The Fall/Winter print edition of Oly Arts magazine is published! Copies of the printed version are available free of charge throughout the area – find out where you can pick up a copy and see a list of articles in this issue.
It’s improbable — or maybe even downright impossible — that anyone could take in the abundance of plays, performances and exhibitions happening in Olympia and environs. That’s an excellent problem to have, as far as the Arts Aficionado is concerned, but if you’d like help narrowing down the options, Molly Gilmore is at your service.
The art shared in the show “From Hwagae Market to Pike Place Market” at South Sound Community College through October 16 is from fourteen artists selected from the Korean American Artists Association of Washington, which makes for a very mixed response to the theme aesthetically, with styles ranging from surreal painterly studies, still life and folk art in style, to collage, wire work, and installations.
Many area residents and visitors have loved participating in the South Sound Studio Tour, seeing local artists’ creations up close and personal, talking with the artists about their art, and in many instances watching the magic of turning blank sheets of paper or canvas, hunks of clay or found materials into works of art. Now the Studio Tour is looking for volunteers to serve on the board, specifically, to fill the Outreach Coordinator and Volunteer Coordinator roles.
Molly Gilmore “Arts Aficionado” #12 — September 16, 2026
Grand Stories, Van Tuinen Retrospective and Last Chance for ‘Kiss’
— StoryOly Grand Slam
— 57 years of art
— ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’
Molly Gilmore “Arts Aficionado” #9 — August 26, 2026
— Sleater-Kinney Rockin’ the Block
— Art on the Farm
— ‘Improbable Peck of Plays’ returns
— ‘Broadcast News’ on Big Screen
https://olyarts.org/arts-aficionado-week-of-august-26-2026/
You know how the race ended — but the story was just beginning. Lightwire Theater’s The Adventures of Tortoise and Hare: The Next Gen picks up a decade after the finish line, where Old Man Tortoise and Big Daddy Hare are now fathers navigating a world of smartphones and video games. When Tortoise Junior and …
Molly Gilmore “Arts Aficionado” #2 — July 8, 2026
— Get thee to a gallery and take your pick of parks
— SPSCC Regional Juried Exhibition returns
— Music in the parks
— Concerts at Tumwater Falls
Susan Christian has lived in Olympia for 54 years and she has been central to the arts community here. Irritated that there were few places for artists to show art, in 2011 she started Salon Refu Gallery downtown. There she showed many local artists, held poetry readings, book readings, and artist talks. It was a joyous hub of the local arts community. Speaking of her own work, Christian says she very intentionally doesn’t paint pictures of things, nor suggestions of things either. She describes her work as someone “touching the surface.” She points out that art needs to be visible and, not one for complacency, she was “not going to let people go to sleep.”
Slow Work is an excellent art exhibition featuring paintings on wooden lathe with a sea full of blue by Susan Christian and bonfire fired pottery by Steve Belz at Childhood’s End Gallery in Olympia — thought provoking, deceptively simple and beautiful art. This is a must-see exhibition through July 26.