Cover Story
Arts & Entertainment Guide 2009
I trust I am in substantial company when I say if it weren’t for the rare miscellany of art, I would’ve left Louisville a long time ago. There are as many platitudes as plaudits in this place, but a city without such diversity of opinion — to put it diplomatically — on issues of culture…
Posthumous Success
Grand Forks, N.D.-turned-Los Angeles singer/songwriter Tom Brosseau’s third full-length for FatCat, Posthumous Success (named for a chapter in an Albert Camus biography), reveals a sonic sophistication not really evident in the bare-bone acoustic arrangements of earlier recordings. What hasn’t changed, though, is the emotional resonance apparent in Brosseau’s image-soaked language. His songs are self-aware and…
Throw Down Your Heart: Africa Sessions (Tales From An Acoustic Planet V. 3)
Enslaved Africans in early America invented the banjo, a combination of several indigenous African instruments. Fleck pays tribute to this and expands his own experience with his chosen instrument via his latest. Throw Down Your Heart is a fantastic document of Fleck’s recent excursion to Africa and his encounters with the musicians he met there.…
Operation Radio Wave
End-of-summer music must have attitude. May is for poppy beats and shallow messages to make your hips swing easier and you drink more beer. August is about thought-provoking, harmonic intercourse that politely tugs on your soul. It’s about getting yourself back together after endless summer nights of cookouts and debauchery. Operation Radio Wave, the album…
Dragonslayer
Montrealite Spencer Krug’s latest brainchild, Dragonslayer, is the third full-length collaboration with Camilla Wynne Ingr, Michael Doerksen and Jordan Robson-Cramer, and the first with rhythm-man Mark Nicoi. Krug, perhaps best known as the keyboardist and dueling songwriter of Wolf Parade, is far freer lyrically in Dragonslayer than in Parade’s hooky, anthemic rock. Here, the specter…
The Double Greatest
A little-known Southern California punk and hardcore band of the late ’80s and early ’90s went by the name 411. Singer Dan O’Mahony, future Farside guitarist Kevin Murphy and onetime Metroschifter drummer Mario Rubalcaba put their own spin on the genre’s most laudable characteristic: political consciousness. Mahony’s baritone speechifying lent an earnest, albeit quirky, element…
Make A Move
Hill Country Revue is a must-own for even the most casual of blues lovers. The band is more of a spin-off rather than a side project for Cody Dickinson and Chris Chew, two of the three founding members of the North Mississippi All-Stars collective. Their debut, Make A Move, shakes off the jam-band veneer, to…
Profile: Robbie Moriarty
The jewelry of Robbie Moriarty is fun. Entering her shop at the Mellwood Arts Center is like walking into Oz. She incorporates colorful beads and other found objects she’s collected over the years into most of her work. Her themed jewelry is always a hit, featuring little snowmen, patriotic characters like Uncle Sam and other…
Music for the ages
Richard Ryan hopes to make hip-hop classical From beneath a mop of dark blond hair and behind a seemingly constant grin, Richard Ryan seems approachable and unruffled. But given a bass, his calm facial expression turns to glare. His eyebrows furrow, his lips tighten, and he moves the bow across the strings almost violently. It’s…
Profile: William M. Duffy
Just call the man Duffy, if you will. Bored with the limitations of two-dimensional art, Duffy became a sculptor by accident — a car accident, that is. A car had smashed into a marble column at a bank, and Duffy, a bystander, took a piece of the marble back to his studio. Carving and chipping…
Profile: Ben Bridwell
The urge to create and discover potential in material has been in Ben Bridwell all his life. He discovered metal art when he worked as a welder at a swimming pool company. He watched hot, molten metal drip to the ground and decided to use his welding skills for more than swimming pool frames. He…
Guide to local galleries and performance houses
21c Museum Hotel 700 W. Main St. • 217-6346 www.21cmuseum.org The 930 Center 930 Mary St. • 635-2554 • www.the930.org Actors Theatre of Louisville 316 W. Main St. • 584-1205 www.actorstheatre.org Alley Theater The Pointe?• 1205 E. Washington St. 473-7224 • www.alleytheaterlouisville.com As Yet Unnamed Theatre Company 445-3203 • www.myspace.com/ayutc Art Cartel www.theartcartel.org Art Ecology…
‘Lookingglass Alice’ a witty, acrobatic treat
