Inland 360’s review of the top stories in arts, entertainment, culture and food in the Quad Cities.
2013 MUSIC: They came, they sang, they left us with minor hearing loss
Somehow University of Idaho scored one of the country’s most talked-about musical acts of 2013, Macklemore and Lewis. Since playing to a sold-out crowd in May at the Kibbie Dome the duo has been nominated for seven Grammys.
Other notables who sang in 360’s circumference area this year:
-- LeAnn Rimes
-- Mac Miller
-- Sammy Kershaw
-- Drowning Pool
-- Adventure Club
-- John Anderson
-- Blitzen Trapper
-- Ronnie Dunn (replaced Randy Travis at the Clearwater River Casino after the country artist suffered a stroke)
-- Heart
-- Styx
-- Casey James
-- Pop Evil
-- Trapt
-- Foghat
-- Georgia Satellites
2013 FAME: Imports and Exports
-- “Duck Dynasty’s” Jase Robertson spoke on “Beards and Babies” at the Clearwater River Casino Event Center outside Lewiston at an October benefit for Life Choices Clinic of Lewiston.
-- Clarkston native Bryan Fuller found a cult of “fannibals” for his latest project, NBC’s dark serial killer drama “Hannibal.” In the wake of the Boston bombings NBC pulled an episode of the show featuring a character who brainwashes children to kill other children. The show returns for a season Feb. 28.
-- Pullman sideshow artist and University of Idaho employee Brad Byers made it to the quarterfinals on TV’s “America’s Got Talent,” with acts like sword swallowing (nine at a time), pulling the show’s host on a cart by a hook through his nose, and laying down on a bed of nails while his brother drove an ATV over a track on his chest.
The Beuk Aie Temple is a permanent exhibit at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History.
2013 ART: Art for All
-- The region’s largest outdoor mural was completed this year. Sandpoint artist Rolf Goetzinger finished the fish mural, the backdrop for the Canoe Wave sculpture off the Interstate Bridge connecting Lewiston and Clarkston.
-- Art now greets visitors to Uniontown where a larger-than-life metal cow stands in the field in front of Artisans at the Dahmen Barn and a tractor made from antique agricultural equipment stands at the town’s south edge. The sculptures were created by Lewiston metal artist John Bergen.
-- Buying art is now as easy as putting quarters in a slot in Pullman and Clarkston where machines selling art were installed this year. An Art-O-Mat at Washington State University’s Compton Union Building is a retired cigarette vending machine offering $5 pack-sized art pieces. Clarkston artist Nancy Morrison loaded a snack machine with Lewiston-Clarkston Valley artists’ works and named it Vincent Art à la Carte. Pieces sell for $2 to $35 at Roosters Waterfront Restaurant in Clarkston. “The point of this, more than making money, is to get local artists’ artwork out where it can see the light of day,” Morrison said.
2013 Obsession: Zombies
In 2013, 360 introduced You Were There, a photo spread featuring regional events. Some of our best photos captured the craze that swept young and old in 2013, an obsession with zombies.
2013 Culture: Branching Out
-- After 40 years in a 7,000-square-foot hardware store in the Lewiston Orchards, the Lewiston City Library moved into a nearly 50,000-square-foot renovated hardware store downtown.
-- One of the oldest surviving Chinese temples in North America, the Beuk Aie Temple, was restored to Lewiston’s Lewis-Clark Center for Arts & History after four years in storage following a fire. The new exhibit is reinterpreted and expanded.
2013 Food: Regional Cuisine Unfolds
-- The number of barbecue restaurants in the region grew as more cooks turned to slow-cooking meat in outdoor smokers. Among them, guns and meat go hand in hand at CD’s Smoke Pit in Moscow where there’s a 10 percent discount to permitted people who openly carry firearms.
“We definitely get daily open carriers,” said owner Corina Ritter. “It’s fun. It’s definitely opened some doors to people who aren’t from the area and don’t know the Idaho ways.”
-- Two new bakeries catering to the gluten-free and those with other food allergies and sensitivities opened this year, Artfully Yours in Pullman and Bridge Baking in Lewiston.
-- The demand for gluten-free foods also boosted Pullman’s Whiskey Barrel Cider Company. It’s one of a growing number of artisan cideries using Pacific Northwest apples to resurrect hard cider after a 150-year hiatus.
2013: Art Fail
The University of Idaho’s annual fall corn maze in Lewiston was canceled this year after adverse growing conditions left the corn too weak to withstand late-September storms.
