If your walls are sparse, lacking hanging artwork, don't despair. Take a look in your kitchen cupboard or at the appliances on your countertop. Use your imagination. Let your sense of humor dominate your other five senses. Your Lazy Susan may be waiting to be discovered In "ugly duckling" fashion, Kirkland artist Kris Lynch takes everyday items - especially unsung kitchen items - and expresses them in a whimsical way. "My passion is to incorporate a sense of humor and my love of whimsy to create artful expressions of everyday things,"she says.
The richness and variety of artistic endeavor displayed in the Toronto International Film Festival's splendid lineup can't help but renew your faith that smart, caring folk are still wrestling with the world's pressing problems. And in such heady environs, it's easy to believe that art is more than sideshow entertainment or museum décor, that it might even have the power to change the world. In the months ahead, keep an eye out for three wildly different films screened in TIFF 2005. Each yanks political/human realities out of simpleminded cliché, spin and jingoism and reimagines them in eye- and mind-opening forms.
The Toronto International Film Festival is the most comprehensive, best-organized and -operated, most international-press-friendly and - for my money - most important film festival in North America. Running 10 days in early September in the Onatrio metropolis and showing upwards of 300 films (features and shorts) in 20some venues, it offers just about everything new the cinema gourmand could want to have a look at, with points of geographical and spiritual origin as diverse as Singapore, South Africa, Latvia and Hollywood, U.S.A. If you couldn't get to Sundance, Berlin, San Francisco, Cannes, Venice or Telluride, and can't make it to Lincoln Center later in the month for the ultraselective New York Film Festival, don't worry: the pick of those crops will (mostly) be on tap somewhere within hailing distance of Bloor and Yonge streets. Moreover, at least since 1999, when the year's surprise top contenders for the Academy Awards, "American Beauty" and "The Cider House Rules," were both unveiled there, Toronto also has become marked the unofficial kickoff of the Oscar season.
Not a creature was stirring ...Studio East will hold auditions on October 7 and 8 for its annual holiday production of "'Twas the Night."The first youth theater production at Studio East this season will be Shakespeare's classic comedy, "Much Ado About Nothing." This production opens October 14 and runs through October 23.Season tickets are now on sale for the 2005-06 season of StoryBook Theater. This season, StoryBook will present "The Ugly Duckling," "Sleeping Beauty" and "Rumplestiltskin."
The sea is as unforgiving as it is bountiful. Those who seek their livelihood upon the often tempestuous waters of the Northwest - from the Salmon Banks of the San Juan Islands to the legendary chop and toss of Alaska's Bristol Bay - face dangers most people can scarcely imagine. Many a crewmember aboard a crabber or purse-seiner has lost his or her life in pursuit of that elusive big catch.Established in 1985, the Seattle Fishermen's Memorial Committee is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the memory of workers lost or killed at sea, creating safer on-board working conditions and ministering to survivors and families within the fishing community who are overcoming a seagoing tragedy.If fun and education are the organizing spirit of the Fishermen's Fall Festival taking place Saturday, Oct. 1, at Magnolia's Fishermen's Terminal, the heart of that festival is the Fishermen's Memorial.
Kirkland Arts Center and Design Within Reach (DWR) present an exhibition of new ceramic sculptures by KAC member Becky Fukuda. This exhibition is the first collaboration between KAC and DWR that pairs contemporary art with contemporary furniture. Running October 13 through 16, this exhibit opens in conjunction with the Kirkland Gallery Association's Art Walk. The artist reception will be from 6-9 p.m. October 13.
Grindline Skateparks last week revealed its computer-generated design for a new skateboard park and basketball court to replace the ones being lost at the Seattle Center next year.The old facility off Fifth Avenue North near Mercer Street has to go to make room for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which plans to build its world headquarters on the Seattle Center parking lots, said Kim Baldwin, a landscape architect managing the project for Seattle Parks and Recreation. "This gives us the opportunity to redesign the skate facility and perhaps make it better."The proposed new location is next to the King County Combined Sewer Overflow pump station in the 500 block of Elliott Ave. W., a move Parents for Skateparks objects to in no uncertain terms.
