Yearly Archives: 2012

2012 Arts & Humanities Month 2nd Friday Art Night

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October is Arts and Humanities Month.  What better time to try out 2nd Friday Art Night for the first time? Or to make a repeated visit?

Tonight from 5pm to 8pm at various downtown museums and galleries, guests can view art and enjoy live entertainment.  Admission is free.

Here are just a few of the highlights.

Christ Episcopal Church.  Watercolors by Kuhl Brown.  A resident of Hillcrest, Kuhl’s paintings are realistic landscapes and other subjects also in the realistic style. The show will run through Dec. 14.

Historic Arkansas Museum will feature live music by the Smittle Band as visitors view the current exhibits. Included at HAM are:

  • Recent Acquisitions: A Collection Vision, 2008 – 2012
  • The Civil War in Arkansas
  • Barbie: The 11 1/2 –inch American Icon
  • The Knife Gallery
  • Arkansas Contemporary: Selected Fellows from the Arkansas Arts Council
  • We Walk in Two Worlds: The Caddo, Osage and Quapaw in Arkansas

The Butler Center Galleries are located within the Arkansas Studies Institute building.  The galleries this month feature: Arkansas League of Artists and Solastalgia.  The Arkansas League of Artists is a group of artists and art enthusiasts who gather to learn from one another by exploring new techniques, working in various media, and sharing their collective knowledge.  Solastalgia will feature artwork by Susan Chambers and Louise Halsey.

The Arkansas League of Artists is an organization formed to promote fine arts in Arkansas. This group of artists and art enthusiasts gathers to learn from one another by exploring new techniques, working in new media, and sharing their collective knowledge.

Also, stop by the third floor of the Cox Creative Center for “Equinox 2011-2012: A Retrospective curated by Alex Leme and Rachel Golden.”  This exhibit, which will run through Decmber 1, features works by Carolyn Ascher, Ashley Barker, Kae Barron, Beth Beam, Rebecca Benson, Chris Cotton, Carolyn Crocker, Starr Crow, Megan Douglas, Chris Friemel, Chelsye Garrett, Heather Harmon, Cody Henslee, Lilia Hernandez, Kelly Hicks, Steve Hollis, Linda Holloway, Zechariah McGhee, Cyrene Quiamco, Becky Robinson, Jerry Rushing, Myriam Saavedra and Lauren Sukany.

The artwork by Susan Chambers and Louise Halsey interprets the idea of solastalgia, a term coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht meaning “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault.”

Mann of the Evening

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Philip Mann, Recipient of 2012 Communicator of the Year AwardTonight, the Arkansas Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators will present the Bronze Quill Awards.  Among the recipients are Philip Mann, Music Director of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.

He will receive the Communicator of the Year Award, recognizing his innovative communication styles in creating connections between the music and the audience.

Congratulations to Maestro Mann and all the recipients this evening.

For more information on IABC, visit here.  For more information Philip Mann and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, visit here.

Little Rock Wind Symphony: CARMEN and Clarinet

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The Little Rock Wind Symphony kicks off the 2012-2013 season tonight with an evening entitled “Carmen and Clarinet.” Under the baton of musical director Dr. Karen Fannin, the LRWS will be joined by guest soloist Kelly Johnson, clarinet.

The program for tonight includes Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, Rodrigo’s Adagio para Orquesta de Instrumentos de Viento, McAllister’s Black Dog Rhapsody for Clarinet and Bizet’s Carmen Symphony.

The program begins at 7:30pm tonight at Second Presbyterian Church.

Dr. Fannin has been music director of LRWS since 2006. She is also Director of Bands and Assistant Professor of Music at Hendrix College, where she conducts the wind ensemble and teaches conducting, low brass, and courses in twentieth-century music and fundamentals of music.

The Little Rock Wind Symphony gave its first performance in February 1994.   It now performs concerts each fall, winter, and spring in addition to its vastly popular Christmas Concert in December. All concerts are held at Second Presbyterian Church. Another annual seasonal highlight is the “Stars and Stripes Celebration” in honor of Flag Day, held  outdoors in June in MacArthur Park.

QQA Annual Meeting and Awards

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QQA logo 2 colorThe Quapaw Quarter Association will hold its annual meeting tonight and present the Greater Little Rock Preservation Awards.

At 5pm, a reception will begin with the program starting at 5:30pm.  The program will take place at The Joint in the Argenta district.

