Lindsay Gallery presents WOOD

Lindsay Gallery, 986 N. High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43201, 614 291 1973.

WOOD

One definition of Folk Art is "ordinary people making art with materials they have at hand." For this show, the materials grow on trees and the not-so-ordinary people are:

Ricky Barnes, Roy Butcher, T.E.Hay, Tim Hitchcock,
& Edwin Jeffrey

Opening reception: Friday, March 3, 2006, 6-9 pm
www.lindsaygallery.com

School for Mime Theatre 2006 Summer Seminar at Kenyon College

The 2006 session of the School for Mime Theatre, at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio runs June 26 through July 7. The youth seminar is scheduled for June 12-22.

Inspired to foster the development and strenghtening of the skills necessary to create solo and ensemble mime and physical theatre, the School for Mime Theatre faculty invites you to attend the 27th annual summer seminar on the campus of Kenyon College, in Gambier Ohio.

Faculty: C. Nicholas Johnson, Rick Wamer, Lorie Heald, Stephen Chipps and Dan Griffiths.
Tuition: One week, $500; two weeks, $900. (Fees include tuition amd housing)

Contact:
C. Nicholas Johnson, 316 686 3640, alitheacreations@cox.net
Rick Wamer, 520 990 5425, ricgeocaps@msn.com

www.schoolformimetheatre.org
www.alitheacreations.com

Bread and Circus Theatre Auditions for "The Lion in Winter"

Bread and Circus Theatre Company will hold auditions for "The Lion in Winter" at the Tripleforce Artistic Center, 3979 Parkway Lane in Hilliard. 7 PM Sunday March 5, Monday March 6, Sunday March 12, and Monday March 13. 5 men, one woman. Resume and head shot requested; readings from script. Please note the part of Eleanor of Aquitaine has been cast. Call 614-470-4895 or visit www.bctco.org.

BREAD AND CIRCUS THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS IBSEN’S “A DOLL’S HOUSE”

Bread and Circus Theatre Company presents “A Doll’s House” at the Tripleforce Artistic Center, 3979 Parkway Lane in Hilliard. Evening performances at 8 PM Friday March 3, Saturday March 4, Friday March 10, and Saturday March 11; matinee Sunday March 5 at 2:30 PM. Reservations $10 for adults and $8 for students and seniors; call 614-470-4895 or visit www.bctco.org

Henrik Ibsen is rightfully regarded as the father of modern drama in theatre and literary circles. It was Ibsen who discarded the tired remnants of the romantic, idyllic Shakespearean drama of 250 years earlier, with its tales of old kings, faeries, ancient Greeks and Romans, and similar story elements rooted in a certain level of fantasy, for the doings of the great and near-great have little grounding in the travails of the common people.

It was partly in recognition of this detached tradition that Bread and Circus Theatre Company produced, in March 2005, Age of Wolves, a tale of great deeds and powerful people firmly rooted in the viewpoint and experiences of the common man. Likewise, it was Ibsen who recognized the bankruptcy of the drama of the nineteenth century, and resolved to create plays that reflected the reality of the ordinary for the first time. The result was the New Realism, a revolution in theatre, and its most eloquent realization, A Doll’s House.


A Doll’s House features Hilliard actors Christine Liberto as Nora, Briana Biffath as Ellen, and Frank Biffath as Krogstad; Columbus actors Carrie Hays as Anna, Manny Flowers as Dr. Rank, and Mony Carpenter as Christina; and Westerville’s Pete Swingle as Torvald. Artistic Director Howard Carpenter is directing, assisted by Kate Campbell and Carrie Hays.

Barbara Chavous, a Columbus Artist, honored by Arnett Howard

(I share Arnett's warmhearted tribute to this most anmazing artist, friend and neighbor. Her talent, way beyond her imaginative way of sculpting totems and spirit houses, was in the way she inspired so many others, children especially, to open up to the immense possibilities of imagination.) Charlie



What a blazing weekend; Cols. was on fire. Friday, Tim Commisky Trio at Worthington Inn, Saturday, the Cols. Children's Choir World Music Festival, Arti Gras at First Community Church in Marblecliff with real New Orleans Cuisine, The Cols. Jazz Orchestra saluting Diz and Bird with Jeff Clayton, Claudio Roditi and Deena DeRose, a jam session with Bryan Olsheski at the Cols. Music Hall, Sunday at Shiloh Baptist Church and a sellout at Cols. Music Hall that featured piano phenom Aaron Diehl. I'm overdosed!

