht In early July, I first saw one of the Little Brothers statues at twilight while driving across the Isthmus. My eyes were sweeping back and forth from the harbor to the Heritage Fountain in the fading light. Suddenly my eyes fixed on the small statue of the child near the fountain because it looked somehow different. Then …
By Anna Schlecht Nearly 50 stone monuments across the US have recently come down, leaving voids in our town squares and college campuses. Whether by government decree or Black Lives Matter (BLM) protester actions, these downed statues have opened up the space to rethink who and how we chose to symbolize our history and inspire …
By Anna Schlecht On March 16, 2020, I rolled into Equal Latin with a friend for what was likely the last happy hour for the foreseeable future. Like bars and restaurants across the state, Equal Latin was virtually empty with the owners and staff trying to make sense of the Governor’s order. Their familiar faces were …
By Anna Schlecht Money was tight when I was little so there weren’t many treats. My Dad used to take one stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum and tear it into seven pieces, one for each of us. We didn’t have much, but we savored what we had. And we shared it equally. I told that …
By Anna Schlecht Olympia has become a “city of murals”, with an ever-growing number of large format artworks on walls across the urban hub and beyond. Some murals appear overnight, executed without payment or permission. Others are juried by experts and commissioned for thousands of dollars. Into this pantheon of public art enters a unique …
An Olympia resident for 45 years, Schlecht has a day job in local government and on the weekends can be found coordinating a volunteer paint crew and supporting public art & murals.