The 15 People to Know for Spring Arts
Let us introduce you to the artists making headlines—and entertaining audiences—in the new season.
By Steve WieckingWith contribution from Sarah Anderson, Wilson Diehl, and Michaelangelo Matos
Left of Center
Rosie Thomas,Singer/Songwriter
You should know her because Last year’s Sub Pop album These Friends of Mine—a collection of delicate ballads featuring fellow indie popster Sufjan Stevens—has established the Cornish alum as a quirky voice on the rise.
What she’s up to now Thomas’s audiences expect the unconventional—they’re often treated to her alter ego, a pizza-delivery gal named Sheila, whom she incorporates into concerts. But late 2007 saw the Ballard resident acting out again: She spent a week filming the upcoming Calvin Marshall with another disarming oddball, Hollywood character actor Steve Zahn. “We had a kiss!” Thomas proclaims in her endearingly childlike squeal. “I can’t even do public displays of affection normally.” The movie experience energized her: “For the first time in my life I felt so brave and full of life because I was so out of my league.” In addition to touring this spring she plans to record new material with Sam Beam, the one-man alt-folk force who performs as Iron and Wine. But she wants to keep her celluloid options open. “If I had four lines in a film every year,” she says, “I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
See for yourself Rosie Thomas, visit www.rosiethomas.com for tour info and film release dates
Lust Laugh
Ellen Forney, Cartoonist
You should know her because She continues to draw a fine funny line between laughing with sex and laughing at it.
What she’s up to now Lust, Forney’s first solo hardback collection, combines some of her weekly illustrations for personal ads in The Stranger with interviews she conducted with people who placed those ads. The talk is refreshingly frank and her cartoons demonstrate a playful grasp of how wonderfully varied human sexuality is: One male seeking a very particular kind of assistance is depicted as a box of “Hand Bugger Helper”; a woman’s Bainbridge ferry fantasy finds itself on a “Wish You Were Here” postcard. Levity moves Forney closer to her goal. “I think if I have an agenda, a lot of it is about being sex positive,” she confesses. “People grow up with a lot of shame around it, and it doesn’t fit into their idea of what a healthy life is. But it leads into accepting yourself. It’s easier to understand other people if you understand yourself.”
See for yourself www.ellenforney.com
Heaven Sent
Holcombe Waller, Performance Artist
You should know him because He has a poet’s gift for language, an avant-garde imagination, and a voice that follows you out of the theater and into the night.
What he’s up to now Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest, which Waller describes as “a performance art piece masquerading as a folk show,” takes the stage here after debuting last September at the TBA Festival in Waller’s home city of Portland. The show features a small band, video projections, and songs (all but one of which he had a hand in writing) about what Waller calls “the search for something greater than yourself…getting at that sense of opening your heart through religion and love and lust.” Waller sings like a fallen angel—untainted yet earthbound and unwilling to forget the sky. He sounds positively holy when, barefoot and soul-baring, he serenades the audience with a desire “to see every leaf on every tree.” Walt Whitman is humming along somewhere.
See for yourself www.ontheboards.org
Published: February 2008