For thirty years my artistic mother has been Barbara Chavous, painter and sculptor. I met Barbara in 1975 when I was living in East Columbus and she was looking for a space to work. She and her former husband, painter and engineer Stanley Sourelis, moved two doors away, above the then Pace Gallery at Taylor and East Broad Street.

Barbara was raised in Columbus, graduated from East High, Central State University and was married to movie photographer Adger Cowens in New York. She met Sourelis in New York and they resettled in Columbus. She says that he taught her the sense of color that now characterizes her work.

During those exciting days, Stanley and Barbara were the artistic mentors to many of us; Queen Brooks, Terry Logan, Pheoris West, Candy Watkins, Stephen Canneto, Walt Neal, Sandy Aska and countless others. They moved to 776 East Franklin Avenue, the former Henry Hallwood Mansion, and were one of the pioneering household in a diverse community now know as Olde Towne East.

One day in 1979, I was wrestling with the choice of accumulating thirty years and a pension in a lawn fertilizer factory or walking off into unknown to be a musician entrepreneur, I went to her for advise (or more like a shove off the gangplank). Her words I will carry with me forever, "If a bird stays too long in the nest they get too fat to fly." I jumped into history.

She can't remember those words of advise to me. If fact, my artistic mom can't remember very much because she has dementia; that loss of intellectual capacity has become so severe that it interferes with her social functioning. She has been patient for over ten years, but fortunately, she has been able to continue to create her amazing art pieces.

In 2003, I was honored to be nominated for the Arts Freedom Award, presented by Southside Settlement House and the Columbus Museum. The two other honorees that year were Steven Anderson, director of Phoenix Theater for Children and Barbara Chavous, my mom.

What a joyful evening; like the proverbial "Old Home Night." All of the Columbus arts family that we partied, exhibited and loved with during those frenzied days of the seventies and eighties came together to celebrate the recognition of our life's work.

To paraphrase a composition from my pastor Mary Kay Beale Carter, "With grateful heart I thank you, Lord, " for bringing Barbara Chavous into my life.

Enjoy. Feedback feels good. The Black History Blog Site is at http://creolefunk.com/historical/blackhistory/blackhistory.html
A www.creolefunk.com

Christopher Ries Master in Glass at OSU Faculty Club Gallery - March 1 through 30, 2006

This release was submitted by Marion Fisher, 614 888 3856

Internationally known glass artist Christopher Ries presents 12 crystal sculptures, with the help of Hawk Galleries of Columbus.
Opening reception: March 11, 1:00 to 3:00. More info, call the club at: 614 292 2262.

An Ohio native, Ries graduated from the Ohio State University in 1975 with a BA in ceramics and glass. While still an undergraduate, Ries helped establish the university's first glass "hot shop". After working with heated glass, he began exploring techniques of coldwork, sawing, grinding, slicing, cutting and carving glass. He has been an artist in residence at Schott Glass Technologies of Durea, PA. The company produces the highest quality of glass allowing transmittal of 99.8% of the light. His pioneering work lead him to create unique effects in glass using ambient light, maximizing the reflective and reactive properties of the optical quality of glass.

The Ohio State University Faculty Club is located at 181 S. Oval Drive, on the Campus of the Ohio State University.

Wendell Hawkins - More from Arnett Howard's Columbus Black and Jazz history archives

Arnette Howard keeps digging up nuggets from his extensive archives. Thanks for sharing with us!

Mardi Gras season starts Friday. My first party is at First Community Church, First Ave. and Cambridge Blvd., Saturday, Feb. 18th, 3 pm., featuring a second line for displaced New Orleans families. Let the good times roll.
A


Picture captions: Wendell at Club Regal on Long Street at Garfield Ave. Dig those curtins. Early 1950s.
The Sammy Hopkins Trio, Bill Ray, drums, Sammy, alto sax, Wendell, piano. Late 1940s.

The Black History Blog archive is at http://creolefunk.com/historical/blackhistory/blackhistory.html

Wendell would have been born in 1927 or 28 and died in the mid-1980s.
The sound file is three minutes. Sorry if it clogs your browser. Feedback is good.

