The monthly 2nd Friday Art Night is tonight at various locations in downtown Little Rock.
Among the participating sites are Historic Arkansas Museum, the Old State House Museum, Christ Episcopal Church, studioMain, Hearne Fine Art, and the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.
Art, music, food, drinks and its all free from 5pm to 8pm. Transportation from the various sites is provided by a free shuttle as well.
Kay C. Goss, will discuss the complicated life and times of Congressman Wilbur D. Mills. Goss is an educator and long-time aide to President Clinton in the Governor’s Office and at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, will discuss her biography of Arkansas’s longest-serving congressman, Mr. Chairman: The Life and Legacy of Wilbur D. Mills.
The book covers the entirety of Mills’s life (1909-1992), including his work on fiscal issues and his relationships with the eight presidents under whom he worked. Goss’s work also delves into Mills’s personal battle with alcoholism, his successful recovery, and his legacy of supporting substance abuse treatment.
Legacies & Lunch is free, open to the public, and supported in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council. The program is held from noon-1 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month in the Main Library’s Darragh Center. Attendees are invited to bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert will be provided.
The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies is a department of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS). It 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.
For more information, call 918-3086.
Tonight at 6:30, the Central Arkansas Library System Butler Center for Arkansas Studies will host the annual “A Prized Evening.” The 2013 Booker Worthen Prize will be presented to Mark Christ and the 2013 Porter Fund prize will be given to Pat Carr.
As one of the most fertile regions in the South, the Arkansas River Valley was highly contested territory during the Civil War. While the Siege on Vicksburg raged, equally important battles were fought here in Arkansas. This struggle is the topic of Mark Christ’s nonfiction work, Civil War Arkansas 1863, which has been selected to receive the 2013 Booker Worthen Literary Prize, awarded by the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS).
The Worthen Prize is awarded each year to an author living in the CALS’s service area whose work is highly regarded. It is named for Booker Worthen, who served twenty-two years on CALS’s board of trustees.
The 2013 Porter Fund Literary Prize will be given to Pat Carr. The Porter Fund presents the award annually to an Arkansas writer who has accomplished a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition
She has a B.A.(Phi Beta Kappa) and an M.A. from Rice, a Ph.D. from Tulane, and she’s taught literature and writing in colleges all across the South. She’s published sixteen books, including the Iowa Fiction Prize winner, The Women in the Mirror, and the PEN Book Award finalist, If We Must Die, and she’s had over a hundred short stories appear in such places as The Southern Review, Yale Review, and Best American Short Stories.
Her latest short story collection, The Death of a Confederate Colonel, a nominee for the Faulkner Award, won the PEN Southwest Fiction Award, the John Estes Cooke Fiction Award, and was voted one of the top ten books from university presses for 2007 by Foreword Magazine.
Carr has won numerous other awards, including a Library of Congress Marc IV, an NEH, the Texas Institute of Letters Short Story Award, an Al Smith Literary Fellowship, and a Fondation Ledig-Rowohlt Writing Fellowship in Lausanne, Switzerland.
A writing text, Writing Fiction with Pat Carr appeared from High Hill Press in June, 2010, and her autobiography, One Page at a Time: On a Writing Life was published by Texas Tech University Press in December, 2010. Pat Carr’s new novella, The Radiance of Fossils, came out in July 2012 with Main Street Rag Press. Her latest published work, Lincoln, Booth, and Me: A Graphic Novel of the Assassination by Horatio, the Cat as told by Par Carr was published in May 2013 by El Amarna Publishing.
Past honorees of the Booker Worthen prize are: 2012-The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937, David Welky; 2011-The Broken Vase, Phillip H. McMath and Emily Matson Lewis; 2010-Ruled by Race: Black/White Relations in Arkansas from Slavery to the Present, Grif Stockley; 2009-The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, Trenton Lee Stewart; 2008-Turn away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis that Shocked the Nation, Elizabeth Jacoway; 2007-A Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier; 2006-Promises Kept, Sidney S. McMath (posthumous); 2005-Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier, Carolyn Earle Billingsley; 2004-The Truth about Celia, Kevin Brockmeier; 2003-Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, Mara Leveritt; 2002-Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919, Grif Stockley; 2000-The Boys on the Tracks, Mara Leveritt; 2001-The Rumble of a Distant Drum: The Quapaws and Old World Newcomers, 1673–1804., Morris S. Arnold; 1999-Arkansas, 1800–1860: Remote and Restless, S. Charles Bolton.
