For nearly ten years, crochet wunderkind Anna Sharp has been creating beautiful, handmade textiles under the Victory Garden Yarn brand. Originally a hobby she learned from her mother, Anna began making scarves, hats, and gloves for family and friends before devoting herself to the craft fulltime in 2010. The entire production started along one wall, … Continue reading TAM Store Highlight – Victory Garden Yarn
Sketch Club is a program based in Tacoma Public Schools that provides materials and resources for youth to create art. The program encourages student voice, choice, and thoughts around how they engage with their own identity as well as the world around them. It is a very special program that holds a dear place in … Continue reading Sketch Club: Art and the Power of Youth Imagination
What do shopping lists, menus, closets, and artworks have in common? Not much, but recently people think you can “curate” all these things. Curating is a buzzword that confuses some people because the word can be taken out of its original context and applied awkwardly to describe collections at best, but even more simply lists … Continue reading Thoughts on the Curatorial Voice
During the economic depression of the 1930s, U.S. government art projects created a wealth of public art and supported artists across the country, as explored in the Tacoma Art Museum’s recent exhibition Forgotten Stories: Northwest Public Art of the 1930s. Like artists from nearly a century ago, in response to the complex issues facing the … Continue reading Community Collaboration: Tacoma’s Rapid Mural Project
In her Four Seasons series, Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke Nation, born Billings, Montana, 1981) creates diorama-like portraits, depicting each season. In this specific work, Fall, Red Star has set up a fake autumn backdrop, with leaves scattered around her, a plastic blow-up elk, and an animal’s skull to the right. Red Star has explained in … Continue reading Object of the Week – “Fall — Four Seasons”
While using his Quinault and Isleta-Pueblo heritage as inspiration for his art, Marvin Oliver quickly became one of the most prominent sculptors and printmakers in the Northwest. In his work, Orca, Oliver uses a mix of watercut, fused, and polished glass to create an orca’s docile fin, with steel at its base representing the water. … Continue reading Object of the Week – “Orca”
When you first see this work by Rick Bartow, what are the first emotions you see? Excited? Angry? Happy? Or something else? What about sound – what do you hear? What do you notice? I gave a tour to a school group last year and asked them, “what do you notice about this work of … Continue reading Object of the Week – “Old Time Picture I”
Preston Singletary has been working to make his culture known in the glass world since 1982 with works like Transference. He uses form line design and bases the images of his work off of stories and figures from his Tlingit heritage. The sleek black and vibrant red make the piece quite an eye catcher when … Continue reading Object of the Week – “Transference”
Marie Watt, a citizen of the Seneca Nation and born in Seattle, Washington, is known for her textile works, particularly those that involve the use of reclaimed blankets. She sees blankets as universal objects that are present globally and as well as at every stage of life. From birth to death, we are surrounded by … Continue reading Object of the Week – “Tear This Wall Down”
This sculpture by Spanish-born Manuel Izquierdo flows vertically, taking on an abstracted shape of a human body with an X shape for its head. As the name Iberian Venus implies, this figure represents the Roman goddess, Venus, and the title also brings in Izquierdo’s origins of the Iberian Peninsula. This sculpture takes on a different … Continue reading Object of the Week – “Iberian Venus”
