Last night I read through Toby Room #10, the latest installment of a jotter-like magazine published by the minds behind Tollbooth Gallery. There’s a great interview with Wynne Greenwood (aka Tracy + The Plastics), who is rumored to be playing at the Frye in the fall as part of the opening reception for the highly anticipated Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. It also highlights independent curator Fionn Meade, whose Hello Central graced Tollbooth last fall. He has two big projects opening simultaneously over Labor Day weekend. In Resonance is a sound-art extravaganza at Bumbershoot and Nocturnes at Soil Art Gallery featuring work by the very cool New York artist/filmmaker/writer Lucy Raven and Seattle’s Mary Simpson, who participated in Hello Central and Release & Capture at the Kirkland Art Center.

What’s so fascinating with all of this activity is that independent and off-the-grid curators such as Meade. Tollbooth’s Michael Lent, and KAC’s Jason Huff are pulling together some of the most challenging and interesting work happening around Seattle and it’s happening in Kirkland and Tacoma. Let that be a modest but powerful lesson to all the naysayers and whiners who complain that innovative work isn’t happening here.