He’s not the kind of guy who promotes himself shamelessly, choosing instead to sit in the background while his friends do the socializing.

But Tim Kapler’s about to come out of the shadows in a first solo-show big way on Thursday, when his latest works will hang at the Sanford & Son gallery, mostly due to these socializing friends.

Kapler’s been an artist about the town for a while now, with works shown in group shows such as the Kulture Lab parties. His involvement there came, originally, from being neighbors with Jeff Olson back when the latter lived in the UWT artists’ lofts next to Kapler. Recently, he’s been building serious artist momentum through involvement in Seattle’s “Bring Your Own Art” festival —where he met DJ Nuclear Dreamer, who will spin at the artist’s reception tonight from 5 to 9 p.m.— as well as through associations with local festivals such as Glass Roots, where he’s going to be painting live.

But don’t think “painting live” means painting live models: Kapler will immediately tell you he’s not that kind of artist.

“I have no fine arts background — no painting, no drawing — it shows, because my characters don’t have bodies.”

His background is within the field of creativity — he studied Media Design and Production at Clover Park Technical College, and brought those skills to the table for his day job at the University of Washington, Tacoma’s Media Services, where’s he’s been gainfully employed for eight years. His own interests take him into the realm of “3-D animation, abstract functional flying logos … everything but ‘real’ stuff,” he explains, though the lines between “real stuff” and “media” became blurred in his “Pointless” series that he worked up for the UWT newspaper, the Ledger, and blur further on his Web site, www.timkapler.com.

Meanwhile the art for his “Dis:connected” show opening tonight is definitely hand-wrought: he explains that the paintings utilizing house paint and found items will be “my boxhead guys that I’ve stumbled upon. Definitely different,” he muses.

The show at Sanford & Son came out of his association with Mindy Barker, who put him in touch with Gretchen Bailey, who curates the art that hangs at Sanford & Son.

Kapler explains that originally Bailey asked him to hang sooner than August, but he wasn’t ready. In fact, he admits that he’s still not ready.

“We’ll see what it turns out like,” he says. “I’m still shaping it.”



[Sanford & Son, through Sept. 19, opening reception featuring DJ Nuclear Dreamer and Khadija Anderson, Thursday, Aug. 16, 5-9 p.m., 743 Broadway, Tacoma, www.timkapler.com]