Category: Arts & Humanities

On the half-complete stage set, the cast and crew of University Theatre’s ” ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore” prepares to fight. Fake fighting.

Bill Evans has his father to thank for letting him become a dance legend and one of the premiere rhythm tap artists in the nation.

And Evans does thank him, in his solo tap work “Blues for My Father,” one of six diverse pieces to be performed tonight and Saturday in the UW-Madison dance program’s fall faculty concert.

There is plenty more classical music on tap this week, especially at the UW School of Music.

When members of the UW-Madison DanceSport competitive ballroom dance team rehearse for an upcoming performance, the steps sizzle. The skirts flap. The turns snap.

Or they’re supposed to, anyway, with a little practice.

Armchair critics are engaged in a verbal punt, pass and kick competition over Donald Lipski’s recently erected football sculpture at Camp Randall Stadium.

Meanwhile, the city has quietly installed another new piece of public art that also uses stylized symbolism to represent the function of a public facility. The sculpture, by Madison artist Gail Simpson, is located outside of the Water Utility Building, 119 E. Olin Ave. The artwork was commissioned by the Madison Arts Commission (formerly CitiARTS) at a cost of $25,000.

….Simpson, a UW-Madison professor of art, is a partner in a local art company, Actual Size Artwork, with Aris Georgiades. The professional artists have collaborated on commissioned public artworks since 1992.

After raising five children and reaching the other side of 50, Susan McBride Gilgen launched a new career in 1997 as an artist of landscape quilting. Within months, her creations were winning “big league” awards in the world of fiber art and quilting.

Gilgen’s quilts have garnered awards and accolades from major shows in the United States and Europe.

….She will be one of the presenters at the second annual Conference on Arts, Curriculum and Community from Friday to Sunday at Monona Terrace. The event is sponsored by University of Wisconsin-Madison Education Outreach and the Wisconsin Arts Board.

Walter Hamady, often credited with helping the art world see the book in a new way, is the featured artist in a vast and yet intimate one-man show at the Watrous Gallery at the Overture Center for the Arts. “Juxtamorphing Space,” which runs through Nov. 20, is a collection of collages, assemblages and books he has composed, crafted or published at The Perishable Press Limited, which he operates out of his home and old dairy barn south of Mount Horeb.

Hamady (pronounced ha-MAH-dee) also is a former UW-Madison art professor, a poet, papermaker, designer, chronicler and prolific letter writer, and in the world of book artistry, a trailblazer.

“OK, John, whenever you’re ready.”

UW-Madison art professor Pat Fennell calls to me behind a closed door. I stand nearly naked and alone in a small storage room on the sixth floor of the Humanities Building.

All she is saying is give art a chance.

Sandwiched just weeks between John Lennon’s 65th birthday and the 25th anniversary of his murder, Yoko Ono wants Madison to enjoy her husband’s artwork, which showcases his playful and political drawings. More than 100 pieces will be displayed at UW-Madison’s Red Gym, next to Memorial Union, and feature many colorized reproductions, some prints signed by Lennon and a few original works.

Do not make assumptions about the American pianist Christopher Taylor from his bookish, gangly and endearingly nerdy appearance. Beneath that professorial persona is a demonically intense artist with a stunning technique and searching intellect.

In recent seasons Mr. Taylor, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has been finding the Miller Theater at Columbia University an ideal place to try out programs that most mainstream concert presenters would never go for.

In his rented lodgings on the UW-Madison campus, Gunther Schuller leans over a card table with a dictionary and a magnifying glass to work on his autobiography the same way he would approach a piece of music as a conductor: with painstaking, meticulous attention to what’s on the printed page and adherence to the well-researched facts.

Sixty years ago the defeat of Imperial Japan left the Korean peninsula divided into two antagonistic states one dominated by the Soviet Union, the other dominated by the United States.

Just when you think there’s nothing new to be said about or learned from the Vietnam War — or that, after more than three decades, emotions about the conflict have cooled — along comes the new PBS documentary “Two Days in October.”

Viewers of “Two Days in October” may as well be warned ahead of time about a brief snippet of archival footage that airs just about midway through the film. This is only fair, because the shot is so terrible that it could haunt them the rest of their days.

If you could watch only one program to grasp what the war in Vietnam did to the United States of America, ”Two Days in October” would be a great choice.

Isabel Allende has lived in the United States for nearly 20 years, but it took the events of Sept. 11, 2001, to really make her feel like an American.

“Today I say I am American,” the Chilean writer told a full house at the Wisconsin Union Theater Thursday night, kicking off both the Wisconsin Book Festival and the UW’s 2005-06 Distinguished Lecture Series.

Dual Vision” — a new show of modern art, mostly American with some European, running through Dec. 31 — promises to be the blockbuster show of the year in Madison.

On the fourth floor of UW- Madison’s Memorial Library, the Digital Collections Center uses scanning equipment and data-entry software to publish and promote the university’s research and resources beyond geographic boundaries. Using a special Internet site, the digital library brings together photos, maps, diaries, artwork, rare books, manuscripts, audio clips, video strips and more from collections held throughout the University of Wisconsin System and by public libraries and agencies throughout the state.

Simona Chazen didn’t start at the top of the collecting world.

“Our first love was Cubist art,” she says of her and her husband, Jerome, whom she met at the UW-Madison where she was studying journalism, philosophy and art history before she became a practicing psychotherapist in clinical social work.

Now, they’re multi-millionaires who can collect just about anything they want. But it was different during their UW days.

“Back then we couldn’t afford real art,” she quickly adds.

