Best of 2008: The Arts

Best Yogi by Day, Rock Star by Night
Partman Parthorse
If you haven’t yet seen Seattle band Partman Parthorse performing around town, well, let’s just say you haven’t exactly been sucking the marrow out of life. Lead man Gary Smith screams weird lyrics over loud post-punk pop and never fails to strip down to tiny underpants, revealing the bounty of his hobby—the yoga devotee practices Bikram at Capitol Hill’s The Sweatbox five days a week. Though you might not guess it as Smith jumps down from the stage and pushes his sweaty (and, ahem, perfectly toned) bod through the crowd, off stage he’s as sweet and mellow as can be.

Best Evidence that Sub Pop Is Still Rocking
Fleet Foxes
Sub Pop’s birthday bash this summer proved that 20 years later, the label that brought us Nirvana and other cult faves still has the magic touch. Its newest darlings, Fleet Foxes, croon the high and lonesome sweet harmonies that have the whole city head over heels.

Best new Place to Pay Homage to Asian history
Wing Luke Asian Museum
(International District, 719 S King St.; 206.623.5124)
Two blocks and worlds away from the former space, this recently relocated and vastly expanded museum provides eight times the enlightenment on the Northwest Asian Pacific American experience. Housed in a freshly refurbished historic building, the 60,000 square feet of exhibits encompass a multitude of cultures from Japanese to Filipino to Asian Indian, and include a 1910 Chinese storefront, intact as if time stood still.

Best Way to Bond with Granny
Boo Davis’ Quiltsrÿche
Metal heads harboring a secret love of quilts can rejoice—now you can satisfy your need for hard rock and soft cloth all at once. Local artist Boo Davis sews “evil rock quilts” in her Quiltsrÿche studio. Choose from a giant skull,  “sign of the horns” hand gesture or heavy metal primer (“E is for Earplugs”), or send her your old rock concert T-shirts and she’ll custom-make you a totally awesome quilt.

Best Chance to Be an Exhibit at SAM’s Olympic Sculpture Park
Back to Back Theatre’s Small Metal Objects
For a few days last summer, small audiences sat on a temporary set of bleachers in OSP watching a performance by Australian theater group Back to Back Theatre. The viewers—all wearing big black headphones—sat in silence, but laughed and looked concerned in unison as they listened to the captivating play unfolding on the grounds, unbeknownst to tourists walking among the secretly miked actors.

Best Example of Monkeys Engaged in Nontraditional Employment
Matthew Porter’s Monkey World
Our little evolutionary cousins aren’t just cymbal players for organ grinders anymore. These days, monkeys are astronauts, hula hoopers and ventriloquists—at least they are in Monkey World: an A-Z of Occupations (Simply Read Books, 2008), local artist Matthew Porter’s newest storybook that takes kids on an alphabetical tour of the working world. We grown-ups love it, too—his images appeal to the primate in all of us.
 
Best Place to Live and Learn
Urban League Village/Northwest African American Museum
(Central District, 2300 S Massachusetts St.; 206.518.6000)
Taken over by activists in the ’80s for eight years, the once abandoned Colman School is today a welcoming place, reopened in March as a combo museum/living space. Located on the first floor, the 19,000-square-foot museum shares the heritage of the African American population that settled in Washington, Oregon and Idaho through traveling and permanent exhibits, while two upper floors provide 36 affordable apartments.
 
Best Reason to Cram Since College
14/48
The twice-yearly two-day 14/48 festival throws Seattle theater talent into unpredictable, entertaining chaos, when the names of the 14 plays’ actors and directors are drawn out of a hat to perform scripts written overnight. This summer’s standout was Celene Ramadan’s Vendetta Operetta about teenage revenge, with txt-msg dialogue such as, “All the peeps totes wanna be us.”
 
Best New Idea for a Film Festival
Couch Fest
The problem with attending most film festivals is that you still have to, you know, get up off the couch. Not so with Couch Fest, which held its inaugural film festival in September. Ten houses around Seattle welcomed an untold number of couch potatoes for 10 different short-film series, each repeating on the hour. Talk about a cushiony lifestyle.

Best Reinterpretation of Greek Mythology with Puppets
The Fisher Ensemble’s Psyche
Garrett Fisher’s lovely music was the delicate thread connecting Seattle artist Tori Ellison’s reinterpretation of the story of Psyche and Aphrodite via dance, dialogue and fantastical puppets in the August and October shows of Psyche. Ellison’s creations included Aphrodite, a dozen feet tall, inspired by Indonesian wayang shadow puppets, with a Balinese-style mask. Eros has a Greco-Roman mask, Japanese fans for wings and a tail made of a Seattle tree branch.