In-Tacoma.net

This weekend local muralists came together on a wall in the Stadium district. This was the result:

Starting *THIS* Saturday, April 4th Fab-5′s rolling out their 10 week urban art program, L.I.F.E.

They’ll be teaching breakdancing, legal graffiti artwork, and DJing and music production/recording.

What’s beautiful about the L.I.F.E. is they provide all the equipment/art supplies and can accommodate those JUST starting out/wanting to learn more, as well as those that want to advance existing skills. All ages/skill levels are welcome, plus, they hook students up with a free lunch after every class session.

To view the front/back of the the digital brochure, click (here) & (here).

L.I.F.E. happens *every* Saturday of April & May from 11am-3pm @ the Brick City Project in downtown Tacoma (754 Pacific Ave, Tacoma WA 98402)

The energy is real nice on these Saturdays. If participating isn’t your thing, feel free to pass this on to a neighbor, son/daughter, niece/nephew or brother/sister that would be interested.

For this program, Fab-5 employs over 15 professional artists from within the Tacoma community as instructors, so please support your community and get a student or two involved.

For more information or to register a student, please visit Fab-5.org or drop an e-mail to info@fab-5.org

Not going to lie, the air did start off really fresh then by the end of the night it was a bit musky. All was good though everyone was having a ton of fun, the drinks were pouring and only some of the artwork was stolen. Saw tons of familiar faces many of them the same from 100th monkey except this time there was awesome music so everyone was in a drunken dance trance.

The art was good like usual, many of the power players of the south sound were on showcase. Jeremy, Olson, Alice, Mary-Kate, etc. I hadn’t seen gryms work before thought it was pretty cool, the snacks were good too though I always get a little weirded out about big bowls of chips and such since most people don’t was their hands.

Oh yea, here are a few pics from the night. You might spot yourself.

Tonight you get kultured in naked chicks, wine, underground art, and good people. Sneak you way to the alley of the warehouse located a block down from the downtown Tacoma library. Here around 8ish the drunk, the sober, the young and old enjoy art, dance to the dj and drink more wine. Role call who’s going!

KULTURE LAB is the brainchild of Tacoma’s Dead Artists: James Hume, Jim Price, Jeff Olson, Rob Anderson, and James Bender. Kulture Lab is an underground center for the arts, paintings,video,film, performance,sculpture and conceptual art.

Alice in Kulture lab
1114 Court E Tacoma, $5

http://www.myspace.com/culturelabart

The Karpeles Manuscript Museum, 407 South G Street. Across the street from Wright Park this ominous and often overlooked building stands tall and sports classic architecture. The cannon in the front of the lot guards the door to a free admission and in my opinion a waste of time. History fascinates me especially priceless artifacts from all cycles of cultures and people both important and obscure. I’m not writing a negative piece about this museum, just an honest one.

Upon Entrance I was greeted by a gal freckled from candy abuse and vitamin D. she doesn’t ask for a donation because there is no donation box. She then yammers about the visiting exhibits “hieroglyphics Noah Webster, and more Hieroglyphics.”

The manuscripts, supposed delicate paper are held in frail wooden boxes lined with velvet and guarded by 50 cent locks. A confused curator interested only in the woes of her cell phone chattered away as I saw there were no security measures to protect any of these priceless pressed pieces of pulp. Everything locked in these wooden boxes looked fake, the crinkles and torn edges bare shadows not of the illumination from this musky hall. The bust of good ol’ Honest Abe held my attention longer than the dummies in shining armor. I was troubled by the prints, all but one looked like an original, the handwritten page out of Noah Webster’s first dictionary everything else looked like a laser copy almost pixilated. The laminated descriptions above each box held no information about where the artifact came from; its preservation from the erosion of time, just a translation of the tiny handwriting of history’s greatest.

The Hieroglyphics were encased in ½” Plexiglas locked in by a convenience lock used at stores like k-mart. The descriptions held only the meaning of the symbol and did not describe what tomb or Egyptian monument they were cut from. The sandstone looked manufactured by Quick-Crete and was in perfect condition making yet another artifact here look counterfeit.

All negatives aside, I did enjoy that the walls in one room were covered in what looked like paintings created for 80’s fantasy pulp novels. Two outrageous glass sculptures created by the local Evan Schaus (see Michaels post), and last but not least a limited edition of a limited edition Declaration of independence, the icing on the cake……

My questions and your mystery to solve for a reward of two beers from myself are: How do they pay taxes on this building if no donations are needed nor accepted? How come there seems to be no authenticity to the artifacts? Why were the levels of security so low when some of these priceless pages could be stolen so easily?

