Arts & Events

By Parker Barry Our team name was “Heidegger says we should spend more time in graveyards because death is the ONLY promise in life.” Heidegger is a 20th-century German existentialist philosopher. I was feeling existential and decided to make everyone at trivia night (every other Thursday at 6 p.m. in Wyatt 101) jump on the death-is-the-only-promise-in-life train. The mood at trivia night last Thursday was a bit bleak. It seemed that all of the students just wanted to get in, answer the questions, and get out. The just-get-it-done attitude was...

By Evan Welsh It is difficult to review a cultural moment, especially when that cultural moment does not really involve you. As a white male, I cannot speak for how black communities have responded to the phenomenon that is “Black Panther” or how well the film represents their communities. However, I can say I personally appreciate how fresh and relevant “Black Panther” feels as a film. The breakaway from many of the conventions seen in the last decade of superhero films and director Ryan Coogler’s choice to focus on large,...

By Matthew Gulick To mark the occasion of Leonard Berstein’s would-be 100th year on earth, the University of Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra performed “Polyglot: Celebrating the Legacy of Leonard Bernstein in Contemporary Music.” The 67-piece orchestra played six pieces written by contemporary composers. Conductor and assistant professor Anna Wittstruck introduced the event after the orchestra’s first piece. The former Interim Music Director and Conductor of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and Stanford Philharmonia, Wittstruck has conducted across the globe with sold-out concerts in Mexico City and Havana, Cuba. Wittstruck began at...

By Parker Barry “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive” — James Baldwin. “Everything I Needed to Know I learned from Fiction,” the title of African American studies professor Renee Simms’ Feb. 27 lecture, seemed to ring true. She took the audience through her life and...

By Brynn Svenningsen Placed at the center of the gallery, paper cutouts of rock climbers, ladders, and a cheetah-human hybrid all sat suspended in resin and glass. In artist Dustin Yellin’s extremely detailed art piece titled “Migration in Four Parts,” layers of resin with small paper figures work collaboratively to create a scene too chaotic for the viewer to look away from. Yellin’s piece is part of a new exhibit that has recently arrived at the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM). The exhibit is called “Immigrant Artists and the American West”...

By Evan Eelsh We all rooting for you, Grammys. I have personally sworn off caring about the Grammys multiple times, but with many articles preceding the show applauding the awards for addressing racial diversity, it seemed like this might be the year the Grammys did better. Even I took hold of the glimmer of hope that this might be the year it all works out. However, of course, this was not the year; it was a trap. Like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, music fans convinced themselves this...

By Parker Barry ART BY ANJ CUNNINGHAM A man in his late 50s dropped his robe and assumed a position where he contorted his naked body, showing the muscles of his thighs and the curvature of his neck. I am in the full experience of Figure Drawing Club, held on Mondays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at an off-campus location called “Feast Arts Center,” a community space for artists to create and collaborate on 11th and South L St. “Figure drawing is a rather intimate environment. I have found...