Iowa Arts News, October 2007IAC CALENDAROct. 18: Grant Writing Workshop, 1-4 p.m., Fairfield Public Library, 104 W. Adams. Looking Back: 1967-68During Iowa Arts Council’s first year, the fledging agency specifically targeted colleges and universities to submit project proposals for possible funding. Some of these first projects included a symposium on the arts in Iowa at Drake University’s College of Fine Arts and a community arts council symposium hosted by the Waterloo Arts Council and the Waterloo Recreation and Arts Center. Today, the IAC accepts proposals not only from schools, but also from nonprofit organizations, area education agencies, local, county, state and federal governmental agencies and tribal councils. Also during that year, the Artists-in-Schools Program was initiated in Iowa, with assistance from the National Endowment for the Arts. The first teacher to participate in the program was Leonard Good, a painting instructor from Drake University, who conducted the program in the Shenandoah schools. Governor Robert D. Ray showed his support for visual artists by showcasing nine Iowa artists at the Capitol Building. “Governor’s Exhibit: Nine Iowa Artists” included works by Byron Burford, Stuart Edie, John Gordon, M.J. Kitzman, Jules Kirschenbaum, James Lechay, Maricio Lasansky, Virginia Myers and John Page. Community Arts Council Leaders Networking LunchesSince taking the position as Community Programs Coordinator for IAC, Dawn Martinez Oropeza has looked for ways to better serve arts councils and their communities. As such, she has talked, visited, sent out surveys and provided services with many different agencies. In the last few months, Oropeza has been meeting with specific representatives from alliances and agencies to find ways in which all groups can all work together, network and find solutions to each one’s individual needs. The solution? The IAC is starting a series of round table lunches, patterned after a similar series at which businesspeople pay thousands of dollars to sit down with top executives to share ideas and solutions. The goal will be to openly communicate about needs and wants and how the Iowa Arts Council can better serve community arts agencies across Iowa. “I am thrilled to take part in the quarterly Community Arts Council lunches put together by Dawn,” said Joe Jennison, executive director of the Iowa Cultural Corridor Alliance. “If our statewide arts community is going to compete with other Midwestern states for cultural tourism, it is imperative that we all begin to work together. I encourage every arts organization, large and small, to join us in the ongoing discussions of how we can make this state a cultural leader. Together we can do so much more than any of us can do alone.” The meetings are free to attend, but lunch and travel expenses are not included. The first meeting will be held Oct. 24 from 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. at Revelations Bookstore, 112 N. Main in Fairfield. To RSVP, contact Dawn Oropeza by Oct. 15 via e-mail, Dawn.Oropeza@iowa.gov. Future meetings are also being planned: More details will be available at www.iowaartscouncil.org as dates, times and locations are set. Check back often for more information. Arts Scholarship Opportunity for High School SeniorsIowa high school students planning to enter college with a major in an arts discipline are invited to apply for the 2008 Iowa Scholarship for the Arts. Offered annually by the Iowa Arts Council, the award is given to Iowa residents who will graduate from an Iowa high school during the 2007-2008 academic year and have proven artistic ability in dance, literature (creative writing), music, theater, traditional arts or visual arts. Each recipient will receive $1,000 toward his or her college tuition and related expenses as a full-time undergraduate at a fully-accredited Iowa college or university with a major in one or more of the disciplines considered for the award. Last year, IAC received nearly 100 scholarship award applications from Iowa students. To be considered for the award, students must complete the scholarship application available at www.iowaartscouncil.org, write an essay about their future career goals in the arts, and include two letters of recommendation. Applications and attachments are due by 4:30 p.m., December 10, 2007 in the Iowa Arts Council offices at 600 E. Locust Street, Des Moines, IA 50319 (this is not a postmark deadline). Incomplete, illegible, handwritten, faxed or emailed applications will not be accepted. Application review, criteria, approval and notification process information is also available on the Web site. Please contact Sarah Ekstrand at (515) 281-4657 or sarah.ekstrand@iowa.gov for more information. Do You Know…AI?The National Endowment for the Arts & Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest strives to educate young people about great poetry through memorization and performance. A list of poems for high school students to choose from is available at www.poetryoutloud.org. While some names may be familiar, others may not. Meet Ai, one of the poets whose work is included in the Poetry Out Loud catalog. Ai was born Florence Anthony in 1947 in Albany, Texas. She adopted the name Ai, which means love in Japanese, to acknowledge her mixed ancestry and to challenge conventional racial stereotypes. Her poems are often dramatic monologues, told by scoundrels, dealing with dark themes such as cruelty, sin and greed, which are also titles of her collections. She won the National Book Award for Vice in 1999, in which she acknowledged that violence is a part of American culture that must be addressed. Here is a sample of her work entitled Conversations: We smile at each other Iowa Arts News will continue to feature a Poetry Out Loud poet per month through April, National Poetry Month. The Poetry Out Loud state-level contest will be held in Des Moines Saturday, March 8. Iowa high school teachers interested in having their