(Actors Theatre of Louisville presents Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company’s “Lookingglass Alice,” written and directed by David Catlin. Continues through Sept. 20 in the Pamela Brown Auditorium. For tickets, call 584-1205 or visit www.actorstheatre.org.) At first glance, the 46th season at Actors Theatre of Louisville looks like a series of safe bets. In hard times,…
Profile: Jeaneen Barnhart
Whether it’s detailing the human form or expressing the rhythm of a galloping racehorse, Jeaneen Barnhart sets out to capture the tension in movement in her drawings. “My desire is to show the energy, the strength, the power of physical movement,” she says. “My intent is to reveal the energy and emulate the figure through…
Profile: Roberto de Leon
Ever driven by what looks like a fancy barn on Shelby Street? Walked around Yew Dell Gardens? Welcome to the designs of Roberto de Leon, 42, and Ross Primmer, 43, of De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop. Both attended Harvard School of Design and later decided to open an office together, eventually moving to Louisville…
Kid about it
I have decided to wean myself off one of my worst addictions. Over the years I have developed my own behavior modification system. I used it to quit smoking cigarettes a few years ago. That wasn’t easy. It took a lot of reprogramming, but I did it, and when I quit, I knew the…
Mug Shots: Taste great and less filling?
Occasionally a cliché bears passing resemblance to reality. Recalling the eagerness of every politician to stump by heaping effusive praise on the genius of good, old-fashioned American workplace creativity, permit me to note that this characterization is spot-on when it comes to American craft brewing. A quarter-century into the American brewing renaissance, there now are…
2009-2010 season schedules, exhibits and more
COMPILED BY SARA HAVENS, JO ANNE TRIPLETT & FARRAH JOHNSON DANCE THE KENTUCKY CENTER FOR THE ARTS • Jigu — Nov. 8, 7 p.m., Brown Theatre. • Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company — Nov. 21, 8 p.m., Whitney Hall. • Pilobolus — March 12, 8 p.m., Brown Theatre. LOUISVILLE BALLET •…
Lost leader
In the summer of 2004, I was in New York finishing up the details of an exhibition I was curating called “Earth and Memory: African and African-American Photography.” The exhibit was scheduled to travel in the fall. That same week, the Republican National Convention was in town, and I had made plans to join the…
Art to the masses
Meet your new community center, the Speed Art Museum. The Speed is undergoing a transformation from the inside out. And that’s the point: The museum is seeking to reach further into the community in an effort to bring more of the community — whomever that may end up being — to it. Charles Venable, the…
Profile: Suzanne Edds
Suzanne Edds is living the dream. Eight years after she first put her hands into clay and began molding it into shapes and designs, she and her partner Gary Bell opened Liberty Tattoo and Art Parlor, where her studio resides and she curates a gallery space with exhibits by local and regional artists. “I feel…
Profile: Skylar Smith
Taletha Al Badr stands motionless on the modest stage at the back of the room, her right arm extended above her head, fingers curled inward. In the background is distinctive Middle Eastern music. Before her 17 people sit, scratching charcoal pencils to sketch pads, as Skylar Smith facilitates, calling “change” every 30 seconds or so,…
A grand move
Kentucky Opera is trading in residence at the 2,500-seat Whitney Hall for the 1,300-seat Brown Theatre, and general director David Roth knows his biggest sales job for the coming season will be to convince longtime patrons that the Brown is grand enough for grand opera. But the impresario has an ace up his sleeve: The…
Profile: Wes Hillegas
Things don’t look so bright in the sinister comic world of Wes Hillegas. Indoctrinated by Marvel comics like “Spider-Man” as early as age 5, he began drawing and dreamt of one day illustrating for Marvel. Hillegas attended the Joe Kubert School of Graphic Arts — one of the only schools in the nation solely dedicated…
Profile: Geoff Carr
“My gut” — that’s what Geoff Carr, 55, listens to when he’s looking for a scene to photograph. “I came across (“Behind the Scenes”) when I was walking around this industrial area,” he says. “I was intrigued with how the surface of the glass created this strong graphic plane … creating a collage of shapes…
Profile: Al Nelson