These days there are reports of British music fans who are writing my jazz research friends, actively interested in Wendell Hawkins, a Columbus pianist who was nearing the end of his long career when I saw him in the early 1980s. He was playing at Engine House Number Five, a very popular steak and seafood house on Columbus' Southside, at Thurman and Fourth Street in trendy German Village. I regret that I never interviewed him because he lived not too long afterwards. I did spend an evening and had a chat with his brother, Wyman, a drummer with The Chuck Henderson Trio at the Gloria Restaurant. And, somewhere, I picked up a record album on the King Label called Mr. Hawkins at the piano: The Wendell Hawkins Trio. So, to fill whatever thirst that our British friends have, here are the notes from the ten song album written by Bill Brabson in 1960.

"Unfortunately, scattered throughout the length and breadth of America are a hand full of musicians who, for one reason or another, be it the case of not being in the right place at the right time or merely the workings of an unpredictable fate, sometimes spend their entire professional lives unknown and unrecognized by anyone save their fellow musicians and a relatively small following of discriminating fans in what area they happen to be working.

Wendell Hawkins has been, up until now, one of those hiding-their-light-under-a-bushel musicians.

Jazz fans around Ohio have been digging Wendell, and his equally talented brother Wyman, for more years than either of them care to remember. But the music business being what it is today, Gabriel himself couldn't get the type of exposure that was almost commonplace in the hey day of bug bands, radio remotes and supper clubs in the 1930s and '40s.

Twenty-five years ago... Wendell Hawkins would have been known coast-to-coast. (He) has as little background worth touting as anyone we've ever run across. He has had no command performances before Queen Elizabeth, he's never played the Newport Jazz festival and he isn't a regular on Jack Parr's nightly (show).

All he does is play good, listenable, clean-cut, imaginative, jazz piano. There's a little Art Tatum here, a smattering of Erroll Garner there, a hunk of Oscar Peterson in spots, but the overall product is pure Wendell Hawkins. A thirty-two year old pianist from Columbus, ohio who we firmly expect to be one of the blazing new stars on the jazz horizon. He is backed up by his brother Wyman on drums and the capable bass work of William Bell.

We hope you like Wendell. We think he plays good. He's a nice guy too."

Kenyon Farrow Signs Books at Monkeys Retreat

Kenyon Farrow will be at the Monkeys Retreat store, Tuesday 2/21/06 from 6-8 pm to promote and sign his book LETTERS FROM YOUNG ACTIVISTS: TODAY'S REBELS SPEAK OUT

Kenyon Farrow is a writer and activist living in Brooklyn, NY. He is the culture editor for Clamor Magazine, and co-editor of Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out (Nation Books 2005).His essays have appeared in print publications and online, and in the upcoming anthology, Spirited: Affirming the Soul of Black Gay and Lesbian Identity (Red Bone Press 2005). Recently named one of the nations "Movers & Shakers" in HIV/AIDS activism by The Body.com, Kenyon's work as an activist has also included prison and police brutality issues, drug policy, LGBT, youth and homelessness issues. He is currently working on his first solo book.

Goes into it's 2nd Printing in January!!!
www.lettersfromyoungactivists.org
LETTERS FROM YOUNG ACTIVISTS: TODAY'S RE BELS SPEAK OUT
by Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin & Kenyon Farrow, editors / Preface by Bernardine Dohrn --Who will lead America in the years to come? Letters from Young Activists introduces America's bold, exciting, new generation of activists. These diverse authors challenge the common misconception that today's young people are apathetic, shallow, and materialistic. Aged ten to thirty-one, these atheist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, transgender, heterosexual, bisexual, metrosexual Americans are from every type of background and ethnicity, but are united by their struggle toward a common goal. They are the inheritors of their parents' legacy from the sixties, but also have the imagination and courage to embark on new paths and different directions.

In letters addressed to their parents, to past generations, to each other, to the youth of tomorrow and to their future selves, each author articulates his or her vision for the world as they work towards racial, economic, gender, environmental and global justice. As the editors write in their introduction: "From globalization to the war on terrorism and beyond, our generation is compelled to action in the midst of a rapidly changing, and unique political moment Our challenge, and yours, is to live our lives in a way that does not make a mockery of our values."

About the authors:
Dan Berger is the author of Outlaws of America and currently a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania.

