Get ready for the creative cacophony that is Olympia’s spring Arts Walk

Molly Gilmore
·6 min read

At Arts Walk, downtown Olympia businesses and storefronts become a series of galleries, performance spaces and even a museum, the pop-up Thurston County Museum of Fine Arts.

There are 100 destinations on the map for this spring’s walk, happening Friday and Saturday, April 26 and 27. The map covers an area that runs from B Avenue on the north edge to Seventh Avenue on the south, plus Sylvester Street on the west edge to Plum Street on the east.

There’s no telling how many artists are participating, since offerings include numerous group shows, collections of work by students at various levels, and an expanded arts market on the closed streets centered on Fifth Avenue from Washington to Jefferson streets.

So abundant is the creativity that if you threw a dart at the Arts Walk map, it would hit something interesting, cool or beautiful.

Mind you, no darts were thrown in the making of this story. (Someone could lose an eye, as Mom — or an editor — would have said.) Instead, it’s a bit of a wander through the map in advance of Olympia’s collective wander through the downtown streets.

The Arts Walk map cover

Let’s start with the image on the Arts Walk map cover, “Lion’s Mane,” by David Hoekje. It’s a still life of a lion’s mane mushroom suspended with string to create the effect of floating.

“Lion’s Mane,” by David Hoekje, is an image of a real mushroom with a fantastical quality. The photograph is featured on the cover of the Arts Walk map.
“Lion’s Mane,” by David Hoekje, is an image of a real mushroom with a fantastical quality. The photograph is featured on the cover of the Arts Walk map.

“The thing I’m most happy about with this image is just how unreal it looks,” Hoekje (pronounced HOKE-yuh) said in a video interview produced by the city of Olympia. “It’s an object which is very real, very natural, and through lighting and manipulation, it becomes this kind of bizarre alien thing.”

The bold colors and striking compositions Hoekje uses caught the attention of the jurors choosing the artist who’d create the cover, said Stephanie Johnson of the city’s Parks, Arts and Recreation department. “They felt the work was unique and innovative,” she said.

The manipulation was done mostly within the limits of traditional photographic techniques, with just a bit of digital editing at the end — to erase the string, for example. “It’s a physical object that I’m shining light onto,” Hoekje told The Olympian. “I try to do as much in camera as I can. The results come out more visually interesting.”

David Hoekje self portrait
David Hoekje self portrait

Group exhibits

Hoekje is an organizer of the pop-up Thurston County Museum of Fine Arts, and the cover photo is on view at the museum, located this time at 509 Fourth Ave. E.

It’s part of “Portals,” which includes work by more than 30 artists. “The image evokes a sort of portal icon,” he said, “but I also like to think about how mycelium, the living organism that produces the fruiting bodies which are mushrooms, operates as a kind of portal between the unseen and the seen or the ancient past and the present. It’s like a kind of underworld beneath the ground that crosses over into our realm with these beautiful forms.”

Hoekje, who’s been mentoring a student in the Avanti Creative Economy program, will also have a photo at the Olympia Knitting Mills, 508 Legion Way SE, as part of a display of work by the students and their mentors. That work, he said, will be a surprise.

Also among the group exhibits at Arts Walk is “Mere Mortals,” at Childhood’s End, 222 Fourth Ave. W. The show features figurative work and portraits in a variety of media by Shari Bray, Lynette Charters, Simon Kogan, Jennifer Lauer, Livia Lynne Miller, Carla Paine and Amy Scherer.

The gallery, invariably crowded during Arts Walk, is also hosting an exhibition of the work of the late Louise Ray Williams, whose colorful and often fantastical paintings took inspiration from her life in the American West.

Schwartz’s at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Washington Street, also is hosting a group show, “Flora, Fauna and Figures,” that includes work by Ruby Re-Usable, a former Arts Walk cover artist and longtime Arts Walk regular who hasn’t been an official Arts Walk participant in years.

“I have been experiencing artist’s block, which I feel like I am slowly emerging out of,” she said. “I’m excited to participate officially in Arts Walk again — just to say, ‘I’m still here.’ ”

Re-Usable is showing a mix of new and old work, including several of her plastic-bag babies and a life-sized plastic man that she made entirely of discarded plastic in 2007.

“I wrapped Tom Sanders up in unwanted plastic wrap … and tape, then cut him out and stuffed the figure with reused bubble wrap and repurposed plastic bags,” she said. The man, holding a coffee cup, is dressed in plastic bags, too.

“Flora, Fauna and Figures” also includes paintings, collages, prints, metal work and stained glass. Artists participating are Hailey Bright, Stephanie Broussard, Laurel Henn, Maggie Post and Fran Potasnik, who got Re-Usable back on the Arts Walk map.

“I had been encouraging my artist friend Fran to participate in Arts Walk,” Re-Usable said. “She said, ‘I will if you do.’ ”

This coffee drinker made largely of plastic bags is among the pieces Ruby Re-Usable is showing at Schwarz’s during Arts Walk. Actor Tom Sanders was the model.
This coffee drinker made largely of plastic bags is among the pieces Ruby Re-Usable is showing at Schwarz’s during Arts Walk. Actor Tom Sanders was the model.

Nikki McClure is here too

Papercut artist Nikki McClure — who arguably achieved a new level of fame this year when she was featured on PBS Newshour — is showing new work at Browsers Bookshop, 107 Capitol Way N.

The illustrations are from “Something About the Sky,” written by environmentalist Rachel Carson for a 1956 episode of the TV program “Omnibus.” McClure will sign copies of the book from 6 to 7 p.m. Friday, April 26, outside Browsers.

When she was asked to illustrate an excerpt from the “Omnibus” piece, McClure was enchanted and wanted to read the entire text, and her editor found it in Carson’s archives at the Yale University Library.

“It was an experiment for me artistically,” McClure said. “I was on the edge of total disaster at all times. I painted the paper with ink. The results were nebulous and chance-filled.

“I then chose a painted paper to cut from, responding to the hues. I couldn’t sketch it out. I just had to go for it… We, the paper, knife and I, came up with some interesting images, like and unlike anything I have ever made previously.”

How to do Arts Walk

What: Olympia’s twice-yearly arts celebration fills downtown with art, music, dance — and people.

When: 6-10 p.m. Friday, April 26, and noon-6 p.m. Saturday, April 27

Where: Downtown Olympia, with Fifth Avenue closed from Washington to Jefferson streets

Maps: Find maps — featuring “Lion’s Mane,” a photo by David Hoekje — at participating businesses and at the Olympia Center. Or access the map on your computer or phone.

More information: http://artswalkoly.com