Art shows up in the most unlikely places in Tacoma, and then blends right in.

Witness Sanford & Son Antiques’ Middle Floor Merchants.  Here, Gretchen Bailey has brought local art into her shop since last autumn, and then encouraged its spread into formerly vacant shop spaces. Right around Valentines Day, the spaces filled up, and the “gallery” at the middle level of the Broadway antique shop moved temporarily to the auction room where a group show hung.

That space wasn’t exactly inspiring, though, so the intrepid shop types moved the gallery onto the walls of the main hallway, which they also spiffed up with some new paint and elbow grease.

But the funny thing about Tacoma and art, as much as you think it can be contained within a silly little thing like a wall, it seeps into other areas as well. And as much as you try to define a specific medium or format, the definition stretches beyond those as well. Yes, that’s happened at the Middle Floor, too.  The shops each contain something that can fit within the context of art, ranging from healing arts to tattoo art to cultural representative art, even on to the art of the guitar.

And there’s more to that “art of the guitar,” with the newly adopted Sanford & Son house band, consisting of Deborah Page, who is joined by Paul Uhl, playing Thursdays from about 6 p.m.

Together, the two run the darkroom infinite photography at the midlevel.  Uhl snaps a mean shot with an impressive use of light, color and perspective — if you doubt my art advice, see for yourself at eststudios.com and be impressed.

And that’s not the end of the “formal” art possibilities at Sanford & Son — you’ll notice this month’s gallery show of abstracts and potentially think, as I did, “Ah.  Abstracts.”

Before you stop at that thought, you need to go downstairs to Crowe Art Studio & Gallery.  Or you can approach the gallery from the Tacoma Link, since it’s pretty much a stone’s throw away from the stop. Cheryl Williams Dolan, artist of the abstract show, also does representational work.  With her watercolorist’s background, she paints scenery using acrylics, but with soft watercolor edges, and pretty much anything else on demand.

Dolan’s show will run until the next Tacoma Third Thursday Art Walk, at which point the art of Uhl and Page will hang. Sarah Utter will be July’s artist, followed by Tim Kapler and then a collaborative show between Kat Bowerman of Folie A Deux and Bailey.



[Middle Floor Merchants at Sanford & Son, 743 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.272.0334]