SUMMERENDER FEST WILL MAKE YOU ‘SWOON!’

To make an audience swoon, the performing arts company Strange Fruit takes a love story, colors it with whimsical costumes and makeup, and acts it out through a magical mix of theater, dance and circus techniques.

Oh yeah, and they do it while perched on flexible poles 13 feet in the air.

“People do get spellbound with how we move through space, which is part of the magic, really,” says 33-year-old Kathryn Jamieson, who’s been with the Melbourne, Australia-based troupe for seven years.

It’s the closest thing you can get to flying, Jamieson says with a laugh during a phone conversation earlier this week while on the road from South Orange, N.J., to the Big Apple. She and three other Strange Fruit performers are currently on a U.S. summer tour.

Since mid-July, they’ve performed “Swoon!” — a love story — at such venues as Chicago’s Millennium Park and the Bank of America Plaza in Los Angeles, and will end the tour at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s annual music and arts festival held Labor Day weekend.

But before that, they’re coming to Yakima to perform in Thursday’s second annual SummerEnder, an outdoor festival presented by The Seasons, the Capitol Theatre and the Committee for Downtown Yakima, along with support from Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center.

The eclectic event will take over a shady stretch of Naches Avenue in downtown Yakima. Here, folks will find food offerings from Buhrmaster Baking Co., Santiago’s and Café Melange. Masset, Kana and Plaza Socievole wineries will serve up their best vinos in the wine and beer garden, where the new Yakima Craft Brewing Co. will also have some suds on tap.

For the little ones, there’s a kids zone with hands-on activities and games.

Over on The Seasons’ front porch, there’ll be performances by The Senate, Carrie Rodriguez and the Bill Frisell Trio.

Seattle’s The Senate are no strangers to Yakima. Several weeks ago, the raucous unplugged trio — which prides itself on playing “face-melting acoustic riffage” — took the stage at Franklin Park for a Summer Sunset Concert, then played the next night as the Yakima Sports Center.

Coming from the other coast is Rodriguez, a classically trained Brooklyn-based beauty (via Austin, Texas) who plays a feisty fiddle and meshes bluesy alt-country with indie singer-songwriter sensibilities.

Lastly is Grammy-winning contemporary jazz guitarist Frisell, who’s called Seattle home since the late 1980s.

In between musical acts, Strange Fruit will be twirling, spinning and swaying above the intersection of Naches Avenue and A Street.

Performed without dialogue, but backed by a beautiful score, “Swoon!” is part aerial ballet, part theatrical performance that tells a tale of love, loss, joy and freedom.

Strange Fruit has a repertoire of seven shows that explore different themes; all are performed on poles and typically play to an audience in the round.

“And where you sit,” explains Strange Fruit’s Jamieson, “you get a different story and a different experience.”

Standing on a perch, the performers are attached by a harness to the sway poles, which are 4 meters high (that’s a little more than 13 feet). The male performers have what’s called a tilt harness that allows them to move their feet off the perch — sure to draw gasps from the crowd.

“Most other equipment, like circus equipment, people usually have to hold on to something, so you don’t have the freedom of expression like we have,” says Jamieson, who has a background as a gymnast and a diver.

As you can imagine, to gracefully pull off this aerial ballet requires movement and manipulation of the whole body.

Weather is also a factor. If it’s too cold, the sway poles spin more. Too hot and they bend more. If it’s raining or too windy, the show can’t go on.

But performing in the elements is part of the fun, says Jamieson. And each new environment changes the feel of the show.

“It really is as fun as it looks,” she says.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Second annual Sweet SummerEnder.

WHO: The Senate, Carrie Rodriguez, the Bill Frisell Trio and Strange Fruit, plus a beer and wine garden, food vendors and a kids zone.

WHEN: Gates open at 3:30 p.m. Thursday (Aug. 28).

WHERE: In front of The Seasons, 101 N. Naches Ave.

HOW MUCH: Advance tickets cost $20 for adults, $10 for students ages 13-20, and are free for children 12 and under. Tickets purchased at the gate cost an additional $5.

A family package (two adults and two students) is also available for $45. Additional children’s tickets cost $5.

Tickets may be purchased through TicketsWest, 800-325-7328, www.ticketswest.com, or the Capitol Theatre box office, 853-2787. (The family package is only available through the Capitol box office.)

INFO: Visit www.capitoltheatre.org or www.seasonsmusicfestival.com.

SNEAK PEEK: To see a video clip from one of Strange Fruit’s “Swoon!” performances, click HERE.

Totally Total Fest

Next week, the notoriously laid-back college town of Missoula, Mont., will be besieged by all brands of punk, metal, garage and stoner-rock, not to mention some insurgent alt-country thrown in for good measure.

Hailing from Portland to Bellingham and San Francisco to the Brooklyn boroughs, these independent bands — about 40 of ’em — will be traversing I-90 on their way to Total Fest, the growing DIY music festival founded by Yakima native Josh Vanek.

Now in its seventh year, Total Fest runs next Thursday through Aug. 16 at Missoula’s Badlander and Palace, two venues interconnected within the same building. Plus, there’s a record swap, barbecues and, since it’s Missoula, river floats.

“It has more of a community feel rather than the bands are inaccessible and locked away,” explains Vanek, a 1992 Eisenhower High School graduate.

“It doesn’t have the air of like a Sasquatchy thing,” he says, referring to the Sasquatch! Music Festival at the Gorge Amphitheatre. “It’s fun and positive — and legitimately that way.”

