Street Art Serves as Foundation for Olympia Artists

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 …

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Susan Aurand: Realism Meets Experimentation Meets Mysterious

By ALEC CLAYTON Almost everyone familiar with the Olympia art scene knows – or should know – Susan Aurand’s work. For many years, beginning in 1974, she taught at The Evergreen State College, and over the years she’s shown her art in such local venues as Childhood’s End Gallery and South Puget Sound Community College …

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Art Takes Flight Inside Hummingbird Studio

By ALEC CLAYTON On a Wednesday morning in November, over 20 people gather around two long tables in downtown Olympia’s Hummingbird Studio. They’re students at The Evergreen State College, or they’re from the Transitions Program of Olympia School District, which provides opportunities to envision the potential for post-secondary education. As the Transitions website puts it, …

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Paintings by Bill Collins and Collages by Gail Ramsey Wharton at Allsorts Gallery

ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Bill Collins and Gail Ramsey Wharton are the perfect pairing for a Halloween show. The imagery in Wharton’s collages is bizarre and highly inventive, and Collins’s recent paintings of houses and cars are downright spooky. Plus, the weirdness in both is done with tongue firmly planted in …

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Melinda Hurst Frye and Cyrra Robinson Show What Lies Beneath at SPSCC

ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The exhibition now showing in the gallery at South Puget Sound Community College is amazingly lush and gorgeous. Called “What Lies Beneath,” the show features photographs by Seattle artist Melinda Hurst Frye and sculpture by Olympia-based Cyrra Robinson. The works from each — while more realistic than …

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Marilyn Frasca Offers Open Moments at Childhood’s End Gallery

By ALEC CLAYTON It is a rare artist who gets invited to mount a one-person show at Childhood’s End Gallery. According to owner Richenda Richardson, there have only been 20 solo exhibits out of approximately 400 in its 43 years. Three have been by Marilyn Frasca. Frasca’s show for Arts Walk will have about 50 …

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Text and Texture Collide at Bucks Fifth Avenue

By ALEC CLAYTON Rubbings as an art form are in Devon Damonte’s blood. He says he’s “deep into the rubbings world.” His father did brass rubbings back in the 1970s, and Damonte says he “spent hours with his dad rubbing gravestones.” He says printmaking, however, was his first love as an adult artist. For Arts …

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The Edges of Belonging (and Not Belonging)

By ALEC CLAYTON The cover art for this year’s Olympia Arts Walk map is fabric art by Faith Hagenhofer. The piece is called “Held Dear” and features a baby’s onesie, perhaps the most evocative of all memorabilia, surrounded by squares with a ruffled edge and topped by a fan. The onesie is a deep purple …

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A Cornucopia of Art at The Artists’ Gallery

ART REVIEW By Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS New to Olympia is The Artists’ Gallery in the Capital Mall Promenade north of the mall and next door to Massage Envy. The Artists’ Gallery is an artist-run cooperative gallery occupying a large exhibition space with two roomy front rooms and additional rooms in back. Visitors are …

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