Performing Arts Studio

Two-time Grammy award winners Brave Combo will kick off the 2012 Summer Breeze free concert series on Sunday, May 20, in Norman’s Lions Park at the corner of Symmes and Flood. This first concert is part of a collaborative arts festival presented by the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, the Firehouse Art Center, The Jacobson House, The Norman Arts Council, and the Performing Arts Studio. The third annual Luncheon on the Grass hands-on arts activities and entertainment will take place in the park from 4 pm – 6:30 pm. At 6:00 pm the Norman Public Arts Board will dedicate Douglas Shaw Elder’s original sculpture being placed in Lions Park. The group’s latest public arts project will be made from this original sculpture. Brave Combo will take the stage at 7 pm. Bring seating and refreshments for a full afternoon and evening of art, music, and fun in the park!

Brave Combo has perfected a world music mix that includes salsa, meringue, rock, cumbia, conjunto, polka, zydeco, classical, cha cha, the blues and more. They are America’s Premier Dance band and a rollicking, rocking, rhythmic global journey -- offering what one critic recently wrote, “Even if you come for the party, you'll leave with something of a musical education.”

Keyboardist, guitarist, accordionist, and singer Carl Finch founded the band in 1979. Alongside Finch for most of Brave Combo's 30 years has been multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Barnes, who joined in 1983. Barnes is known for his lively and imaginative stage wear, as well as playing an array of reeds and woodwinds, harmonica, pennywhistle, guitars, you name it, sometimes in multiple, simultaneous combinations. Rounding out the current line-up are trumpet player Danny O'Brien, drummer Alan Emert and Little Jack Melody on electric bass.

For additional information contact The Performing Arts Studio, 405-307-9320.

Summer Breeze Concerts are produced by the Performing Arts Studio and are made possible in part by grants from the Norman Arts Council, the Oklahoma Arts Council, and from businesses and individuals including: Michael Miller; Jamie Belknap, DDS, Norman Smile Center; Andi Berry, Wyoming Art Therapy; Skye Diers, Gingerbread Nursery School; and Republic Bank and Trust.  Additional support comes from Cardinal Engineering; David Fries Roofing; Tom McAuliffe, Don Cies Real Estate; Old Republic Title Company of Oklahoma; The Spirit Shop; Dale Wares,Wares Properties; The Earth Natural Foods; The Montford Inn; and City of Norman Parks and Recreation Department.

Multiple award winning poet Carol Hamilton will read from two new books: Master of the Theatre: Peter the Great and Lexicography at the Sunday Poetry Reading on May 20 in the Norman Depot, 200 S. Jones.  The free reading will begin at 2:00 pm.  Light refreshments will be served.

Hamilton’s list of accolades includes Poet Laureate of Oklahoma 1995-97, the Oklahoma Book Award for poetry chapbook Once the Dust in 1992, a Southwest Book Award in 1988 for a children’s novel, The Dawn Seekers and a Cherubim Award for children’s novel, The Mystery of Black Mesa. She has won the Byline Literary Awards for both short story and poetry and has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. She received the David Ray Poetry Award in 2000 and the 2002 Warren Keith Wright Prize for Poetry.

The list of her publications is extensive.  Recent releases include Shots On, Contrapuntal,  and poetry chapbook Umberto Eco Lost His Gun, all finalists for the Oklahoma Book Award.    She has been recently featured in White Wall, Tulane Review, Connecticut River Review, Caveat Lector (recorded reading online), San Pedro River Review, Crosstimbers, Ellipses, slipstream, Aries, The Bryant Literary, The Rockford Review and Poet Lore.

 A writer and storyteller born in Enid, Oklahoma, Hamilton graduated from Midwest City High School, has a BS degree from Phillips University and an MA in English from the University of Central Oklahoma.  She taught in the English Department of Rose State College for 10 years, and 7 years on the graduate faculty of the Creative Studies Division of the English Department for the University of Central Oklahoma.  She received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2007.

Second Sunday Poetry Readings are a program of The Performing Arts Studio located in the Norman Depot.  Office hours are Monday-Friday from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm.  For further information about PAS programs phone 405-307-9320.  For further information about Carol Hamilton visit www.carolhamilton.org.

