Cover Story
Portraits of transition: Local artists with chronic illnesses continue to create
As she sits in Galerie Hertz on a sunny mid-November day, Ann Stewart Anderson watches Billy Hertz painting one of his abstracted landscapes. Both artists were showcasing their work during the 2015 Open Studio Weekend, a fundraiser for Louisville Visual Art and UofL’s Hite Art Institute. But what they’re really doing is talking and keeping…
10 things to do under $5 this week in Louisville (8/15)
MONDAY PokeMondays with Ocean Disco, The Big Atomic Mag Bar Free | 9 p.m. Poke-mania takes over Mag Bar, where they will serve $3 Pokemon-themed shots, play “Pokemon,” the original series, on the big screen, drop lures at its backyard PokeStop and host a non-stop battle at the Mag Bar gym. There will also be live music by…
Auditioning at the zoo, a very particular brand of weirdos
I’m inside a 1,000-square-foot room in a building called Zoovision, behind Lemur Mountain, when I am briefly surrounded by pirates. It’s a sweltering Saturday, and it’s hard to imagine the brisk chill of autumn, but at the Louisville Zoo, hopeful actors are auditioning to be a part of what the zoo calls “The World’s Largest…
5 Things to Do this Weekend in Louisville (8/12)
FRIDAY Joyce Manor, Diet Cig, Tiny Moving Parts, Boner City New Vintage $16-$18; 6:30 p.m. This show has it all: Four solid acts and a bit of variety in each, and it’s under $20 (I’m on a budget OK!). Louisville’s own Boner City is a gritty punk band with a fun side (hence the name),…
Arts & Entertainment Guide 2016: Links to the A&E Issue’s feature stories and events calendar
Art is a calling as much as it is a career. What happens when a creative life is interrupted by disease? In this year’s Arts & Entertainment Guide, I’ve written a story suggested by Ann Stewart Anderson, an artist with Parkinson’s disease. She knows several local, outstanding artists whose work changed with their adult-onset illness.…
Pops conductor Bob Bernhardt cues audience, too
Welcome to the Louisville Orchestra Pops. We hope you enjoy the concert, and if the music moves you, you’re welcome to fly right out of your seats in eruptions of applause and spontaneous cheering. Well, no — it’s not something you’d expect to find printed in the program of an orchestra concert. And it is…
Louisville’s not done with ?Amy Attaway
Amy Attaway, the new associate artistic director of Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, nearly escaped. “Louisville is such a great town for theater, but it has limitations, financially and opportunity wise. We lose a lot of smart young actors to other cities,” she said. Attaway, 37, nearly was one of those actors. She’s tried to escape Louisville…
Filmmaker Brennan Clark looks to Hollywood
Brennan Clark dropped out of film school because he wanted to make movies. “I realized it was going to be a big old waste of money,” Clark said of his time at Savannah School of Art and Design. He seems to have made the right decision. Now 31, he counts among his successes three first…
New Opera director Ian Derrer,? ‘I was just blown away’
Ian Derrer was bitten by “the opera bug” early in life. As a youngster his parents introduced him to opera, and it has played an important role for him since. After being on stage for a few years, he ended up moving into the management side of opera and was recently named the general director…
Baron Kelly’s balancing act of a teacher and actor
Baron Kelly, the newish director of the African American Theatre Program at the University of Louisville, is almost too good to be true. He’s got an impressive academic career, and a list of professional credits as long as your arm. But what makes him most interesting to this arts writer is his attempt to reach…
Mortality drives painter ?Jesse Lane
Painter Jesse Lane is used to living in pain. Lane, who signs his artwork as Sparrow, was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia when he was a toddler. Sickle cell is a genetic blood disorder that causes red blood cells to be shaped like sickles, or crescent moons. This slows, or blocks, blood flow and oxygen…
C. E. Zacherl: Illustration meets fine art
Many years ago, a conversation with a friend turned to the subject of art as a commodity. The question was: Should art be created for the sake of its creation, or for its sale potential? At the nexus of this question is where illustration and fine art meet. In the world of fine art, illustration…
2016-2017 Arts & Entertainment Season Schedule
DANCE KENTUCKY CENTER FOR THE ARTS kentuckycenter.org Dasani Dance Showcase – Oct. 15 “Pilobolus: Shadowland” – Oct. 20 “Light Has Come The Angels Story” – Nov. 26 “Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet” – Jan. 27 Wendy Whelan / Brian Brooks / Brooklyn Rider SOME OF A THOUSAND WORDS – March 8 LOUISVILLE BALLET louisvilleballet.org “Stars +…
Thorns & Roses: The Worst and Best
