Art
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Photos from Ohana Comic Con
Posted By Mark Larson on Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 8:43 PM
A surprisingly large crowd of costumed cartoon, movie and anime fans (estimated between 800 and 1,000) filled the Sapphire Palace at the Blue Lake Casino and Hotel on Saturday for its first ever Ohana Comic Con. Organizers of the event used the Hawaiian word “ohana,” meaning “family,” to attract families. The cheap tickets (in contrast with big comic con events) also helped bring in a crowd.
The two-day event hosted two costume contests, a wide mix of vendor tables, special guest artists and a few local artists. Event organizers were surprised and pleased at the attendance and hinted at a return event next year. Check out the scene in the slideshow below.
The two-day event hosted two costume contests, a wide mix of vendor tables, special guest artists and a few local artists. Event organizers were surprised and pleased at the attendance and hinted at a return event next year. Check out the scene in the slideshow below.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Tattoos and Suspension: Photos from the Native Ink Expo
Posted By Mark Larson on Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 8:15 AM
Needing a break from the North Country Fair late Saturday afternoon and looking for an opportunity to renew my interest in our daughter's profession as a tattoo artist, I headed south to the first (promising to be annual) Native Ink Tattoo Expo event at the Bear River Casino Resort. The event ran Friday through Sunday.
The all-ages tattoo expo in the large rec center building hosted a few local and several national tattoo artists who were busy with bookings on Saturday, along with a few cannabis-related, art and clothing vendors. See the slideshow below for highlights of the day.
I was distracted from looking at tattoo flash and a few examples of "Native ink" by watching the Captain's Side Show and the new-to-me aerial-suspensions performances — a form of body modification that involves hanging a human body by hooks attached to ropes that is considered a therapeutic experience by some. (Warning: While not bloody, images of suspension, which appear at the end of the slideshow, freak some folks out.)
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Katy Warner and Madelyn Covey Geek Out at the Sanctuary
Posted By Gabrielle Gopinath on Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 8:35 PM
“This is about otaku-dom: intense, obsessive fandom,” Katy Warner said, using the Japanese word that fans worldwide have adopted to describe obsession. She was referring to the screenprints and collages she is showing at the Sanctuary in Arcata through Sept. 6, dense with snippets of text, “based on the plot of the Japanese role-playing game I invented in high school.”
Otaku of every stripe will find their enthusiasm mirrored by the works in Cosplay / Larkspur, a two-person show at the Sanctuary that features prints and collages by Warner and paintings by her fellow Mills alumna Madelyn Covey. Covey lives in Oakland and works at Creative Growth, a nonprofit serving artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities. Warner supervises arts programming at the Sanctuary in Arcata and manages the print room there.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Photos from the 56th Klamath Salmon Festival
Posted By Mark Larson on Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 7:06 PM
The tasty smell of fresh Klamath River salmon cooking the traditional way over an open fire mingled with the tangy smell of smoke from wildfires at the Yurok Tribe's 56th annual Klamath Salmon Festival on Sunday. The Yurok tribe had canceled serving salmon in 2016 and 2017 due to low fish runs.
The event's annual parade featured two grand marshals who are military veterans, Joe Pitt (89) of Klamath, and Irving Wilder, of Weitchpec.
In a new addition to Sunday's usual family fun, live music, car show and a wide array of vendors and information booths, seven expert traditional basket weavers from different local tribes worked in a tent area filled with different types of ceremonial regalia, basketry and other cultural objects. See the slideshow below for highlights.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Grainy Photos from the Sand Sculpture Festival
Posted By Mark Larson on Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 6:26 PM
The 23rd annual Sand Sculpture Festival sponsored by Friends of the Dunes took place on Saturday under cool overcast skies at a new location on the beach at the Samoa Drag Strip (easy access and lots of parking). Fifteen artist teams and a few other freelancers showed up to have fun creating amazing sand sculptures in a very temporary medium — think high tide. They could use only sand, water and items found on the beach. Check out photos of the entries in the slideshow below.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Photos from Northern Nights
Posted By Jennifer Fumiko Cahill on Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 7:03 PM
With temps in the 90s and stage lights ablaze, the Northern Nights Music Festival was a hot ticket this past weekend. If you couldn't make it up to Cooks Valley Campground — or if you crashed out hard on the Grove Stage beds — here's Alexander Woodard's slideshow of some of the DJ and live band shows, dancing, river frolicking, trippy black-light art, outdoor yoga and impromptu didgeridoo you might have missed Friday and Saturday.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Kinetic Finish Line Photos
Posted By Jennifer Fumiko Cahill on Wed, May 30, 2018 at 7:14 PM
All over Humboldt County, Kinetic Grand Championship racers are likely still icing their quads from the 50th annual three-day human-powered sculpture race over land and water that ended on Ferndale's Main Street on Monday. In the end, the Grand Championship trophy went to Team Trilo Bike and its diner on wheels. But ACE awards (for carrying everyone and everything you need along the journey with you the whole time, among other strict rules) and just plain dragging your team over the finish line in the Memorial Day sunshine are worthy of celebration. Enjoy Mark McKenna's photos of the glory-fest in the slideshow below. Then get back in the garage and start building your rig for next year.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Splashdown! Photos from Kinetic Day 2
Posted By Jennifer Fumiko Cahill on Mon, May 28, 2018 at 11:34 AM
Hang onto your paddles, the Kinetic Grand Championship's 50th annual Humboldt Bay crossing made a splash with the amphibious leg of the race yesterday. Photographer Mark McKenna was there to catch the flipping, floating and fun. Enjoy the highlights in the slideshow below — from outside the splash zone.
