Author Archives: Scott

Unknown's avatar

About Scott

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

HEART/HAND: an architectural lecture by Billie Tsien

Posted on by

TseinThis month, the Architecture and Design Network features Billie Tsien, AIA, NCAARB, FAAR of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects of New York City.

Ms. Tsien’s lecture will take place tonight in the Arkansas Arts Center lecture hall.  Her remarks will begin at 6pm following a reception at 5:30.

Born in Ithaca New York, Billie Tsien received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale and her Master in Architecture from UCLA. Currently, in addition to practicing, teaching and lecturing, she serves on the advisory council for the Yale School of Architecture. In 2007 Tsien was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tsien and her husband Tod Williams have been working together since 1977. Their firm, which operates out of a small, unpretentious studio on Central Park South in New York City, has earned wide acclaim for its work. This past December, the American Institute of Architects awarded the firm its prestigious 2013 Architecture Firm Award in recognition of work that “reveals a contemporary sensibility and intelligence.” Given annually, the award is the highest honor the AIA bestows on a firm. It recognizes a practice that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least ten years.

Their recently completed, 93,000 square foot museum in Philadelphia, designed for the Barnes Foundation, has drawn critical acclaim from many sources. In January, the AIA gave it a 2013 Institute Honor Award for Architecture. The new facility replaces the original one in Merion, Pennsylvania, established by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922. A challenge to its designers was to replicate the original 12,000 square foot main gallery, replete with art as arranged by the late Dr. Barnes himself. And they did.

Supporters of the Architecture and Design Network, a non-profit organization, include the Arkansas Arts Center, the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Artist Kevin Kresse at “Tales from the South” Tuesday, March 5

Posted on by
kevinselfportrait

Kevin Kresse in a self-portrait

Tuesday, March 5 , the Starving Artist Cafe will come alive with Tales from the South’s monthly “Tin Roof Project” which features a Southerner in conversation. This month the featured guest is artist Kevin Kresse.

Artist Kevin Kresse, a native Arkansan, supports his family as a painter and sculptor in Little Rock. He has exhibited his work around Arkansas and in New York, NY, Washington D.C., Memphis, TN, and Atlanta, GA.

Kresse has been awarded painting fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts-Mid America Arts Alliance and the Arkansas Arts Council. He has also won several awards in the Arkansas Arts Center annual Delta competition.

He has been featured in the Arkansas Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the North Little Rock Times, the Little Rock Free Press, Active Years Magazine, and Soiree Magazine.

Kresse has also been featured in pieces produced by the local affiliates of ABC, CBS, and PBS television, as well as a film short by Garret Lakin. Kevin lives in Little Rock with his wife Bridget and their three children.

Brad Williams and blues guitarist Mark Simpson will provide musical entertainment.

Dinner 5pm-6:30pm
Show starts at 7pm
Admission is $7.50.  You MUST purchase your ticket before the show.

Tales From the South is a radio show created and produced by Paula Martin Morell, who is also the show’s host. The show is taped live on Tuesday. The night is a cross between a house concert and a reading/show, with incredible food and great company. Tickets must be purchased before the show, as shows are usually standing-room only.

“Tales from the South” is a showcase of writers reading their own true stories. While the show itself is unrehearsed, the literary memoirs have been worked on for weeks leading up to the readings. Stories range from funny to touching, from everyday occurrences to life-altering tragedies.

Tales from the South airs on KUAR Public Radio on Thursdays at 7pm.

NATURAL STATE NOTABLES book launched on Monday

Posted on by

natural_state_notablesSchool-aged children can learn about famous Arkansans in Natural State Notables: 21 Famous People from Arkansas by Steven Teske, a new book from Butler Center Books. Teske will read from the book and sign books, which will be available for purchase, on Monday, March 4, at 4:00 p.m. in the Central Arkansas Library System’s (CALS) Children’s Library and Learning Center at 4800 W. 10th Street.

Biographies on Arkansans including Maya Angelou, Johnny Cash, Bill Clinton, John Grisham, Scottie Pippen, Winthrop Rockefeller, Mary Steenburgen, and Sam Walton highlight the accomplishments and backgrounds of some of Arkansas’s most celebrated sons and daughters. The book features pictures, timelines, and information on each Arkansan.