Criminal Homicide City | Thorn x2 2006: 30 2007: 37 2008: 31 2009: 42 2010: 28 2011: 27 2013: 31 2014: 30 2015: 49 2016: 65 Taco Smell | Thorn Maybe Taco Bell franchisees hope Mexicans in the United States will “run for the border” and back to Mexico, if presidential perspirant Donald “Duck-face” Trump is…
Running through dreams: A conversation with Beach House
Victoria Legrand, the voice behind dream-pop duo Beach House, met longtime collaborator Alex Scally in the early 2000s in the burgeoning and mercurial Baltimore indie scene. The two quickly realized that they shared common ground with music and found the urge to express that creativity. And it just sort of happened. “We didn’t really talk…
Becoming ourselves: A conversation with Landlady
You might not immediately recognize Adam Schatz, the brainchild behind Landlady, because he’s perhaps better known for his day job — one of the multi-instrumental virtuosos behind indie-rock outfit, Man Man. However, it’s Landlady he’ll have in tow on this pass through town. “I’m friends with one of the guys who books Zanzabar, so that’s…
RMLLW2LLZ: Nu Growf
There is a golden age of hip-hop feel to the newest from RMLLW2LLZ — that sort of gritty, society-focused, sharp sound that informed a generation. Nu Growf manages to fit the general standards of that particular qualifier, with RMLLW2LLZ’s incredibly smooth delivery and a sharp wit to his rhymes, backed here by equally-admirable production. The…
Eons D & Jordan Jetson: Inner Space
The six songs on Inner Space — a collaboration between Jordan Jetson and Eons D — are packed with agile production and thick verses that don’t waste any time. Throughout the entirely of the album, the two rappers turn in phrase after phrase with velocity and intent — the lines come with speed, but each…
Hot Prowlers: Neon
There is more than a little ’80s nostalgia to the music of the Hot Prowlers, tempered here by a punk edge. Perhaps the main draw is the throaty Joan Jett-esque vocals of Foxie Gogo, which vacillate between a rock sneer and that kind of infectious pop-rock sensibility of Grace Slick or Ann Wilson. The music…
Billy Nelson: Water Sports
With dark, ominous synth-pop that builds an intense atmosphere, Billy Nelson’s Water Sports delivers little snapshots in time that capture the complexities of rolling through life. Mostly personal, easily relatable, sometimes cutting, once-in-a-while lighthearted and always with this Nick Cave-like, fever dream delivery that feels like the soundtrack to a near-death experience, his high vocals,…
‘Back to Cool Comedy Show,’ ?an all-star reunion of yucks
This weekend, there’s going to be a reunion of sorts with the “Back to Cool Comedy Show” at The Bard’s Town. It will feature an all-star lineup of Louisville’s legendary comedians, most of whom started together in the early ‘90s at Comedy Caravan. They include Mike Nilsson, Donna Watts, Rich Barber, Jeff Davis and Mike…
Eiderdown in Germantown makes us happy
I won’t deny that being a restaurant critic is fun, but it’s hard work also. And there is one truly significant downside: When duty calls you to eat out someplace new every week, it’s not easy to return to dine casually at places that make you happy. Nevertheless, there’s a handful, or maybe two, of…
Somewhere becomes home
Amid our busy schedules, a post-workday happy hour with my mom is usually in the cards about once a month (it should be much more frequent, but, alas, life happens). As my mom often uses me as her restaurant and city guide for all things happening in Louisville, and the fact that the wontons from…
Redneck hair code, Eric Flack impersonation
Back in prehistorical times you had hair, didn’t you? You cheeky twat. I had hair until at least 1985. But don’t you worry. I’ve noted your combover: You’ll also be a bald bastard before long. Anyway, why the sudden interest in my barnet? Just seeing you got me thinking of current news, so I was…
Women are Out Of the Box
Sometimes you find vocations. Sometimes they find you. I am firmly in the latter category, as I had virtually no ambition to practice law, or be any kind of advocate, as a teenager in the 1980s, but, then, we didn’t have the internet, or the many women role models, we have today. The ‘80s marked…
Big block of cheese and cats: The importance of taking care of our animals
Any real fan of the “The West Wing” has to remember “Big Block of Cheese Day.” This was a reference to a day of public engagement inspired by President Andrew Jackson in 1837, when Jackson hosted an open house at the White House. The legend goes that Jackson had 1,400-pound block of cheese brought in…
Your Voice
On racial justice in louisville in black and white … The idea of social justice is inherently a horrible idea. Once you put the word social in front of the word justice, justice now has a different meaning … Social justice is providing justice to a group of people at the expense of an individuals…
