THIRD THURSDAY ARTWALK

The Child and I visited Tacoma Art Museum as part of Tacoma's Third Thursday ArtWalk, where the museums are free to the public for a few hours and many of the downtown art galleries and local shops are open later.

I was eager to once again visit The Movement of Impressionism: Europe, America, and the Northwest exhibit. Highlights included two bronze sculptures by Edgar Degas, paintings and a lithograph by Pierre Auguste Renoir, and paintings by Camille Pissarro (pictured above), Eugène Louis Boudin, and Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida.


We next visited the opening of the Mighty Tacoma exhibit, which is a "snapshot" of both the City of Tacoma and the state of digital photography as art in 2010. My favorite artists were Terry Rishel and Kevin Lidtka, primarily due to the richly saturated colors in their photographs.

Terry Rishel's ink jet print Tideflats (2010) made me gasp. The "canvas" was orange and yellow, with a spot of red that was something (sawdust? grain?) piled in front of large silos. I could almost feel the heat emanating from the "flames" of the photograph. The steam from the various smokestacks felt more like smoke. I could imagine myself trying to catch my breath.

I was also struck by the geometric compositions in Morgain Bailey's untitled ink jet prints from Excerpts from the Tacoma Series.

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After Tacoma Art Museum, we headed off to buy some small and inexpensive art from Tacoma's Art-o-mat Machine, located inside BKB & Company.

Then, it was off to the opening of Maria Jost's Street Botany show at Fulcrum Gallery, but that is a story in itself.