Wednesday, May 14, 2008
MAGAZINE
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The trouble with this quilt show is it generates inspiration. And from inspiration comes a messy sewing room — so messy that order may never return.
The LSU Bachelor of Fine Arts Student Exhibition will be Monday-Friday, May 12-16, at the Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Exhibition Gallery in the Shaw Center, 100 Lafayette St. Nottoway Plantation, on La. 1 at White Castle, is in the process of a major restoration. Owner Paul Ramsay of Sydney, Australia, announced last week that he is providing the resources to ensure that the restoration is conducted in a manner that will preserve Nottoway for many more years. In 1996, newspaper columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson wrangled an assignment from her editor in Atlanta. She was to cover a boar hunt in south Louisiana, but the story turned out to be a bit of a bust. Your Living Family Tree, Keeping Your Family Together Forever Through Print, Photos, Sound, and Video is a new book by Gordon Burgett and published and distributed by Communication Unlimited of Novato, Calif. This one is Sandy Dokka’s favorite, the one showing the man in the choir robe playing the upright piano. The painting is small, but big enough to contain the large woman standing behind the pianist. She’s singing, it’s obvious. What a joy it used to be to receive a well-written letter. Before cell phones, telephones, telegrams, the Internet and other advances in technology, people used to communicate across distances by sitting down and putting their thoughts and feelings on paper. When you write a book about the place where you live, you almost inevitably rub some folks the wrong way. That’s not been the case for Rheta Grimsley Johnson, at least so far. Birmingham, Ala., built on a foundation of iron and steel, has grown into a multi-faceted town of business, gardens, sports, music, food and arts. Visit this summer and explore all that the city has to offer, plus a generous helping of Southern hospitality. In recent weeks, thousands of air passengers have been stranded by airline bankruptcies and flight cancellations. And there may be more disruptions ahead as older jets continue to be scrutinized for safety and the economy bubbles with trouble. “Stick to what you know” could be the motto for Branson this year as the Ozark resort town focuses on its wholesome country, pop music and family entertainment roots, plus recent upgrades in shopping and hotels, to ride out the national economic downturn. May 11-May 17, 2008 Small groups of work by individual artists dot the floor of Elizabethan Gallery, 680 Jefferson Highway, most of the time. The Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra’s Mother’s Day Lunch and Chamber Concert will be at noon today, May 11, at De La Ronde Hall, 320 Third St., Suite 201. Baton Rouge will be visited by a couple of dirty rotten scoundrels, a wizard and none other than Tracy Turnblad beginning in the fall. Dena Feldstein Brody sketched out an $8,000 budget for a 12-day family vacation this summer in England, France and Spain. But those plans were two years ago. Since then, the dollar has plummeted and air fares have soared. A little over a decade ago, the owners of galleries and businesses in the midcity area of Baton Rouge took a look around and liked what they saw: clusters of art and art-related businesses. A free day of the arts at the Shaw Center for the Arts will run 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, May 10. The Second Saturday event is an all-ages day of art activities and fun throughout the building. Activities vary each month. Second Saturdays are a cooperative arts activity by Manship Theatre, the LSU Museum of Art, LSU School of Art Gallery, Brunner Gallery, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, Community School for the Arts, Playmakers of Baton Rouge and Shaw Center for the Arts. The Phantom of the Magnolia Arts Pavilion seems like such a long title. Better shorten it to The Phantom of the Pavilion, at least for this afternoon. Exhibits by artists Cynthia Knapp and Regina Loch-Elvert will open Monday, May 4, at Ann Connelly Fine Art, 711 Jefferson Highway Suite 3A. There will be an opening reception 6-9 p.m. Friday, May 9, in conjunction with Mid City Merchants’ Hot Art Cool Nights. The exhibit will continue to May 28. Knapp’s exhibit, By the Same Hand, features figurative and abstract works on paper and canvas. Her current work develops dialectically. Each new series of drawings, paintings and sculpture revisits and transcends the formal and imagistic premises of her earlier work. It was a different time. The team played its home games on a basketball court that sat atop a dirt floor in what was essentially a rodeo arena. It’s star was a skinny kid who favored floppy, oversized socks. They were his lucky socks. He washed them himself after every game. His dad was the coach. The team was LSU and the kid with the huge hosiery was Pete Maravich — Pistol Pete. If you’re lucky, John Clemmer will walk in right before you’re about to leave. He won’t notice you, which is OK, because you’re not the person with whom he can truly share his stories of Caroline Durieux. Louisiana will join hundreds of states, cities and businesses in a salute to tourism this month. Special events, from high-powered seminars to welcoming lemonade stands for visitors, will be customized on local levels throughout the U.S. Colonial Williamsburg’s Fifes and Drums have been entertaining visitors at the reconstructed village in Virginia for decades. This year the musical group is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Founded in 1958, the Fifes and Drums perform in the historic area nearly 500 times during the year in daily programs. The musical organization is made up local boys and girls aged 10-18. They perform as members of either the junior or senior group. A new museum is opening June 2 at the site of the 1969 Woodstock concert. Tired of stressing about what your pale skin and flabby muscles are going to look like on the beach during your summer vacation? Then do what I did. Trade in your shorts for a pair of long underwear, jump on your motorcycle and head north to Alaska. No, please. Hasn’t everyone heard enough about Hurricane Katrina? Nick Erickson didn’t think so, but his students were living in a different mindset. Some were survivors of the storm, and sure, they had stories. But they were ready to move on. When he thinks of Rome, he remembers the fancy nightclub and the jetsetters who came in nightly to listen to his trio play. He was the only jazz pianist in the city, maybe all of Italy, and