Author Archives: Scott

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About Scott

A cultural thinker with a life long interest in the arts and humanities: theatre, music, architecture, photography, history, urban planning, etc.

This weekend at Wildwood Park – 6th annual LANTERNS! Festival

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LanternsLANTERNS! Festival, Arkansas’ only deep-winter outdoor festival, will light up the night at Wildwood Park for a sixth year of family fun and illuminating entertainment! Travel paved paths illuminated with fire pits and thousands of luminaria to enjoy unique entertainment, authentic food and beverages for all ages at eight cultural vistas from around the globe!

LANTERNS! runs from 6pm to 10pm on Friday, February 14, Saturday, February 15 and Sunday, February 16.

Tickets are available at the gate during festival days:
$10 for Adults
$5 for Children (6-12 years old)
FREE for Children 5 and Under
At Wildwood, visitors will take a mystical stroll along paved pathways lit by fire pits and luminaries into the park’s winter woodlands to enjoy a variety of indoor and outdoor entertainment at lighted vistas representing six cultural vistas around the globe.
This year’s festival includes Asia, Jamaica, Mexico, New Orleans, Rome, and Shakespeare’s England.
Cultural entertainment, games, and discoveries span the Park’s arboretum, gardens, and lakeside performance spaces.
Wildwood’s performance complex, including the 625-seat Lucy Lockett Cabe Festival Theatre, is transformed into an international spectacle, meant to transport festival-goers to the far corners of the globe via magical tastes, sounds, and sights.
As visitors stroll through the glowing paths of of Wildwood’s lakeside forest, they will be immersed in a new culture at every turn.

A LOVEly 2nd Friday Art Night

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2nd friday art nightSince Valentine’s Day falls on 2nd Friday Art Night, expect some touches of red and pink along the way at the various sites.

Among the participating locations are Historic Arkansas Museum which will feature live music by Kit & Kaboodle as well as the opening reception for the Mid-Southern Watercolorists 44th Annual Juried Exhibition. Awards will be announced at 6 pm.

This exhibition includes 43 watercolors from members of the Mid-Southern Watercolorists (MSW), a group founded in Little Rock in 1970 with members in more than a dozen states.

MSW was formed to elevate the stature of watercolor and educate the public to the significance of watercolor as an important creative, permanent painting medium. MSW offers workshops, programs and competitive exhibits throughout the year.

The Old State House Museum‘s Second Friday Cinema will feature the film Hallelujah at 6:00pm.

One of the earliest Hollywood feature films shot on location in Arkansas, Hallelujah was innovative in several ways. It was the first talking picture made by popular director King Vidor, one of the first Hollywood movies with an all-black cast, and it introduced an early form of sound dubbing. Scenes of cotton picking and outdoor church revivals were shot in Tennessee and Arkansas, with the movie’s climactic chase scene shot in Ten Mile Bayou near West Memphis.

Ben Fry, General Manager of KLRE/KUAR and coordinator of the film minor at UALR, will introduce the film and lead a discussion after the screening.

At CALS’ Butler Center Galleries, they are promising “Sweet Art for Your Sweetheart.”

The featured artist is Russell Lemond.  He is a contemporary sculptural artist who works primarily with metal. His work is deemed “outside the box” by some, but he feels that in art as in life, there is no box.  The featured musician,Oksana Pavilionis, is a premier concert violinist playing mix of classical and folk tunes. Originally from Russia, Oksana now lives and teaches in Benton, Arkansas.

The current exhibitions are “Reflections in Pastel,” “Arkansas Women to Watch 2013,” “Native Arkansas,” and “Unusual Portraits: New Works by Michael Warrick and David O’Brien.”

Poet Mayda del Valle to ‘Bless the Mic’ tonight at Philander Smith

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pscdelvalleFebruary’s Bless the Mic at Philander Smith College features poet and spoken word artist Mayda del Valle. The program starts at 7pm.  Free and open to the public, it will take place in the M.L. Harris Auditorium. Tickets are not required; seating is first-come, first-serve. For more information, call 370-5354.

Chosen by O Magazine as one of 20 women on the first “O Power List,” the Chicago native is the youngest poet and first Latino to win the 2001 National Poetry Slam Individual Championship. Soon after she was chosen to perform on the first season of the HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, followed by a stint as an original cast member and contributing writer of the critically acclaimed Tony award winning production of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway.

Del Valle, who has been featured in numerous publications including Urban Latino, Latina magazine and the New York Times, holds a B.A. in Art from Williams College.

Bless The Mic is a contemporary spin on the traditional President’s Lecture Series. These events, held on hundreds of campuses across the country, have been a way to stimulate the intellectual discourse on the campus. Even today, these series seek to bring in noted scholars, authors, politicians and public intellectuals to expose not only the campus community to their ideas and concepts, but the broader community in which the institution resides.