The bill includes a number of regionally well-known bands such as Black Elk, the sneering, spitting, super loud group out of Portland; Seattle’s PBR-fueled Akimbo; and Bellingham’s Black Eyes and Neckties, who you may (unfortunately) remember — they showed some serious skin when they played the Yakima Sports Center in December.

Also, there are The Pasties (Olympia); Pure Country Gold (Portland); The Trucks (Bellingham; pictured at left); Miss Lana Rebel (Portland); Triclops! (San Francisco); the one-time reunion of Disgruntled Nation (Kalispell, Mont.); and the only live show this year by Federation X, the Bellingham-Brooklyn band featuring local boy Bill Badgley.

Past Total Fest acts have included Old Time Relijun, the Fleshies, the Thrones, Yogoman Burning Band, Mountain High, Madraso, Volumen, Japanther and the Cherry Valence.

“It’s bands whose music we think is exciting,” says Vanek.

While the first fest in 2002 was simply a concert featuring a handful of Vanek’s favorite bands, it’s now grown into an event that, this year, drew submissions from more than 100 bands. A listening committee sifts through all that rock ’n’ ruckus to select the lineup.

“Obviously, there are many more than 40 that we would have liked to have,” says Vanek.

And although the Thursday night show is 18 and older, the rest of the festival is all-ages.

“Growing up in Yakima, the opportunity for shows being under 18 was few and far between,” says the 34-year-old Vanek. “It might be way easier to do it 21-plus, but what’s the point?”

Total Fest — an ambitious name that comes from the concept of “total music,” as dubbed by the San Francisco band The F***ing Champs — was born out of Vanek’s record label, Wäntage USA.

And the label was born, in part, out of a few of those few-and-far-between all-ages shows here in his hometown. Held in the parking lot of Yakima music store Off the Record in the mid-1990s, Vanek remembers seeing hard-hitting Northwest acts such as Karp and Zeke.

“Yakima gets skipped over a lot (by bands), so when it did happen, I remember it being super special,” recalls Vanek.
“Those shows kind of blew a lot of our minds,” he says. “They personally inspired me to get involved as a nonmusician.”

Vanek founded Wäntage in 1993 after his freshman year of college at the University of Montana in Missoula (where he’d eventually make his permanent home after returning from the Peace Corps).

Back in Yakima for the summer and working for a local frozen food company, Vanek (pictured at left) had a little cash in his pocket, so he started his own record label. (His brother Matt came up with the name, and brother Ian helped run the label for a long time.) The first release was a split cassette tape by Yakima bands Squelch and Clever.

Wäntage now has about 50 releases to its name, mostly from loud, fiercely independent bands, several of which — Fed X, The Lights, The Narrows, Squalora, Volumen — will be playing at next week’s Total Fest.

“They’re bands that are kind of do-it-yourself,” says Vanek, “and whose music I think deserves more attention.”

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Total Fest VII.
WHO: Federation X, Squalora, Volumen, Akimbo, Black Elk, Black Eyes & Neckties, Disgruntled Nation, JackTop Town, Lopez, The Pasties, Pure Country Gold, Saviours, Pierced Arrows, the Sherlocks, The Trucks and Triclops!, among others.
WHEN: Aug. 14-16.
WHERE: Downtown Missoula, Mont.
• Live music: 8 p.m. Aug. 14-16 at the Badlander/Palace, 208 Ryman St.
• Record swap: Noon-2 p.m. Aug. 16 at Big Dipper Ice Cream, 631 S. Higgins Ave.
HOW MUCH: $35 for a three-day pass and $25 for two-day pass (Aug. 15-16).
INFO: Tickets, band descriptions and the like are available at www.wantageusa.com and wantagetotalfest.blogspot.com.

Warhol Portrait Show At Maryhill Museum of Art

“It was his spontaneous intuition that not to be received as an image in the common consciousness is to be bereft of the only reality that matters. This thought may be enlisted to explain his propensity to repeat, over and over, the same image of the same personality — Marilyn, Liz, Jackie, Elvis — as if the quantity of iterated images increased the substance, in the only way possible, of those who had become labels for themselves.”

— Art critic Arthur Danto

BY KIM NOWACKI
Yakima Herald-Republic

GOLDENDALE — Andy Warhol was a great manipulator of images, including his own.
He was an artist — one of the most important and influential of the 20th century — more interested in labels than the contents.

He approached household products like celebrities, and vice versa.

“He was not interested in, say, Norma Jeane Baker and her struggles,” says Sue Taylor, a noted art critic, professor of art history at Portland State University and corresponding editor for Art in America magazine.

Instead, Warhol’s focus was solely on Baker’s glamorized, Hollywood-created persona of Marilyn Monroe.

In her cult of celebrity.

In her marketed image.

And in mass-producing that iconic image, Warhol commented on our consumption of it.

He was also “the great leveler who reduced all subjects, no matter what their measure of importance, to the same degree of interpretation,” states the brochure for “Andy Warhol and Other Famous Faces,” an exhibition of portraits that opens Saturday at the Maryhill Museum of Art, just south of Goldendale. It will be on display through Nov. 15.

The show features a number of Warhol’s famous pop art portraits from the ’60s and ’70s — Marilyn, the Beatles, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sitting Bull, General Custer, Geronimo, Queen Elizabeth II, Jimmy Carter, Liza Minnelli — as well as portraits by a number of artists inspired by Warhol’s work. They include Robert Rauschenberg’s famous 1970 screen print “Signs” and Red Grooms’ 1987 lithograph “Elvis,” both of which not only depict people, but also certain eras in American history.