those nights were exciting, because people were coming to hear him. He can see the marquee now: Tonight, Bill Conti. Every night, Bill Conti. Songstress Nnenna Freelon will perform in the final concert of the River City Jazz Masters Series’ 2007-2008 season at 7 p.m. and again at 9 p.m. Thursday, May 1, in the Manship Theatre in the Shaw Center, 100 Lafayette St. This will be the LSU School of Music’s last Union Theater performance for at least year. After this, audiences will have to go to First Baptist Church of Baton Rouge, the Louisiana School for the Deaf and the Reilly Theatre on campus for big events and concerts. “The LSU Union Theater is undergoing renovation after this,” Sara Lynn Baird said. “They’re predicting it will take a year before the project is complete.” Baton Rouge tourism officials are gearing up (literally) to serve as hosts for the 2008 Fireball Run Transcontinental Rally. The event, scheduled Sept. 25-Oct. 4, is a networking and fun rally for 100 teams made up exclusively of business and community leaders from throughout the U.S. And it has a serious side as a race to recover America’s missing children. Started last year as an awareness campaign for the Child Rescue Network, participants contributed to the recovery of 11 missing children. The late Rev. Donald J. Hebert was a friend of mine and an outstanding genealogical preservationist. He is responsible for the publication of many records about the southwest Louisiana area, especially Catholic Church records, and his publications started appearing back in the 1970s. Set in 1903 in the Canadian West, this novel begins with a young widow named Mary Boulton on the run. As the story unfolds, her compulsion to flee is revealed: she’s a widow because she has killed her husband, and his two gigantic, look-alike, red-haired brothers are chasing her. So she runs, afoot and on horseback. Adamson’s language is dense with imagery and the careful pacing of each sentence is evidence of her (Gil is short for Gillian) background in poetry. It seems as if another Katrina story comes out every day. Margaret Media is a book publishing company that was founded in New Orleans in 1981. The company was named for Mary Haughery, an Irish social worker in 19th century New Orleans. A two-day symposium focusing on “Discovering How People of African Descent are Interpreted at Louisiana State Plantation Sites” will be held at the LSU Rural Life Museum Friday-Saturday, May 2-3. Houston has a new global tourism marketing campaign featuring anecdotes from local celebrities, peeling away Houston’s layers and offering visitors insight into the city. The “My Houston” ads seen in magazines and on television feature numerous personalities, including Beyonce, Yao Ming, Dr. Denton Cooley, A.J. Foyt, Carl Lewis, George Foreman and President George and Barbara Bush. The fourth annual Art for Food — Art for Every Budget begins with a silent auction at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 1, on the grounds of Burns and Co. Realtors Inc.’s Highland Road office at the gates of the Country Club of Louisiana, 17400 Memorial Ave. The event is hosted by Burns and Co. The live auction will begin at 7 p.m. He was scared, too scared to stand in front of an audition panel and recite his lines. Fear filled his eyes, his voice faded into a tiny whimper. Only an adult would call it a snake. Let’s insert an eye roll here, because one passed by and said just that. Now, if you’re a kid you can see Richard Swenson’s creation clearly, even before the head is assembled. “Look, a dragon!” someone said. Go ahead, ask if he’s going to change anything – if the Philip Mann vision will be something completely different. “Well, I’ve changed a few of the costumes,” he said. “We’ll have some animal prints and more leather.” Silence, followed by a smile. “Well, it is a whorehouse, after all,” Mann said. He’s still smiling, but it’s not one of those junior high laugh-at-anything-risque smirks. If you’ve ever wanted to research your family history at the Louisiana State Archives but were intimidated by the imposing building on Essen Lane, you’ll want to check out the latest publication by Le Comité des Archives de la Louisiane. A Guide to Genealogical Research at the Louisiana State Archives will help you navigate through the multitude of genealogical collections at this facility. Before you can answer the question “Did we really need another book about John James Audubon?” Danny Heitman’s engaging new book has pulled you into a 73-page essay that captures Audubon’s time outside St. Francisville in the summer of 1821. More importantly, Heitman’s essay suggests why the interest in Audubon the artist, outdoorsman and early American marketing man persists. The last will be a first for the Louisiana Sinfonietta. For it’s in the final concert of the season when the Sinfonietta will perform its first opera. Or mini opera, as Dinos Constantinides calls it. “This opera will have a very little stage,” he said. Within American letters, there’s a small but abiding tradition of newspaper journalists who moonlight as poets. Before he firmly established his fame, Carl Sandburg worked as a film reviewer at a Chicago daily. In Charlotte, N.C., Dannye Romine Powell is known not only as a favorite columnist of The Observer, but the author of two well-received books of verse, The Ecstasy of Regret and At Every Wedding Someone Stays Home. Louisiana Poet Laureate Darrell Bourque didn’t always write poetry. “I didn’t write as a child. It wasn’t until I went to the university and I began to (write),” he said. That was about 40 years ago. After more than 30 years, Godspell could use a little updating. Enter Bradley Sanchez. The 20-year-old LSU student and Gonzales native is directing the Ascension Community Theatre Second Stage’s production of the rock musical, opening this week at the Pasqua Theatre in Gonzales. Photographs by legendary New Orleans pianist Henry Butler will be on exhibit through May 24 in the Jones Walker Foyer Gallery of the Manship Theatre inside the Shaw Center for the Arts, 100 Lafayette St. The exhibit is the second in a series of events sponsored by Brunner Gallery and Manship Theatre, celebrating collaborations between the performing and visual arts. Experience the sophistication of New England this spring and summer with a visit to Boston. Plan your trip around a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, which will be showing a groundbreaking exhibit of early 17th-century Spanish art. The El Greco to Velazquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III exhibition opens today, April 20, and runs through July 27. |
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