“Today” and “tonight” signify Friday, March 13.
PORT ANGELES — In the form of art and music, March is about to come in like a lion.
Tonight, in fact, downtown Port Angeles’ Second Weekend art activities will begin with a pair of painters and the band called Joy in Mudville.
This is the event called 2FAR — Second Friday Art Rock — and it will bring together artists Jeff Tocher and Lynne Roberson, addressing a single canvas at Bar N9ne, 229 W. First St.
The duo will create their on-site painting while Joy in Mudville, featuring Jason Mogi and Kim Trenerry, fill the place with dance-driving rock and blues. It all starts at 8 p.m. with a $3 cover charge.
Saturday, another local painter and his band will dish up a show at Studio Bob, 118½ E. Front St.
Mike “Barky” Pace, a guitarist, singer and visual artist, is about to mount a show of his feline-inspired paintings. Titled “Katzenjammer,” it will open with a free, public reception from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday.
Shortly after that, Pace’s band PufnStuff will arrive for a dance concert on Studio Bob’s Alle Stage. There’s no admission charge for that party or for the art show’s reopening from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday.
Pace, though known for playing with numerous bands — the Soulshakers, the Vibratones, the Hayshakers and Small Fry among them — majored in art back when he was at Gonzaga University.
But after graduating in 2000, he went through years of artistic drought, as he puts it.
Then he met Jeff Tocher, the Port Angeles artist, at a concert where Tocher was the on-site painter and Pace was playing in the band.
They became great friends, and Pace found renewed inspiration to paint, play and sometimes combine the two.
Much of his work features cats — he and his wife, Michelle, share their home with four — in fanciful situations.
“I don’t pretend that my work is deep,” or that every piece conveys social commentary, Pace says.
“What it does convey is entirely up to the viewer. I try to capture a moment of time, a situation, or a feeling.”
This weekend promises still other opportunities to see and hear the work of local artists and musicians. Here are some highlights.
■ The Heatherton Gallery, in The Landing mall at 115 E. Railroad Ave., showcases some 40 local painters, sculptors and jewelry makers. A free reception with the artists is set for 5 p.m. to 7:30 tonight.
■ The Sequim Arts Student Show is open in the The Landing’s ground-floor atrium, with 90 creations by high school and middle school students across Clallam County.
Award winners include Aubry Young of Sequim for her piece titled “One with Nature” and Tori Phillips, also of Sequim, for her “Fabu Lion.”
■ The Landing Artists Studio, yet another gallery in The Landing mall, is now displaying Maryann Proctor’s “hen house”: whimsical portraits of chickens.
The studio, which offers a range of fine and wearable art, is open from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily except Thursdays.
■ Roma Peters, the singer and ukulelist known as Hawaii Amor, will play music of Polynesia from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Elliott’s Antique Emporium, 135 E. First St. There’s no charge to stop in and listen.
■ Harbor Art, the cooperative gallery at 110 E. Railroad Ave., invites the public to a reception with its member artists and their new work from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday.
