Arts
The following is a brief list of
events this weekend. For more infor
mation, call the venue.
CONCERTS:
Duffys Tavern, 1412 O St
(402)474-3543
Sunday: Christie Stremel,
Transforming Apollo and
Mykiw
Duggan’s Pub,440S. ll^St
(402)477-3513
Friday: FAC with Cool Riddum
and BREX
Saturday: BREX
Kimball Recital Hall, 12^ and R
streets
(402)472-3376
Saturday: Barb Zach
Sunday. Lynn Waddell
Knickerbocker's, 901 OSt
(402)476-6865
Friday Nationale and Guru
Saturday 8^ Wave, JV All-Stars,
Heroine Sheiks and Lost
Product
Pia-Mor Ballroom, 6600WO St
(402)475-4030
Saturday: Russ Morgan
Orchestra
Sunday Full Choke and Del Rio
Royal Grove, 340 W. Comhusker
Huy.
(402)474-2332
Friday Trigger
Saturday Seed and Mushroom
Bruise
WQ Downtown,1228P St
(402)477-4006
Friday Nadas and the Aaron
Zimmer Band
The Zoo Bar, 136 N. 14th St
(402)435-8754
Friday and Saturday little Slim
and die Back Alky Blues Band
THEATER;
Lied Center for Performing Arts,
301N. 12th St
(402)472-4747
Saturday: "Sing Around
Nebraska” Honor Choirs
Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater,
12^ and R streets
(402)472-5353
All weekend: Faust
The Star City Dinner Theatre
and Comedy Cabaret, 803 QSL
(402)477-8277
All weekend: “It’s a Wonderful
Life”
Studio Theatre, Temple
Building, 12^ and R streets
(402)472-2073
Saturday. “Sex and Metaphors”
GALLERIES:
Doc’s Place, 140 N. 8^ St.
(402)476-3232
AD weekend: Kameron Becwar
Haydon Gallery, 335 N. 8th
SL(402) 475-5421
All weekend: Dave Stewart
Noyes Art Gallery, 119 S. 9th St
(402)475-1061
AD weekend: Gretchen Meyers,
Kaori Schimzu, Tom Bord, Chris
andPatDonlan
The Sheldon Memorial Art
Gallery, 12^ and R streets
(402)472-2461
All weekend: Prints of Robert
Mangold, “The Jam Portfobo’
by S.C. Wilson and Jon Gieriich;
“Food for Thought”
1M1?oIkrnu)
1.0on Caballero
“American Don”
Math was never this cool. Except
in the third grade
2. Badly Drawn Boy
"Hour of the Bewilderbeast”
Mercury Prize-winning indie rock
3. J. Masics & the Fog
“More Light”
Dinosaur Jr. frontman, featuring
Bob Pollard
4. Elf Power
"The Winter Is Coming"
Finest full-length to date
5. The Doves
“Lost Souls”
Dreamy indie rock from the post
britpopera
6. Plastilina Mosh
"Juan Manuel”
Despite the kitsch, it’s every bit as
funky as its predecessors
7. Ml American Chainsaw Kittens
"All American Chainsaw Kittens”
With a dandy cover of "We Got
the Bear
8. Black Eyed Peas
"Bridging the Gap”
Lots of guest rappers and stuff.
But that’s what the kids want
9. Mike 6
"Sugar Daddy”
Smoove and funky
10. New Order
"BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert”
Recorded at Glastonbury ‘87,
featuring the first-ever perform
ance of “True Faith”
"Aquifer Lake*
by Peter Brown
Exhibition blends mystical frontier, captures soul of people
BY MELANIE MENSCH
Before the West was won, its mysticism,
romance and hardships won the hearts of
early 19th-century artists and continues to
captivate artists and audiences of the 21st
century.
“Art of the American West," the new exhi
bition of the Great Plains Art Collection, wel
comes viewers to its new location in Hewit
Place, 1155 Q St
Held in the first floor of the Christlieb
Gallery, the exhibition spreads more than 80
pieces of art, including paintings, photo
graphs and sculptures throughout its new
spacious home.
Sharon Gustafson, interim curator, said
the new place attracted a broader audience to
the impressive collection.
“This is the ideal location,” she said. “It’s
on the edge of campus and close to down
town. We’re getting lunch crowds and busi
ness people now. The gallery wasn’t as accessi
ble to these people before in Love Library.”
Fred B. Holbert, a Lincoln retiree, visited
the gallery Thursday with his wife, Gloria, and
son Kent
“It's convenient here," he said. “I love it,
especially the physical A
space. I came here to see (Albert) Bierstadt
and (George) Catlin, but I found new friends
like (Keith) Jacobshagen.”
Case Maranville, a wildlife management
student, said he was surprised to discover an
art collection in the new building.
“I thought it was going to be more offices,”
he said. “It’s a neat combination of modem art
meeting historical art"
Now, through a row of grand windows,
passersby can catch a glimpse of Western
American art, letting intrigue guide them in.
Artists spanning two centuries depict
imagery of majestic mountains, vast plains
and the inhabitants and animals of the
untamed frontier.
“The West was a mystical place,”
Gustafson said.
The artwork covers all styles from realism
to modernism, abstraction and impression
ism.
The collection hangs somewhat chrono
logically. Different themes of the art include
migration, mass settlement, industrialization,
military forces and resurgence of native tradi
tions.
