♪♪
-Hi, there and welcome to the show.
I'm Nancy Guppy, coming to you from Soto Park,
the temporary new digs Teatro Zinzanni!
♪♪
That's right -- the brilliant and beloved cabaret
circus extravaganza is back in the heart of Seattle
with a three-month run of their brand new show,
appropriately titled "Coming Home."
"Coming Home" features a stellar cast that includes
Zinzanni veterans Kevin Kent, Manuela Horn, Michael Evolution,
and the incomparable Rizo.
The show is packed with humor,
awe-inspiring moments, delightful surprises,
and, of course, a delicious dinner provided by Herban Feast.
"Coming Home" runs through February 19, 2023
with a possible extension.
More information, including how to get tickets,
is at Zinzanni.com.
♪♪
We've got a terrific line up for you,
including an immersive exhibition
at King Street Station...
-Imminent Mode Us.
-...the fine art of gluten-free baking...
-A big part of my M.O. is to try and make food for people
so that everybody feels welcome.
And music from Whiting Tennis.
[ Rock music plays ]
-♪ I have the questions to your answers ♪
♪♪
♪ Like a drawbridge across a moat ♪
-And we'll begin with the immensely talented illustrator
and muralist Stevie Shao.
-I'm Stevie Shao. I'm a Seattle-based
and Seattle born-and-raised illustrator and muralist.
And I do a little bit of everything --
illustration, design stuff.
I love working on merch for, like, local businesses.
All my friends and things, I'll do,
like, canvas paintings, paintings on wood.
♪♪
During the pandemic, a lot of businesses
were concerned about break-ins, things like that.
So a lot of them are boarded up on the outside,
just covered in plywood.
And over the course of about a week,
Ballard had a bunch of artists come through
and paint those boards.
And for a lot of people, that was, like,
their first few murals.
For me, it was my first few murals --
like, painting at a large scale.
♪♪
-All of these small businesses were getting boarded up
and this beacon of hope in her color,
in her vibrancy, her patterns.
And we kind of started to see it all over town.
We fell in love with everything about her --
her drive, her work ethic,
her fierce loyalty to her own vision,
and the way that she translates that in different spaces
and per project kind of just blew us away.
And we were like, "If she'll have us,
this would be the dreamiest collaboration ever."
-After meeting and talking about it
and really getting to check out the space,
we decided that we wanted to cover,
like, almost every single surface with artwork.
All of the pieces from that show I made for the show.
-And she's kind of filled every little nook and cranny
in these really fun and surprising ways.
I mean, you're going down the stairs and it's like,
"Oh my God, there's another piece, and it's perfect,
and it needs to be there."
-I think the work that I enjoy making
has a lot to do with my heritage
and retelling those kind of stories
and integrating them with my world,
like, my universe, and my experience.
So I like them to have this mystical feel
and have a couple of passes --
you know, like, you have the first pass.
It's really bold, colorful, hopefully.
And, you know, you sort of keep noticing these things about it.
-I don't know that I would ever put Stevie,
especially at this point in her career
and in her life, into a category,
because I think she's going to blow all of those categories
out of the water.
And I mean, I keep telling every person that's buying,
"You should invest in this now
before she has her solo show at the Whitney." [ Laughs ]
♪♪
-I think Instagram, especially because
I started doing murals during the pandemic,
was a really big part of my journey,
just sharing everything.
A lot of people that I met after lockdown,
I had been in communication with
for a really long time over Instagram.
♪♪
I had been e-mailed by Murphy Gilson,
who works for U.W., about putting a mural
on this one wall in U district.
So over time and conversation, after doing a site visit,
I really wanted to just, like, blast the whole thing over.
-This mural is based on a Norwegian folktale
about these two brothers.
It is sort of, like, a Norse origin story.
I have a few color combinations
that I normally gravitate towards.
The contrast is really important between these colors,
so it normally ends up being sort of, like,
red and blue or black and orange.
I'm hoping that there's a vibrancy, like, a life
that is breathed into the storytelling behind the imagery
and sort of the care that is put into
painting something so large.
♪♪
Seeing my work out in the wild is really special to me,
I think, because I get to think about all the relationships
that I built that led up to that project happening
and seeing people interact with it
or, you know, enjoy it or just walk by it is is pretty special.
I think I would always find time to make art.
It's always been a huge part of my life
and a huge part of who I am.
♪♪
-Follow Stevie and her myriad of creative projects
on Instagram and at StevieShao.com.
♪♪
Next up, we visit Well Fed Bakery in Wallingford
to discover the science and art of gluten-free baking.
♪♪
-My mom was great at allowing us to experiment in the kitchen.
And she was a baker. She used to bake bread.
I can say that I was a professional baker at age 13.
My best friend and I were trying to earn money
to go to Marriott's Great America, to the amusement park.
And my mom said, "If you want to go,
you have to sell something that you made yourself."
And we decided that we would make baguettes.
And so every couple of weeks, we would get together,
and it was an all-day process, making these baguettes.
They were delicious.