students participate in the program have until Nov. 1 to contact Donna Davilla at ddavilla@mchsi.com for information and materials. Public Invited to Grant Review MeetingsThe Iowa Arts Council will be holding review meetings for the second round of FY08 major grant applications Wednesday, Oct. 17 at the State Historical Building in Des Moines. From 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., sub-panels will meet to discuss each grant application. The afternoon session from 1:30-3:30 p.m. will bring the full panel together to discuss funding recommendations. Members of the public may attend and observe, but not speak at or participate in these meetings. Contact Staci Nevinski at (515) 281-3293 or Staci.Nevinski@iowa.gov for information. “ICE” Film Festival Seeks to Break Cinematic BoundariesThis weekend, Iowa City will be home to the first Iowa City Experimental “Experimental film festivals like this provide opportunities to exhibit films from smaller niches, unheard voices in unheard parts of the world,” said Lisa Danker who, along with Charlotte Taylor, is co-director of the Festival. “The thriving artistic communities in the rural Midwest are too often overlooked and we aim to challenge this shortsightedness.” Of more than 180 national and international submissions received, 64 will be screened Oct. 4-6 at various venues in Iowa City and on the University of Iowa campus. The event received a $1,500 mini grant in September from the Iowa Arts Council. “People who attend the festival can expect to see films and videos that break cinematic conventions and question the limitations of traditional film,” Taylor said. “We want to open the dialogue between the international experimental filmmaking community and the Iowa City community.” No one knows more about the struggle of experimental filmmaking than the ICE Film Festival’s two jurors, Naomi Uman and Bill Brown. Both received M.F.A. degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and both have received Fulbright grants. Brown’s work can be characterized as personal-essay documentaries appealing to a wide audience while Uman’s have crossed from hand-painted artistic films to documentaries. “The experience and expertise of these two accomplished filmmakers bestows recognition upon the winners of the Festival,” Danker added. “Ultimately, we are striving to stimulate discussion between these accomplished filmmaker and novice enthusiasts about the possibilities of experimental film and to inspire the practice of creative, low-budget, low-tech experimental filmmaking.” For a schedule of screening and more information about the Iowa City Experimental Film Festival, visit www.icefilmfest.org or www.myspace.com/icefilmfest. Musician Brings Recognition to Ragtime GreatsAround the turn of the century, it was a common perception that blacks were incapable of formal music composition and notation. But a group of African Americans persevered against prejudice and outright thievery of their intellectual property to find sympathetic businessmen who would publish and promote their music. The result of their persistence was a musical revolution that began in the Midwest and swept through America – thrusting the United States into international prominence as the source of an exciting new music called Ragtime. More than 100 years later, the music is being kept alive by Iowa musician and pianist Brent Watkins. Featured on the Iowa Arts Council’s Performing Artist Roster, Watkins has created The Heroes of Parlor Town, a presentation featuring a live piano performance interspersed with oral history that traces the transformation of American popular music by African-American composers from the 1890s to the early 1920s. “Most people will recognize the name Scott Joplin as one of the most prolific and popular ragtime composers,” Watkins said. “But there are other ‘heroes’ who helped change the musical landscape as well: Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden, James Scott are just a few. Many African American composers overcame great odds in order to bring music from their culture into the urban parlors of Middle America.” Watkins was raised in Cedar Rapids where he studied piano beginning at age eight. Trained in the classics, as a young teenager, he fell in love with ragtime piano in the early 1970s, when music from the motion picture “The Sting” was played on a local radio station. The Heroes of Parlor Town was a natural progression for Watkins to explore the history of the African American composers and the early jazz era. In 2006, The Heroes of Parlor Town received a major grant from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities, allowing Watkins to complete the production of a short film documenting the role African Americans played in the ascendancy of American popular music during the early 20th century. Additionally, his music has been featured on National Public Radio’s All Songs Considered and KSUI’s Talk of Iowa. He currently lives in Cedar Rapids with his wife and five children. To learn more about Watkins and The Heroes of Parlortown, visit www.heroesofparlortown.org or Iowa Arts Council Roster Web page. To listen to samples of his music, visit http://www.heroesofparlortown.org/html/cd_vol_1.html. Brown Receives Harry Oster AwardIowa-based musician Greg Brown was presented with the 2007 Harry Oster Award by the Iowa Friends of Old-Time Music Sept. 16. Brown is a prolific songwriter whose work has been performed by Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, Michael Johnson, Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter. He has recorded more than a dozen albums, including his latest release, Live from the Big Top, a recording of Brown’s 2005 concert at the Big Top Chautauqua in Bayfield, Wis. He is a regular contributor to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion radio show on National Public Radio. The Harry Oster Friend of Old-Time Music Award is presented to individuals who have made an