Archives: September 2007

News

Sparky’s Got a Lawyer

David Martin,

Supporters of an off-leash dog park in Waldo are accusing the Kansas City, Missouri, parks board of violating Missouri’s Sunshine Law in the hopes of rescinding a controversial vote that put a sudden end to their efforts. On August 28, the parks board enacted new guidelines for off-leash dog parks. The guidelines state that dog parks belong in the city’s…
News

Raising Arizona: Edwin Hall’s Summer Love Reappears

Scott Wilson,

Pop quiz. Which of these describes the plot of a summer teen blockbuster? 1. Three seniors in high school, hellbent on losing their virginity, embark on an odyssey to score alcohol for a hot girl’s party. Police chases, male bonding and summer love ensue. 2. A cute teenage runaway seeks asylum from authorities at an apartment that three older guys…

Art Extravaganza

Crystal K. Wiebe,

Since Friday, the streets of Westport have been booked for the annual Art Westport exhibition. The juried art show features only works by artists who live within 40 miles of Kansas City — a great reminder of the metro’s awesome talent pool. This year’s roster includes more than 120 painters, sculptors and other creative types. They all set up booths…

Arboretum Sculpture Exhibition

Twelve sculptures are on display at the third annual Overland Park Sculpture Exhibition. Aug. 8-Oct. 14, 2007 Tags: Night & Day, overland park

A Taste of Ink

Caleb Goellner,

Feeling faded is fine at the club, but those wishing to stand out at the first-ever “Real Deal” Tattoo Convention at the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway) this weekend might reinspect their body art before standing up tat-to-tat with their peers. The all-ages event honors local tattoo artists Gene Grimm and the Grimm family for their longstanding local creativity. Expect competitions,…

New Spencer Stuff

Lisa Horn,

One of the foremost artists of the Harlem Renaissance receives a long-overdue homecoming beginning today at the University of Kansas’ Spencer Museum of Art. Despite being credited with advancing the African-American modernist movement, Topekan Aaron Douglas is an often overlooked artist. “Douglas is maybe an artist who gets a paragraph or two — if he’s lucky — in most art…

Rare Sights

Santiago Ramos,

Anyone can have a DVD copy of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth and Shakespeare’s complete works. The plastic arts, however, are restricted by ownership. Not everyone can afford a Rembrandt or a Manet. But many who can are generous with their wealth, allowing publishers to photograph cherished paintings and sculptures for glossy books and lending…

Sign of Tradition

Crystal K. Wiebe,

Just 99 red balloons floating around downtown Lawrence tonight would be a disappointment to Dominic Sova. He’s the organizer of the Red Balloon To-Do, a local art crawl with a five-year history that he describes as “a lot of performance artists and people reveling and cavorting in the spirit of art.” The works of more than 100 Lawrence artists will…

Painting on the Z-Axis

Chris Packham,

Sedalia native Caleb McCandless wants you to think about his three-dimensional paintings, not about how he makes them. “They’re mixed media — oil paint and metal that I manipulate magnetically — and that’s as much detail as I can go into about the process,” he tells the Pitch. McCandless developed his technique two years ago. “I had clumps of paint…

Pressing On

Jen Chen,

Three years ago, Brady Vest moved his Hammerpress workshop and store to the Crossroads neighborhood. Since then, his gorgeous stationery and posters — which are hand-printed on 19th-century letterpresses — have garnered accolades from style blogs and magazines. So thanks to all of this love, Hammerpress is moving to a larger space at 110 Southwest Boulevard (across from Smokin’ Joe’s)….

Pregame Fiesta

Carolyn Szczepanski,

For their showdown tonight with the New York Yankees, the Kansas City Royals are packing a little extra talent from Latin America. Kauffman Stadium (Interstate 70 and Blue Ridge Cutoff) celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month with its Viva Los Royals pregame festivities with a couple of Mexico’s most enduring icons: singer Jose Jose and one of today’s hottest Latino artists, Jay…

Heroin Chic

Alan Scherstuhl,

The brand-new Journeyman Theatre Company is attempting something that sounds impossible: Harry Green’s adaptation of Trainspotting. Irvine Welsh’s heroin epic was a book before it was a play, and it was a play before it was director Danny Boyle’s searing film. Though the stage play is more of an ensemble piece than the movie, Journeyman’s fliers so successfully ape the…

