Page 8 Daily Nebraskan Friday, January 12,2001 WppIfonH -LEi^PreyiewJ The following is a brief list of events this weekend. For more information, call the venue. CONCERTS: Duffy’s Tavern, 14120 St 474-3543 Saturday: Drive by Honky CD release show, No cover Duggan's Pub, 440S. 11th Sl 477-3513 Thursday: Kris Larger Band $3 Friday: FAC with C .A. Waller $3 Friday & Saturday night: The Rocking Fossils $4 Kimball Recital Hall, 12th and R streets 472-3376 Friday: Peter Collins 7:30 p.m. Knickerbockers Bar & Grill, 901 OSl 476- 6965 Friday: Westside Proletariat & Settle for Less Saturday: Early all ages show Jank 1000 and 8* Wave 10 p.m.-La.m.: Lost Product and Mac and Don’s Supper Club Pla Mor Ballroom, 6600 West OSt 475-4030 Sunday: Southern Cross and Sandy Creek 8-12 p.m. Dance lessons 7-8 p.m. $5 All ages show Royal Grove Nite Club, 340 West Comhusker Highway 474- 2332 On the Fritz: Classic Rock THEATER: Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater, 12™ and R streets 472-5353 Dancer in die Dark Friday 6:30 /9 p.m. Saturday 1/ 3:30/6:30/9p.m. Sunday 4/6:30/9 p.m. Star City Dinner Theatre & Comedy Cabaret, 803 Q Street 477- 8277 Weekend of Cabaret Friday: Brian Mathers Saturday: Nancy Marshall and Steve Hansen Shows 7:30 p.m. dinner at 6:15 p.m. Dinner tickets $25, Slow $15 GALLERIES: Gallery 9 Professional Artist Affiliation, Suite-4124 S. 9™ St 477-2822 Yvonne Meyer Transitions Haydon Art Gallery, 335N. 8th St. 475- 5421 All weekend: Price by Kate Brook Hours: 10-5 Tuesday Saturday Noyes Art Gallery, 119 S Ninth 475-1061 All month: Focus gallery; Susan Palmer, Susan Barnes, Julie Willcock and Kay Cooper 1. The Nation of Ulysses Their final recordings, released 8 years after they broke up. -Minin— m 9* • CwlKHIuy yOIQIIhJ & Space-age analog future pop is all the rage. S. Libreiiess“ Yesterday and Former Polvo and Helium member Ash Bowie’s new project. rrtucn vucxs Toung uvyvf Ultra-catchy indie rock. 8.0ns "One” Math rock as math rock should be done. hi—n—— ^ U |«|| W 0. vOfm nU«TM NY pop group’s first release on Merge Records. 7. DoNrae 3838 "Deltroa 3898" Dan the Automator and Del and a whole bunch of guest stars. 8. Q aei Net U "He Kill No Beep Beep" More DC post-punk on Dischord. 8. Mi N to (X) •jyg (rmR ft injury” The other space-age analog future poppers on the countdown. 18. The Oeoti Life "Neveaa ee a Nocturne" Produced by Lincoln’s own Mogis brothers. Sheldon exhibit features 20-year archived collection BY MAUREEN GALLAGHER Collecting quilts may seem an unusual habit to many, but former University of Alabama professor Robert Cargo certainly thinks otherwise. Cargo was drawn to the tech niques of black quilters from his home in the Deep South and acquired an extensive collection of those quilts over 20 years. Starting today, 30 of those quilts are now on display at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery through April 1. Cargo initially began collect ing quilts after inheriting several from his grandmother, but even tually shifted his focus to collect ing quilts by black artists, prima rily from west Alabama, that tended to use brighter colors and more variation than other quilts. “It’s almost as if the makers of those quilts set out to break the rules,” said Cargo. “They show obvious signs of improvisation, Art Preview —(Where: African American1 Quilts Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery 12th &R Jan. 12 - April 1 use unusual color combinations and don’t follow a traditional pat tern.” A technique common to black quilters, Cargo said, is to use strips of material arranged vertically, deviating from com mon block-quilt styles. Often, they’re asymmetrical and use large, eye-catching elements with many pattern variations. “These quilts will often seem bizarre,” he said. In all the quilts, Cargo said, the dominating characteristic is their improvisation. “In a word, improvisation captures the essence of these quilts,” he said. “In fact, I have heard them compared to jazz.” Over the course of 50 years, Cargo amassed an extensive col lection of quilts, numbering nearly 300, and most were creat ed by black quilters from Alabama. Robert Cargo and his wife, Helen, donated 156 of their quilts to the UNL International Quilt Studies Center. Ultimately, 30 were selected for display, said Sheldon Director Janice Dreisbach. “We had many difficult deci sions, and we wanted to display more, but unfortunately the quilts’ size prevented it,” Dreisbach said. "In the end we tried to choose quilts that showed a cross-section of the NateWagner/DN Ed Rumbaugh, Assistant Prepearator of the Sheldon Art Museum prepares one of thirty quilts to be displayed in the Robert and Helen Cargo Collection Showcase at * the Sheldon from January 12 to April 1. whole collection.” The quilts selected represent piece-work, story and strip quilts, and most date from the 1970s and ’80s, said Driesbach. Driesbach went on to name some of the quilters featured in the exhibit, among them Yvonne Wells, who will be giving a lecture with Cargo at the Sheldon Feb. 23-24. Wells and Cargo will lecture at 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 23, and on Feb. 24, Wells will conduct a Family Story Hour and Family QuiltWorkshop at 10:30 a.m. 70s colors girl displays prints in new Doc's show BY SCAN mccakthy Though Aja Engel has not graduated from UNL yet, her artwork hangs in three coun tries: Italy, Bangladesh and the United States. In the U.S., Engel’s paintings are displayed at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Her latest exhibit is at Doc’s Place, HON. Eighth