Beginning with Western art’s roots in real
ism, it descends to its post-Civil War concen
tration on landscape, to the more tradi
|k tional American-Indian
an oi everyday me
and finally resting at a
more modern depic
tion of Western
scenery.
Some early artists
conveyed adventur
ous images of the
West for curious audi
ences back home,
Gustafson said.
But early 19th-centu
ry artist Albert Bierstadt
portrayed a less romantic
view of the West in
“Courthouse Rock,” a
small, straight-forward
Plains painting of a
Nebraska natural
landmark.
Other paint
ings, such as
those of Gene Kloss and Robert Glider,
expressed the beauty of America as westward
expansion glided over the land.
Photography portrays the West then and
now in the collection.
Ben Wittick and Adolph F. Muhr pho
tographed the transitional lifestyle and identi
ty crisis beheld by early 19t^1-century
American Indians in “Anselina, Navajo
Woman” and “Red Elk, Red Dog, Sioux
Indians.”
Modern photographers such as Peter
Brown, John C. Spence and UNL Journalism
Professor
oeorge luck
capture small
t o w n
Nebraska with
their cameras.
American
Indian artists'
works also
grace the
gallery walls.
In “Night,"
by Juane
Quick-To-See
Smith, the
American Indian artist combines text and
shape in this mixed-media collage, contrast
ing images of nature with those of white inter
vention.
American-Indian artists such as William
Standing and Fred Beaver painted their ver
sions of the West before white intervention in
"Talk ofWagons” and “Tracking.”
Traditional Indian artists such as Tonita
Pena and Richard Martinez display the every
day activities of tribal life, such as dancing and
harvesting.
More than 30 bronze sculptures of all sizes
decorate the interior room of the gallery, but
the most overpowering piece is “No Huning
Back” by Veryl Goodnight.
Standing in the gallery’s foyer, the life-size
figure of a pioneer woman, arm resting on a
wagon wheel, idealizes the American spirit of
adventure and hope.
“The West has a romantic appeal that we
are enamored with,” Gustafson said. “We’re a
young country, not far removed from the West
migration.
"Mountain Man*
byJohndymer
Many iami
ly mem
bers have
memories
of the hard
ships and
settlement.
It's a theme
very close
to home."
"Sih-Chida and
Manchsi-Karehde/'by
Karl Bodmer
Nebraska poets to share words on nature, religion
BY BILLY SMUCK
In a nutshell, poetry is the art
of splashing emotion and life
experience onto a page.
Two Nebraska poets will
aptly display that sentiment in a
Coffee House Poetry Reading
tonight at Lee Booksellers. ,
At 7:30, Lincoln poet Ted
Kooser and Norfolk poet
Barbara Schmitz will read from
their latest books, which are
available at Lee Booksellers, 56th
and Highway 2.
Their poems focus on nature
and spirituality through a range
of life experiences.
Kooser, 61, is a retired insur
ance executive and a well
known Nebraska poet who has
published eight different books.
Tonight, he will be reading
from his latest publication,
“Winter Morning Works: One
Hundred Postcards to Jim
Harrison.”
Kooser, who has been writ
ing since he was 18-years-old,
put his pen aside for awhile in
the summer of 1997 because of
depression and illness.
It wasn’t until the following
autumn of 1998, while Kooser
was recovering from surgery and
radiation treatment for cancer,
that he began to write again.
Instructed by his doctor to
avoid sun exposure for a year,
Kooser would take two-mile
walks before dawn on the coun
try roads near his home.
“I would go on these pre
dawn walks, and one morning, I
decided to write a poem, which
later turned into a morning ritu
al,” he said.
Over the span of that winter,
the morning ritual produced the
collection of poems from which
he will be reading this evening.
“These poems are about the
natural world,” Kooser said. "I
would see a haystack or a flock
of birds and write about it,
reflecting on what I saw and
felt."
Kooser, who is looking for
ward to the reading, said a good
poetry reading is “really quite an
experience.”
“It’s one that most of us are
not accustomed to, which is to
hear a poem that’s trying to
reach its audience," he said.
Schmitz, who teaches
English at Northeast
Community College in Norfolk,
said people don’t pay enough
attention to poetry.
“It’s something that could
make their lives a lot richer," she
said.
Schmitz will be reading from
her latest book, “How to Get Out
of the Body.”
“They’re family poems about
going to Catholic school and
death of loved ones,” Schmitz
said. “On a deeper level, they will
transcend the ordinary and
commence with the spirit.”
In writing her latest poetry,
Schmitz, who is affiliated with
the Sufi Order of the West, has
drawn from her Sufism experi
ence.
“Sufism is a spiritual teach
ing that acknowledges all reli
gions and all prophets,” she
said.
Kuzma was cited on the back of
Schmitz’s book.
“This is a sad book but chill
ingly honest,” Kuzma wrote.
“She is a courageous poet who
tells the truth.”
Linda Hillegass, owner of
Lee Booksellers, said the Coffee
House Poetry Reading will be
the bookstore’s third.
“We've been surprised by the
popularity of the poetry reading
so far,” she said. “The customers
have told us they find something
special in the pleasure of listen
ing to the poet’s
own voice.”
Event Preview
Coffee House Poetry
Reading featuring
Ted Kooser &
Rarhara Qphmib
Scott Eastman/DN