Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990 TAG: 9003032803
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jeff DeBell
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That's the word from the steering committee that is laying plans for the inaugural valleywide arts festival in the fall of 1991.
The event originally was to be called Culture Jam, a name admired by some but regarded by others like a foreign object in the pudding.
Though perhaps more conservative, the new name does capture both a sense of regional identity and the spirit of a festival that is itself new and will emphasize new work in the arts.
In announcing the new name, committee member Susan Cole said the decision is final. The committee needs to get on with planning the festival, she said, and is through fiddling with the matter of what to call it.
\ Prize-winning photo flap
A prize-winning photograph has been removed from the American Association of University Women art exhibit at Valley View Shopping Center because of objections from shoppers.
Eileen McCaul-Basham's untitled black-and-white photo shows a nude female torso from a three-quarters frontal perspective. It was awarded an honorable mention by the judge for the annual show.
The decision to remove the photo was made by Scott Ashcraft, who is marketing director for the shopping center. He said the photo was placed in his office and can be seen there by anyone who asks.
Before the show opened, Ashcraft asked the artist to substitute another work in deference to the family nature of the mall's clientele. McCaul-Basham, objecting to what she viewed as censorship of her work and medium (painted nudes have been in the show before), in turn asked Ashcraft to reconsider.
He did so and decided to allow the photograph to stay unless a shopper found it objectionable and asked that it be removed. That happened Wednesday afternoon. If the artist wishes, he said, she can substitute another piece of her work in the show.
McCaul-Basham won first prize in last year's AAUW show at the shopping center.
The annual AAUW show continues through March 10 and can be viewed during mall hours.
\ Anybody want to share?
The Acting Company of Roanoke Valley is looking for "co-venturers" in a proposal to restore Roanoke's 92-year-old First Baptist Church and reopen it as a center for plays, art shows, dance programs, concerts and other cultural activities.
The church is on North Jefferson Street at Gilmer Avenue. It has been vacant since 1982, when the congregation moved into its new church nearby.
The church has offered to lease the old building to the Acting Company at no cost, but it's more space than the company needs for itself and the estimated $450,000 restoration cost is far beyond its capacity to handle alone.
That's why the company is beating the bushes for possible associates in the enterprise. The idea was outlined in broad terms at a meeting for potential partners and other interested parties this week. More than 100 people showed up.
Their responses are now being evaluated by the Acting Company to see whether it should develop the idea further or, in the words of vice president Jan Wilkins, "stop spinning our wheels in preservation and just do theater."
The Acting Company has never had a home. It was drawn to the church in part for that reason and has spent about nine months studying the church and the notion of a mini art center. However, there are those within the company who believe its need to perform in borrowed and sometimes unusual space is a promotable distinction.
At present, the Acting Company is presenting a contemporary play titled "Five of Us" in the Iroquois nightclub and restaurant.
\ Traveling artists
An untitled drawing by Roanoke artist John Clingempeel is part of a new exhibit at the High Museum of the George-Pacific Center in Atlanta.
The show of work by 25 artists is called "Working on Paper: Contemporary American Drawings." It will stay at the High until May 4, then go on tour until the spring of 1991.
A Patrick Henry High School senior, Sonoko Konishi, is represented in the fourth annual Virginia Youth Art Exhibit at the Virginia Museum in Richmond.
Konishi's work is an acrylic titled "Dancer."
The show continues through March 4, then tours to other locations including offices of the Virginia congressional delegation in Washington.
Lime Kiln update\ Singer-songwriters Robin and Linda Williams, who did the music for Lime Kiln Arts' popular "Stonewall Country," are doing the same for a new show that will premiere at the Lexington outdoor theater this summer.
The show's title is "Blindsight." It is based on the true stories of an Appalachian couple.
Don Baker, Lime Kiln artistic director, is writing the show. He also wrote "Stonewall Country."
"Stonewall Country" will be back for the summer season, its sixth, along with a revised "Munci Meg."
Other plans for the season include not one but two concert series - on Wednesday and Sunday evenings - and Lime Kiln's first American Movement Festival. Held the first three weekends in June, it will feature the Seattle Mime Company, the American Dance Theater and the New Vaudeville Review.
Concert acts that have been booked so far include Trapezoid, the Seldom Scene, the Audubon Quartet, David Bromberg, Peter Ostruchko, Vassar Clements, John McCutcheon, a New Wave bagpipe band called Rare Air and woman blues band, Sapphire.
More information, including the facts about tickets and subscriptions, is available at 703-463-3074.
\ Guest curator
Betty Tisinger has been engaged as guest curator for the May 2-July 22 Jim Yeatts retrospective at the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts.
Tisinger is associate professor of art education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Before taking that position, she was art supervisor for Roanoke Public Schools. She is a former member of the museum's board of trustees and in 1971 she served as its acting director.
Yeatts, a painter, is a pillar of the art scene in Western Virginia. The retrospective will cover 50 years of his work.
by CNB