Got some sad news a few weeks ago: Western Bridge gallery, one of the most innovative contemporary art spaces in town, announced it will close April 2012. ’It’s not sad! It’s not sad!’ director Eric Fredericksen told Jen Graves of The Stranger, noting that ‘the fetish for preserving everything actually gets in the way of new things emerging.’ [ Stranger ] The six-year-old gallery always had an expiration date, Fredericksen said, but the announcement bums us out anyway. What other gallery in Seattle has the cajones (or square footage) to house something like Euan Macdonald’s A Little Ramble: an indoor installation of a mountain, some 20 feet high, with goats perched on top?

But now’s not the time for a wake. It’s time to stop by Western Bridge while we can, starting this Saturday, July 24, for an event featuring brothers/artists Eli Hansen and Oscar Tuazon, who will help their mother Anna Linzer stage a reading of her novel-turned-play, A River Story. It’s the 13th and final installment of the gallery’s New Year series, which brought in new artists for two-week projects since January. Well-known local sculptors Hansen and Tuazon have been crafting the "stage" for the play since July 15—reimagining Fishtown, with its artists’ enclave tucked within fishing shanties on the Skagit River, through a large-scale drawing. Within the installation, Linzer and Elizabeth Huddle (Intiman Theatre’s former artistic director who co-adapted the novel) will tell the stories of a 10-year-old girl and a 70-something man. Bonus: There’s musical accompaniment by the Toy Boats.

The project, titled All Things Subject to Change, will remain on display through July 31. Saturday’s staged reading starts at 6pm. westernbridge.org.