Previous recipients of the Porter Fund prize are: 2012-Margaret Jones Bolsterli (Non-Fiction); 2011-Bill Harrison (Fiction); 2010-Bob Ford (Playwriting); 2009-Roy Reed (Non-Fiction); 2008-Trenton Lee Stewart (Fiction); 2007-Greg Brownderville (Poetry); 2006-Donald “Skip” Hays (Fiction); 2005-Shirley Abbott (Non-Fiction); 2005-Constance Merritt (Poetry); 2004-Michael Burns (Poetry); 2003-Kevin Brockmeier (Fiction); 2002-Ralph Burns (Poetry); 2001-Morris Arnold (Non-Fiction); 2001-Fleda Brown (Poetry); 2000-Jo McDougall (Poetry); 1999-Grif Stockley (Fiction); 1998-Michael Heffernan (Poetry); 1997-Dennis Vannatta (Fiction); 1996-David Jauss (Fiction); 1995-Norman Lavers (Fiction); 1994-Werner Trieschmann (Playwriting); 1993-No Prize was awarded; 1992-Andrea Hollander Budy (Poetry); 1991-Crescent Dragonwagon (Fiction); 1990-James Twiggs (Fiction); 1989-Hope Norman Coulter (Fiction); 1988-Paul Lake (Poetry); 1987-Donald Harington (Fiction); 1986-Buddy Nordan (Fiction); 1985-Leon Stokesbury (Poetry).
Legal issues of violence and gun possession were as prevalent in Spanish colonial Arkansas as they are today. Dr. Michael Dougan, distinguished professor of history emeritus of Arkansas State University, will discuss the history of Arkansas’s anti-gun laws in his talk, “Black Powder & Bowie Knives: Violence and the Law in Arkansas,” at noon on Wednesday, October 2, in the Main Library’s Darragh Center, 100 Rock Street.
The talk is part of Legacies & Lunch, a monthly lecture series hosted by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS).
Early American Arkansas passed a law against carrying concealed weapons that triggered a major case for the newly established Arkansas Supreme Court. The majority upheld the law, and anti-gun laws remained a part of Arkansas until well into the twentieth century.
Legacies & Lunch is free, open to the public, and supported in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council. Attendees are invited to bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert will be provided.
Later this week music stages downtown will be filled with three days of music as part of the 2nd annual Arkansas Sounds music festival.
The week kicks off tonight with a Singer Songwriter Showcase.
Featuring local members of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (Steve Smith, Russellville; Jim Pollock, Conway; Rodger King with Molly Brockinton, Lonoke; Roy Hayle, Malvern) and a special performance by Arkansas songwriter Wood Newton.
The program will start tonight at 6pm at the Darragh Center of the Main Library.
The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), sponsors the annual Arkansas Sounds Music Festival.
Focused on Arkansas music and musicians both past and present, the Festival also works to get musicians and songwriters involved in local schools, with songwriting workshops for kids and adults, and related performances and events throughout the state.
What do a rockabilly musician turned cinematic swamp monster, an instrument that lent its name to a weapon, and the creator of Schoolhouse Rock! have in common? They all come from Arkansas. The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), will host a cocktail party to celebrate the release of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas Music, a new Butler Center Book, on Thursday, September 19, at 5:30 p.m. in the Main Library’s Darragh Center, 100 Rock Street. Reservations are appreciated, but not required. To RSVP, email kchagnon@cals.org or call 918-3033.
It is Friday the 13th, which means it is the second Friday of the month. That means it is time for another round of 2nd Friday Art Night.
Among the sites this month are:
Butler Center Galleries (401 President Clinton Avenue). Guests can enjoy the music of guitarist Michael Carenbauer and the art of featured artist Sherrell Holcomb. In addition the evening will feature the opening of Abstract Ar(t). This exhibit showcases contemporary, abstract works of art by Arkansas-based artists Dustyn Bork, Megan Chapman, Donnie Copeland, Don Lee, and Steven Wise. It will be on display through November 24, 2013.
Historic Arkansas Museum (200 East Third Street). Visitors to HAM will hear live music by Gentleman Jazz and enjoy wine tasting provided by Zin Wine Bar. In addition to continuing exhibitions, the evening includes an opening reception of Reflections from the Monday Studio Artists with works by Shirley R. Anderson, Barbara Seibel, Sue Shields and Caryl Joy Young. The show features these four artists’ landscape works.
Old State House Museum (300 West Markham). Music by Big Silver headlines the offerings at the Old State House Museum. The acclaimed Little Rock band will be playing on the lawn of the museum starting at 5:30 pm. The band recently recorded an episode of “AETN Presents: On the Front Row” that featured the music of Big Silver member Isaac Alexander. Concert goers are encouraged to bring a chair or blanket. In case of inclement weather, the concert will be moved inside. Food and drinks will be provided for this free event.
2nd Friday Art Night runs from 5:00pm to 8:00pm and is free. There are numerous stops at downtown galleries and museums.
Little Rock Culture Vulture 