Inspired by themes of faith, hope and love, Al Nelson creates stunning sculptures from stone, impressive landmarks in the Louisville area that include “Let’s Play Ball,” the 15-ton stone baseball mitt in the Louisville Slugger Museum; the “Hearts in Harmony” family group outside the downtown YMCA; and “Chris,” a dragon boat at Cherokee Park. But…
B-Sides: Music & Other Ephemera
Buster’s Jessica and Clark Case are two Lexington attorneys who double as historical preservationists. And that mentality doesn’t stop at the barroom door. When they heard Buster’s in Lexington was being razed along with its next-door neighbor, The Dame, and that the Buster’s owner wanted to get out of the business entirely, they put in…
Profile: Rhonda Caldwell
Rhonda Caldwell, 36, calls herself “The Graphic Design Girl.” It simplifies things. Her business name and logo “simply reflect who I am and what I love doing,” she says. What she loves doing is expressive design with a touch of whimsy, personality and individuality. I saw her company logo over a year ago and it…
Add it up
I take a seat at the bar and order a Miller Lite. After a minute or so it arrives in a disposable plastic cup emblazoned with the words “Sports & Social Club.” The beer is cold and cheap, and I wander outside where, atop a stage dominating the main thoroughfare of Fourth Street Live, a…
Hiding the opposition
According to Mom, I once met John F. Kennedy. I don’t remember it because I was a baby and still trying to figure out what my fingers were for. This was back in the days when candidates had to actually go out and meet voters, and Kennedy brought his presidential campaign to the mythical little…
Jerry’s kids
The relationship between Metro Council colleagues and mayoral hopefuls David Tandy and Jim King should make for an interesting theater of personalities in the coming months. It’s still early in this campaign, but so far King, D-10, looks slightly better, having co-sponsored a bill that would make public how businesses in partnership with Metro spend…
Profile: Eddie Santiago
Searching for balance in a chaotic world, Eddie Santiago’s paintings reflect the journey of someone who has seen the good, the bad and the brutal. His most recent show, “Perdido En Demencia,” explores experiences from living in inner-city communities on both the East and West Coasts. Deep, reflective faces emerge from the paint splatters that…
How privileged we are to be alive
Lately I’ve been revisiting socialism. Most people, politicians or otherwise, seem to fear it more than H1N1, and I don’t respect these people much. Therefore, there must be something good about it. I have a vague memory of learning about socialism, along with democracy, theocracy and Marxism, but no memory of what it is exactly.…
Video TapeWorm
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS: LOVE AND PAIN AND THE WHOLE DAMN THING 1972; $19.95, PG Movies from the ’70s are a mixed bag. That decade contains some of the most profoundly moving moving pictures ever to come out of the West, but they are forever tainted as if from a shrouded time the world seems…
For art’s sake
The underside of the Interstate 65 overpass on East Market Street is as plain and boring as buying in bulk: gray walls of paneled concrete stand perpendicular to standard sidewalks sprinkled with random urban detritus. There is almost nothing distinguishable about the place. Then you notice what looks like a tear in taught fabric, from…
Profile: Justine Dennis
Justine Dennis rescues old sweaters and discarded clothing from local thrift shops and repurposes them into fiber sculptures. She began her artistic endeavors with ceramics and fell into the world of fiber accidentally, after a neighbor gave her a garbage bag full of discarded cotton. A self-proclaimed “old hippie,” Dennis couldn’t stare at the bag…
‘Soul’ providers
Six months ago, when the label Noise Pollution approached former Evergreen bassist Troy Lee Cox about reissuing a compilation of the band’s early material, Cox wasn’t all systems go. “I was skeptical,” he said. “I didn’t know what they wanted.” He hadn’t listened to the songs in 15 years, nor had he picked up a…
Profile: Ying Kit Chan
The drawings are massive, two-paneled pieces stretching across eight feet or so of the floor in Ying Kit Chan’s office at the University of Louisville, where the Hong Kong native is a professor of art. They are dark, heavy renderings of the coldest American landscapes, our tracts of industry. There are open fields poked with…
Five questions with five Louisville playwrights
