Does art need to be ugly or shocking to be taken seriously? So worries the highly talented Ruthie V., whose work has been called “erotic, challenging and frighteningly vulnerable.” But even though she loves flowers, until recently she hadn’t let herself paint them.

She actually apologized that her show at Edison’s Smith & Vallee Gallery is so “disgustingly pretty.” Her only gesture toward “ugly” is the subtle background of “Mud Festival Peonies,” otherwise given over…

It’s the near future, and all women and girls across the United States are required to wear word counters that limit them to 100 words per day. For each word beyond 100, the irremovable “bracelets” deliver a series of electric shocks that increase in intensity from painful to completely devastating.

What’s more, women are not permitted to read books, or write, or use sign language. They are not allowed to work outside the home. Their only purpose is to serve men as homemakers.…

Blue herons, bald eagles, cormorants, Harlequin ducks, Canada geese, Northern flickers and Anna’s hummingbirds were among the winged wonders I viewed in Whatcom County last weekend, and I wasn’t even on a dedicated birding expedition—unlike a friend who, while on a Sunday field trip to the lower Skagit Valley, also reported seeing short-eared owls, trumpeter swans, Pacific loons, a couple different types of hawk, snow geese, red-winged blackbirds, buffleheads and plenty of other…

Ten dollars will go further than usual at an inaugural Bham SOUP event taking place Mon., Jan. 21 at Goat Mountain Pizza.

First off, those in attendance at the first-come, first-served event will be dished out a delicious bowl of warm goodness made by the eatery’s Charlie Pasquier—you can choose from ginger chicken noodle or shiitake miso soup—and a generous serving of bread.

But that’s not all the suggested $10 donation will get you. The entry fee for the micro-funding…

It’s not often a Q&A page on a website is the place to go for a quick laugh, but when it comes to Broad Comedy, pretty much everything the female-focused ensemble does is designed to elicit a visceral reaction.

To wit, when asking if people should book Broad Comedy for their next big event, the clever reply to the question is twofold. “Answer: Are you a women’s health clinic, a liberal political organization, a college, or basically any corporation that doesn’t open your meetings…

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a story about a Rufus Wainwright concert at the Lincoln Theatre in which I detailed the long, fraught history of the Wainwright clan. In summary, Rufus is the son of musicians Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, and brother to Martha Wainwright, also a musician. Father and offspring haven’t exactly had picture-perfect relationships with each other, and being that they’re all songwriters—especially confessional ones at that—they’ve not been…