In Tacoma, a trailblazing Black painter with a sense of humor

As Black History Month draws to a close, I wanted to highlight Tacoma Art Museum’s The One-Two Punch: 100 Years of Robert Colescott (through Mar. 29), which focuses on the life and work of the trailblazing Black American painter. 

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Colescott (1925 - 2009) is relatively new to me. I first saw one of his paintings in 2024: “Les Demoiselles d'Alabama: Vestidas” (1980), at the Seattle Art Museum’s Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture. The piece riffs on Pablo Picasso’s famous “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907), transforming the portrait of naked French sex workers into a group of clothed and (mostly Black) Alabaman women. The painting is Colescott’s subtle but clever way of critiquing Picasso’s appropriation of African masks and visual culture, recentering the iconic painting in the American South. I instantly loved it. 

TAM’s extensive Colescott retrospective takes a broad look at the late artist’s critical and formal transformations over his career. In addition to displaying some of Colescott’s lesser-known works, One-Two Punch particularly explores the development of his provocative, satirical-cartoon style. Side note: The space in which Colescott’s show is exhibited will be the new permanent home  for The Current, An Artist Award, given out annually to a Black artist working in Tacoma (full disclosure, I judged the 2023 Current Awards). 

Colescott — who started his career as a painting instructor in Seattle Public Schools and taught at Portland State University from 1957 to 1966 — had ever the critical eye, using the lenses of race, sex and art history to force viewers to examine their own prejudices about American society. He also had a profound sense of color, blending vibrant magentas, oranges, purples and greens into his work. His 1965 painting “The Virgin Queen” is Fauvist in its color sensibility — the nude women look as if they are melting into the hot background. That being said, the man certainly had a sense of humor. 

Take, for example, his 1982 painting “Artistry and Reality: A Piece of Cake,” which is also on view at One-Two Punch. It’s a portrait of, well, a piece of a cake, on top of a pair of bright pink panties, a wry depiction of cake and the other kind of cake. Like a lot of Colescott’s work, it hits ya with a one-two punch. 

As we reach Peak Winter, going to the movies is about the only thing that feels right — not only do I get to be warm and around other people, but I also get to be comforted by popcorn and beautiful images flitting across the silver screen. It’s a win-win for cinephiles like me. Thankfully, SIFF has a slew of excellent film festivals featuring classic movies and obscure gems that are all well-worth digging into. 

Wrapping up next week is World of Wong Kar-wai (through Mar. 4), a program focusing on the legendary Hong Kong director’s dreamy, love-driven oeuvre. There’s still time to catch the yearning classic In the Mood for Love and queer romance Happy Together. 

Kicking off this week is Martin Scorsese: Maestro of Cinema (Feb. 25 - Apr. 29), which dives headfirst into the New Hollywood icon’s extensive filmography. I’m particularly excited about this fest because I still have a couple of Scorsese gaps to close (Age of Innocence and Silence, I’m looking at you) that I absolutely need to see on the big screen. 

For those who crave weird and experimental cinema, Sea Slug Animation Festival (Feb. 27 - Mar. 1) has a wonderfully curated lineup of animation shorts and feature-length films from around the world. There are three short film programs and three feature film screenings (Rita, a short about a snail grandmother, looks particularly cute).

And Sea Slug is screening one of my most favorite movies, Son of the White Mare, a psychedelic Hungarian animated feature from 1981. It’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen that feels mythic in both scale and storytelling — this 4K restoration is not to be missed!

Time for some dancing….

< Also for the film-minded, Can Can Seattle’s NOIR (through Mar. 15) draws from the visual storytelling well of noir directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles to create  a burlesque/cabaret dinner-and-a-show production all its own. Come for the dramatic lighting and sensuous dancing, stay for the coconut shrimp starter. 

< Over at the Meany Center, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their groundbreaking work Still/Here (Feb. 26-28) centered around the life and experiences of people with terminal illnesses including AIDS and cancer. Now hailed as a landmark in 20th-century dance, the performance — which generated a lot of controversy back in 1996 — projects filmed interviews with the terminally ill participants alongside the dancers, a reminder that the dead’s stories are still with us. 

<  And on a slightly more lighthearted note, Seattle duo The Bonnies (Kaitlin McCarthy and Jenny Peterson) will perform I’m On Fire, You’re On Fire, We’re On Fire presented by Velocity (at 12th Avenue Arts, Mar. 4-7). Inspired by 1966 Czech New Wave film Daises, the show dives headfirst into a fantastical, chaotic, femme alternative reality where The Bonnies “teeter between vision and delusion, manifesting a shared destiny built from queer plutonic love.”

…and reading

< Local writer (and winner of a 2026 Pacific Northwest Book Award) Kelly Goto will be at Third Place Books Ravenna (Feb. 27 at 7 p.m.) to discuss her book Seattle Samurai: A Cartoonist’s Perspective of the Japanese American Experience. The novel chronicles the life of her father, Sam Goto, who illustrated the Seattle Tomodachi comic series that illuminated Japanese American life in the 20th century.  

< A good ghost tale still hits hard during these cold, dark, dregs of winter, and Seattle writer Kim Fu’s The Valley of the Vengeful Ghosts is just that.  The story centers on Eleanor, who buys a model home with her inheritance from the death of her controlling mother. But in trying to make a fresh start the past comes back to haunt her. Fu will read from the new novel at Elliott Bay Books (Mar. 3 at 7 p.m.). 

< And Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Seattle writer Evelyn Iritani will be at Town Hall (Mar. 10 at 7:30 p.m.) with local author Frank Abe to discuss her new nonfiction book Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal​, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During W​o​rld War II. In a review, Publisher’s Weekly called the book “gripping and immersive” and her talk with Abe is sure to be one rich with revelation. 

Calling local filmmakers

Applications for Cascade PBS's annual Origins filmmaking grant are now open. The $40,000 grant supports the production of a five-part short form docuseries grounded in ancestry, culture and place. The key requirement is that the filmmaker must be part of the community they are documenting; Indigenous stories told by Indigenous filmmakers, Black stories told by Black filmmakers, etc. Past seasons have told stories about the Lummi Nation and Vietnamese and Afghan refugees in Washington.

The winning project has the chance to premiere at SIFF Uptown as well as the potential to broadcast on Cascade PBS and our on-demand platforms. Season 4, which explores the story of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, will premiere on March 12th at SIFF Uptown. Submissions for Season 5 are due April 17th.