Treasure

The northern light of Dutch painters ...
I fell in love with it at 6-years-old.
How it caressed neat tiles,
fabrics, stilled flesh.
Later I lived on the North Sea,
winter light as rare as a warm room.
How the painters must have loved it.
I remember the shock of Greek islands
on a movie screen in December,
so spendthrift with white and color
on a blue sea as we drowned,
day by day, in gray. Little jewels,
these paintings, and no wonder,
for precious commodities, hard found,
diamonds,
pearls,
an illumination on loved things,
these are held dear.

Carol Hamilton

Seven members of the art faculty of St. Gregory’s University in Shawnee will display their prints, paintings and photographs in the Depot Gallery, 200 S. Jones, Norman, from May 2 through June 29.  A reception for the artists will be held on May 11 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM in conjunction with Norman’s 2nd Friday Circuit of Art.  Guitarist Nathan Harwell will provide live music.

Faculty members exhibiting are Sheryl Cozad, M.F.A.; Christopher Cunningham, M.F.A. & Rodica Focseneanu Cunningham, M.F.A.; Brother George Hubl O.S.B.; Carey Hughes, M.F.A.; Madeline M. Rugh, PH.D., A.T.R.;  and  Tim Sullivan, M.F.A.

Sheryl Cozad is a visual artist, art and art history assistant professor at St. Gregory’s University, as well as an Oklahoma State Artist-in-Residence.   Cozad teaches college courses including drawing, painting, design, art history, and humanities.  Her artwork consists of drawings, paintings, murals and wood sculpture in a variety of media including oils, acrylics, watercolor, pastels and mixed media.  Portraits and narrative human figurative pieces are her main subjects.

Christopher Cunningham and Rodica Focseneanu Cunningham met and married during their graduate school education at the University of New Mexico, where they taught classes in Shop Foundations to both undergraduates and other graduate students.  Each holds an MFA in sculpture.  In recent years, Christopher and Rodica have worked together as professional artists and iconographers. Their work has become much smaller in scale.  Christopher utilizes carving and wood-burning in the creation of the frames for their icons.   Over the past few years, they have taught workshops at St. Gregory’s about Romanian reversed glass iconography, an old technique learned from Rodica’s great aunt in Romania.

Brother George Hubl is an accomplished photographer and serves as photographer for St. Gregory's University and webmaster for St. Gregory's Abbey. He is a member of the Professional Photographers of Oklahoma and has been instrumental in bringing their annual summer workshop to the campus of St. Gregory's for the last six years.  He assists with the university photography classes.

St. Gregory’s University photography instructor Carey Hughes obtained a bachelor of fine arts degree with an emphasis in photography/film at the University of Oklahoma. She later was accepted to the Savannah College of Art and Design where she earned a master of fine arts in photography.  Hughes’ work has been published in the Oklahoma Today and selected for several group exhibitions.   Her photos display Arabian horses.  “I am entranced by the beauty, power, and vitality of the horse.” says Hughes.

Madeline Rugh holds a Ph.D. in adult and community education, an MA in Art Education and a BFA in Painting.  Currently Dr. Rugh is a research advisor for Pratt Art Institute's Creative Art Therapy program in New York City and an affiliate faculty member for St. Gregory’s University in Fine Arts.  She continues to create her own paintings and work in  a number of mixed media methods, from traditional collage and digital photography to “woven paintings”, “eco-portraits” and “ritual implements”.

Tim Sullivan holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in both printmaking and ceramics from the University of Dallas, has been a master printer for numerous artists, and worked as a teaching assistant with the late printmaker Dan Kiacz.  Sullivan taught at North Lake College in Irving, Texas, for several years which led to his being invited to teach courses in Rome.  Sullivan has presented printmaking workshops at several Oklahoma colleges and universities, the Oklahoma Arts Council and the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute.

Gallery and office hours are 8:00 am to 2:00 pm Monday through Friday.  Phone 405-307-9320 for further information.  Gallery exhibitions in the Performing Arts Studio Depot Gallery are made possible in part by a grant from the Oklahoma Arts Council.