Don’t blink. You’ll miss the art. Read more...

The Tracy Lang show at the University of Puget Sound’s Kittredge Gallery is up for only another week, but it’s worth catching before it closes. Read more...

It started with a trip to Africa, and a dream of a shared art space in Tacoma. Now the dream has a building, art supplies and equipment and a small but growing community of folks making art together. Tacoma Art Place celebrates its first year Saturday, and its supporters are excited by where the nonprofit cooperative is going. Read more...

If you’ve never heard of Rossini’s opera “Le Comte Ory,” don’t fret. Rossini wrote many popular works (“The Barber of Seville,” the “William Tell” overture) but “Ory” isn’t one of them: You can count the total U.S. productions on one hand. Yet Tacoma Opera has chosen the comedy for its opening production this weekend. Why? Fantastic singing, great tunes and a whole lot of hilarious cross-dressing. Read more...

If you’d spent $100,000 on an elaborate Halloween costume and had to wait four years to wear it, you’d be pretty pleased when the moment finally came. Read more...

It’s art that connects four rivers and an ocean; that connects local tribes, governments and residents. It connects history with environment; a tumultuous past with an uncertain future. Read more...

It’s the regular Wednesday night live-drawing session at PLU, where artists can hone their anatomy skills by drawing from live bodies, unencumbered by clothes. But tonight is different: The seven people on the central platform are there not just to model, but to learn how to do it well and to do it for money. And professional model Anne Reilly is there to teach them.

Read more...

OK, hands up if you’ve seen a bassoon player do a solo in front of an orchestra. Read more...

There’s a piece of India inside Tacoma Art Museum. With a new series of large South Indian-painted billboards, Seattle artist Donald Fels offers up a show that’s rather like India in many ways: big, loud, bright, startling and with an onion’s worth of layers that Westerners can only guess at. Read more...

As a companion to Donald Fels’ “What is a Trade?”, Tacoma Art Museum has secured a simply beautiful exhibition from the Dahesh Museum of Art. Half of a touring show (the other half is in the Frye in Seattle), “Oasis: Western Dreams of the Ottoman Empire” takes a look at the obsessive Orientalism that swept Europe from the 17th to 19th centuries, in oils, watercolors, photogravures, prints and sculptures. Read more...

Simply splendid singing! Divine dancing! Charming, captivating comedy! Perfectly precocious puppets! Read more...

In Tip Toland’s studio, there’s an old lady curled up on the floor, a shivering girl and a little boy with his hands down his pants. Which is all exactly as it should be. Read more...

If you’ve ever wished a book could come to life, you’re in luck this fall. Award-winning children’s author-illustrator Gerald McDermott’s “Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest” and “Coyote: A Trickster Tale from the American Southwest” will pull off that feat in Tacoma – more or less. Read more...

If Puyallup Fair burnout has caught up with you, consider taking the family to Auburn today for the White River Valley Museum’s annual Model Railroad Show. Read more...

If you had to sum up the 2008-2009 performing arts season in Tacoma, opening later this month, the word would be “different.” Read more...