Many people interested in learning how to paint on canvas turn to academe and enroll in semester-long classes. Others seek guidance from Springfield Art Association or the Prairie Art Alliance. Many would therefore be surprised to learn there exists a teacher whose approach to placing colors on cloth produces take-home results not at the end […]
Arts Features
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backstage pass 12-9-04
If you’re looking for an alternative to Christmas-show overload, check out the Portuguese Rodeo Clown Company, which features three actors performing improvisations and other comic antics onstage for one night at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. The “clown company” includes Andy Lee and Johnny Molson, co-hosts of a show on WMAY (970 AM), and […]
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art seen 12-9-04
In 1966, Bob Waldmire and I were enrolled at Springfield Junior College, and already he was known as an artist whose star was on the rise. And though many artists are destined to follow their stars into the sky, Bob was to follow his onto Route 66 and beyond. During a recent visit to Springfield, […]
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backstage pass 11-25-04
It’s Thanksgiving, and that means the start of the Christmas season. The holiday theater season kicks off next week with A Yuletide Festival of Song and Dance, a show by the Mature Mob that’s being presented Thursday-Sunday, Dec. 2-5, at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. This year’s production, in which Mrs. Santa Claus and […]
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Alliance hosts unique exhibit of area faculty art
For the first time in the history of the Prairie Art Alliance, organizers have assembled an exhibit of works by faculty at Springfield’s different institutions of higher education, including Robert Morris College, Springfield College in Illinois, Lincoln Land Community College, and the University of Illinois at Springfield. The exhibit represents a break from tradition: Usually […]
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backstage pass 11-11-04
Springfield Theatre Centre opens its production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman this week on the main stage of the Hoogland Center for the Arts. Don Russell, Loretta Hess, Mac Warren, and Rob Decroix, respectively, star in the roles of beleaguered Brooklyn salesman Willy Loman, his wife, and his two sons. The casting of […]
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Rugrat Rembrandts embrace art early at Springfield Art Association
Some social anthropologists suggest that the impressions made on the life of a young child through the age of 5 “set the table” for how the young person relates to the rest of the world for the rest of his or her life. Thanks to the Springfield Art Association and teacher Kathy Harvey, a growing […]
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backstage pass 10-28-04
Halloween is here, and it seems that theater practitioners have decided to produce more than the usual haunted-house fare this year. First, the Roxy Group has created an original show of its own, a musical revue titled Halloween Dreams that plays Friday-Sunday, Oct. 29-31, at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. The show, directed by […]
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Little (art) house on the prairie
Springfield’s oldest retail art gallery was launched in 1970 as an afterthought to the restoration of the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices at the corner of Sixth and Adams streets. Three families had joined forces to rehabilitate the historic law offices. “When we considered what we wanted to put next door, we decided on an art gallery,” […]
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backstage pass 10-14-04
The community has lost another champion of the arts with the passing of Martha Jackson of Petersburg. Jackson and her partner, Linda Nordeman, owned the City Arts Venue art gallery, a space dedicated to new artists and their work, downtown on South Sixth Street. The first time I met Marty, she asked, “Why don’t you […]
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He’s not playing with your head
Morrisonville native Thomas “Thom” Whalen saw a lot of the country before settling down almost where he started. After grad school at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Whalen lived in Kansas City, Seattle, and Phoenix. When he came to Springfield, he bought a design company, which fared well, and did some adjunct teaching in […]
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The gifts of Grace
Danville native Grace Eckert didn’t take art classes in high school, even though she knew she was going to be an artist. Her father, a math professor at Illinois State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, insisted on classes that would pay off for her as an adult. “He was a formidable man, […]
