Arts & Entertainment
* m
Businesses paint pretty picture for artists
By Mary Nell Westbrook
Staff Reporter
About 30 Lincoln businesses sup
port local and regional artists through
a leasing program set up by Haydon
Art Gallery.
The program allows businesses
and individuals to lease pieces of art
for three months or more. Many busi
nesses are on a perpetual leasing pro
gram in which they trade in different
pieces of art abou t every three months,
said Diane Martin, director of the
Haydon Gallery', 230 N. 7th St.
The artists represented are all pro
fessional artists f rom the state or re
gion. The regional artists all have
some tic to the University of Ne
braska-Lincoln or Lincoln, Marlin
said.
The 91 artists are all members of
the Nebraska Art Association.
The gallery acts as an agent for the
artist, Martin said. About 60 percent
of those leasing art eventually buy the
piece or pieces they are leasing.
“The artists love it,” she said. “It
expands their visibility.”
Not only do the artists love the
program, so do the businesses leasing
the art.
DaVinci’s leases art continually
for its restaurants, said Kent Knudson,
DaVinci’s vice president.
“We really enjoy the program,” he
said. “We change 75 percent of the art
in four restaurants quarterly.”
Replacing art gives the restaurant a
face lift, he said. Customers notice
and comment on the art.
FirsTier Bank leases three or four
paintings for the various branches,
said Ross McCown, vice president
and manager of customer service.
“Thousands of people see the art
and sometimes ask where it comes
from,” he said.
Barbara Kastncr, an artist whose
work is leased through the Haydon
Gallery, has lived in Nebraska for
eight years and said Nebraska busi
nesses are great supporters of local
artists.
The program educates the public
about what is going on regionally in
art, she said.
Karen Dienstbier, a still-life artist,
said that the program gets artists’
work out in the community and Ha
ydon will put clients in contact with
the artist.
“Good exposure is very important
for making a living,” she said.
Art association celebrates 100 years
The Sheldon Memorial ArtGalleiy
at UNL will celebrate the 100th anni
versary of the Nebraska Art Associa
tion with a series of exhibits from the
gallery’s permanent collection.
The “Sheldon Sampler” series,
which continues through next spring,
will feature the art gallery’s most
significant paintings, sculpture and
works on paper. The first two exhibits
opened Sunday. They are entitled
“Masterworks” and “More than 100
American Prints.”
Future exhibits will be titled “The
Nebraska Art Association Remem
bers,” “European Selections,” “Ne
braska Collects” and “100 Photo
graphs.”
“The Sheldon Sampler” now on
display is representative of the 19th
century landscape tradition. Ex
amples include works by Hudson
River School painters such as Thomas
Cole and panoramic vistas by Albert
Bierstadl.
Impressionist paintings include
those of Childe Hassam, John
Twachtman, Theodore Robinson and
J. Alden Weir. Early 20th-century
works will include those by Robert
Henri and the Stieglitz Circle mem
bers Georgia O’Keefe and Arthur
Dove. Cubist works will include
paintings by Max Weber and Patrick
Henry Bruce. American modernists
Marsden Hartley, John Marin and
Alfred Maurer also will be repre
sented.
The realistic tradition will be rep
resented by such diverse artists as
Thomas Eakins, Thomas Hart Ben
ton, Edward Hopper, Wayne Thic
baud and Philip Pearlstein. Abstract
artists will include Mark Rothko,
Barnett Newman and Frank Stella.
In addition, sculptures by Elie
Nadclman and David Smith will be
relocated inside the gallery through
out the year long commemoration.
The Nebraska Art Association is
the oldest continuous arts-support
organization in the country. Its parent
organization, the Hay don Art Club,
was founded in 1888.
In 1900 the club’s name was
changed to the Nebraska Art Associa
tion, and the success of its early exhi
bitions prompted Mary Frances Shel
don to bequeath her entire estate to the
construction of an art gallery. The
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery stands
as a memorial to her and to her brother,
Adams Bromley Sheldon, who added
money to his sister’s gift.
UNL and the Nebraska Art Asso
ciation have shared a century of part
nership with separately owned, jointly
housed art collections.
I
J
Butch Irelar i/DaiIy Nebraskan
Kent Knudson, DaVinci’s vice president, with “Landscape #5”
by William Lyberis, in the store at 14th and Superior streets.
■ —-1
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/
To live your life as a dog
is a way to deal with fate
By Kevin Cowan
Senior Reporter
“My Life As A Dog,” Swedish (English
subtitles), Cinema Twin.
Lasse Hallstrom’s “My Life as a Dog”
shows fate in a way American films do not
— seen through the thick persona logic of
the child mind.
We get complacent, thinking that life
surrounds us with peach-fuzz protection,
thate veryone is happy , dial we need to smile
and suggest to all the idea of having a “nice
day.”
Movie Review
But fate holds a separate notion. Fate
twists life with every opportunity. If we
don * t keep a world to ourselves, distance our
inner world from the outer, our mental rope
will fray and snap. “My Life As A Dog”
suggests that we need to keep the rope taunt,
though not stressed. Sometimes maintain
ing a certain distance from love and death is
essentially important Sometimes you just
have to be a dog.
Dogs loyally coexist with fate. One day
they chase rabbits through a barnyard; the
next day they lie severed on a highway. Fate
works that way.
“My Life as a Dog,” with all the exquisite
technique accompanying so many foreign
films, lets us know that if we keep a “tight
rope,” we‘ll win the round in the end.
The film holds light focus on the intro
spective mind of Ingemar, a 12-year-old,
and the events that take place in a year and
a half of his life.
He struggles through early adolescence
chastised for his odd outward behavior. The
only companion he can truly relate to is his
dog, Sickan, not an uncommon scenario.
What makes the film interesting arc the
behavioristic quirks of Ingemar and the
inner rationale he uses to keep himself
strong. If all children could see and under
stand what Ingamar adheres to, adolescent
rip-tide hysteria could easily disappear from
childhood.
It’s hard when you love people and fate
stands in the way, barring outward expres
sion. Ingamar loves his mother, but all his
acts of good gesture get lost in domestic
haywire and his mother’s attempts to cope
with cancerous lungs. No matter how hard
he tries, fate walks first and destroys the
noble act
The advantage of film is knowledge
shown to the audience, while the characters
see only the surface. Ingemar’s relationship
with his rifle-toting brother, for the audi
ence, appears as an adolescent terror where
the unbalanced scales of punishmental ways
end up against Ingamar.
It seems dogmatic to comment on the
performances given by a cast of people who
could very easily live in the setting they
create. Of course, the performances are
superb. It’s obvious that Hallstrom took the
time to find the faces and the abilities re
quired, rather than hiring a load of meticu
lous professionals who would overplay
everything.
“My Life as a Dog” is subtle. With
mother’s fingers in potato-sack gloves, it
approaches the subjects that children all
over the world experience, but Americans
don’t like to admit.
For example, a pop-bottle introduction to
sex — a sexual explanation given by an
older child thatends up with Ingemar'spenis
stuck in a wine bottle. Tomboy girls whose
breasts are beginning to give them away. A
first love with an older woman and the
curiosity adjoining. These topics, if at
tempted in American cinema, would be
labeled as pornographic grunge. But Hall
strom shows the naturalistic way that adults
treat youth — understanding and compas
sion rather than superficial scolding and
paranoid fear of social taboo.