And we sold them for $0.75 apiece.
About eight years ago,
I started having some weird digestive symptoms
and learned that I couldn't tolerate gluten any longer.
And I've always loved to bake,
and I've always really loved eating baked goods.
They're just my happy place.
And I tried a bunch of recipes and products
that were on the shelf that frankly,
at that point, were terrible.
And I realized that if I wanted to continue eating those things,
that I needed to make them myself.
I have a variety of flours that I use in order
to mimic what happens when you bake with wheat flour.
And I have -- use primarily brown rice, sorghum,
oat flour, coconut flour, arrowroot starch.
And then I have a variety of different flavors that I do.
So the pumpernickel would have chocolate and molasses
and caraway in it.
I do an orange bread that grinds up
half of an orange for each loaf.
And then I also do crackers
that have lots of different kinds of seeds in them --
flax seeds and pumpkin seeds,
sunflower seeds, chia seeds, and olive oil.
-Hey! -Hey!
-I found out about Charlotte baking gluten-free bread
from a neighbor of mine.
And my son and I have been eating gluten-free forever.
And Charlotte's loaves are incredibly crusty
and heavy and satisfying.
This is fig pecan.
And my other favorite is her pumpernickel breads.
Bread's really like the -- I don't know, the unicorn,
I guess.
You can get great cookies.
There are places that do cakes that are pretty good.
And bread is this -- you know, you really need gluten.
That's what makes the bread stretchy
and it allows you to get the big pockets of air in there,
which helps it to rise.
And so recreating that without gluten requires
additional things to kind of shore up the dough.
And it definitely took a while.
-Hey. -Hey.
-I usually order two, and this time I only did one
because I'm probably going to eat it by the time I get home.
-Yeah, it's still warm, too. -Your favorite.
-I know. -I know. [ Laughs ]
-IT's the chew. It's the flavor. It's the crumb.
-In terms of the finer tuning the texture and the flavor,
that's all, you know, what feels good to me,
what smells good, what looks good out of the oven.
What I'm trying to create is a food experience for someone,
and that feels like art to me.
-There you go. -Thank you!
-Multigrain.
-I love toast in the morning.
Put a little edamame hummus on it,
slice of tomato, and it's perfection.
♪♪
-A big part of my M.O. in how I live my life
is to try and make food for people
so that everybody feels welcome to eat.
So when I have people over, there a variety
of different things for meeting people's different eating needs.
You know, it's how we come together,
and I feel so strongly that people really feel welcome.
♪♪
-For more information, including how to sign up
for Charlotte's regular e-mail updates,
go to WellFedBakery.com.
♪♪
Our band this week is Whiting Tennis,
featuring Whiting Tennis on guitar and vocals,
Kevin Warner on bass,
and Jim Wood on drums,
performing "Poor Boy Just Don't"
from Whiting's 2021 release, "I Do."
♪♪
♪ I have the questions to your answers ♪
♪♪
♪ Like a drawbridge across a moat ♪
♪♪
♪ And I don't know, and I know that I won't ♪
♪♪
-♪ 'Cause a poor boy just don't ♪
♪♪
-♪ And as the flag flies above us ♪
♪♪
♪ A pile of nothing on the hill ♪
♪♪
♪ And I can't tell what's fake and what's real ♪
♪ And a poor boy never will ♪
♪♪
♪ And if it looks like I'm holding out ♪
♪♪
♪ Well, I'm holding out ♪
♪♪
♪ And if I act like I'm losing out ♪
♪ It's 'cause, God d--n it, I'm... ♪
♪ Losing out ♪
♪♪
♪ I have the questions to your answers ♪
♪♪
♪ Like a drawbridge across a moat ♪
♪♪
♪ And I don't know, and I know that I won't ♪
♪ 'Cause a poor boy just don't ♪
♪♪
-"I Do" is available on Bandcamp and from CD Baby.
Catch Whiting live on Wednesday, December 21st
at the Rabbit Box Theater in Pike Place Market,
and check out Whiting's visual artwork
at Kucera Gallery in Seattle,
Russo Lee Gallery in Portland,
and Derek Eller Gallery in New York City.
♪♪
Before wrapping up, we have a few highlights
from opening night of Imminent Mode Us,
an immersive exhibition of installations
and fashion at King Street Station.
-I present to you...
Imminent Mode Us.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
[ Indistinct conversations ]
♪♪
[ Woman singing in French]
♪♪
[ Singing in French continues ]
♪♪
[ Singing in French continues ]
♪♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
[ Singing in French continues ]
♪♪
[ Singing in French continues ]
♪♪
[ Singing in French continues ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Imminent Mode Us is up now through January 5th, 2023,
in the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture,
located on the third floor of King Street Station.
More information is at Seattle.gov/arts.
♪♪
And that does it for us.
Big thanks to Teatro Zinzanni for letting us hang out
in their very cool space.
Ticket information for "Coming Home"
is at zinzanni.com
And thanks to you for tuning in.
Have a great week, a wonderful holiday,
and we'll see you next year.
♪♪