The featured speaker will be Kim Trent of Knox Heritage in Knoxville TN.  She brings a diverse background to her current role, including experience in journalism, community organizing, community development banking, public relations and non-profit management. She has worked in preservation professionally and as a community volunteer and advocate at the local, state and national level for more than 16 years and is a proponent of preservation-based community and economic development.

Following the annual meeting, which is open to the public, there will be a members only reception at 7pm.  Memberships to the Quapaw Quarter Association will be available for purchase.

Rhea Roberts is the executive director of the Quapaw Quarter Association.

The Quapaw Quarter Association’s mission is to promote the preservation of Little Rock’s architectural heritage through advocacy, marketing and education. The QQA promotes the preservation and enhancement of the historic buildings and neighborhoods of Little Rock.  It is a Local Partner of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

 

Escape Velocity Launch Party

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cover

Tonight at 6pm at the Darragh Center of the Central Arkansas Library, the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies will host a launch party for the new book: Escape Velocity.  Edited by Jay Jennings, this collects the works of Charles Portis and represents his first new release in more than 20 years.  The book is published by Butler Center Books.
The evening will include remarks by Jennings, readings by Graham Gordy and music by Mandy McBride.  Last week, another launch event was held in New York City.

The book-which collects Portis’s nonfiction and short stories, as well as a memoir and a play-spans his half-century-long writing career, covering his early journalism from the 1950s when he worked for several newspapers up to more recent magazine stories published in the Atlantic and the Oxford American.

Escape Velocity brings together almost everything Portis has written outside his novels, both never-before-published work and hard-to-find stories that fans have known about for years and that new readers will delight in discovering.

Besides True Grit, Portis is the author of four other novels-Norwood, The Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis, and Gringos. All of his novels are available from Overlook Press.

About the editor
Jay Jennings, a journalist and humorist, lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. A former reporter for Sports Illustrated and frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, Jennings is the author of Carry the Rock: Race, Football, and the Soul of an American City (Rodale Press, 2010), a book that focuses on the 2007 football season at Little Rock’s famed Central High School-a half-century after the tumultuous 1957 desegregation of the school.

Claude Bolling’s Suite for Violin and Jazz Piano Trio at The Afterthought

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Tonight, October 8th, 2012 there will be a special one-time performance of Claude Bolling’s Suite for Violin and Jazz Piano Trio at The Afterthought, the jazz club on Kavanaugh Blvd. in the Hillcrest section of Little Rock.

With music starting at 8pm, saxophonist Brandon Dorris will perform a trio set with bassist Joe Vick and drummer Brian Brown. The Bolling,which is about an hour of music, will feature violinist Geoffrey Robson,pianist Louis Menendez, bassist Joe Vick, and drummer Brian Brown.

The evening will conclude with more music from Brandon Dorris and the trio.

Sophisticated jazz piano stylings blend seamlessly with lyrical and virtuosic violin playing in the music of Claude Bolling. $5 cover only.

Geoffrey Robson, violinist, is the Associate Conductor of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and violinist in Trio Arkansas with pianist Louis Menendez. Louis Menendez, of Hot Springs, AR, is a fine concert pianist, opera coach, and conductor, and is a faculty member at
Ouachita Baptist University. Joe Vick is a member of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and a Little Rock jazz mainstay. He also teaches music at College Station Elementary and Fuller Middle School in Little Rock.

Brian Brown, also a local jazz mainstay, has performed on just about every stage in town, and appears four nights a week at the Capital Hotel with the Ted Ludwig Jazz Trio. Brandon Dorris is one of the more versatile musicians in town. Recent appearances include the Hot Springs Jazz Festival, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Arkansas Repertory Theater, and Dugan’s Pub.

Sculpture Vulture: Jane DeDecker’s “Daphne”

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The annual Sculpture at the River Market Show and Sale takes place this month (October 19-21). In recognition of this, the October Sculpture Vulture will focus on more of the pieces in the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden which were acquired from previous shows.

Today’s feature is Jane DeDecker’s Daphne which was installed in 2011.  Cast in bronze, it depicts a headless torso with arms upstretched.  At the terminus of the arms are tree branches.

Jane DeDecker has been making a major contribution to the world sculpture scene since 1986. Creating over 250 limited edition, original sculptures, 60 of those being life-size and four one of a kind monuments, with 50 sold out editions. She has been published in magazines reaching global circulations, from Art and Antiques to European Home and Gardens. She has been sought out for her artistic integrity by organizations ranging from the National Parks Service to the President of the United States.