• The Raynier Institute & Foundation announced this week that it's giving $1.1 million to Artist Trust and the Frye Art Museum. For five years, Artist Trust will give two awards of $15,000 and one award of $50,000 each year to local artists to make their work (all unrestricted funding). Those artists will then be exhibited at the Frye, with catalogs of the shows published. Expect at least two big group shows and several smaller ones at the museum, all featuring local artists. The Raynier Foundation was established by the late James W. Ray, a Capitol Hill art enthusiast who struggled with bipolar disorder and addiction, and left more than $80 million when he died. You can't apply to get money from Raynier—they just find you. Recent Raynier funding has focused on homeless housing projects, including the great YouthCare.
• On June 7, 2012, just days after the Cafe Racer shootings—in which a mentally ill man with a handgun killed five people and severely wounded another—musicians and other performers put on a benefit show at the Neptune. It was a highly charged evening with full-throated sing-alongs, solemn acrobatics, and surprisingly exuberant dancing. The event raised $80,000 toward a benefit fund to financially stabilize those affected by the shootings. It was also filmed. This Sunday, the Royal Room hosts a screening party of the resulting DVD with live music by Bakelite 78, the Bad Things, and musicians from the cafe's weekly Racer Sessions (which some of the deceased played in). The party is free, but it's a fundraiser—bring full pocketbooks.
• Three Dollar Bill Cinema, which produces lesbian, gay, and transgender film festivals, is moving into the 12th Avenue Arts building, joining Washington Ensemble Theatre, Strawberry Theatre Workshop, and New Century Theatre Company. Capitol Hill Housing is leading the 12th Avenue project—now under construction—to build arts spaces, retail space, and 88 affordable housing units on top of what used to be a Seattle Police Department parking lot.
• The lit Brits are pissed. The Man Booker Prize has announced it's opening up to American authors for the first time starting in 2014. This year's award, to be announced October 15, is between Colm TĂłibĂn, Eleanor Catton, Ruth Ozeki, Jim Crace, NoViolet Bulawayo, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
• TeenTix is the local organization that hooks up Seattle teens with $5 tickets to arts events all over town, and this past Saturday brought the 2013 Teeny Awards, wherein TeenTix's all-teen voting bloc names their favorite art events of the past year. Among the winners at the splashy ceremony held at ACT Theatre and hosted by the brilliant Lindy West: EMP's Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses (best art exhibit), Pacific Northwest Ballet's Roméo et Juliette (best dance performance), Seattle Children's Theatre's The Wizard of Oz (best play), and Pacific Science Center's Laser Daft Punk (best other kind of event).
• Jeff Bezos took the last slice of pizza at a Washington Post board meeting last Monday. Then an alien burst out of his stomach and ate it before he could. 