Chesa Boudin was a leader of the Yale Coalition for Peace and is studying issues of Public Policy in Latin America at Oxford University, where he is a Rhodes Scholar. His parents are David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, who both participated in the 1981 Brinks robbery (his letter to his dad who is still in prison is remarkable).

Kenyon Farrow has been published in City Limits and Black Commentator and on activism websites, and is working on a book.

The preface is by Bernardine Dohrn, former member of the Weather Underground, writer, activist and professor of law at Northwestern University.

"These voices will not be ignored. They will be heard." --Mumia Abu-Jamal, political prisoner and author of We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party

"Whether North American or Other you will not regret the hours spent with this inspiring, compassionate and soulful book. It allows a glimpse into the hearts of young activists of today... They are making of themselves an offering to the Goddess of Peace." --Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple

Trade paperback book (5-1/2" x 8-1/4"), 256 pages. -- $14.95

JAZZ at COLUMBUS MUSIC HALL update 02/16/06

JAZZ at COLUMBUS MUSIC HALL

www.columbusmusichall.com
734 Oak Street 464-0044
One block southeast of Broad & I-71

...an intimate jazz venue featuring local, regional, and national musicians...

Reminder:

Saturday, February 18, 10:00 pm, $7, Bryan Olsheski,
tenor sax, Mark Flugge, piano, Doug Richeson, bass,
Dave Weinstock, drums

And...don't miss this special concert on...

Sunday, February 19, 7:30pm, $10, $5 students, AARON
DIEHL, jazz piano with special guest vocalist,
Jennifer Sanon.
Aaron is a 3rd year student in the jazz program at The
Juilliard School of Music. He is a Columbus native
and returns occasionally to treat us to his keyboard
skills. Jennifer is a student in NYC who has
performed with Wynton Marsalis and promises to be the
next jazz "diva."

Wednesday, February 22, 7:00, $5, Teen Jazz

Friday, February 24, 8pm, $10, $5 students. The Todd
Stoll Septet returns to feature the music of Thelonius
MONK, Jelly Roll MORTON, and Wynton MARSALIS. The
Grandview Heights High School Jazz Band opens the
evening at 8pm.

Wednesday, March 1, 8:30pm $7, Bobby Floyd B3 Trio

The second PBJ & Jazz for Kids and Families is on
Saturday morning March 11 at 11:00am with the Bobby
Floyd trio, Chad Eby on tenor sax and Mary McClendon,
vocals. Kids get PBJ sandwiches, juice and a cookie.
Coffee for parents (and grandparents). It is $5 at the
door with a ceiling of $20 per family.

And, of course,
Every Monday -Vaughn Wiester's Famous Jazz Orchestra,
7:30, $6
Every Tuesday - Yumbambé Latin Salsa Jazz, 8:30, $7

2nd Wednesdays - Larry Cook Trio with college combos
as guests followed by a jam session,
7:30pm, $5, $3 students

This is a real jazz-lovers gem! The Bright Rose of Bronzeville

Arnett Howard, once again, sent in this amazing gem of Columbus jazz history. I always love looking at the old photographs, but that piece of original music recorded more than 70 years ago is killer, to say the least. Be sure and listen to the mp3 attached below. Just click on the link.

"My People, Thanks to Doug Tracy the mystery woman has been uncovered. He found this column in the pages of the Ohio Sentinel, a Black newspaper that I used to deliver as a child on the Westside. Doug, you are da' man! Bright moments, A

PS: The music files are from Jim Loeffler, whose father, Bill, recorded them on a homemade disc cutting maching in the 1930s. The photos are from the Cols. Call-Post newspaper."

The Bright Rose of Bronzeville
By Eddie J. Colston, The Ohio Sentinel, March 29, 1958 edition
Listen to this recording by Madame Rose Brown

Name any great Columbus entertainer in the past decade and the name Madam Rose Brown will ring a bell. Years ago, Madam was the town's top performer. Today she still has firm hold on her star studded crown by singing and swinging in the area's night clubs and plush cocktail lounges. The young clique will remember Madam more vividly from her weekly TV show a few years ago, over WTVN-TV, for a segment of "The Rose Brown Show" was devoted to introducing fresh talent. Born in Savanah, Georgia, Rose Brown came to Columbus to visit relatives.