Students from all seven Queen Anne and Magnolia public schools rallied last week to help students driven out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. They did that in each school on Sept. 22 by loading backpacks with school supplies for displaced students who ended up in Baton Rouge, said Joanne Testa-Cross, principal of John Hay Elementary School and president of the recently formed Successful Schools in Action, a nonprofit umbrella organization that oversaw the relief effort."What we did," she said, "is the schools collected money." The original goal was to collect $14,000 in a week's time, an amount that would have been used to buy enough school supplies to fill 700 backpacks, which were donated by World Vision, Testa-Cross said. "And all of a sudden, the money started pouring in."In fact, $30,000 was collected from students, their parents, local businesses and people who don't even have children in school yet, she said.
Local artists, galleries and animal lovers are banding together to help save the thousands of homeless animals on the ravaged Gulf Coast. The resulting "Artists for Animals" is an exhibit at Dooley's Dog House and Parklane Gallery that will be showing through November 6. Forty percent of the proceeds from both exhibits will benefit the animal Pasado's Safe Haven, which has been in the trenches since four days after Katrina blew in."Pasado has really gone the distance this time," said Parklane artist and animal activist Janet Wold. "On its own, Pasado's is a very worthy cause. We would love all the help we can get."
If you've seen the 1956 film adaptation of the Broadway blockbuster "The King and I," you know what to expect from this umpteenth touring version now playing at 5th Avenue Theatre. But in this case that's not a problem. Created by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics), the 1951 Tony-winner still boasts a timeless charm. So this touring salute to its retro splendor includes the lovely songs, adorable children, wonderful orchestra, dazzling costumes, visual opulence and the recreation of Jerome Robbins' original choreography. Rodgers and Hammerstein's glowing score soars with beautiful - and indisputable - Broadway standards, including "Getting to Know You," "I Whistle a Happy Tune," "Hello, Young Lovers" and the heart-thumping "Shall We Dance?" R&H;'s musical theater classic, based on Margaret Landon's 1944 novel "Anna and the King of Siam," follows the relationship between an adventuresome and determined English widow who travels to 19th-century Siam to teach the king's favorite wives and 60-plus children - he claims he's a late starter. Anna soon finds His Royal Highness to be her greatest challenge, but over time their cultural clashes soften into an unspoken love.
Oh, joy! Book-It's done it again - applied stage wizardry to a literary classic and created a theatrical evening to remember. "Don Quixote" erupts on stage with poignancy, satire, lunacy and comedy. It's a fitting tribute to one of the finest novels ever written on the occasion of its 400th birthday. This is a road trip, but instead of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby we have the ludicrously paired Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza. Quixote is an elderly, slightly mad, minor noble who dubs himself a knight and pledges himself to the code of chivalry. The buffoonish squire is sensible enough to recognize Quixote's madness but optimistic enough to think that there might be something in it for himself.The two set off, the don on a stringy nag, the squire on an ass. Quixote's quest is to right wrongs, protect the oppressed and pay homage to the lovely Lady Dulcinea. Along the way the pair encounters all manner of scoundrels and bizarre situations.
A typical image of a general manager - of any firm - is Type A, stressed and not particularly empathetic. But if you follow the dulcet strains of Beethoven over the air to 10 Harrison Street in Seattle, you'll find that KING-FM's Jennifer Ridewood is about as nice as nice gets. Just ask Peter Donnelly, Ridewood's former boss and president and CEO of Artsfund, which is one-third owner of the Seattle classical radio station."Jennifer is one of the nicest people I've ever met," says Donnelly, who was once her boss, "but she's tough as nails also. And I mean that as a compliment
Total nightly closures of N.E. 132nd Street under I-405 will continue into the fall so crews can complete the widening the I-405 bridge at this location. Drivers should expect nightly closures of all lanes in both directions of N.E. 132nd between 116th Avenue N.E. and Totem Lake Blvd. from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The Central Way project is killing four - maybe five - birds with one stone, but the construction hassle is also leaving deep bruises on some downtown businesses along the Kirkland corridor.The primary reason for tearing up Central between Sixth and Market streets is to replace the water and sewer system, project engineer Rod Steitzer said. "It's really old." Replacing the pre-1950 system was one issue identified in the utility department's Comprehensive Plan, and the system will also be replaced on Market Street from Central to Fourth Avenue, he said
Last month, the war in Iraq claimed the life of another young Kirkland man. Marine Lance Cpl. Shane Clanin Swanberg, 24, died in a mortar attack at his base in Ramadi, Iraq. Swanberg, who had been in Iraq for just 10 days, was the only fatality in the Sept. 15 attack. Swanberg was the third Kirkland soldier to die in the war in Iraq. Jake Herring, 21, died on April 27, 2004. Nathan Wood, 19, died last year on November 9.