All of the work in the exhibit is on loan from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation. This is the third exhibition of works loaned by Schnitzer that Maryhill has organized.

“For a long time, I’ve wanted to do an Andy Warhol portrait show,” explains Maryhill curator Lee Musgrave.

“I always felt Andy revolutionized portraits,” Musgrave says while taking a break from hanging the neon-colored collection in an upstairs showroom.

However, it was Schnitzer — he will give a talk at Maryhill on Aug. 2 — who encouraged Musgrave to also include artists influenced by Warhol.

Unlike regal, realistic one-of-a-kind portraits, Warhol took ready-made images from magazines and newspapers, and through the mass-media tool of printmaking, blurred the lines of high and low art.

He made art out of mass-produced items and images — and then sought to also mass produce the art.

“When artists struggled to be authentic and original, he did the opposite,” says Portland State’s Taylor.

Next Thursday, Taylor will present his lecture, “Andy Warhol, Postmodern Persona,” which highlights Warhol, who died in 1987, and his impact on art and pop culture.

An American icon himself known for his distinctive mannerisms and hip New York studio dubbed “The Factory,” Warhol and his prints are still recognized even by people who don’t follow art or recite his, well, famous “15 minutes” quote.

But to see his work in person is to see its richness and scale, to see beyond its glossy mass-produced persona.

“You’re struck by that this was made by hand,” says Musgrave.

At the Maryhill show, you can get up close and study the glitter lining in Queen Elizabeth II — the prints of her are two of the most striking in the exhibit — or Warhol’s smudged fingerprint underneath the Beatles.

And, yes, there’s even the emblematic “Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato)” — perhaps a de facto portrait of the artist.

“It’s easy to chuckle when you see those Campbell’s soup cans,” says Taylor. “But there’s a great deal of substance there.”

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Andy Warhol and Other Famous Faces” opens July 19 at the Maryhill Museum of Art.

WHEN: Maryhill is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Nov. 15.

WHERE: Overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, the museum is off State Route 14, just west of U.S. Highway 97 near Goldendale.

HOW MUCH: Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors, $2 for ages 6-16 and free for ages 5 and under.

INFO: Call 773-3733, or visit www.maryhillmuseum.org.

MORE WARHOL: Here are upcoming events related to the “Andy Warhol and Other Famous Faces” exhibition:

* 1-4 p.m. July 19 and Aug. 2 — Visitors can join the museum’s education staff to create a free self-portrait using Warhol’s “blotted line technique.”

* 7 p.m. July 24 — Art critic Sue Taylor will present the lecture “Andy Warhol, Postmodern Persona,” which highlights Warhol and his impact on art and pop culture. Free with museum admission.

* 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Aug. 2 — Noted master printer Frank Janzen will lead a mono-print workshop for those with a serious interest in printmaking. Cost is $60 and advance registration is required.

* 3 p.m. Aug. 2 — A talk by art collector Jordan Schnitzer. All of the work in the Warhol exhibit is on loan from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation. Schnitzer began collecting art at age 14 and has a contemporary print collection of more than 5,000 works. The talk will be followed by a walk through the exhibit led by Maryhill curator Lee Musgrave. Free with museum admission.

ABOUT MARYHILL: The castlelike museum was founded by Northwest entrepreneur Sam Hill and opened to the public in 1940. It’s home to early 20th century European works, Native American artifacts, a captivating chess set collection, stunning Rodin sculptures — the second largest collection on the West Coast — and a number of beautiful, yet a little feisty, peacocks wandering the grounds. (See if you can spot Frederick, the all-white peacock.) Four miles east of Maryhill is the museum’s full-scale replica of England’s famous Neolithic Stonehenge.

AT STONEHENGE: At 7 p.m. July 19, Keith Scales, artistic director for the Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon in Portland, will present the work of 19th century Irish poet W.B. Yeats at the Stonehenge Memorial. The free program will feature two short plays by Yeats titled “The Cat and the Moon” and “At the Hawks Well.”

Tieton’s Summer Solstice — Arts Unbound

TIETON — In an old fruit warehouse in this tiny Central Washington town, an igloo has formed.

Here, in a former cold storage room, icebergs are floating on a rolling sea. A starry night sky gives way to glimpses of the northern lights.

This arcticscape is part of an eerie, exciting, electrifying installation/performance art piece created by Seattle artist Allan Packer (pictured, photo by Andy Sawyer, YH-R). Titled “The Ozone Room,” it fills this immense, echoey space.

“I thought the irony of building an igloo in here was ideal,” says the 51-year-old Packer. He has spent the past two weeks building “The Ozone Room” with the help of Stephan “Buck,” who’s been involved in the theater and special events business for 40 years.

“The Ozone Room” will debut this weekend as part of Tieton Summer Solstice — Arts Unbound, a celebration that includes art displays and book arts demonstrations, as well as an evening dinner and concert to benefit the Artist Trust and the Yakima Symphony Orchestra.

Without giving too much away about “The Ozone Room” — which is part of the evening fundraiser — it includes “Corvus Corvax,” the igloo sculpture made of cast urethane that Packer created in 2005 at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. The piece was derived from Packer’s experiences living in 1980 in the high arctic community of Cape Dorset, known as the “capital of Inuit art.”

