Seconds of Joy: A Poetry Reading

Billie McKindra Phillips reads from her recently published collection of poetry, Seconds of Joy, and shares with the audience stories about what inspired the poems. Phillips is retired supervisor of art for the St. Louis Public Schools and is now a docent for the St. Louis Art Museum.  

Lincoln's America

Judy Cook, nominee for Best Female Vocalist in Traditional Folk in Washington DC, travels with the audience across Abraham Lincoln's America with songs from and about his lifetime. The songs take us from Lincoln's 1809 birth to his 1865 death, from Kentucky to California. Cook provides historical details about the songs and tunes. Audience members are encouraged to sing on the choruses, leaving with a deeper understanding of Lincoln's life and times. Louis Killen, a respected singer of English traditional song, says Cook’s “depth of understanding and storytelling ability in ballad form is rivaled only by her dedication to the music and her willingness to do her research."  

The Art of Scientific Illustration

Yevonn Wilson-Ramsey, artist, scientific illustrator, and adjunct professor of art at St. Louis Community College, takes us behind the scenes in the world of scientific botanical illustration. We briefly survey the history of botanical art as well as current working techniques and works in progress. If time allows, we can talk about her current studio works, which are influenced by science and the environment. Wilson-Ramsey’s art is primarily on paper and in bronze. She teaches and shows her work locally.

“Remembering the Summer Earth”: Women Writers of the Rural and the Wild

Tom Goodmann, associate professor of English at University of Miami, presents an overview of a work-in-progress, recuperating work of several women writing on roles and relations of humans in nature, particularly in the 1930s-1970s American landscape. A generation of women writers wrote in newspapers and essays about rural living and wilderness exploration. While Rachel Carson is central in historical importance and expressive and advocatory achievements, many writers produced books at major publishers. Rachel Peden penned newspaper columns weekly for decades in Indiana, editing them into books on Midwest farm life. Gladys Taber wrote and edited fifty books from her Connecticut farm, while Minnesota's Helen Hoover wrote on carving a life from the Northwoods. Missouri's Josephine Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel on farm life, Now in November, and saw similar success years later with The Inland Island, on un-farming forty Ohio acres to create a nature preserve. Goodmann frames the achievements and reception of such writers and a cultural context of nostalgia for ways of life appealing more to imagination than suburban reality.

History Seen From the Conservator's Bench: Preserving the Past, One Page at a Time

Richard Baker, book and paper conservator in St. Louis, discusses his experiences with conserving important historical items. Artifacts he has worked on range from the Orteig Prize won by Charles Lindbergh to Lewis and Clark's journals. Baker describes the range of problems faced by conservators and the methods they employ in solving them.
 

Art in Gallery 210: A Sneak Peak Preview

Terry Suhre, director of Gallery 210 and research professor of Art at UMSL, offers a pre-opening view of the exhibition “Rosalyn Schwartz: Retrospective 1990-2010,” with paintings and works on paper. Schwartz’s paintings investigate quintessential conflicts between notions of beauty and futility, perfection and impossibility. Using thin layers of glazing and highly pigmented color, she presents unexpected juxtapositions of representational and abstract imagery. Her sources range from French rococo and mid-twentieth century interiors to contemporary fashion and wallpaper design, to 1950s kitsch Italian sculptures. Her paintings implicate and seduce viewers, confronting them with a stereotypical interpretation of the “beautiful painting,” willful in attention to detail, intense color, and refined surface, while it exploits a tension between reality and illusion. Schwartz’s work moves through brooding landscapes and still-lifes to animated displays of decorative motifs including sconces and candelabras, as well as landscapes and abstractions. Suhre also previews other coming Gallery 210 exhibitions. 

Where: Gallery 210 Auditorium in the Telecommunity Center (west of the N. Campus MetroLink stop—park in MSC Garage North).

The Arianna String Quartet

The Arianna String Quartet members return to discuss their work and teaching, as well as their upcoming “Audience Choice’” program at the Touhill on Friday, October 29th. The internationally acclaimed quartet members play selections from this concert and talk about their travels for performances in Brazil and South Africa.

Election 2010

Terry Jones, veteran political consultant and professor of Political Science at UM-St. Louis, analyzes the recent campaigns, makes some predictions, and discusses how the November election outcomes may affect the St. Louis region.

Masterful Storyteller: Richard Burgin

Richard Burgin reads from his new novel Rivers Last Longer. Burgin, five-time Pushcart Prize winner, offers a darkly compelling, witty account of friendship gone wrong. A psychological thriller and ambitious literary work told from multiple points of view, Rivers Last Longer moves through New York literary, art, and film worlds in a story of ambition, murder, and love. Burgin was called “among our finest artists of love at its most desperate” by The Chicago Tribune and ”one of America’s most distinctive storytellers” by The Philadelphia Inquirer. His book The Identity Club was on the Times Literary Supplement’s “Best Books of 2006” and the “40 Best Books of Fiction of the Decade” by The Huffington Post. Burgin is founder and editor of Boulevard and professor of Communication and English at St. Louis University.

The Lost Muse:  George Balanchine, Lidiia Ivanova, Ballet, Murder, and Revolution

Elizabeth Kendall, St. Louis native, dance critic and writing professor at New York’s New School University, talks about her work in Russian and Georgian archives, researching the youth of master choreographer George Balanchine, and the 1924 murder of his best friend, young ballerina Lidiia Ivanova. This presentation is about piecing together and interpreting history from hard-to-find primary documents and interpreting them. (Rescheduled from spring 2010.)