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Rolling Through: Photos and Video from Kinetic Day One
Posted By Jennifer Fumiko Cahill on Sun, May 27, 2018 at 7:32 PM
On Saturday, May 26, crowds gathered on the Arcata Plaza to see the blend of art, engineering and madness that is the parade of Kinetic Grand Championship teams and their wild rides. Around midday, after a kind of show and shine with spectators checking out the amphibious marvels and their brave crews, participants looped the plaza in the annual brake test and headed onto the course.
2018 Kinetic Sculpture Race from North Coast Journal on Vimeo.
Enjoy the slideshow below and marvel at Mark McKenna's photos of the rolling sculptures (still shiny and new) on the plaza and Sam Armanino's shots from the infamous Dead Man's Drop in the dunes.Friday, May 25, 2018
Will We Ever Get Out of Here? A review of Dell'Arte's Let Me Out!
Posted By Pat Bitton on Fri, May 25, 2018 at 1:24 PM
Let Me Out! explores what happens when theater meets role-playing game meets escape room, wrapped up in a murder-mystery evening that may or may not be trapped in an endless repeating cycle. The outcome of a year of research and development by Dell’Arte graduates Eric William Jones, Marguerite Boissonault and Linnea Ytterlid, Let Me Out is totally immersive theatre, playing for only two more performances, Saturday, May 26 and Sunday May, 27 at Dell’Arte’s Taylor Way building in Blue Lake. And it is mesmerizing.
Audience size for Let Me Out! is very limited, maybe 15 people max, and for good reason — because everyone has a part to play. Of that audience (in the language of the production, “witnesses”), six are chosen as “players” to participate fully as defined characters in the production. These players are led off to be briefed by the three creators, who are also players, shortly before the action begins. Meanwhile we remaining witnesses are led into the performance area. Here, we are invited to select our seats from among the random chairs scattered around the “room,” which has the feel of a long-abandoned part a long-abandoned house; all the walls are covered with broken-down cardboard boxes and a large cabinet sits in the middle of the floor.
We are each given several cards with instructions to be acted upon during the performance: When X happens, give this card to Y or do Z, and we're asked not to speak again; we may move but must remain on the perimeter, bearing silent witness, no matter what happens. We are “the firing synapses of the mind.”
At first, all we hear is dirge-like music. Then we become conscious of people walking about. Dana, the central character (Marguerite Boissonault), approaches and opens the cabinet, ushers a second woman (Linnea Ytterlid) inside and locks her in. Dana lies on the floor and the lights go out. The remaining players enter, led by Gary (Eric William Jones) and guided by a flashlight, as a giant digital clock projected onto the wall starts counting down. Suddenly lights begin to flash, strange and disturbing sounds fill the space, and Dana begins to rise, as if awakened from a dream.
Let the (mind)games begin.
Everyone has a strange feeling they have been in this place before. They feel that they know each other but do not (yet) know how or why. As they explore their surroundings, each player begins to uncover pieces of his or her past (“hey, we must be married!” “I was a manager at Target!”), but there is no sense of time having passed. Dana waits for someone to recognize her and tell her who she is.
A panicked cry emerges from the cabinet. The players must figure out what combination of letters will open the lock (which they eventually do), and the woman, who goes by Sylvia, staggers out, crying that she has no idea how long she’s been trapped. Then Gary pulls a large, rusted object from the cabinet, which sets in motion the life stories and relationships of all the characters, as they gradually unfold before us.
Each set of interactions between the characters builds not just an aspect of those characters but adds a piece to the living puzzle that is Dana. We, the witnesses, add color as we set in motion different actions (“dance like Elvis!”) that reflect a particular life stage. The characters draw on a multiplicity of found objects in their environment to set off new memory-trains — a copy of Pride and Prejudice, a bottle of Zoloft — as the human synapses begin firing every which way. And at every turn, we find ourselves wondering what is real to us, to the players and to Dana. And then there’s Sylvia. As Shakespeare once asked, “Who is Silvia? What is she …?” By art or by design, it leads us to another and, in the context of this performance, very appropriate slice of Bardly wisdom:
“To die — to sleep / To sleep — perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub! / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.”
But when we pause, do we finally die? Or do we begin the dream again? And again? And again?
Let Me Out! Is an extraordinary experience and one that I hope will continue to live, evolve and expand to allow many more people the privilege of entering its alternate(?) reality.
