Monthly Archives: October 2016

Creative Class 2016: Karen Q. Clark

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cc16-clarkKaren Q. Clark has played a sympathetic nun on film and an exceedingly unsympathetic nun on stage.   In between she has been a singing nun (in The Sound of Music).  Outside of the habit, she has appeared in New York, many regional theatres, and most (if not all) Little Rock stages.  A native of Wisconsin, she came to Little Rock with her husband (and fellow thespian) Jay Clark.  During the day, she is Lower School choral and drama teacher at Episcopal Collegiate School.

In addition to being a fixture in the Little Rock theatre scene, she also has numerous credits in many Arkansas-made films.  Favorite stage roles include: Mrs. Banks, Mary Poppins (Arkansas Rep); Betty in The It Girl (IRNE nomination, Worcester Foothills); Princess Rhyme in the world premiere of The Phantom Tollbooth and Rachel in Inherit the Wind (Wheelock Family Theatre); Irene in Hello Dolly! (Jekyll Island); Maria in The Sound of Music; and Narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre). Another favorite role is being Quin’s mom.

Creative Class 2016: Hunter Brown

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cc16-brownHunter Brown was born and raised in Little Rock. His mother was always painting and his father was always working with his hands building and creating. While he did not originally envision himself as an artist, he discovered sculpture as a student of the University of Central Arkansas. After graduating Hunter gradually built a design and sculpture studio, where he would continue to explore with sculptural forms. Today Hunter is the owner and operator of Innovative Sculpture Design Studio where he creates fine art full time, traveling throughout the country to fine art shows and festivals.

His work moves between the figurative and the abstract, modern and contemporary styles. While many sculptors fabricate their forms with flawless craftsmanship and machine-like precision, he chooses to exploit the natural characteristics of materials and the fabrication process. By experimenting with finishes, grind patterns, tool markings, welding techniques, and even slag from the torch, Hunter has developed a style that captures his process and leaves his imprint in the work.

Having installations throughout the U.S., Hunter was one of the artists in the 2016 Sculpture at the River Market show.  Year round his work can be found at the Matt McLeod Gallery.

Creative Class 2016: Kevin Brockmeier

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cc16-brockmeierIn addition to his most recent work, A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip, KEVIN BROCKMEIER is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; and the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery.

His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He has published his stories in such venues as The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. In 2007, he was named one of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

A graduate of Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School and Missouri State University, he attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop program at the University of Iowa, studying under such names as Frank Conroy and Marilynn Robinson, and graduated in 1997 with an MFA degree.  He is probably the only author to have participated in every single Arkansas Literary Festival.

Kevin Robb’s SERENADING THE CLOUDS to be installed today

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Looking UpStaff from the City of Little Rock Department of Parks and Recreation, in partnership with Deltic Timber and Sculpture at the River Market, will install Kevin Robb’s Serenading the Clouds, a 19-foot-tall brushed stainless steel sculpture near the intersection of Rahling Road and St. Vincent Way.

The piece was purchased by Sculpture at the River Market with assistance from Deltic Timber to be enjoyed by the public as they travel through the area.  Iconic public art can serve as a landmark for residents, employees, and visitors.

Kevin Robb’s Serenading the Clouds is a unique design for him because it has an even number of components.  Four components take a special design to ensure the sculpture is strong and not repetitive, bringing the dynamics of space into the design that doesn’t come naturally.

The stainless steel is cut out and the individual components are welded together. When the components are 80% complete he then starts assembling them. The individual elements are hung from a crane system in his studio allowing them to turn, twist, raise, and move.  Once he is pleased with the direction of the components, they are marked, taken down, and cut into one another so they can be conjoined into a continuous piece.  It is never exact to the sketch, the sketch becomes the general idea, the creation happens in the studio.

Serenading the Clouds soars into the air at 19 feet and is 8 feet in width. It commands space and deals with the space around it with the strong, positive presence it displays. The brushed stainless steel finish catches the light in so many different ways.

Robb’s Playing Ball is located at the roundabout on Rebsamen Park Road at Riverfront Drive.

Creative Class 2016: Chad Bradford

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cc16-bradfordActor and director Chad Bradford started appearing on Little Rock stages while he was still a student at Hall High School.  Since then, he has appeared Off Broadway, in national tours, and in numerous regional theatres throughout the U.S.  While often appearing in Shakespeare or other classical plays, he is equally at home in farce, musicals, and drawing room comedies.  In 2015, he played the title character in the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre production of Puss in Boots. In other words, he is a versatile actor.

Earlier this year, he directed Twelfth Night for Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre (while also appearing in their productions of West Side Story and A Midsummer Night’s Dream).  Twelfth Night was later remounted at Shake on the Lake Shakespeare in New York and returned to Conway for another appearance.  (This is not his first show to originate in Little Rock and be performed throughout the US. In 2013, he helmed David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries here before it played elsewhere.)  In 2015, National Arts Strategies named him a Creative Community Fellows recipient.

He is currently in rehearsals directing David Ives’s The Liar on the UCA Mainstage.  It plays October 20-22, and 27 & 28.

Brown Bag lecture at Old State House today focuses on Robinson Center construction

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robinson-auditorium-by-scott-carterToday (Thursday, October 6) at noon at the Old State House, the Brown Bag lecture focuses on the construction of the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium.

After three decades of failed attempts to build a municipal auditorium in Little Rock, the New Deal finally offered the opportunity to build a structure for performances and conventions. But there were still many roadblocks on the way to the opening of the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium.

For this Brown Bag Lunch Lecture, Scott Whiteley Carter will examine the changes and chances from October 1935 to April 1940 leading up to the opening of Robinson Auditorium. The period featured a reluctant but triumphant mayor, a crusading newspaper editor, political intrigue, financial chaos, and a plethora of frustration — all ultimately leading to a monument to civic pride.

A native of Little Rock, Carter is Special Projects Administrator at the City of Little Rock. Among his duties in this capacity are research and functioning as the city’s historian.

Creative Class 2016: Bryan Borland

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cc16-borlandBryan Borland is the founder and publisher of Sibling Rivalry Press, an independent publishing house based in Little Rock.  Since 2010, SRP has published Poets & Writers Top Debut Fiction, a Poets & Writers Top 12 Debut Poet, a Pushcart Prize winner, a Lambda Award winner for Gay Poetry, a Lambda Award winner for Lesbian Poetry, eight Lambda Literary Award finalists, two Thom Gunn Award finalists, twenty-one American Library Association “Over the Rainbow” recommended LGBT titles, three American Library Association “Over the Rainbow” top 10 favorite picks, one of Library Journal‘s “Best New Magazines,” one of Flavorwire‘s 50 books that define the last five years of literature, and finalists for the Bisexual Poetry Book of the Year, the Oregon Book of the Year, and the Georgia Book of the Year.

SRP was also recognized as the 2013 Bisexual Publisher of the Year from the Bisexual Writers Association for dedication to quality literary content across the spectrum of sexuality. In 2015, the Library of Congress acquired all of SRP’s printed titles for housing in its Rare Books and Special Collections Vault, “housed among history’s greatest writers for all of perpetuity.”

As a poet, Bryan’s first collection of poetry, My Life as Adam was one of only five books of poetry selected by the American Library Association for its first annual “Over the Rainbow” list of recommended LGBT-themed publications. His second collection of poetry, Less Fortunate Pirates: Poems from the First Year Without My Father, was released in November 2012. He is a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry and winner of the 2016 Judith A. Marowitz Emerging Writer Award. His third collection of poetry, DIG, was published in September 2016 by Stillhouse Press.