Tiptoe to Timber Days, visit ‘Places to Mourn,’ or go to a gallery
A summerlong festival
In keeping with COVID-19 safety rules, the Mason County Forest Festival is spreading out its annual celebration with several weekends of movies, music and parades that are, for now at least, on a small scale. The festival’s first Timber Days weekend, June 4 and 5, offers two mini parades, games, crafts, a beer garden and a pair of what the event’s organizers are calling “classic forestry flicks,” screening at dusk Friday. They’re showing at the same time on different screens, so if you go, you’ll have to take your pick between the 1952 Kirk Douglas Western “The Big Trees” (“a definite timber classic”) and the 1961 thriller “Ring of Fire.” Though the Forest Festival website describes it as “disjointed to say the least,” “Fire” sounds like the one to see. It was filmed mostly in Mason County, includes real forest-fire footage and stars Frank Gorshin, best known as the Riddler in the original “Batman.” The movie’s theme song is not the Johnny Cash classic but a rollicking instrumental by guitarist Duane Eddy. If your taste in films runs a bit more to the conventional, fear not: The Saturday night film is the 1987 comedy classic “The Princess Bride.” The films and other activities are free, and Timber Days continues one weekend a month through Sept. 18, when organizers hope to hold the traditional Paul Bunyan Grand Parade.
‘Place’ to pause
Since the pandemic began, artist Kathy Gore-Fuss has been thinking about how to create places where people can pause, contemplate and grieve. The first of her “Places to Mourn” is a flower-bedecked installation in the garden of a home at 1511 Quince St. NE in Olympia. The installation, completed Monday, includes a bench, a journal and copies of a poem by Josie Emmons Turner. The installation will evolve over the next week or so as the flowers wrapping a statue and hanging from trees fade and dry. “It is so important for me to feel things deeply right now,” Gore-Fuss wrote in an artist’s statement. “This practice of constructing the memorials affords me that opportunity to do so with others.” She already has discovered that she’s not alone in this desire. “We have had a steady stream of visitors,” she told The Olympian. “It seems to have struck a chord. I am lighting candles every evening at dusk.” The public is welcome to visit the installation.
Student art show
South Puget Sound Community College’s 16th annual Student Art Exhibition showcases a selection of pieces created in the college’s studio art classes over the past year. The work is on view both online and at the college’s Leonor R. Fuller Gallery, 2011 Mottman Road SW, Olympia. The gallery is open from noon to 6 p.m. weekdays, and the exhibition, which includes a slide show of additional student work, is on view through June 24. Find out more about the artists and their work at the virtual opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, June 4.
Freelance writer Molly Gilmore talks about what’s happening in Olympia and beyond with 95.3 KGY-FM’s Michael Stein from 3 to 4 p.m. Fridays.
This story was originally published June 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.