Take a look at just a few of the events to choose from this weekend in the Yakima Valley, plus something to plan ahead for.
First Friday
Downtown businesses, organizations and other downtown spaces are offering specials to highlight art, culture, dining and shopping as part of First Friday events on May 3, 2024. Visit downtownyakima.com for more information.
Pop-up at the Old Naches Heights Firehouse
J Alexander will open his studio for the fourth annual Firehouse Pop-Up. Alexander’s studio is the former Naches Heights Firehouse at 5500 Naches Heights Road, Yakima. Show hours are 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday.
Tieton-based artist J Alexander works with found objects to create his metal-based work. The discards that find their way into his work are often found on a hiking trail and carried out by hand. As he transforms the worn surfaces of aged wood and rusted metal, the objects are renewed to tell a new story.
J Alexander’s firehouse is another of his found objects, bought at auction and transformed into an art studio. Once a year it becomes a place for local and regional artists to show their work to the public.
Each year’s show is a unique spectrum of media, types and offerings. Along with J Alexander, this year’s 10 featured artists are:
• Renee Adams, Thorp, creates mixed-media sculptures that examine the complex relationships humans have cultivated with the natural world. She finds immediate inspiration in the flora of her surroundings.
• D. Alden, Yakima, is a visual artist whose inspiration comes from the colors in the landscape, the shapes in design and the feeling from music.
• Howard Barlow, Ellensburg, is a sculptor as well as senior lecturer in 3-D Arts at Central Washington University. His 2D and 3D work has exhibited regionally and nationally in museums including the Museum of Northwest Art, Whatcom Art Museum and Frye Art Museum.
• Justin Colt Beckman, Ellensburg, whose work explores the dichotomy of urban and rural cultures and their associated stereotypes.
• Will Bow, Roslyn, works in watercolor on a multitude of surfaces, including canvas, wood and, sometimes, paper, mixing in acrylic and latex paints as well as graphite and chalk.
• Justin Gibbens, Thorp, uses the conventions of wildlife illustration and traditional Chinese fine-line painting in surprising and unconventional ways.
• Darcie Roberts, Yakima, works with pastels. She finds inspiration in the shrub-steppe landscape of Central Washington in both her representational pastels and abstract work.
• Leslie West, Seattle, is an encaustic/mixed media artist. Her affinity for found objects and well-worn surfaces are inspiration for textured focus painting. Leslie’s paintings feature simplicity with complex layers of bees wax, damar resin and oil paint.
• Michelle Wyles, Tieton, is a ceramic sculpture artist with a studio in Tieton. Her sculpture work is wild and wonderful. “My brain seems to think in 3D – I dream sculpture, solve technical problems, fantasize surface.”
• And introducing apgath, Seattle, an interior designer and artist who expresses color through abstract landscapes, surreal places and interiors. An obsessive collector, he often paints interiors, showcasing the chaotic, yet organized delight that collections can have in one’s life.
– Dorothy Richards
Yakima Taco Fest
The 2024 festival will be from 2-9 p.m. Saturday, and tickets are available now for the 21-and-older event. General admission tickets cost $30 and VIP tickets cost $125. Parking is included with the price of a ticket.
The outdoor event will be at State Fair Park, 1301 S. Fair Ave., and is put together by the Central Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Yakima Taco Fest will have food and drink vendors, yard games, music and photo booth stations. There will again be space for a local mercado (market) featuring retail merchants and vendors.
Visit yhne.ws/yakimatacofest for more information and to purchase tickets.
History Happy Hour
Plan now for next week’s History Happy Hour with Yakima Valley Libraries and Gilbert Cellars, from 7-8 p.m. Wednesday, May 8, in the Gilbert Cellars tasting room, 2620 Draper Road.
Carlos Pelley, archive librarian of Yakima Valley Libraries’ Northwest Reading Room, will present stories alongside historic imagery from the library’s archives about Japanese American history.
The event is free to attend, open to the public and is for all ages. Register for the event at yhne.ws/yvlhhh; it’s encouraged but not required.
Future History Happy Hour dates and topics are Native American history on June 12 and Latino(a) history on July 10.