Out on the town one night she did several guest numbers at a couple of popular night haunts. With soulful blues, sexy torch songs and energetic swing style, she had the town's nightlifers in the palm of her hand. Since then, this has been Rose Brown's town. Wasn't so long ago that Rose rose (and I'm not tongue tied) to the pinnacle of Broadway success, when she costarred with the late Bill Robinson as Katisha in Mike Todd's "The Hot Mikado." Her Broadway appearance was in a featured role in "My Dear Public," starring Willie Howard and a long list of today's top stars.
Rose has added other musical triumphs and flattering press notices to her scrapbook with top billings with The Page Cavanaugh Trio. Louis Jordan's Band, the Page One Ball, sponsored annually by the Columbus Chapter of the American Newspaper Guild and many others. Norman Nadel, Columbus Citizen's celebrated theatrical editor and big voice in show business recently penned a lengthy feature on Rose Brown. Nadel said, "I thought of shows I'd seen, singers I heard in Manhattan nightspots where the cover charge would buy food for a family of six. Once in a blue moon you might hear a singer like Rose. People from Columbus go to those New York clubs when they travel east. They could do as well or better, listening to this handsome dark-skinned woman singing in a little club on High Street."

Another thrill for Rose was her invitation to audition for the role of Bloody Mary in the original "South Pacific" cast. "Rogers and Hammerstein brought me to New York," he recalled happily, "and I sang the part for them. But when I saw Juanita Hall do it, I told them to go ahead and pick her, because she was perfect for the part. But I would have loved it."
Currently, Rose is slated to make a series of films or live appearances on WTVN-TV doing Negro spirituals.

Note: Rose Brown passed in 1960.

InnerartBlog - (replaces CharlieBits at innerart.com )

InnerartBlog - (replaces CharlieBits at innerart.com )


Ellen Shelburne sent me this amazing little bit.

THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE
Paris by Night.....Panoramic view........very cool

Once you have the picture, scroll the side bar down and then move the bottom scroll bar slowly for a wrap around view of Paris.


http://framboise781.free.fr/Paris.htm

The Art of Richard Duarte Brown & CAPACITY

If I Could Plant A Dream...
The Art of Richard Duarte Brown & CAPACITY, CAPA's Youth Arts Program
Through February 28

Opening Reception: Sunday, February 19, 4 -7 pm
Performance by Is Said 5:30 pm

at The William H. Thomas Gallery
1270 Bryden Rd.
Columbus, OH 43205

Click on www.capacity.org or call 614 372 1822 for more info

My Bad!

In the earlier blog entry "Steve Ben Israel performs with Baba and Yaho" I mispelled a name! I should have written "Yako" instead of Yaho. My appologies to Yako. If you look at the image of the postcard - that appears 2 entries below - you can see why I might have made such an error. -charlie

Remebering Dr. Bop, a Columbus legend of the early Rock 'n Roll days!

Arnett Howard, a well known Columbus musician and band leader, has long had a passion for collecting memorabilia and stories relating to the Black music experience in town. In honor of Black History Month, he sent us this little piece of (almost) forgotten radio history. Legendary DJ Dr. Bop introduced thousands of local teens, me included, to the joys of rock music in the late 50s. Thanks Arnett.


People, Among my first memories as a child growing up in West Columbus in the mid-1950s, was listening to WCOL-AM 1230 late at night on our family's Westinghouse transistor radio. From nine at night until the wee hours, WCOL-AM featured Doctor Bop and his introductory patter went, "This is Doctor Bop on the scene with a stack of shellac and my record machine. A little country boy from across the track, so down with it, baby, that I'll never go back." Doctor Bop's real name was Hoyt Locke and his family ran Bop Record Shop in 1956. When hot new rhythm and blues records came out, he would call the radio station and bug the disc jockeys to get with the musical program. In time, he talked his way onto the air and stayed on WCOL-AM for several years. Doctor Bop was the person who introduced the high energy music of Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry to Columbus teenagers. The accompanying photo, taken by Kojo Kamau, shows the good doctor at a local dance. The band in the background is led by legendary jazz saxophonist Ronnie Kirk, also known as Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Bop eventually migrated to a Milwaukee radio station and he died there in 1984. But he was the announcer who brought rock and roll to Columbus audiences in the 1950s.
The sound file is about five minutes. Feedback is good. A