Riggle Riggle

Megan Metzger,

Did you know that comedian Rob Riggle was raised in Overland Park? And during the 2004-05 season of Saturday Night Live, when Riggle was a featured player, he made history as the first SNL cast member to be a military man? It’s a fact, Jack. As a major in the Marine Corps Reserve, Riggle saw combat in Liberia, Kosovo and…

Power-Pop Goodness

Richard Gintowt,

When Jackie Carol plays a show in Kansas City, it’s a good night if 50 people show up. The band’s stellar “formerly of” credentials (Casket Lottery, Koufax, the Believe It Or Nots) and watertight power-pop chops make it a hands-down torchbearer of the local scene, but that hardly means folks will forgo a new episode of Wife Swap and actually…

Well-Endowed

Chris Packham,

The Charlotte Street Foundation started distributing grants to area creators back in 1997, mostly as a positive stimulant for local art but partly as a response to cuts in federal arts funding. (Republican Congress: We salute you!) Ten years down the road, the foundation has seeded KC’s arts community with more than $350,000, propelled locals to national prominence and created…

Rock Heads

Annie Fischer,

  Michelangelo’s David is the major reason that tourists flock to Florence’s Galleria dell’ Accademia, where it has stood since 1873. But there’s something even more moving to the left of the magnificent Renaissance sculpture, in an unfinished room that housed a collection of 19th-century plaster casts. It’s creepy as all get-out, with those soulless heads and torsos choking every…

News

¡Fiebre de Danza!

Alan Scherstuhl,

Unlike the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Rockhurst University has no rep for swallowing up neighborhoods and cultures, and it’s not the one allowing anti-immigration lawyer Kris Kobach to teach immigration law. Still, when talk turns to “diversity,” no area college stirs a bigger laugh than Rockhurst. That doesn’t mean the Jesuits aren’t trying. The college will open its fall film…

Heartbreak Mythology

Ashley Brown,

  There’s a reason that the Greeks and their tragedies, gravid with the weight of human experience, persist as artistic fodder. “Give me back my blood from your veins,” a jilted Medea cries in Heinen Muller’s Medeamaterial, a brutal retelling of the Greek myth in which Jason shrugs away the mother of his children for a new lady love. In…

Embroidered Anxiety

Chris Packham,

Yesterday’s 9/11 anniversary also marked the sixth anniversary of artist Frank Krainz’s nervous breakdown. “It happened after 9/11 because I couldn’t put it into perspective, and it changed my art — everything I made became more reduced and fragmented,” he says. The resulting work — minimal, Lennonesque embroideries on a range of materials, including plastic, tarps and wood — is…

N Step

Crystal K. Wiebe,

Today, raise money, raise awareness and raise your heart rate as you celebrate Kansas City’s racial diversity. Individuals, groups and families may enter the Harmony Walk, a 5K walk that promotes — well, isn’t it obvious? The local group called Harmony organized the walk as a fundraiser for its educational outreach programs, which remind youth and adults that skin color…

Our top DVD picks scheduled for release this week:

The Black Donnellys: The Complete Series (Universal) Chill Out Scooby-Doo! (Warner Bros.) City of Violence (Weinstein) Delta Farce (Lionsgate) Desperate Housewives: The Complete Third Season (Buena Vista) Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams (Disney) Georgia Rule (Universal) Gumby Essentials (Classic Media) It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Seasons 1 & 2 (Fox) Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (Classic Media) Nip/Tuck: The…

Getting Medieval

Chris Ward,

  Funny how gaming’s most epic genre — the role-playing game — often feels the most limited in scope. After all, how many times can we traverse a medieval land, defeat the orcs, rescue the girl, save the world, and level up along the way? Never enough times would be the answer supplied by the latest RPG, Two Worlds. And…

Seasons in the Sun

Jordan Harper, Robert Wilonsky,

  The Office: Season Three (Universal) After a shaky first season and a better-with-every-episode second, The Office proved itself one of the most consistent comedies in the history of the medium. The show has long since escaped the shadow of its BBC forebear and boasts an ensemble from which you could pick a dozen leads. This was the season during…