Mmm ... Frosty!

I hung out at lunch today at Frost Park. Where's Frost Park you ask? It's the really ugly place on the corner of 9th & Commerce by the Park Plaza North garage. It's loud with lots of traffic ... so why was I there?

The Frost Park Chalk Challenge, of course!

Check it out here at the Tacoma Urbanist. Even if you weren't there you can still vote for your favorite chalk drawing of the set. This monster frog won my vote:


Cool event.

Day in NYC

This is from the roof garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Central Park is in the background.

Coolest. Public Art. Ever.

Witness the Sunlight Poem Projector.

Depending on the day of the year, a different stanza shows up on the ground.

"Using a complex array of perforations, the pavilion's surface allows light to pass through creating shifting patterns, which-during specific times of the year-transform into the legible text of a poem. The specific arrangements of the perforations reveal different shadow-poems according to the solar calendar: a theme of new-life during the summer solstice, a reflection on the passing of time at the period of the winter solstice."

That's awesome.

At Fulcrum tonight

Well worth checking out. A very cool show. This is from Galen McCarty Turner, who I went to school with from about 7th - 12th grade. He was a crack-up then and he's a crack up now. That, and a very good neon/inert gas artist.

He also drives the car that has a rocket ship on top. Go see the show!

Juried Art Show at the Helm

Last night's opening of the Juried Art Show at the Helm was one of their finer shows. I was very impressed with the work of local artists included RR Anderson, Daniel Blue, Teresa Cuff, and many others.

Previously, I'd thought that one of the best parts of the Helm was bringing in artists from elsewhere to Tacoma. Turns out they can showcase Tacoma's best artists pretty well too.

The Tacoma Urbanist has pictures of the event, including some stuff about the drop-by of Costas Varotsos, the artist who has created the sculpture outside of the new Hotel Murano.

Art Walk and Dinner at Woody's

We had a good time visiting both Fulcrum Gallery and the Helm last night for Art Walk. Chris Sharp's work at the Helm was very cool and the Joe Miller "Lambscapes" at Fulcrum was also intriguing.

After checking out the two galleries, we headed down to the Thea Foss where we checked out Woody's on the Water. It's still got a Blue Olive feel on the restaurant side although the weird lounge on the other side is now full of tables.

I enjoyed my steak and Mary liked her chicken, but I couldn't escape the thought that the name Woody's doesn't entirely mesh with the nicer decor and presentation style of the restaurant. But it was nice to see the restaurant pretty full. I hope with the new projects coming onto the Foss the Esplanade will start to fill up.

Blowing Glass Is Fun

So someone else did all the hard work. I picked out my colors and described what I wanted the glass Christmas ornament to look like. And when it was getting close I got to do the actual blowing into the ornament to fill it up. It was a fun morning at the M Space Hot Shop. And very festive! I'm excited to see my ornament when it's done.

The four of us started out at PSP and saw everyone there. Truly. Roxanne Murphy, Daniel Blue, Paul Sparks, Jamie Chase, Alexa Folsom Hill ... Puget Sound Pizza was the place to have breakfast this morning.

Weekend Update

So the weekend was a good one. Friday night was low-key, with a nice dinner at Gateway to India followed by a lot of hanging out at home. Which is good because Saturday took it out of us. We worked most of the day finishing up some badly needed work to get our place ready for a small party we had Saturday night.

We took care of a few non-cleaning tasks as well, including the hanging of 5 Beautiful Angle posters that look awesome. For those who like Beautiful Angle as much as we do, we have up the "Factory" poster, "St. Patrick's Breastplate," and the classic "Save Me" on one wall, as well as the "T-Dome Flower" and "Never Enough Parking" poster on another wall.

We have other posters of theirs we'll eventually get around to framing as well, possibly rotating them out with our current selection. Those include the Blender, the Christmas Tree, the Art Chantry co-designed poster, and a few other favorites.

The party was a lot of fun, with friends from all over Tacoma as well as a couple who made the drive from Seattle. We brought in a box full of cupcakes from Hello, Cupcakes so we even had Tacoma desserts for guests.

By the time we got to today we were beat from all the cleaning and then the party itself and we missed the Philharmonic, which we'd both been looking forward to. But we did have a nice and quiet dinner out with my parents at Paddy Coynes (love the open face turkey sandwich!).

So it was a good weekend. I got some writing done as well. I'm at 26,581 words in my novel for National Write A Novel Month, which means I've only been averaging 1477 words a day--190 words less than I should be doing. If you figure that there are 250 - 300 words on a page, I'm at least 15 pages behind. But I'm starting Chapter 10 and I'm on page 93, which is pretty awesome. Even though I'm behind, I've never written so much so fast. It's quite exhilarating and I'm very excited to finish. I've had to upgrade paper clips to a large-scale clip to fit what I have so far.

Still going strong, though. I'll need a good push at Tuesday night's writing meeting and then I'll probably have to skip Black Friday in favor of catching up. But I'm cool with that.

Visit The Helm!

DO Check out the Helm today. It's the last day of their show on Chauney Peck and Whiting Tennis. The artists are pretty big names and having them display in Tacoma is very cool. Even if you don't want to buy (although you should at least consider it) the art is first rate and on the cutting edge.

Alec Clayton gives it high marks on Spew today with some background on Peck as well. See what Tacoma has to offer!

Banned Books Art Auction - Raise Your Paddle!

I had a great time at the Banned Books Art Auction tonight. I had some half price appetizers at Doyle's ahead of time and read my book with a nice Stella before heading over.

I was happy to see a number of friends and familiar faces at Kings Books, which was very cool. The art up for auction was creative and fun. As for me and a few friends, we're now going on a studio tour with Beautiful Angle and Springtide Press, which is going to be awesome. Tacoma has some great letterpress art and we're going to see some of the best.

Cool to raise some money for the Scholars and Champions Association. Here's the event notice at Exit133 from earlier in the day that inspired me to check it out.

Take the Helm!

Two friends from the Grand, Peter Lynn and Sean Alexander, are opening an art gallery tomorrow on Broadway in the Bostwick. Actually, it's directly below my old apartment, which is kind of cool.

The gallery is called The Helm, and it's going to be on the cutting edge of art. They're opening is tomorrow as part of the Third Thursday Art Walk.

After Critical Line closed and ArtRod dissolved, some people have questioned whether a gallery with similar aspirations would survive. But I think they are on the right track. Critical Line opened new shows every three months, which left the gallery empty of patrons and without sales for months at a time. The Helm will be changing shows monthly. They'll also be offering residency to artists looking to work for two weeks in Tacoma, which is totally awesome.

Looking forward to another cool place!