Little Rock Look Back: Lincoln Avenue Viaduct

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ahpp_nom_lincolnaveviaduct_largeSince today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, the focus is on the Lincoln Avenue Viaduct.  This arched bridge is traversed by thousands of cars each day, with most having no idea the name of the structure.

The Lincoln Avenue Viaduct is the arched bridge connecting LaHarpe with Cantrell Road which (literally) bridges downtown with the west along Highway 10.

The Lincoln Avenue Viaduct is a reinforced concrete rainbow arch bridge. It was opened at 2:05p.m. on Friday, December 28, 1928, and, despite later alterations, it remains particularly well
preserved. The Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, considered the most important railroad company in the state, constructed the bridge amid a series of improvements in Little Rock made necessary by the damage wrought by the infamous spring floods of 1927.

Though the bride was constructed by the railroad, the City had to give authorization to do so, this was accomplished by the passing of Ordinance 4,335, at the May 28, 1928, City Council meeting.

Lincoln Avenue was one of several names for stretches of Highway 10 in Little Rock. By the 1960s, the areas west of the Lincoln Avenue viaduct were all renamed Cantrell in honor of the man who had developed much of the area west of the Heights. The longest stretch of the road already carried that name. There had been an effort to rename Highway 10 (including sections named Lincoln, Q, and Cantrell) in Little Rock for Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson in 1930. He declined the offer because he did not want to diminish the contributions of Mr. Cantrell.  Over time the entire stretch bore the name Cantrell.

The stretches east of the viaduct which involved a couple of names were renamed La Harpe Boulevard in honor of the French explorer who first saw the Little Rock.

Though the street has been renamed, the bridge still carries the name of the 16th President of the United States.

Tech City is new exhibit at Museum of Discovery

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techcityLogo_4CInvent, design, create and build in Tech City, the Museum of Discovery’s new exhibit which opened last Saturday, February 8.

Tech City features 12 interactive stations that allow visitors to solve problems that engineers face each day on the job.

“One of our goals at the Museum of Discovery is helping young people establish a clear line of sight between science- and technology-related activities and careers in important, rewarding fields like engineering,” said museum CEO Kelley Bass. “In Tech City our visitors will engage in some of the day-to-day tasks engineers take on and see that these activities can be fun and challenging.”

In Tech City, visitors can build structures that will withstand the force of an earthquake; use a computer program to adjust simulated traffic flow by changing traffic light timing; engineer with sound in a studio with effects and instruments and play the recordings back; dam a creek to prevent flooding; build a bridge and more. The exhibit also includes a play area for young museum visitors.

Tech City is supported in part by Garver and will be on display through May 11. For more information visit http://www.museumofdiscovery.org or call 501-396-7050.

Museum of Discovery’s mission is to ignite a passion for science, technology and math in a dynamic, interactive environment.

Lineup for April’s 11th Annual Arkansas Literary Festival Announced

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1359064160-litfest_logoAs winter drones on, a person’s fancy may turn to thoughts of spring. Or to a good book to read by candlelight to pass the time in winter.

In any way, a certain harbinger of warmer weather will be the presence in April of the 11th annual Arkansas Literary Festival.

Prestigious award-winners, big names, writers for television shows, journalists, and artists are among the diverse roster of presenters who will be providing sessions at the eleventh annual Arkansas Literary Festival, April 24-27, 2014. The Central Arkansas Library System‘s Main Library campus and many other Little Rock venues are the sites for a stimulating mix of sessions, panels, special events, performances, workshops, presentations, opportunities to meet authors, book sales, and book signings. Most events are free and open to the public.

The Arkansas Literary Festival, the premier gathering of readers and writers in Arkansas, will include more than 80 presenters including featured authors Catherine Coulter, who has more than seventy million books in print; Congressman John Lewis, one of the key figures in the civil rights movement; best-selling authors Mary Roach, ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Curtis Sittenfeld, and artist/illustrator Kadir Nelson; musician Rhett Miller; and education expert David L. Kirp.

This year’s Festival authors have won an impressive number and variety of distinguished awards, including ten Emmy awards, multiple National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and grants, two Pulitzer Prizes, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (the Genius Grant), the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, the Caldecott Honor, an NAACP Image Award, an Eisner Award, a Ford Foundation Fellowship, the American Book Award, the O. Henry Prize, recognition as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, and much more.

Their works have been included in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Bon Appétit, Glamour, Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Slate, Mother Jones, and the Washington Post, among others.

Special events for adults during the Festival include a cocktail reception with the authors, a writing workshop with Catherine Coulter, a concert by Rhett Miller, and a presentation by an art historian which includes an Artists Buffet. Panels and sessions include genres and topics such as chocolate, lucid dreaming, graphic novels, the war in Iraq, short stories, Arkansas food, murder mysteries, football, dinosaurs, and gangsters.