Natural State Notables author Steven Teske works as an archival assistant for the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. He has also written Unvarnished Arkansas about famous people in Arkansas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he co-wrote Homefront Arkansas about life in Arkansas during wartime from the war with Mexico in 1848 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the twenty-first century. He has worked for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, the Butler Center’s online resource about the state of Arkansas, and he teaches college classes in history and comparative religions for the Arkansas State University-Beebe’s campus on the Little Rock Air Force Base.

Butler Center Books is a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System. This publishing program was made possible by a gift from John G. and Dora “DeDe” Ragsdale. Butler Center Books publishes volumes that increase knowledge about and appreciation of the history and culture of Arkansas. The University of Arkansas Press in Fayetteville is the distribution agent for Butler Center Books.

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies was founded in 1997 to promote the study and appreciation of Arkansas history and culture. The Butler Center’s research collections, art galleries, and offices are located in the Arkansas Studies Institute building at 401 President Clinton Ave. on the campus of the CALS Main Library.

The event, which will include a reception and a preview tour of the new facility, is free and open to the public. RSVP to marey@cals.org or 918-3033. The Children’s Library will open on Saturday, March 16.

CALS celebrates READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY in honor of Dr. Seuss

Posted on by

CALS Celebrates Read Across America Day

read_across_americaOne fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. 

Celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday with the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) at events during Read Across America Day. Crafts and parties encourage patrons to pick a book and read with the whole family.  All events are free and open to the public.

Activities started yesterday and continue today.

At Park Plaza Mall from 11am to 2pm, there are Read Across America Day crafts.  Events at Park Plaza Mall are provided by the new Children’s Library and Learning Center, 4800 W. 10th Street, which will open to the public on March 16.

A Dr. Seuss Birthday Party will take place at the Fletcher Library today at 10am.  In addition, a Bilingual Dr. Seuss Birthday Party will be at the Main Library at 10:30am.

On Monday at 6pm, the McMath Library will host a Dr. Seuss Pajama Party.  Let’s face it, most Dr. Seuss characters look like they are wearing pajamas.

On Wednesday, the Terry Library will host a Dr. Seuss Birthday Sock Hop at 6:30pm.  No word on whether they will be Hopping on Pop.  So go and find out.

CALS libraries in Little Rock include:

  • Main Library, 100 Rock Street;
  • Dee Brown Library, 6325 Baseline Road;
  • Fletcher Library, 823 North Buchanan Street;
  • Oley E. Rooker Library, 11 Otter Creek Court;
  • Terry Library, 2015 Napa Valley Drive;
  • Thompson Library, 38 Rahling Circle;
  • Williams Library, 1800 Chester Street;
  • McMath Library, 2100 John Barrow Road.

CALS libraries in surrounding communities include:

  • Max Milam Library, 609 Aplin Avenue, Perryville;
  • Maumelle Library, 10 Lake Pointe Drive, Maumelle;
  • Esther D. Nixon Library, 703 W. Main Street, Jacksonville
  • Amy Sanders Library, 31 Shelby Drive, Sherwood

Sandwiching in History at St. John’s Seminary today

Posted on by

Today the Sandwiching in History program visits the St. John’s Seminary, located at 2500 N. Tyler Street.  Sandwiching in History is sponsored by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

StJohn3This campus was built in 1916 to house Little Rock College for Boys until it closed in 1929. From 1930 until it closed in 1967 St. John Home Mission Seminary was located at this site.

In 1968, the campus was renamed St. John Catholic Center when it became the home of the Diocese of Little Rock offices. Today it also serves as a retreat center and residence for retired diocesan priests.

The “Sandwiching In History“ program is a series of tours that seeks to familiarize people who live and work in central Arkansas with the historic structures and sites around us. The tours take place on Fridays at noon, last less than an hour, and participants are encouraged to bring their lunches so that they can eat while listening to a brief lecture about the property and its history before proceeding on a short tour.