Rising up from the igloo is a Tesla coil — to make the Aurora Borealis — rows of black lights and a time machine, an art piece Packer created in 2006. During the 10-minute performance, there will be live narration, actors that look like stick figures and a soundtrack taken from deep space.

“The Ozone Room,” explains Packer, addresses a number of contemporary problems such as global warming and cross-racial issues, as well as questions like “what’s out there,” he says. The actual performance features “a sequence of events that are abstract but that tell a story,” says Packer.

“This has really grown,” he says of the installation. “It’s taken five years to come to this place.”

Packer first got the idea after visiting the warehouse during a similar event last year, which served as the major coming out party for Mighty Tieton, the name given to Seattle art book publisher Ed Marquand’s vision for this former bustling fruit hub that sits roughly 20 miles outside Yakima.

Marquand’s hope is to establish the foundation for a community of artisan businesses and hospitality enterprises — think furniture design, gift lines, concrete casting, catering companies, even a distillery.

“Some things are moving slower. I wish we had the cafe and tavern open,” says the 54-year-old Marquand.

“But, financially, we need to catch our breath,” he adds.

So far, Marquand has renovated the old town pharmacy into the Book Arts Studio — a place for his employees to get away from computers and get back to book-arts basics. He’s also purchased a number of storefronts, a former church-turned-community-events center called Harvest Hall and two fruit warehouses.

One warehouse has been — almost unbelievably — transformed into 14 airy live/work lofts.

The other, the Mighty Tieton Warehouse, houses a letterpress print shop and artist studios, including a workspace occupied by Trimpin, a Seattle-based multi-media artist and recipient of a 1997 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” (You know that electronic, funnel-shaped sculpture of guitars at the center of the Experience Music Project in Seattle? Trimpin made that.)

Next to Trimpin’s space is where Packer has been working. The large, cold storage room has been a place to experiment and develop ideas, he says.

“It’s a very nurturing place,” says Packer, who also loves the geography of the area and the stories from the Tieton old-timers who’ve come by to see what he’s doing.

“Here, it’s come and make art,” he says.

Although Packer’s piece will be under wraps during the day Saturday, visitors can check out the Mighty Tieton Warehouse, where works from a broad array of Northwest artists will be on display. Admission is $5 and benefits Tieton Arts & Humanities, a nonprofit corporation formed to produce educational events in conjunction with Mighty Tieton. Children with adults are admitted free, as are ticket holders to that night’s fundraiser.

Also on Saturday, just down Wisconsin Avenue in Galeria Dos — one of those storefront’s Marquand bought up — the young and adventurous artists from Seattle’s PUNCH Gallery will host an art and book swap and rummage sale.

And in the Book Arts Studio, there will be an exhibition and sale of artists’ books, prints and books about artists, plus a medieval bookbinding demonstration by bookbinder, toolmaker and conservator Jim Croft of northern Idaho. Croft builds books completely by hand without any electric machines or tools.

If you get hungry, the Tieton Lions Club will be firing up the grills in the town square.

Saturday evening, the Mighty Tieton Warehouse will be the site of the multifaceted fundraiser for the YSO and Artist Trust, the Seattle-based, not-for-
profit organization that provides direct funding to Washington artists and serves as a professional information resource. There will be art installation/performance pieces by Packer, Trimpin and Thomas Matthiesen during the reception hour.

Dinner follows with a chamber music performance, with oration, of “Façade,” featuring music by William Walton and poems by Dame Edith Sitwell.

The festivities wrap up Sunday morning at Harvest Hall with a light breakfast and conversation led by Brooke Creswell, conductor for the YSO. Creswell, along with Washington state Poet Laureate Sam Green, and artist, activist and creative community builder Karen Guzak will discuss “Creative Communities in Collaboration.” Admission to the breakfast is $15 at the door

If you go

WHAT: Tieton Summer Solstice — Arts Unbound.

WHO: Presented by Artist Trust, Mighty Tieton, Tieton Arts & Humanities and the Yakima Symphony Orchestra.

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday and Sunday throughout Tieton.

SCHEDULE:

* 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday — Barbecue in the town square. Proceeds benefit the Tieton Lions Club

* Noon-5 p.m. Saturday — Art and exhibits in the Mighty Tieton Warehouse. Admission is $5. (Free for that night’s benefit dinner and performance ticket holders.) Proceeds benefit Tieton Arts & Humanities

* Noon-5 p.m. Saturday — Art exhibits, demonstrations and bookstore in the Book Arts Studio. Admission is free.

* Noon-5 p.m. Saturday — Seattle’s PUNCH Gallery hosts an art and book swap and rummage sale in Galeria Dos.

* 5-10 p.m. Saturday — Tieton Solstice benefit dinner and performance in the Mighty Tieton Warehouse. Tickets cost $100 through www.brownpapertickets.com.

* 10 a.m.-noon Sunday — Light breakfast and conversation at Harvest Hall. Topic is “Creative Communities in Collaboration.” Admission is $15 at the door.

INFO: For complete event and ticket information, visit www.mightytieton.com or www.artisttrust.org.

Ten things to do this summer on less than a tank of gas

Just because gas prices — along with the cost of everything else — are skyrocketing, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your summer fun.

On Sunday, the Yakima Herald-Republic will include a speical, revamped SUMMER IN THE VALLEY guide (formerly our Summer Fun section) with information about everything that’s going on from now through September.