St., until Ian. 31. Engel, a senior art major from South Sioux City, special izes in printmaking media as well as oil paintings. Most of the paintings for her exhibit contain abstract shapes and psychedelic colors. "I’m a weirdo 70s color girl,” Engel said. Engel has two intaglio works featured in her exhibit. During the process of intaglio, acids are etched into two copper plates. The crevasses of the plates are filled with ink and then the plate is run through a press. Engel spent two years work ing on the exhibit at Doc’s Place. However, she only had two days to get her exhibit ready. “Right now, I have six empty walls in my apartment that had my paintings,” Engel laughed. Some of the paintings were completed in Florence, Italy, where she studied in the sum mer of 1999. When Engel gradu Courtesy of Aja Engel UNL senior Aja Engel's art has been shown in three foreign countries and at Lousiana State University. The Doc's show runs through January. ates in May, she hopes to go to graduate school on the East Coast. She has already sold one painting, but she expressed reservations about selling her favorite painting, “Substantial Choices." “It's a stupid attachment I have,” Engel said. This will be the second exhibit in Lincoln featuring Engel’s work in six months. Last August, Club 1427 displayed Engel’s work. For inspiration, Engel lis tened to hip-hop and electronic music while she worked on her latest exhibit. One of the paint ings features headphones and records connected together. “My biggest challenge,” she said, “was to create a body of work that goes well together." God needs to cut the crao BY ANDREW SHAW Dear God, I’ve been watching TV a lot lately. I know, it rots my brain, but I try to steer clear of sitcoms. My concern lies in the one minute infomercials, the type that advertise music CDs but not the cheesy love song compilations or even the greatest disco hits of June 1977. I am concerned with the Contemporary Christian commer cials featuring thousands of mainly white faces raising their hands in the air in crowded stadiums, ready to quake at any moment These mindless masses are singing along with lyrics either lift ed out of context from the Bible or containing such juvenile combi nations of God-related words that any third-grader paying attention in Sunday school could jot down as an “inspired" poem. How have You become so one dimensional in music? These Amy Grant- and Michael W. Smith wannabe bands repeat trite mus ings like “God is so good” or “He’s an awesome God,” while plucking the most basic chord progressions from an acoustic guitar accompa nied by an orchestra of MIDI vio lins. That’s not praise music, that’s lazy and unimaginative. If you have actually blessed these people with musical talent, they are wasting that skill, not expanding on it wisely. God, I’ve listened to “WOW 2001: The Year’s 30 Top Christian Artists and Hits,” and I’ve got to tell Music Commentary you that the inspiration is waning. People are accepting good money for writing bad songs. People are paying good money for these bands’ songs because they think that it will speak something to them, when it really just reiterates the same ideas of “living water” and the “leap of faith” in a smiling ly complacent form. Now don’t get me wrong, God, these ideas are all fine and dandy, but after thousands of years of people exploring their relation ship with You, I think they could discover some sort of new metaphor or way to describe You. Here’s my leap offaith; one that most likely has never been taken by Steven Curtis Chapman or Cece Winans. I’ve been looking for You in unlikely places and have come up with some mind-blowing con clusions. Marilyn Manson’s 2000 release, “Holy Wood," is splattered with graphic images, both in the liner notes and the music, which might shake the weak of mind. But I stuck it out and discovered an intelligent discussion of Your exis tence. And Manson comes away believing in You. After exploring alchemy, Kabbalah, violence, assassination and Heaven, Manson exposes his listeners to the diverse complexi ties of spirituality without forcing one religious agenda or perspec tive. It’s not a political statement, not Christians versus the world. It’s an amazing and intelligent dis covery ofYou, God. “WOW 2001’s” diversity reach ing out by two black faces and two Hispanic ones on the first disc, and two ofthe songs sung by these non white artists were written by white songwriters. That’s not a fair repre sentation ofYour diverse world, yet it is what is considered the most spiritually-minded music offered. Like on "Holy Wood,” a spiritu al journey takes place on The Smashing Pumpkins’ final album, “Machina/The Machines of God.” The concept album explores one man’s conflict with the critical eyes of the world and how he constant ly looks toward two spiritual enti ties: an amorphous being and You in the form of woman. The extend ed odyssey to find You spills over to the album’s artwork, a second album, and various writings from Billy Corgan, the head Pumpkin. This idea of listening to music with a paradoxically open mind and critical eye may seem like a lot of work, but You never meant for spirituality to be simple, did You? It’s time to cut the crap, God, and change the direction of stereo typical “spiritual” music. It has become laughable and banal, and they are affixing Yodr name to it Spiritual music isn’t meant to be predictable; it’s meant to be thought-provoking. Psalms 33:3 says, “Sing unto Him a new song; play skillfiillyvnih a loud noise.” Thanks for listening, God. Stay groovy.