The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass continues at Arkansas Arts Center

Posted on by
Contraband Bayou, Louisiana - 1941

Contraband Bayou, Louisiana – 1941

As America awaited the declaration of war in the spring of 1941, photographer Edward Weston set out on a cross-country photographic expedition.  Now through April 21, the Arkansas Arts Center is playing host to an exhibit of his photos from that expedition.  Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Weston, one of America’s leading modernist photographers, was making photographs for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The Limited Editions Club of New York commissioned these images to bring together the great nineteenth-century poet’s verbal celebration of America with the great twentieth-century photographer’s visual odyssey.

In accepting the assignment, Weston declined to literally illustrate Whitman’s words, yet the two portraits of America echo one another. Where Whitman’s nineteenth-century verse was shaped by the Civil War, Weston’s images anticipated World War II.

Weston’s trip lasted almost ten months, covering 24 states and nearly 25,000 miles. Weston and his wife, Charis Wilson, drove their trusty Ford, “Walt,” throughout the South, the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and back home to California after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought about America’s entry into the war. Weston’s photographs include studies of decaying southern mansions, the Boulder Dam, a homely display of old bottles, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans cemeteries, and haunting portraits of people the photographer met along the way.

Weston’s images form no detached national survey; rather they embody an idiosyncratic personal meditation on selected American places, objects, and people. Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass includes 53 photographs chosen from the approximately 700 negatives Weston developed from the trip.

Science After Dark: The Science of Africa

Posted on by

science_after_darkThe Museum of Discovery, the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, UALR and the Little Rock Zoo are partnering to present “The Science of Africa” from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, February 27, the latest in the Museum of Discovery’s monthly Science After Dark series.

The museum’s Great Hall will come alive with interactive, science-based experiences highlighting the physical and earth sciences of Africa. Dr. Warigia Bowman, assistant professor at the Clinton School, and Joel Gordon, visitor experience director at the Museum of Discovery, have collaborated to plan and execute an engaging series of interactive experiences

Other presenters will include Dr. Amin Akhnoukh of UALR, representatives of the Reptile Rescue Center, members of the education staffs of the Little Rock Zoo and the Museum of Discovery as well as Hamadi Njoroge, owner/operator of African Wildcats Adventure Safaris.

Those attending the 21-and-over-only event full of Africa science-based experiences will get the chance to:

  • Meet some African animals and learn more about many of the continent’s best-known inhabitants.
  • Examine some of the more exotic skeletons of African animals, pulled from the Museum of Discovery’s collection, as well as skulls, hides and other animal artifacts from the Little Rock Zoo.
  • Learn about the science and scientists of Africa, including troubling phenomena like the melting of the snow cap on Mount Kilimanjaro.
  • Explore “The Development of Construction from the Age of the Pharaoh to Modern Egypt,” as Dr. Akhnoukh talks about pyramids, pharaoh temples and newer projects such as the high dam in Aswan, Cairo Tower, the famous Alexandria Library, and the Egyptian Museum.
  • Enjoy African roots-based music.
  • And learn why deep down in our DNA, we are all African.

Dr. Bowman is an expert in the science of Africa. She earned her doctorate degree from Harvard University, where her Ph.D. research centered on the effect of technology in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. She has consulted for many African organizations, including the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, the African Technology Policy Studies Network and the New Economic Partnership for African Development.

Dr. Akhnoukh, a native of Egypt, is an assistant professor of construction engineering at UALR. He has his Ph.D. in construction engineering from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and his masters in civil engineering from Kansas State University. He research focuses on ultra-high strength concrete mixes. Dr. Akhnoukh is a registered professional engineer in Arkansas and Cairo. His board affiliations include serving on the board of the Arkansas chapter of the American Concrete Institute.

Hamadi is an expert on Kenyan animals, including many of the country’s 1,000 bird species as well as wild cats, including lions and leopards, and other important large game species including rhinos, elephants, giraffes and the numerous antelopes that make their home in the vast grasslands of East Africa.

Admission to Science After Dark is $5, free for Museum of Discovery members, and is payable at the door. Bosco’s will provide a cash bar, and visitors will have full access to the 85 interactive exhibits featured in the museum’s three galleries. For more information, visit www.museumofdiscovery.org and “like” Science After Dark on Facebook.