But we know you don’t want to wait until Sunday. You don’t want to wast any more precious days in the sweet sunshine. So here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll find this summer in the valley.
Read more

Sunshine & Wine — The good life

BY JEAN GUERRERO

Looking for a taste of the best wines in the state?

The seventh annual Sunshine and Wine event is coming to State Fair Park on June 21. Wine tasting, food and an auction will accompany the showcasing of results from the only wine competition worldwide that revolves exclusively around Washington wineries.

Fifteen judges will compare 390 wines from 87 Washington wineries this Saturday.

A week later at Sunshine and Wine, guests will get their chance to taste some of the winners firsthand. Fifty-five of the wineries from the competition will be serving up their finest, some sporting double gold, gold, silver and bronze medals.

One local winemaker, 27-year-old Sean Gilbert of Gilbert Cellars, will feature his 2006 chardonnay, 2005 syrah, 2005 cabernet sauvignon and 2005 malbec.

In addition to entering his top wines into the competition, Gilbert said he has been putting the finishing touches on a tasting room and wine bar that will open at Front Street and Yakima Avenue on July 1.

“Our priority is making great wine and hopefully making an economic and social contribution to the Valley, providing people with something to do downtown,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert Cellars isn’t the only new downtown wine tasting room. Masset Winery, Plaza Sociovale, and the Cascade Wine Co. have all opened in downtown Yakima during the past year. Desert Hills, Donitelia and Kana Winery are the other wineries with tasting rooms downtown.

Local business owners plan to reap some of the benefits from Sunshine and Wine, because hundreds of wine lovers are known to travel to the event each year.

Scott Bouchey, a Cascade Wine Co. employee, said the shop is anticipating spillover business from the competition, calling it a “symbiotic relationship.”

Wine experts said the downtown area will regain prominence as a cultural focal point largely based on the success of wine tourism.

“(Wine drinking) is equated on the part of many people as a lifestyle,” said Jim Collins, owner of Cascade Wine Co. “It’s a symbol of the good life.”

He said the wine industry has been doing well despite economic instability because of the unshakable allure of wine.

“If you’re making a good product that appeals to people not only in terms of quality but the uniqueness of it, and it’s fairly priced, people are going to flock to it,” Collins said.

Gilbert, whose family has owned the prominent local tree fruit company Gilbert Orchards since 1897, became aware of this new potential early on.

He said he was studying history at Pomona College in California when he began considering the possibilities within the wine industry.

Gilbert returned home during the summer of 2001 to help his father plant a test vineyard in the Ahtanum Valley west of Yakima. A year later, his family purchased another vineyard in Mattawa.

“That really got our foot in the door,” Gilbert said.

At first, he and his brother just sold the grapes to other wineries and made small quantities of wine for friends and family.

After a steady string of successes, however, Gilbert was determined to realize the full potential of this new operation by turning it into a real business.

“(Grapes are) a newer crop, and the climate is well-suited to grape growing here,” said Barb Smith Gilbert, Sean’s mother. “It provides an opportunity for agri-tourism and draws people to the Yakima Valley from other parts of the state.”

In 2004, Sean Gilbert interned at Januik and Novelty Hill wineries in Woodinville to learn how to make wine. He then returned home and became the general manager of Gilbert Cellars.

“(Sean) is very enthusiastic about the future of the Yakima Valley, and I think that’s terrific,” Barb said of her son.

Gilbert said he decided to open a Gilbert Cellars tasting room in the historic Lund Building at the corner of Front Street and Yakima Avenue because of its elegant stone exterior and wooden floors, which he believes reflect the style of his wine.

Last year, Gilbert won a silver medal for his 2004 claret. This will be his second time participating in the annual competition.

“Washington wines are getting better known all over the world,” said Brian Carter, a prominent winemaker who has won multiple awards for his Brian Carter Cellars wine. He will be one of the judges at the competition.

Carter said the competition is significant because Washington wines are beginning to win national and international acclaim.

He attributed the high quality of these wines to a combination of winemaking skills and the distinctive environmental conditions of Central Washington: well-drained soils, plentiful water supplies and a relative lack of rainfall.

“A lot of undefined characteristics just come together to make Washington state a really unique winegrowing area unmatched by any place in the world,” Carter said.

Gilbert said he is looking forward to Sunshine and Wine because it will help his wine achieve recognition throughout the community and beyond.

“It is important for the public to be able to see the results (of the competition) so they can make informed decisions about what wines they want to buy,” Carter said.

More than 500 people are expected to attend the event, which will run from 2-7 p.m. and costs $75 per person to attend. All profits made from the event will be used to renovate buildings at State Fair Park.

If you go

WHAT: Sunshine & Wine.

WHEN: 2:30-7:30 p.m. June 21.

WHERE: State Fair Park, 1301 S. Fair Ave.

HOW MUCH: $75. Includes food from regional restaurants and chefs, award-winning wines, live music and silent and live auctions. Call 248-7160 or visit www.sunshineandwine.com.

Edge Fest V: Back from the edge

The biggest surprise for Saturday’s fifth annual Edge Fest isn’t the Blue Mouse Theatre reunion, or that an artist from notable independent label Barsuk Records is on the bill.

It’s that the daylong music festival, which shakes the Yakima Valley Community College courtyard each June, is happening at all.

“There was a lot of surprise,” says 22-year-old Donovon Walton, YVCC Associated Student Body co-director for student programs and coordinator for this year’s Edge Fest.

“No one expected it to happen.”

