Hannah Bellefontaine’s pottery pickle bears mute witness to a Tacoma that once was.
The giant pickle, a full foot and a half long, is a tribute to Nalley’s, the pickle-packing company that once lent its strong aromatic presence to the industrial gulch known as the Nalley Valley.
Today, Nalley’s pickles are still sold in Northwest grocery stores, but with the company sold to an out-of-state corporation, the pickle smell is gone.
Still, Bellefontaine considers the pickle an iconic symbol of her adopted city, and that’s why she chose to create one for a show at the art gallery in Freighthouse Square. The show, titled “The Unveiling of Tacoma,” marshals the talent of 20 South Sound artists who created 50 Tacoma-centric images. On display at the Freighthouse Art Gallery through Dec. 15, artworks include watercolor, oil and acrylic paintings, pottery, photography and drawing.
“We were trying to come up with an interesting idea for a show,” says Tacoma native Carolyn Burt, who headed the committee that put the collection together. “We thought we would look at Tacoma through an artist’s eyes.”
Artists such as Bellefontaine saw humor in the city’s past. In addition to her pickle, she also created a pottery teapot in the image of Bob’s Java Jive, Tacoma’s famous coffee-pot shaped nightspot, and a covered cheese plate in the shape of the Tacoma Dome.
Other artists painted or photographed cityscapes and urban dwellers. Popular images include those of the city’s curvilinear architecture, such as the federal courthouse in the former Union Station, the Museum of Glass hot shop cone or the Tacoma Dome.
Burt went to a vacant lot off Yakima Avenue to get a perspective on the Tacoma Dome for her acrylic painting. She drove by The Spar Tavern in Old Town late on a rainy night to create a dreamy watercolor painting of one of Tacoma’s oldest watering holes. Her stark pen-and-ink drawings of the W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory at Wright Park, the Rialto Theater and Union Station offer yet another interpretation of city landmarks.
“It’s been really fun for me to look at different views of Tacoma,” Burt says. “It got me to be proud of my city again. What’s neat about putting it into a painting is seeing the details, instead of taking it all for granted.”
Photographer Kate Lynch of DuPont took another approach, focusing on a few of Tacoma’s people. Her photograph, titled “Living Colors,” shows two youthful subjects viewing paintings in the Freighthouse Gallery. Both young women have hair dyed in a rainbow of day-glow colors, and one leans casually on a decorated skateboard. To Lynch, the two sisters represent a new generation of Tacoma art lovers, sampling art hung in a historic building with deep Tacoma roots.
Richard Jahn calls his painting style “alternative,” and says he aims to bring a certain “wow” factor to each picture he creates. He favors contrasting colors that pop from the canvas. One of his brightly colored oils in the “Unveiling Tacoma” show looks across the water at Union Station and shows a sliver of the 21st Street cable-stay bridge leading into the city from the Tideflats.
“I tend to look for obvious scenes that represent an area,” says Jahn, who works as a firefighter in Renton and who has had success selling paintings of that city. “When I think of Tacoma, this is what I think of.”
Like many artists, painter and photographer Val Persoon is in love with Tacoma’s architectural, maritime and industrial heritage. Her entries in the show include a painting of Stadium High School, titled “The Castle,” in which the landmark building appears to rise from a fog bank. She also hung several black-and-white photographs of giant ropes coiled on a wharf and other scenes from the waterfront. “To me, they just say Tideflats,” says the North Dakota native.
Persoon’s studio is just a stone’s throw from Freighthouse Square, and she often paints to the sound of whistling trains. If she happens to be teaching a painting class when a train races by, she simply halts instruction for a moment in deference to the sound of the giant machine.
To her, the sound is energizing and a reminder of the industry that built Tacoma. “If you don’t like industrial,” says Persoon, “you don’t like Tacoma.”
Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635
WHAT: “The Unveiling of Tacoma,” an art show of city images
WHEN: through Dec. 15
WHERE: Freighthouse Art Gallery, 430 E. 25th St., Tacoma
HOURS: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays; 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. Sundays
ADMISSION: free
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