Liz Fentress Liz Fentress is a playwright, director and actor. In Louisville, she directs and acts for Stage One and is a teaching artist for Actors Theatre’s New Voices program. In 2008, her play “The Honey Harvest” won the North American Actors Association’s annual Playwriting Competition and was staged in London’s West End. KET’s production…
Game on
Oh what a night it was: Nov. 2, 2006. Cardinal fans frolicked out of Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium in a state of such ecstasy, many smiled tolerantly at the brewski-overloaded nabobs pissing in the bushes. Maybe Howard Schnellenberger’s bluster was indeed more than boast. U of L had just sent the third-ranked West Virginia Mountaineers…
Inbox — Sept. 2, 2009
Eyesore Kudos Thanks very much for the picture and small commentary on the property at 1135 E. Kentucky St. (LEO Weekly, Eyesore, Aug. 26). I live next door. I hope it moves someone or something to start the demolition of a really useless and dangerous building. The owner has no shame and no pride —…
Club List
19th Green ?1740 Williamsburg Drive Jeffersonville (812) 284-9088 60 West? 3939 Shelbyville Road?719-9717 930 Listening Room 930 Mary St., 635-2554 Air Devil’s Inn? 2802 Taylorsville Road?454-4092 Angel’s Rock Bar ?4328 S. Fourth St. 540-1461 Backstage Café? 109 N. Mulberry St. Elizabethtown?(270) 234-1686 Bearno’s by the Bridge ?131 W. Main St. 584-7437 Bearno’s Highlands? 1318 Bardstown…
Industry Standard: Insider info for those who dine out
A server glides through a packed dining room, projecting calm serenity and competence. She breezes through the door that separates the dining room from the “engine room.” As it swings shut behind her, she is delivered to the heat, clamor and chaos of the kitchen, and her smile drops away. She exclaims, to everyone and…
Profile: Sarah Frary
Like her raw inner free spirit, Sarah Frary’s work is deeply personal. Exploring darker themes of nature and human evolution, Frary’s ink illustrations and paintings tell stories of the epic variety. From live art performances to her first solo gallery exhibit in October at the Tim Faulkner Gallery, Frary’s work is gaining popularity all over…
Profile: Kathleen Fitzgerald
Kathleen Fitzgerald came into the art game a little later than most. After working more than 20 years in the nursing field, she decided to try out a hobby she’d been curious about her entire life. “I was afraid to make that first brush stroke,” she says about her initial foray into painting. That was…
Burgers, dogs and cones, oh my!
For all the talk of market indicators and the rebounding Dow and yada yada yada, you and I know there’s still a recession going on. And so, apparently, do a lot of Louisville’s restaurateurs. I’ve reported recently on the ways some of the city’s top-tier eateries are responding to tightened consumer spending with menu-price reductions.…
Profile: Tiffany Ackerman
It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma (thank you, Winston Churchill): How could a person who has an aversion to fire be a glassblower? Perhaps the answer lies with Tiffany Ackerman, 29. As an art major with an interest in painting, she decided to take a glassblowing class in 2004 before she…
Plugged In
Readers are strongly encouraged to call ahead to verify these listings. To get your club, comedian, musical act or karaoke listed, please send e-mail to mherron@leoweekly.com with PLUGGED IN in the subject line. The deadline is NOON THURSDAY the week before publication. We do not accept listings via social networking sites. WED Sept. 2 Derby City…
Profile: Russel Hulsey
It has to the ultimate non-violent statement when the ultimate non-violent man is hit in the nose. “It was very difficult to do, to hit Gandhi,” says Russel Hulsey, 35. “‘Gandhi Bleeding’ took a year to complete. This was the final act in order to bring the work into completion.” Hulsey is a multimedia artist…
Profile: Thea Lura
Not even “bad” artwork gets much criticism in saccharine America, but provocative artist Thea Lura welcomes it. Getting a reaction generally means she has succeeded in pushing audiences to think about the concepts she projects in her work. Questioning the meaning and role of art, death and religion in modern life, Lura’s inspiration is to…
Profile: Andrew Brown
Standing in a pile of sawdust and shavings that is roughly the size of a batter’s box, Andrew Brown inserts a long, rectangular spear of poplar into a lathe in his Germantown garage. The woodturner from Atlanta, Ga., is in the middle of a bout of copy spindlework; he is making replicas for a high-end…