Overall, I was stumped by the time I left and felt a strange feeling of being ripped off even though I didn’t pay! What do you think?

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maybelline/342866156/

Inspired by the Frost Park take over I rallied team In-Tacoma and we made our way down to the cement deadzone in Downtown Tacoma Called Tollefson Plaza. We decided to hold an experiment to see what would happen if Tollefson Plaza was turned into a real world wiki for a day. (A wiki is website or similar online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively.)

With a large bucket of chalk in hand we began to draw in the center. I created the message “imagine.” very large in the center to get people to start thinking about this space and with the period its quite actionable. We then created a defined chalk area with the word “free” around it and a simple task of “Have Fun”.

We were interested to see if people would actually participate.

Leaving the park we came back 2 hours later to find that people were indeed participating and I had to add more chalk for people to use. We did this throughout the entire day.

Conclusion:

• People are ready to use this space
• People do some pretty wild things in this space like, take off there pants and jump in the fountain.
• Over 30 people participated and only one chalk penis
• People that wrote inappropriate things were moderated by others
• Security won’t stop you from chalking
• People created waypoints to help people find things in Tacoma, arrows pointing to the cupcake place for example.

Not to long ago you might remember reading about the cover-up of “The Tacoma Graffiti Garages”. Well I’ve been keeping a close eye on them so you don’t have to.

Presenting the new and improved Graffiti Garages:

Previously on In-tacoma

Don’t be surprised if you see some people out in front of the Pantages voicing their support.

Once again the mural on the side of embellish has changed. Saturday and Sunday writers Kegs, Charms, Auras, Ksra, Dkoy, Foes, Pubs, Jrat, Letgo, Yuk, and Clone left their mark. The ever evolving wall is something more businesses of Tacoma should look at. Many of the murals in Tacoma get stale and just start to look bad why not switch it up every few months?

See All Photos

Just received a response from the city regarding the death to the graffiti garages, many of you want to know who to talk to. Feel free to contact Dan McConaughy at 591-2047 with any questions.

Good afternoon– Below is the response from Dan McConaughy of Building and Land Use Services — Public Works Department.
Dan said he would talk with you if you had any questions. His contact number is 591-2047.

I am responding to the email sent to the Mayor’s office regarding the graffiti located at the parking garages at 723 Broadway. Code Enforcement received a complaint from the Tacoma Police Department regarding the graffiti. At that time an inspector went and verified the complaint. The parking garages have no doors and the graffiti was visible to the public. A “Notice of Violation” was sent to the property owner requesting that they voluntarily remove the graffiti from the property. Attached with the Notice of Violation are the procedures to request an appeal if the owner so chooses. No appeal was filed and the property was re-inspected on January 11, 2008 and found to be in compliance with city code. To my knowledge, all actions by the owner were voluntary.

Sincerely,
Cindy

Cindy Leingang
Mayor/Council Office

No answers yet, glad they are looking into it, ill keep you all posted

Update:

Good afternoon,
We are trying to find an answer regarding your question. I have contacted our Parking Manager and Arts Administrator and once I receive a response I will let you know.
Sincerely,
Cindy

Cindy Leingang
Mayor/Council Office

Exit133 pointed out that they saw the Tacoma Graffiti Garages getting a makeover. I immediately had to see what was going on. It turns out the City if Tacoma has strong armed the owners of the parking garage to paint its wall and remove the art. Who’s next the mural on embellish? 6th ave?

I emailed Amy about the garages and here is her response:

With the new year starting we decided it was time to launch another in-tacoma.net project. Introducing 253hiphop.com a members only Tacoma hiphop community forum. If you support Tacoma hiphop and like to follow what’s going on then be sure to head over and checkout http://253hiphop.com

As the rain gets well rainy-ier we decided now would be a great time to introduce the In-Tacoma Forums. The talk will mostly be about events, art, and music of Tacoma. We will not focus on politics and condos we just could careless talking about such topics. If you would like to join us feel free to jump right in, upload a photo of yourself or something… and start a discussion

Join The Forums Now

Tonight Underground Tacoma is hosting a ArtRave located at Sanford and Son from 8pm – 11pm,