“Dual Vision” — a new show of modern art, mostly American with some European, running through Dec. 31 — promises to be the blockbuster show of the year in Madison.

Perhaps being the Show of the Year is only fitting, since the 84 art works themselves come from the personal collection of some 500 works owned by Simona and Jerome Chazen, the same University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni whose donation last spring of $20 million toward a museum expansion caused UW officials to rebaptize the Elvehjem Museum of Art as the Chazen Museum of Art.

It’s that time again.

“I can’t believe how much culture Madison has for a city its size,” a friend recently exclaimed with obvious pleasure and equally obvious frustration.

….This weekend is a fine example because it marks two main citywide arts events that take place: Friday night from 5 to 9 is Gallery Night, which happens twice a year and this time is the biggest yet, with 47 participants, according to the sponsor and organizer, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; and Saturday from 2 p.m. to midnight is the annual Arts Night Out, sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to highlight students and faculty in the performing arts and fine arts with many free events that range from belly dancing and break dancing to stand-up comedy and classical music.

Jin-Wen Yu knows, like Bob Dylan, that there’s really no direction home. Life is rarely so simple or banal for such restlessly creative souls.

….Yu, possessed of startling physical grace and a vivid imagination, is steadily building a reputation as one of America’s most gifted and accomplished dancers. His company has performed throughout the United States, South America, Korea and Taiwan. Among his most recent honors include, in 2004, the Wisconsin Dance Council Award for Choreography/Performance and the Emily Mead Baldwin professorship in the creative arts at the UW-Madison. This year he performed at UNESCO in Paris for the celebration concert of 2005 international Dance Day.

Mary Carbine of the University of Wisconsin Arts Institute has directed the Wisconsin Film Festival since its debut in 1999, but Carbine will be stepping down from the film festival and the university to pursue a career in the ââ?¬Å?private sectorââ?¬Â this year.

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bayââ?¬â?¢s Lawton Gallery is hosting a controversial art exhibit, ââ?¬Å?Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin,ââ?¬Â this month. The exhibit, which has been monitored by the Secret Service at past showings, features highly provocative art in the form of U.S. postage stamps, including such images as the World Trade Center burning with the words ââ?¬Å?Blame God.ââ?¬Â

Whether it’s the irresistible rhythms of Brazilian drums or the otherworldly vocals of African chants, the sounds of world music are nothing new to the Memorial Union.

The Wisconsin Union Theater has brought internationally known world musicians to Madison year-round through its World Stage Series. That commitment to bringing in global music has expanded into the Madison World Music Festival this Thursday through Saturday, featuring a dozen artists from places as far away as Mali, Brazil and Spain.

Each season has its own magic, and this time of year we should ponder autumn’s: splendid colors by day; crisp, sharp skies at night filled with bedazzling starscapes. And between the two – the wondrous sight of migrating birds drawn to destinations reachable only by a pair of wings.

It’s a fitting time, then, for “Starry Transit,” an installation by Madison artist Martha Glowacki. Inspired by and built specifically for the picturesque, 19th-century Washburn Observatory peering high above the UW-Madison campus, “Starry Transit” explores our own fascination with the heavens and the feathered creatures that soar where we cannot.

….It’s a mind-expanding exhibit that is as visually, scientifically and philosophically far-reaching as any art show Madison has seen for many years.

(Martha) Glowacki, a Madison artist and co-curator of the Wisconsin Academy’s Watrous Gallery in the Overture Center, has created an installation that reaches back to the late 1800s, when humans began to understand and observe more about the solar system.

The exhibit also reaches right into the stars, with telescopic power. “Starry Transit” is situated in, and conceptually wedded to, Washburn Observatory, which sits majestically atop the highest point on the UW-Madison campus, overlooking Lake Mendota.

If you had to pick a single night that marks the opening of the new arts season, it would no doubt be Friday, when a perfect storm of cultural events will strike Madison.

The rich schedule is certainly impressive, offering a great deal for art lovers to do, see and hear.

But it may also have a hidden dark side as a harbinger of Madison’s booming arts scene, rife with mounting competition for consumers’ scarce time and precious entertainment dollars.

Dear Editor: Thank you for highlighting the current conversations between Overture Center and the city of Madison over the facility’s refinancing. It’s a complex issue, perhaps dry and detached to many, but essential in deciding how we, as a community, value and support the nonprofit arts….

Andrew Taylor, director, Bolz Center for Arts Administration, UW-Madison

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has tapped a longtime UW Press employee to lead the publisher on an interim basis.

Sheila Leary will take over as interim director on Aug. 22, Graduate School Dean Martin Cadwallader said.

Over at the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, it’s out with the new and in with the old.

The spacious second-floor Paige Court at the Chazen (formerly the Elvehjem) is full again, and the contrast with last year’s installation could not be more striking.

When it comes to gothic horror, “The Mystery of Irma Vep” has everything but Frankenstein’s monster. But it’s written for chuckles, not chills – and University Theatre’s production is loads of laugh-out-loud fun.

“Irma Vep is ‘vampire’ anagram-atized!” reveals Lady Enid, one of seven characters played by two actors in University Theatre’s production of “The Mystery of Irma Vep.”

Well, of course it is. And that’s exactly the type of loopy twist you come to expect from this slightly risque horror-mystery-melodrama send-up that opened Friday to a full house at the Hemsley Theater on the University of Wisconsin campus.

…If there’s any drawback to the production, it’s the Hemsley’s annoying cabaret seating, the free popcorn notwithstanding.