I know, I know. The weather outside is enough to make you want to open a main vein and escape this mortal coil, or at least curl up in the fetal position listening to Bauhaus and The Smiths. Everything you hear and see on the news echoes the grey skies and hail and rain, and you just want to escape it all.



And once again, like a sunshiney-bright chunk of Prozac, Tacoma is here to help.

How, you ask?



ArtWalk.



Yep, that Third-Thursday, walk-about-the-town-enjoying-culture-from-five-to-eight-p.m. ritual is back — though it never actually went away — and like all the best things in life, it’s free. You can pull yourself up from that pool of snot and tears and get your art on. Act as art-pretentious as you want to, or be honest about your feelings and perhaps learn a little while meeting some fine folk — whatever you want, it’s there.



A brief look at this month’s highlights would, naturally, have to start at the south side of the Link tracks, at Gallery Madera. This working studio of Carlos Taylor-Swanson’s wood art, doubling as a gallery, highlights some ultra cool work that fuses wood, fire, and earth. A Path of Flame isn’t your hippie art teacher’s wood-fired pottery, this show is all about the accidental perfection that can occur when natural materials meet skilled hands then metamorphose into their own entities. Showcased are Reid Ozaki and Erin Solberg’s vessels along with Eva Funderburgh’s whimsical, fantastic, and toothy beasts.



Along Pacific Avenue, don’t forget to stop into BKB & Company and pick up your ultra-affordable art from the Art-o-mat (pay $5 for a token that you pop into a re-purposed cigarette machine and walk away with art!)



Of course, no Third Thursday is complete without a (free, natch!) visit to the museums (from 5-8 p.m.).



Escape the rain, snow, sleet or hail with a visit to the Washington History Museum and check out the past and present of various sites with the Washington Then & Now exhibit, learn about girl (voting!) power in the Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices exhibit, and see circus posters and world folk art — it’s all there in a warm and dry building. Surrealist art, the Northwest Biennial, and David Macaulay’s drawings are compelling reasons to visit Tacoma Art Museum, for sure, but for a special treat, medical illustrator Susan Russell Hall will present an overview of her work.



You’ll find more than a pretty piece of glass when you head over the bridge (of glass) to the Museum of Glass and Traver Gallery. The ubiquitous glass master of Tacoma himself, Dale Chihuly, is represented with his Laguna Murano Chandelier (in addition to all the lovely stuff you saw as you walked over the bridge) as is another glass D.C., Daniel Clayman, whose White Light exhibition shows a more minimalistic approach to molten sand. Next door to the museum, the Traver Gallery shows off more than 40 artists in the Look Forward group exhibition; this includes some recognizable names, including Chihuly, Dante Marioni, Preston Singletary and even Oliver Doriss (with Eil Hansen, both of whom worked with Sonja Blomdahl).



Doriss takes more of a background role at his Fulcrum Gallery, where Lance Kagey’s independent series of work explores geometry’s beauty. The distance between the calculated and the random isn’t a series of strings tied to nailheads in straight lines to make circles, though: this is a show that combines Kagey’s typographic fascination with a conceptual approach. In his words, “My new work is the product of this exploratory process, examining number forms as visual elements and their more pragmatic uses as codes describing complex realities.”



Just in case you’re afraid that might be more than your cloud-addled brain cells can handle, never fear: the work is accessible and cool, layered in vision and meaning. Combine that with Fulcrum ambience and then up the ante with a multimedia installation, Environmental Aesthetics, experimental compositions created through a residency program that places artists in the belly of a nuclear tower.



But maybe you’d rather your music was sourced closer to home. In that case, head back toward the belly of T-Town toward Sanford & Son. Browse the coolness of artist Laurel Lawson’s Orange on Broadway, then peruse the shops and galleries of Sanford & Son as you listen to Deborah Page. Her warm voice and heartfelt vocalization, along with Paul Uhl’s atmospheric guitar work will put your psyche to rights again, and even though it might be cold, dark and dreary outside, you’ll feel better.



It’s better than Prozac. It’s Tacoma on a Thursday evening.



[Gallery Madera, noon to 8 p.m., Tacoma, 2210 Court A, 253.572.1218]

[BKB & Company, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., 1734 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.6884]

[Washington State History Museum, free from 2-8 p.m. 1911 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, 800.238.4373]

[Tacoma Art Museum, free from 5-8 p.m. 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.4258]

[Museum of Glass, free from 5-8 p.m., 1801 Dock St., Tacoma, 253.284.4750]

[Traver Gallery, noon to 6 p.m., 1821 Dock St. #100, Tacoma, 253.383.3685]

[Fulcrum Gallery, noon to 10 p.m., 1308 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, 253.250.0520]

[Orange on Broadway, 1-8 p.m., 739 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.970.7080]

[Sanford & Son, noon to 9 p.m., 743 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.272.0334]