NEW SHOW OPENS AT HANDFORTH GALLERY TOMORROW >>>

You might have notice that there are letters everywhere. You're reading some right now, in fact. But when was the last time you really thought about them? Not the sentence you're reading, or the concepts conveyed - just the individual letters.

Olympia artist and musician Sarah Utter (Bangs, Western Hymn) thought about letters. So did her mother, Karen. And their friend Lynne Ferren.

And then they painted them - kind of.

The two Utters and Ferren will open their show Animal Abecedary tomorrow night at Handforth Gallery inside the Tacoma Public Library's Main Branch in downtown Tacoma. All the paintings - 26 of them - are new works, each a vibrant animal correlating to a different letter of the alphabet.

"I've always wanted to do a collaborative show with my mom, as she was the one who got me into art as a kid," explains Sarah.

Both Utters are self-proclaimed library nerds so they felt the Handforth fit them to a T.

"On the flipside, the gallery is HUGE and we both felt a little overwhelmed with filling it by ourselves," adds Sarah. "So my mom got in touch with an amazingly creative and prolific artist named Lynne Ferren - who happens to focus primarily on animals in her paintings, too."

To tie-in with the library they settled on a letter theme.

"It all came together naturally, though we each have a different take on our assigned letters. I went with scientific names: Uncia Uncia, Vulpes Vulpes, etc.," Sarah says.

Sarah's library nerdiness can also be found on her wares - shirts, stickers, mugs - she sells on buyolympia.com. Her most popular items are tagged with "reading is sexy".

The artist will be at the show's opening Thursday, March 11 at 6 p.m. Karen Utter has baked cupcakes for the event.

"All the work is really bright and crazy," says Sarah. "This is definitely the kind of show that kids as well as adults might be stoked on."

Stoked with a capital S.

[Handforth Library, Animal Abecedary, March 11-April 16, 1102 Tacoma Ave. S., Tacoma, 253.591.5661]