Children’s special events include a storytime on the lawn of the Governor’s Mansion, a treasure hunt, a play based on The Little Engine That Could, and a Lego exhibit. Festival sessions for children will take place at both the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library and Learning Center, 4800 10th Street, and the Youth Services Department at the Main Library, 100 Rock Street.

At Level 4, the Main Library’s teen center, special events for teens include a robotics demonstration and a panel on comic book conventions.

Through the Writers In The Schools (WITS) initiative, the Festival will provide presentations by several authors for Pulaski county elementary, middle, and senior high schools and area colleges.

Support for the Literary Festival is provided by sponsors including Central Arkansas Library System; Friends of Central Arkansas Libraries (FOCAL); Arkansas Humanities Council; Department of Arkansas Heritage; Fred K. Darragh Jr. Foundation; Mosaic Templars Cultural Center; ProSmart Printing; KUAR FM 89.1; Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau; Arkansas Democrat Gazette; Sync; Arkansas Life; William J. Clinton Presidential Center; Oxford American; Landers FIAT of Benton; MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History; Arkansas Times; Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP; University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service; Historic Arkansas Museum ; Christ Church, Little Rock’s Downtown Episcopal Church; Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center; Arkansas Library Association; Goss Management Company, LLC; Henderson State University; Hendrix College Project Pericles Program; Pulaski Technical College; Arkansas Arts Center; River’s Edge Media; Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre; Rockefeller Elementary School; Gibbs Elementary School; Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center; Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow; Arkansas Governor’s Mansion; Hendrix College Creative Writing; University of Arkansas at Little Rock English Department; University of Arkansas at Little Rock Department of Rhetoric and Writing; Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing/Hearne Fine Art; Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack; Literacy Action of Central Arkansas; National Park Service Central High School National Historic Site; Tales from the South; and Power 92 Jams. The Arkansas Literary Festival is supported in part by funds from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Author! Author!, a cocktail reception with the authors, will be Friday, April 25, at 8 p.m.; tickets are $25 in advance, and $40 at the door, and go on sale at ArkansasLiteraryFestival.org beginning Tuesday, April 1. Author! Author! tickets will also be available for purchase at the Main Library and River Market Books & Gifts, 120 River Market Avenue.

The Arkansas Literary Festival is a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. The Festival’s mission is to encourage the development of a more literate populace. A group of dedicated volunteers assists Festival Coordinator Brad Mooy with planning the Festival. Jay Jennings is the 2014 Festival Chair. Other committee chairs include Katherine Whitworth, Talent Committee; Lisa Donovan, Youth Programs; and Amy Bradley-Hole, Moderators.

For more information about the 2014 Arkansas Literary Festival, visit ArkansasLiteraryFestival.org, or contact Brad Mooy at bmooy@cals.org or 501-918-3098. For information on volunteering at the Festival, contact Angela Delaney atadelaney@cals.org or 501-918-3095.

COWS typing T H E E N D today at 2 and 4

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aacctcowsToday at 2pm and 4pm, the typing cows will be preparing to remove the paper from the typewriter one final time at the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre production of Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type.

“This classically hilarious children’s story about some rebelliously clever farm animals will come to life on stage at the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre as they engage in peaceful protests to improve their working conditions,” said Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre artistic director Bradley Anderson. “This delightful tale about negotiation and compromise is enjoyable for any age.”

Farmer Brown thinks it’s odd when he hears typing sounds coming from the barn but his troubles really begin when his cows start leaving him notes demanding better working conditions before staging a strike. Join the Arkansas Art Center Children’s Theatre as a bunch of literate cows turn Farmer Brown’s farm upside down. Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type is adapted by George Howe and James E. Grote from Doreen Cronin’s original book with illustrator Betsey Lewin.

The cast for Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type includes: John Isner, of Little Rock, as Farmer Brown Jeremy Matthey, of Little Rock, as Duck Moriah Patterson, of Sheridan, as Cow 1 Aleigha Garstka, of Little Rock, as Cow 2 Veronica Lowry, of Charlottesville, VA, as Hen

Bradley D. Anderson is the artistic director and the director for the production. Choreography by Moriah Patterson, musical direction by Lori Isner, costumes are designed by Erin Larkin, technical direction by Drew Posey, lighting design by Penelope Poppers, scenic design and properties by Miranda Young and Sarah Gasser is the stage manager.

Presenting sponsors are Landers FIAT in Benton, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and in honor of Dorothy and Fallon Davis by Dr. Scott and Shannon Davis. Also sponsored by All Aboard Restaurant and Martha Logue.

Recognized by The Drama League as one of the best regional theatre companies in America, the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre is the only professional company in Arkansas that produces children’s literary works for the stage. Since 1979, Children’s Theatre has been creating unique experiences for family audiences.

For more information, visit arkansasartscenter.org or call (501)372-4000.

General Admission Tickets are $12.50 for children and adults & $10 for AAC members.