It's on today!
VISUAL ARTS
The Helm Gallery
I’ve been following the evolution of Chauney Peck since the late ’90s when she showed up in a group show at the old Commencement Art Gallery.
Back then she was doing paintings that were expressive, spatially open and gestural. Then she evolved into a sculptor of large, painted wood constructions that looked something like giant kids’ jigsaw puzzles — a typical example being the big, cartoonlike boat she displayed at Ice Box Gallery last year. That boat and similar constructions presented an interesting twist on tradition: Paintings in the Renaissance tradition used perspective to create an illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface; in her painted constructions, Peck created an illusion of flat space in three-dimensional objects.
Her vinyl paintings on paper at The Helm bring together many of the visual concerns dealt with in her earlier works. She paints clumps or piles of urban debris — cast-off clothing, toys, furniture, the accumulated crap of a wasteful consumer society. Everything is piled together into a single shape surrounded by white space. Her compositions are highly structured and architectural in the way of Cezanne when he broke the forms of nature down to their essential geometric shapes. Her painting style — with flat, unmodulated colors and flowing lines — reminds me a lot of Jacob Lawrence.
Showing with Peck is Whiting Tennis, whose paintings and sculptures deal with many of the same subjects and are similar in style. The two are so similar in both style and outlook that it would be easy to assume that everything in the gallery was created by the same artist. They are a perfect match.
This is truly an excellent show. It closes today, so I urge you to see it. — Alec Clayton
[The Helm, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., 760 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.627.8845, www.thehelmgallery.com]
MORE VISUAL ARTS: What’s hanging locally.
FILM
“American Gangster”
Apart from the detail that he was a heroin dealer, Frank Lucas’ career would be an ideal case study for a business school. “American Gangster” tells his success story. Inheriting a crime empire from his famous boss, Bumpy Johnson, he cornered the New York drug trade with admirable capitalist strategies. He personally flew to Southeast Asia to buy his product directly from the suppliers, used an ingenious importing scheme to get it into the United States, and sold it at higher purity and lower cost than anyone else was able to. At the end, he was worth more than $150 million and got a reduced sentence by cutting a deal to expose three-quarters of the NYPD narcotics officers as corrupt. And he always took his mom to church on Sunday. Four Stars. — Roger Ebert
[AMC Narrows Plaza 8: 2, 5:15, 8:30; Century Olympia: noon, 1:40, 3:25, 5:10, 7, 8:40, 10:20; Lakewood Cinema 15: 11:40 a.m., 12:10, 1, 3, 3:40, 4:40, 6:30, 7, 8, 10, 10:30; Lakewood Towne Center 12: 12:20, 3:40, 7, 10:25; Longston Place 14: 11:45 a.m., 12:15, 12:45, 3:15, 3:40, 4:10, 6:45, 7:15, 8, 10:15, 10:40; Regal Gig Harbor 3: 3:50, 7:10; Regal Martin Village 16: 11:45 a.m., 12:15, 1, 3:15, 3:45, 4:45, 6:40, 7:10, 8:30, 10:10, 10:40; Yelm Cinemas @ Prairie Park: 12:20, 3:35, 6:50.
OLYMPIA FILM FESTIVAL: Today’s schedule.
MORE FILM: Playing on local screens.
