The Film Alliance of the Ozarks and the New Design Center are teaming up this summer to bring you the “Feed Mill Film” series on the third Thursdays of each month. The purpose of the series is to explore the many ways in which artists create and share their work.

The first film will be this Thursday (June 19th) at 8:30pm. Rivers and Tides is a documentary about artist Andy Goldsworthy, who is known for his sculptures that incorporate elements of nature that blend seamlessly into their landscape environment.

The films will be screened at the New Design Center, located in the basement of the Mill Building at 525 South School Avenue. The cost of admission is $5. A reception will be held before the screening at 7pm on the first floor of the Mill Building. Please call (479) 587–9925 for directions or more information.

The next screening will be held on Thursday July 17th. The film, The Five Obstructions, a documentary about the filmmaking process, will be shown.

YouthCAN!’s Community Imagination Studio invites all of Northwest Arkansas to join us at YouthCAN!’s Community Imagination Studio this summer as we explore art from around the world during our Summer Passport to Art program.  No need to pack a suitcase for this vacation, everyone is invited to travel along.  From Australia to France, we will be making art from a different country each Saturday from 10 - 4, June 14th - August 23rd.  Participants will receive their very own passport to keep track of their travels, and we will end our journeys with an International Art Show at The Studio.

The Passport to Art program is $5 per participant, free to the parents of participating children. The Community Imagination Studio is located at 818 N. Sang Ave. in Fayetteville.  For more information, contact Alison Carter at 442-8585, alison@communityimaginationstudio.org, or visit www.communityimaginationstudio.org

George Dombek, who divides his time between Brooklyn, N.Y., and Goshen, donated a 40-by-40-inch watercolor from his “Ozark Portrait” series to the University of Arkansas Library on May 19. The painting, titled “Medal of Honor ” features bygone common household and farm tools and will hang in the Fine Arts Library.

“The subjects are pieces of farm equipment: primarily exhaust pipes and oil cans, usually worn and rusty,” Dombek said. “As the series progressed, the subjects began to take on lifelike forms, thus the name ‘Ozark Portrait.’ For instance, a group of cans became a ‘family:’ grandmother, grandfather and their triplet grandchildren. Now I’ve reached a point where I have specific people in mind when I do a new Ozark Portrait piece.”

Originally from Paris, Ark., Dombek received a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1974 and a master’s of fine arts degree in painting in 1975 from the UA. During a 40-year period, Dombek has produced a catalog of work, mostly watercolor, that features his brand of abstract realism. His works have appeared in more than 800 museum, corporate and private collections and have been exhibited in more than 150 solo and group shows, including at the Arkansas Arts Center, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum. He has received more than 80 awards.

from:  Northwest Arkansas Faces, June 1 2008

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Did you ever wonder what a grid filled with colors described in a novel, say, War and Peace, might look like? Or what mental images might be evoked when viewing a naval signal flag? Art professor Marilyn Nelson did, and the results are currently on display in Mullins Library on the University of Arkansas campus.

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Artwork titled “J,” “M,” “Middlesex,” by Marilyn Nelson. Used by permission.

One of the hallmarks of art that transcends the ordinary is a glimpse through an alternative way of seeing. Nelson, associate professor in the department of art at the University of Arkansas, creates just that. Both projects allow the viewer to explore alternative ways of conceptualizing the written word.
The first project, titled “U.S. Naval Flag Signal Narratives,” is a suite of 26 editions of serigraph prints - one edition to represent each alphabetic flag. U.S. Navy maritime flags are used to communicate with other vessels while maintaining radio silence.

Each flag represents a single letter in the alphabet when hoisted on a halyard as a series, but represents another maritime signal when singly displayed. In addition, each letter also represents a word in the military alphabet code, such as “Charlie” for “C,” “tango” for “T,” or “Romeo” for “R.” Nelson begins with these multiplicities of meaning and adds on additional evocative layers of images, colors, diagrams, documents - all of which are suggested by the original naval flag.

Nelson explains that the flags are “visual abbreviations for the words they represent” and her imagery “revolves around lyrical interpretations of these words.” Each serigraph represents complex layers of meaning, which Nelson, whose father was a career naval officer, says often arose from “personal histories and iconographies” that have “emerged and evolved to reveal patterns of experience and memory.”

The second project, titled “Color Interpretations/Meditations,” is a series of paintings depicting Nelson’s interpretation of the “vivid color descriptions” in novels such as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. A “grid field” painting shows each color in the order in which they appear in the novel, and a companion black and white “digital grid” shows the actual color words and the page number on which a reader can locate a specific color mentioned. Nelson says that because the color order is arranged according to the text, “many unexpected color juxtapositions occur” and “areas of pattern, or blocks of similar colors emerge.”

Nelson received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and her Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Colorado in Boulder. From 1979 to 1987 she was art director and designer at Celestial Seasonings Inc., an herb tea company in Boulder, Colo. On the faculty at the University of Arkansas since 1993, she currently teaches Visual Design. Previously, she taught at Eastern New Mexico University, University of Oregon and the University of Colorado. She has received grants and awards for her teaching activities, including the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences Master Teacher Award. Her work has been viewed in many solo exhibitions and juried group venues nationally and internationally. These include La Biennale Internationale D’estampe Contemporaine, Québec, Canada; Siggraph: 30th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, San Diego; Gallery Pecanians, Mexico City; Gallery International, Baltimore; aRaMoNaSTuDIo and Gallery 402, New York City.