Walton won’t necessarily say it was guilt that forced him to take over Edge Fest — “I don’t think it was that bad,” the soft-spoken Walton says with a smile — but there definitely was pressure to keep the popular event going after festival founder Jeff Murray left for college in Spokane.

So Walton did, with the help of several phone calls to Murray, who will be back to visit, and volunteer, this weekend.

Edge Fest runs from 1 p.m. to midnight Saturday and features local and regional punk, metal (a lot of metal), indie-rock, hip-hop and folk (much more than years past) bands playing on two alternating stages. Admission is $10, or $5 with at least three nonperishable food donations for the Northwest Harvest food bank. Monetary proceeds will go to help bring two women from Afghanistan to study at YVCC.

Returning to Edge Fest are Shook Ones, Adipose, Chokeout, Colin Spring, With A Bullet, Typical Ace, Grey Fox, The Lonely Forest, Behold, SadistiK with DJ Dominic, and perennial Edge Fest favorite Thee Letting Forth of Fire.

However, absent this year are longtime Edge Festers Feverclub (formerly The Look) and Optimus Rhyme. Feverclub had to cancel because of a scheduling issue; Optimus Rhyme is on a break while band members explore other projects.

Also, Thee Letting Forth of Fire won’t be closing out the festival as the experi-metal ensemble traditionally does. This year’s final spot is being filled by the reunion of Blue Mouse Theatre. (Not that there are probably any hard feelings. The two bands go way back and even split an EP.)

After jokingly mentioning a reunion show, Blue Mouse Theatre, the former Ellensburg metal band that often played The Zone and even the inaugural Edge Fest, sent an e-mail via Edge Fest’s MySpace asking to play this year’s festival.

“Of course, I had no idea who they were,” says Walton, who moved to Yakima just a year ago.

But Murray still has access to the Edge Fest MySpace, “and within a day I got a phone call from Jeff saying, ‘Book Blue Mouse, book Blue Mouse,’” says Walton.

While the reunion began as sort of a lark, now that the band has a gig and has been practicing, this might not just be a one-night-only thing.

“It’s really hard to tell,” says vocalist B.J. Kooy, who will also be playing bass. “We’ll probably enjoy it so much we might do it again.”

Newbies to the Edge Fest stages this year are locals Bad Habit, Fourth & Forever, Makings of a Massacre and Chad Bault, as well as Ellensburg’s Mon Marie and Seattle’s Guns of Nevada.

“I tried to mix it up as much as I could to appeal to a wide range of people,” says Walton, who received more than 60 requests from bands looking to play this year.

“As we got closer, they just started pouring in,” he says.

The latest addition is Seattle indie-folk singer-songwriter Rocky Votolato, who’s signed to Barsuk Records, the Seattle label that’s put out albums by the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, The Long Winters, Nada Surf, Viva Voce and What Made Milwaukee Famous.

Votolato’s latest effort, “The Brag & Cuss,” is a beautifully melancholy album with an alt-country tinge and tales of rough crowds, drinking, lovin’ and lonely highways.

Now paid for out of the YVCC Associated Student Body programming budget, Edge Fest was founded in 2004 by Murray, then a wild-haired 19-year-old YVCC student who simply wanted to throw a rock show that would benefit the Northwest Harvest food bank — and, perhaps, earn him a few cool points. He named it for 88.5-FM The Edge, the YV Tech radio station where he was then student general manager.

In that first year, Murray cobbled together eight local and regional bands ranging from hip-hop to jazz, Christian metal and emo, all playing on a wobbly stage.

In Murray’s opinion, it was terrible, but the good reviews kept rolling in. The next year he secured funds from YVCC and focused all his energy on Edge Fest, which expanded to include more than 20 acts on two alternating stages, similar to the Vans Warped Tour setup.

It drew about 800 music fans, brought in more than 1,000 pounds of food for the food bank and cemented itself as an early summer tradition committed to the spirit of independent music and the community built around it.

But as Murray headed off to Whitworth College in Spokane, the future of Edge Fest seemed bleak.

Enter Walton, a noticeable figure on YVCC’s campus with his long dreadlocks and multiple piercings.

Edge Fest was the first cool event he remembers going to when he moved here from The Dalles, Ore.

“It was pretty much like, I can’t let this stop,” he says.

So he didn’t. And there’s already a potential organizer for next year’s festival.

“We’re really trying to keep the legacy going,” says Walton.

* Find links to the bands playing this year’s Edge Fest and pictures from last year’s event at on.yakimablogs.com/music.

Goodbye Sasquatch! Thanks for a good time

By Kim Nowacki
Yakima Herald-Republic

I’m sore, I’m sunburned, I’m broke. (Seriously, $11 for a 24-ounce can of Pabst Blue Ribbon?) Basically, I’ve only just begun to recover from last weekend’s Sasquatch! Music Festival at the Gorge Amphitheatre.
You can check out all of my Sasquatch dispatches, plus tons of photos and some “artistically shaky” videos — hey, it’s hard to hold your arms up to shoot video while being jostled by eager fans — from the three-day festival at on.yakimablogs.com/music. Just click on the “Sasquatch! 2008″ link.

And now, after a couple of days to decompress and reflect, here are a few of my favorite Sasquatch memories:

* Despite 20,000 people being there — all conspicuously wearing the same attire: big sunglasses, hipster kuffiyeh scarfs, skinny jeans — each day I always eventually, and totally randomly, ran into my friends.

