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The wonder of shopping downtown Olympia is the variety of unique goods to be found within easy walking distance. Here are five recommended downtown shopping destinations. Traditions Fair Trade at 500 5th Ave. SW, is right across the street from Capitol Lake. Traditions offers a smorgasbord of craft items from around
Stage
I must confess that I did not have high hopes when I went to The Triad Theater in Yelm to see Standing Room Only's production of Monty Python's Spamalot. My previous experience with small town community theater has never been on a par with Tacoma and Olympia theaters. But the
Arts
The Tacoma design showroom and gallery, Matter:Tacoma made modern, is offering a rare opportunity to see the work of French-Tunisian graffiti artist and TED Fellow, eL Seed. His global initiative to share the message of peace through graffiti art is more urgent now than ever. eL Seed has given permission to
Arts
Jason Sobottka is a fascinating painter. It's tempting to label his paintings fantasy art, but that would be too easy. There are fantasy elements aplenty, but there is much more to it than that. He paints fantasy creatures and mythological creatures, and he paints common animals such as dogs, rabbits
Stage
With lots of schmaltz and lots of good cheer, live theater in the South Sound is gearing up for holiday shows.Lakewood Playhouse. The most touching, feel-good holiday show of all time is coming to Lakewood Playhouse this season. You've seen it in countless reruns on TV and probably shed a
Arts
Art House Designs owner Susie Engelstad challenged three other artists and herself to come up with four paintings measuring four feet by four feet for a show to be called, naturally, "Four by Four". Three of the women, Rose Nicholas, Susan Ujcid and Engelstad herself, rose to the challenge. The
South Sound Cinema
The 33rd annual Olympia Film Festival is now in full swing with films, music, and live performance with local and national talent. The festival features more than 40 film premieres and Dan Savage's "Hump Film Festival." Among the many live and filmed entertainments is Breakin', featuring choreographer and dancer Shabba Doo
Arts
The latest exhibition at Tacoma Art Museum, "The Beauty of a Shared Passion: Highlights from the Rebecca and Jack Benaroya Collection," is but a small selection (65 major works of art, mostly from well-known Pacific Northwest artists) of the huge collection the Benaroya family has promised as a gift to
Stage
The Lakewood Institute of Theatre and Lakewood Playhouse are teaming up this year for a joint production of their annual all-ages show. This year's show, their fifth annual, is the perennial favorite of kids and adults alike, The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum as adapted by Robert and Willie
Arts
Works from three major installations by Geraldine Ondrizek come together in the show "Tracing Genetic Inheritance: Recent Work by Geraldine Ondrizek" at the art gallery at The Evergreen State College. This is a highly unusual, beautiful and intelligent exhibition that combines science and art in ways that should open the mind
Stage
Tacoma Little Theatre's rendition of Dracula is creepy, funny, horrifying, and hauntingly beautiful. A highly stylized presentation as directed by Pug Bujeaud with outstanding sets (Blake R. York), lighting (Niclas R. Olson) and costumes (Michele Graves); this production is the epitome of theatricality. Often throughout there are overlapping and widely spaced
Arts
I reviewed "30 Americans" in this space two weeks ago. With 45 works from 30 of the best African American artists since the 1970s, this exhibition needs more than one column. So here's part two: One of the more impressive paintings I did not touch on in my first review is
Stage
An Act of the Imagination by Bernard Slade, directed by Kathryn D. Beall, is, typical of British mysteries, a many-layered story peopled with eccentric characters and featuring surprise twists - in this case, multiple surprise twists. Arthur Putnam (John Pratt) is a successful mystery writer in London. The time is 1964,
Arts
The exhibition of drawings and paintings by Kathy Gore-Fuss at Salon Refu offers proof positive that practice makes perfect. Gore-Fuss has been making art for a long time. She was one of the first artists I met when I moved to Olympia in 1988. She was good then, and she's
Stage
Olympia Family Theater's Elephant & Piggie's "We Are in a Play" is a small play that packs a big wallop for kids. I was not familiar with Mo Willems' series of children's books, Elephant & Piggy, before reading about them in the program. The stories about Gerald, the elephant and
Arts
The traveling exhibition "30 Americans," from the famed Rubell Family Collection in Miami, makes its first West Coast stop at Tacoma Art Museum. With 45 works from 30 of the best African American artists since the 1970s, this is one of the more important shows to ever grace the galleries
Arts
The annual juried art exhibition at Tacoma Community College is usually a sampling of much of the best art created by South Sound artists. There is always admirable art to be seen, and this year is no exception; there are works worthy of admiration by such artists as Lois Beck,
Stage
The Hound of the Baskervilles at Lakewood Playhouse is not the spooky version of the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but a spoof on it by Stephen Canny and the British comedy troupe Peepleykus (pronounced people like us). It is a Monty Python-style skit expanded to about two-and-a-half hours
Arts
The newest exhibition at Museum of Glass is "Into the Deep," an exhibition of glass art that, according to a nicely worded press release, "connects the fragile beauty of marine environments to the delicate nature of glass." That statement was written either by communications manager Alex Carr or assistant curator
Arts
South Puget Sound Community College gallery director Nathan Barnes noted that Margaret Noble's exhibition, "Resonating Objects," begs the question "what is art?" Is it just painting and sculpture? What about sound, movement, light? What are the boundaries between visual art and the performing arts? There are no easy answers, but