“A Diversity of Shape, Color and Design” will be on display in Mullins Library lobby level through the end of June. For more information, call (479) 575-6702.

There are currently 3 positions open and there has only been one applicant.

Applications are due tomorrow at 5 pm.

The application (pdf) for the Arts Council is on the City’s Web Site at accessfayetteville.org

Applicants can either email them to the City Clerk’s office or hand deliver them.

Latest ‘Stay More’ Novel Promises That Farther Along We’ll Understand Why

Donald Harington

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A man runs away from himself to live in a remote cave in the Ozarks. Two women, an elderly widow and a mysterious redhead, try to save him from alcohol and despair. Arkansas novelist Donald Harington mixes these individuals with others, both living and dead, to reveal his newest story of Stay More, Ark.

Harington, who had been a professor of art and art history at the University of Arkansas for more than 20 years, has published 14 novels of the imagined Ozark village of Stay More. In the most recent, Farther Along, Stay More is an isolated, abandoned town inhabited by descendents and shadows of characters from previous novels. The title comes from an old hymn commonly sung at Southern funerals. Its chorus promises: “Farther along we’ll know all about it, Farther along we’ll understand why; Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine, We’ll understand it all by and by.”

In Farther Along, a man leaves his career as a museum curator to live as a Bluff-dweller, one of a vanished tribe of American Indians. He shares his cave with a dog, lives on venison and plays tunes alone on a hair comb and tissue. Each night he drinks himself to sleep with moonshine produced by the Hermit, an “oddling” from a neighboring mountain. In the end, the Bluff-dweller comes into the town, where he lives as the Dying Man and plays Scrabble with the red-headed woman. His change occurs with the help of the two women and the spirit of Kind.

Harington was born and bred in Little Rock, Ark., and spent most childhood summers with his grandparents in the Ozark hamlet of Drakes Creek. Before losing his hearing to meningitis at age 12, Harington listened to the visitors in his grandparents’ general store and post office, absorbing a folk dialect that has nearly vanished from daily speech but lives in the rhythm and language of his novels.

Entertainment Weekly has named Harington “America’s Greatest Unknown Writer.” The American Library Association listed Harington’s The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks as one of the year’s 10 best novels in 1975.

He has won the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Porter Prize and the Heasley Prize, and has been inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. The Winter 2002 issue of Southern Quarterly is a “Donald Harington Special Issue” with tributes from fellow novelists, scholarly essays, interviews and a selection from his 40-year correspondence with William Styron. He received the inaugural Oxford American award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.

Farther Along is published by The Toby Press, which also distributes Harington’s earlier novels.

Harington, who had been a Distinguished Professor in the department of art in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas, retired in May 2008.

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Contact:

Donald Harington, Distinguished Professor, department of art
J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences
(479) 575-5202, dharingt@uark.edu

Feed Mill Summer Film series begins on third Thursdays June, July, August

On June 19, July 17 and August 21, New Design Center will launch a first annual summer film series! This summer’s theme is creative process. We hope that if you are an artist or want to learn more about creating that seeing how others create might inspire and inform you. The first film in the series is about an installation artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Color, line and texture taken all from a single location in nature come to life in Rivers and Tides. In the second film, a film maker takes the challenge of recreating his famous art film, The Perfect Human. Each time the specifications for making become more technically, socially and emotionally challenging. The final film or set of films will be about local artists and composed by a local film maker. This will be announced at the second film. All shows begin at 8:30 and benefit the nonprofit organizers New Design Center and Film Alliance of the Ozarks. All shows are $5 each. This series is cosponsored by KUAF radio.

To read reviews and see film previews visit:
www.newdesigncenter.org/films.html
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Join us at the 8th Annual Art of Wine Festival!

Sample the finest of wines and food with your friends as you support arts learning programs at Walton Arts Center, a non-profit arts organization.

The Winemaker’s Dinner at James at the Mill

Thursday, June 5, 6pm / Tickets: $150 ($50 tax deductible)

Dine in the elegant and picturesque setting of James at the Mill in Johnson, AR. You’ll enjoy a 5-course meal prepared by Chef Miles James; each course is paired with a specially selected wine. Returning guest winemaker Kate MacMurray of MacMurray Ranch Vineyards will guide you through the meal.

Grand Tasting Events

Friday & Saturday, June 6 & 7 6-9pm / Tickets: $70 ($15 tax deductible) Add the Reserve Room for $45

More than 700 wines available to taste! Plus delicious fare from some of your favorite local restaurants.

Wine Lover’s Brunch

Saturday, June 7, 11am / Tickets: $45 (limited availability - get yours now!)

Joe Farnan of Gallo Wineries will guide you through a mid-day exploration of food and wine, featuring Pinot Noirs and brunch prepared by James at the Mill.

Visit waltonartscenter.org or call 479.443.5600 for tickets.