* The weather. Oh, sure I got a little sun and there were a few rain showers, but no blistering heat making life unbearable, or hail storms or high winds shutting down the main stage.

Saturday, R.E.M. bore the brunt of what would ultimately be the worst rain shower of the weekend, but played on, even though Michael Stipe had to take off his shoes so he wouldn’t slip.

And on Sunday evening, Stephen Malkmus commented on how nice the weather was compared to years past — then he made a “crooked rain” reference. Oh Malkmus.

* Speaking of which, I’ve seen Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks before and remember being underwhelmed, if not totally bored. Not anymore.

Malkmus & the Jicks — which now includes the awesomely awesome Janet Weiss on drums — were, of course, noodley in delivery, but not so much so that it overtook the songs. And I just love Malkmus’ pingy voice and quirky songwriting. (I’ve always been a big Pavement fan.)

For sure, this was my most favorite didn’t-expect-to-love-it-but-I-totally-did performance of the weekend. It was really hard to pull away from Malkmus in order to go see The Cure.

* Turns out actor Rainn Wilson (Dwight from “The Office”) and I have a shared love of the Cold War Kids.

* Looking through the notes I took during The Flaming Lips’ show, I simply have written — several times — “So, so, so much confetti.”

* While The Flaming Lips’ were a spectacular spectacle and plenty of other bands put on stand-out performances — Dan Craig was right, The Mars Volta will crush your head — my absolute No. 1 new favorite band is Austin, Texas’ Okkervil River.

Just as the Arcade Fire did in 2005, Okkervil River completely captivated me — it’s hard to take your eyes off singer-songwriter Will Sheff’s lanky frame and I’m utterly enamored with the band’s great storytelling songs, which are propelled by incredibly catchy hooks and a hint of rootsy Americana. Okkervil River is this summer’s musical crush.

As for realizations: Apparently, sunblock expires. Ouch.

And regrets: That there weren’t two of me so I didn’t have to make the decision to miss Ghostland Observatory (they had lasers!) in order to see The Flaming Lips.

Sculptor Denali Granholm is good with figures

Of the more than 200 bas-relief sculptures that Denali Granholm has created for Nike’s Walk of Fame — Wayne Gretzky, Nolan Ryan, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, to name a few — she’s only met a handful of her famous sports subjects. Most of the time, Granholm is working from photographs to create the bronze portraits for Nike’s world headquarters in Beaverton, Ore.

She has an innate talent to turn those snapshots into three-dimensional works of art with personality, despite discovering her passion for sculpting after several other career and life paths — a flight attendant for United Airlines, teaching home economics in India, interior design.

Doing portraits, she says, is in her cellular makeup.

“It’s like I have a memory from another lifetime,” the 59-year-old Granholm says while sitting in her tidy Yakima studio, which is one of the stops on Saturday’s Tour of Artists’ Homes and Studios, an annual fundraiser organized by the Larson Gallery Guild.

Now in its ninth year, the self-guided tour is an opportunity to visit the living and creating quarters of local artists. It offers insights into how local artists think, live, work — and decorate.

And like last year, all of the stops are new. Except, of course, for designer Leo Adams’ celebrated Ahtanum Ridge work-of-art abode, which has been included annually since the tour’s inception. (Regular tour-goers would most likely cause a stir if they didn’t get the chance to check out Adams’ continuously changing home — and hang out with his adorable dogs.)

In addition to Granholm, whose studio is in the basement of a beautiful English Tudor-style brick house near Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, folks will get to visit Gary Dismukes (clay), Carol Fletcher (jewelry/mixed media) and Evans Fletcher (mixed media/fused glass), and Ardith Kaiser (painting) and her daughter, Holly Mahre (sculpture).

Also new this year is a $5 discount ticket for high school and college students.

Granholm is excited to be on the tour, but also sorry she doesn’t get to visit the other artist spaces. (It’s a common lament.)

Born and raised in the Lower Valley, Granholm has led an adventurous life filled with travel and various career paths. She has a curious mind that needed to see what was out there.

But it wasn’t until she took an art class just for fun while attending Metropolitan State College of Denver — she was studying psychology — that Granholm realized abilities she didn’t know she had.

Eventually, she earned her degree in art education from Central Washington University in 1977 (and a minor in psychology), then moved to Vancouver, Wash., where she started sculpting, and built a career as an interior designer.

However, in spring 1989, Granholm felt she needed a sign to tell her which way her life should go. Three months later, a Portland art gallery that showed her work called to say Nike was interested in talking to her about portraits for its Walk of Fame.

At the time, Granholm had only done one bas-relief sculpture, ever. Nike was so impressed with her work and ideas that she has a lifetime contract with the athletic company titan.

But sculpting the faces of seminal sports figures isn’t Granholm’s only medium. She’s responsible for the life-size bronze statue of the late, great jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton that stands at the University of Idaho in Moscow. Granholm met and measured Hampton for the piece. He was a man, she recalls, who exuded much love.

Granholm also sculpts beautiful, sensual abstract pieces — they come from the soul, she says — and has commissioned pieces of people’s horses. Granholm has had a life-long love of horses, and even bought one when she lived in Colorado. (When she was a kid, “I thought I was a horse,” she says.)

Granholm returned to the Valley in the winter of 2005 after her mother died and her father needed some help. And she plans to stick around and settle down.

She’s traded in her saddle for skinny road bike tires — cycling being another passion — teaches art classes and is at peace with staying in one place.