extraordinary contribution to the music scene in eastern Iowa, their lasting impact on fellow musicians and on the music and folk traditions of the area. Dr. Harry Oster was a highly regarded American folklorist, musicologist, musician, record producer, concert promoter, professor, instrument collector and co-founder of the Iowa Friends of Old-Time Music. His accomplishments include publishing numerous books and articles on music and folklore, including Living Country Blues (1969) and the Penguin Dictionary of American Folklore (2000). Oster died in 2001 at the age of 77. In Memoriam: Sharilyn BellSharilyn Bell passed away at the end of July 2007 after a valiant fight against cancer. She was and is the acknowledged heart and soul of Psalms, a family-based, African-American gospel group quartet that performs contemporary music, spirituals and hymns for family reunions, festivals, benefits and church. The parents of several in the group sang in the renowned Zionettes. Sharilyn grew up singing with her siblings, Sandy Reed and Allen Bell, before graduating to the junior choir in their Cedar Rapids church. After World War II, the Bell family moved to Iowa from Kirksville, Mo. Psalms was Sharilyn’s baby in particular. She taught herself the piano and for years would get together with Sandy, and their cousin Mona to sing in the living room. After several family deaths, Allen finally joined the group, then Paul (Mona’s brother), and finally Mike Cole. In 1988, the group met Ron Teague, gospel choir director at the University of Iowa who became their trainer and began booking them more frequently. Iowa Roots Pieces Available as MP3sSeason four of Iowa Roots is now in MP3 format and available for downloading. Iowa Roots is a production of the Iowa Arts Council and WOI Radio that features stories, music and talk with traditional artists from a variety of ethnic, geographic, occupational and religious groups found in Iowa. Season four includes interviews with the Matney Sisters (Siouxland Anglo-American gospel and boogie-woogie), Les Ackerman (Amana wine maker), Dawn Suzanne Wanatee (Meskwaki traditions) and Gene Mealhow (K&K Tiny But Mighty Popcorn®). Visit the Iowa Roots Web site to hear the interviews or download the MP3 files. IAC Staff Out & AboutOct. 1-2: Bruce Williams to Muscatine for CLP applicant site visit with Muscatine Art Center Meet Your IAC Board MembersDo you want to know who’s on the Board of Directors for the Iowa Arts Council? You may be surprised to see they are from all over the state – probably closer than you think! The Iowa Arts Council Web site includes the listing of board members’ names and complete contact information at www.iowaartscouncil.org/about/board-of-directors. Arts organizations – be sure you’re listed as a tourism destination!Guidepost USA is offering a FREE basic listing on their web site, www.GuidepostUSA.com for tourism destinations in Iowa. Basic listings include name, address and phone numbers, a brief description as well as an automatically generated geocode (latitude and longitude) and an interactive map. For an example of a basic listing, click here.October is National Arts & Humanities Month!Each year since 1993, National Arts and Humanities Month has helped give millions of Americans the opportunity to explore new facets of the arts and humanities in their lives and has encouraged them to begin a lifelong habit of active participation. It has become the nation’s largest collective annual celebration of the arts and humanities. From arts center open houses to mayoral proclamations to storefront banners and newspaper articles, thousands of communities across the U.S. are recognizing the cultural gems all around them. The Iowa Arts Council encourages local participation in National Arts & Humanities Month. If you’re part of an arts or humanities organization looking for ideas, visit the Americans for the Arts Web site for some great ideas. River of Words Brings Environment, Poetry & Art TogetherRiver of Words is an annual environmental poetry and art contest for youth aged 5-19 in grades K-12. The contest is designed to help youth explore the natural and cultural history of their own watershed and to express what they discover through poetry and art. Each year, eight U.S. winners, one international winner and a “ROW Teacher of the Year” are selected to be honored during National Poetry Month (April) at an award ceremony at The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. River of Words also publishes an annual poetry book of winning submissions, selected by Robert Hass, and exhibits the children’s paintings at museums, libraries, conferences and other venues around the world. The contest is free to enter, and every child is acknowledged with a personalized “Watershed Explorer” certificate. Children may enter on their own or through schools, nature centers, libraries, youth clubs and other organizations. River of Words is coordinated in Iowa by IOWATER. Entries not chosen as finalists or grand prize winners in the international contest are returned to IOWATER, where they are judged in a statewide River of Words contest. For specific information, visit the ROW Web site at www.riverofwords.org. AEI Fall Conference/Nature Retreat Oct. 12-14Return to the camp days of your childhood summers during Art Educators of Iowa Fall Conference/Retreat Oct. 12-14 at the YMCA Camp in Boone. Sleep in a cabin with friends. Sing around the campfire. Hike in the woods. Draw. Canoe. Make new friends. Renew old friendships. Make sculpture. Dance around the campfire. Relax. Dye a t-shirt. Listen to story tellers. Giggle after the lights are out. Learn new ideas and skills. Share your ideas and skills. Have a massage. Write a postcard home. Look at the stars. Get recertification credit. Re-energize. Bid on a silent auction item or two. Photograph your friends and their art. A variety of workshops are available. Costs vary. AEI members and nonmembers welcome. Visit www.artedia.org for details. |