I stopped by Public Space One the day after the opening of Gaia Nardie-Warner’s “Limelight,” and the gallery space had its fluorescent lights on. These had been turned off during the opening, so that track lighting provided the paintings’ only illumination. I therefore experienced them under both flattering and unflattering lights, and was struck by […]
Iowa City art
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Arts Review: A Set of Lies Agreed Upon
The question of how emperors and imperial aspirants fashion their cult status through images is, given our place in the present election cycle, relevant. An exhibition that raises questions and provides insight into the ways that visual propaganda shapes the image of an actual or potential government leader would have been edifying in the current […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
ARTicle: A visit to Walnut Farms: Institute of Art. Agriculture and Burning Shopping Carts
It’s another hot Iowa City summer night and in the woods, the trees hang tired and droopy. Black leaves gently shiver against a cascade of smoke rising from a 10-foot-high bonfire. Sparks of flame jaunt into the sky and crackle alongside an endless drone of mating insects. A huge hand-painted mural covered in dreamlike poetic […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Arts Review: Following the “Water” – on Josh Hoeks installation at UI Studio Arts
Josh Hoeks calls Water a “structural intervention” to his studio at The University of Iowa’s Studio Arts building. The Rube-Goldberg-esque contraption Hoeks designed serves to siphon water from another studio into his—and to successfully dispose of the wastewater thereby generated. His studio’s need for water is increased by the fact that the nearest sink, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
ARTicle: Art on Demand at the Iowa City Public Library
Where does art live? If you’re in the Iowa City area, can abide by some very generous checkout times and can offer it the promise of shelter for a month or so, art can live with you, thanks to the Iowa City Public Library’s Art-To-Go Collection. Also, if you’re a local artist, it might just […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
ARTicle: A Little More Room for Art in Iowa
You don’t have to be a mathlete—or even a little mathletic—to know that there are multiple parts to an equation. You have the numbers of course, or parties involved. You have the function. Are they going to multiply? Divide? And what will the outcome be? For art’s sake, there’s no better illustration of this than […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
The Deadwood Deadzone
What you need to know is that this was not what I expected. But haunted house stories almost never are. And in the wake of Public Space One’s exciting expansion into the Wesley Center early this month, where they’re creating a free workspace for artists, filled with materials and equipment, I wondered about PS1’s historical […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Photos: Late works by Mauricio Lasansky
This afternoon, some friends from the Des Moines Art Center’s Print Club are in Iowa City visiting the studios of active UI professors Anita Jung and Susan White, and the late Mauricio Lasansky. Lasansky, who passed away earlier this month, is the founder of the UI printmaking department. He is universally recognized as one of […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
ARTicle: The Art of Hospitality: The Hotel at Kirkwood Center
Look just beyond Iowa City, a quick highway drive up 380, to The Hotel Kirkwood Center. The ambitious building is a multi-million-dollar endeavor, melding 5-star hotel swankiness with an upscale conference center, inspired restaurant, office complex and art collection. Three hundred pieces, to be exact, all procured by Arbe Bareis, Kirkwood’s Fine and Performing Arts […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
ARTicle: Looking Up
Street art. Just by reading that, perhaps you’ve been marginalized. Perhaps you’ve been freed. It’s a provocative rabbit hole of self-generating “what is art?” questions that’s easy to tumble down. Recently, on a cold, rainy, cracked-gray day, Deanne Wortman was my spirit guide on a journey through corridors and alleys, the gallery spaces of our […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Little Village 109: December 2011
Flip through issue 109 of Little Village magazine.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: T'Bone – Mount Trashmore
T’Bone is based in Chicago, but is made up of Iowa natives Leland Meiners (bass), Ed Bornstein (drums) and Pat McPartland (guitar), and their album Mount Trashmore was recorded in Iowa City at Luke Tweedy’s Flat Black Studio. Chicago, birthplace of seminal post rock bands like Tortoise and Gastr Del Sol, is an apt home for these guys, whose songs follow their own crooked paths, leaving pop song conventions far behind.
