Tacoma crafting wizard Laurie Cinotto is on her way to New York. Cinotto won a coveted spot at the Martha Stewart Holiday Craft Sale in New York City, garnering the most votes out of eight finalists along the way. Cinotto’s meticulous handmades, including witty corsages and boutonnières, and beautiful crepe paper bouquets, secured her a slot at the famous showcase. When she’s not creating fabulous adornments for jacket lapels, or for tabletops, the artist runs a local feline adoption program, The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee (and she raised a whopping $49,000 for the Humane Society last summer). See how Cinotto’s furry studio mates contribute to the creative process at www.lalalaurie.com.
The War Experience Project, an exhibition organized by artist and Iraq veteran, Rick Lawson, was the subject of a special edition of the KBTC program, Northwest Now, recorded earlier this month (check listings for rebroadcast times). Because of its unique mission of helping veterans to tell their stories through art (using uniforms as a canvas), and its relevance to the Puget Sound military community, the WEP has received extensive media coverage since it opened on Nov. 11. More than 50 uniforms are on display at the gallery at 906 Broadway. Lawson will conduct on-site painting workshops for vets through mid-Feb. 2011. Hours: Wed. – Sat., 10am – 5pm; Sun., noon – 5pm. Information at (347) 927-3708, or contact rick@warep.com.
First-round Spaceworks artist Gretchen Bennett, who created a dusky tribute to Tacoma at the Woolworth Building, was shortlisted in Sept. for a Genius Award by the Seattle alternative weekly, The Stranger. It was Bennett’s second nomination for the $5,000 award, and only the latest recognition in a year that has included a showing of drawings in the Seattle Art Museum exhibition, Kurt, an homage to Kurt Cobain.
Lisa Kinoshita‘s sculpture, What You Own, Owns You, is on view at the Tacoma Art Museum through Jan. 16, 2011. The Tacoma artist has been nominated for the Portland Art Museum’s second Contemporary Northwest Art Awards (formerly the Oregon Biennial). Five to eight artists working in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana or Wyoming, will be honored with a museum exhibition and catalog next year. Recipients will be announced in Jan. 2011.
Two Spaceworks artists whose work deals with our increasingly dystopic relationship to the planet, are recipients of 2010 Artist Trust GAP grants. Walla Walla artist Michelle Acuff received a $1,500 award to publish a catalog of sculptural works that explore “our tenuous liaison to the natural world.” Acuff’s work addresses the high price of consumer consumption as measured in the ubiquitous, poisonous substances used in industrial mass production. Her distortions of the natural world, such as in the blue deer (at right), inhabit a plane that is both saccharine and surreal.
Shelton-based artist Barbara De Pirro has been Resident Artist at the Museum of Glass in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Her 2010 Artist Trust GAP Grant, in the amount of $1,500, is providing support for new projects and public works. Artist Trust describes De Pirro’s work as “biomorphic sculptural forms and installations that subtlety express her ecological concerns. Designs conceived in her observations of nature are constructed reusing unnatural, reclaimed materials, and then placed in the world where they can be investigated and contemplated. This deliberate juxtaposition between form and material opens the door for subtle but infinite metaphorical meaning.” Find out more at depirro.com.
Artists Ben Hirschkoff and Alyson Piskorowski have been selected to create installations for the pilot program of Storefronts Seattle, a project of Shunpike modeled after Spaceworks Tacoma, and implemented in Pioneer Square and the International District. Hirschkoff will enliven his storefront exhibit with existing building materials, utilizing the vernacular of construction to create a large-scale sculpture. Piskorowski continues her elegant investigations into the geometry of space with the creation of flowing patterns in paper that engage passersby. Both installations will be on display from Dec. 2010 to Feb. 2011.