“I’m happy to be back,” she says.

If you go

WHAT: The Larson Gallery Guild’s ninth annual Tour of Artists’ Homes and Studios.

WHO’S ON THE TOUR: Leo Adams (paintings/designs), Gary Dismukes (clay), Carol Fletcher (jewelry/mixed media) and Evans Fletcher (mixed media/fused glass), Denali Granholm (sculpture) and Ardith Kaiser (painting) and Holly Mahre (sculpture).

WHEN: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday.

HOW MUCH: Tickets cost $20 for adults and $5 for students (high school and college) and are available at the Larson Gallery, Oak Hollow Gallery, Simon Edwards Gallery, Yakima Bindery and the downtown Banner Bank.

MORE INFO: Call the Larson Gallery at 574-4875 or visit www.larsongallery.org.

Guilty Pleasures — Spring yard parties

When the weather starts to turn pleasant, as it has for the past few weekends — hey, there have been a few nonwindy moments — Guilty Pleasures starts to lament having a lack of yard space to host outdoor get-togethers.

Luckily, that’s no longer a problem because Guilty Pleasures has joined up with a group of folks who gather each Sunday for a yard party and potluck dinner at the home of two friends.

It sounds so wholesome, and it is.

We throw the foam football around in the yard, grill up burgers, do crafts, play Apples to Apples (perhaps the greatest card game ever invented) and help with the dishes after all sitting down for a “family” meal together.

But let’s be honest, these are Guilty Pleasures’ friends, so there’s also fire juggling, plenty of “that’s what she said” jokes, crude sidewalk chalk drawings, strange costumes and an endless supply of booze punch (pictured) — both of the people who live there are bartenders.

It’s pretty much the perfect way to spend a spring Sunday, and Guilty Pleasures can only see it getting better as the summer goes on — splashing around in a cheap plastic kiddie pool while listening to weird electronica strangely comes to mind first.

Sadly, however, with gas prices the way they are, the truly best part of these Sunday soirées is that the hosting house is within biking distance from Guilty Pleasures’ apartment.

Hmmm, anyone know how to strap tiki torches to a bike?

* Guilty Pleasures is a weekly look at whatever Guilty Pleasures wants to look at.

Night life spotlight — Mystery Fluid

Longtime Yakima band Mystery Fluid likes to say it plays metal that would make Ozzy proud. And frontman Joe Alvarez certainly has the long hair, the tattoos, the slightly sinister voice.

But it’s not like Alvarez is attempting to copy the Prince of Darkness. It’s just that he comes from the same heavy metal old-school.

Mystery Fluid — trust me, that name is better than the alternative — makes great, head-banging double bass drum rock in the tradition of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. They write their own songs and favor stacks of speakers and plenty of lighting effects. And if they blow your ear drums? Mission accomplished.

The core members of Mystery Fluid — Alvarez, guitarist Randy Tilton and drummer Mark Overby — have been together since 1997. Bass player Max Irwin joined last year. But aside from the occasional biker event, the band doesn’t play live much.

Booking a local gig is difficult, they say, especially for a metal band that plays original material. (Mystery Fluid isn’t the only band to lodge this complaint.)

But on Saturday, they’ll bust out of their cramped practice space in Irwin’s basement and into Brews and Cues, the downtown dive bar formerly called Amy Lou’s.

“When I walked in, I saw a dive bar — and I thought this is perfect,” says Irwin, who knows Brews and Cues owner Rick Newcombe, who took over the bar in September.

“It has metal written all over it.”

While that’s a compliment, Newcombe’s been working to revamp Brews and Cues and turn it into a “neighborhood bar,” he says. Live music in the space will only be an occasional thing, notes Newcombe.

Even if live gigs are few and far between, Mystery Fluid has also taken advantage of a couple of other ways to get noticed.

The band, of course, has a MySpace page (www.myspace.com/mysteryfluid) and recently paid to have a song included on a Metal Edge magazine compilation CD (think of it as audible advertising). It’s track 11 on the disk that came in the March issue.

“We never got discouraged,” Alvarez says about keeping the metal dream alive. “We just love the art of creating the darn songs.”

* Mystery Fluid plays at 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Brews and Cues (formerly Amy Lou’s), 104 S. Second St. Phone: 453-9713. No cover charge.

WILD WOMEN DON’T GET THE BLUES …

… But they sure can sing it.

Saturday’s A CASE OF THE BLUES AND ALL THAT JAZZ is featuring an all female-fronted lineup. On the bill is the raucous trio Saffire — The Uppity Blues Women, the swampabilly outfit Junkyard Jane, and the Delta blues duo Wildsang.

Earlier this week, On Magazine writer Kim Nowacki spoke with Saffire vocalist Gaye Adegbalola (pictured) from her home in Fredricksburg, Va.

Here’s what the 63-year-old blues woman had to say about the blues, the band and being outspoken (we apologize that the audio is a little slow):
Click here to listen

• A Case of the Blues and All That Jazz runs from 3-11 p.m. Saturday in Sarg Hubbard Park on the Yakima Greenway.
In addition to the music, there’ ll be wines, microbrews, a mojito and port bar, cigar tent and food booths. No outside food or drink is allowed, but folks are welcome to bring lawn chairs and blankets. (And don’t forget your ID, because this party is 21 and over.)
Tickets cost $40 in advance and $45 at the gate and are available through the Yakima Greenway Foundation.
Proceeds benefit the Greenway and the Junior League of Yakima.