Shimomura to show new work in KC

“Stereotypes and Admonitions,” a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Kansas University art professor Roger Shimomura, opens Friday at the Jan Weiner Gallery in Kansas City, Mo.

The series, created in 2002 and 2003, interprets contemporary instances of bigotry and ignorance aimed at Asian-Americans, including events experienced by Shimomura.

“Vincent Chin Murder,” above, interprets the 1982 beating death of Chinese-American Vincent Chin, who was lured into a fight with two white auto workers while attending his bachelor party at a suburban Detroit strip club. The perpetrators pleaded guilty to beating Chin in the head with a baseball bat — reportedly because they blamed Asians for ailing the United States auto industry and causing white workers to lose their jobs — and were sentenced to three years probation and a $3,000 fine.

Opening receptions for the show will be from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the gallery, 4800 Liberty St. Shimomura will give a lecture at 7 p.m. Jan. 9 at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo.

Prairie Wind Dancers to have children’s show

The Prairie Wind Dancers, the resident dance company of the Lawrence Arts Center, will present “InsideOutsideUpsideDown: Dances for Kids” at 2 p.m. Saturday and Nov. 9 at the center, 940 N.H.

The program will include two new works: “Cindy,” a modern day tale of Cinderella, and a humorous piece about a ballerina and clown.

Admission is $6 for children and $8 for adults.

For more information, call the arts center at 843-2787 or go to www.lawrenceartscenter.com.

Symphony orchestra to perform concert

The Kansas University Symphony Orchestra will continue its fall season with a special concert at 3 p.m. Monday at the Lied Center.

The symphony orchestra’s performances will include:

• Carl Maria von Weber’s “Andante and Rondo for Viola and Orchestra,” featuring Peter Chun, assistant professor of viola at KU.
• “Symphony in C Major, K.425, ‘Linz'” by W.A. Mozart.
• “Symphony No. 4, op. 36” by P.I. Tchaikovksy.

Nicholas Uljanov is KU’s director of orchestral activities.

Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for students and seniors. Tickets are available at the Lied Center (864-2787), Murphy Hall (864-3982) and the Student Union Activities office in the Kansas Union (864-SHOW).

East Asian center presents art lectures

The Kansas University Center for East Asian Studies will present two events about Buddhist art Tuesday and Thursday.

Jamyong Singye will speak about his Thangka paintings at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Pine Room in the Kansas Union. Singye was born in Tibet, grew up in India and was placed in a Buddhist monastery at age 6. He began studying Tibetan art as a teenager and later learned the meditative art of Thangka painting, which depicts Buddhist deities and is hung in Buddhist monasteries or family altars. Singye teaches in San Francisco.

Amy McNair, associate professor of art history at KU who specializes in Chinese Buddhist art, will present “Tang Court Eunuchs’ Karmic Gift of Sculpture at Longmen” at 4 p.m. Thursday at Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread Ave. She has been researching a book on the topic with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the past two years.

The lectures are free and open to the public.

KU gallery exhibition explores intertextuality of fish, cultural history

An upcoming exhibition at Kansas University’s Art and Design Gallery brings together two faculty artists from different schools.

The exhibition, titled “Convergent,” will be on view today through Nov. 21 and includes lush and confrontational works by Ivan Fortushniak, associate professor of painting, and John Bavaro, an instructor at Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pa.

Bavaro’s paintings of fish, done in jewel-like colors that suffuse realistic detail with a luminous, dream-like quality, explore the artist’s fascination with the creatures.

Fortushniak’s works use a variety of techniques, including direct opaque painting and glazing, burning and scratching. He often juxtaposes modern subject matter, such as water towers and Boeing aircraft, with landscapes inspired by noted painters like Winslow Homer and Albert Pinkham Ryder. He describes the final images as “archaelogical excavations.”

A reception for the exhibition will be from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday at the gallery. Fortushniak will be present.

The Art and Design Gallery is located on the third floor of the Art and Design Building on campus, at the northeast corner of 15th Street and Naismith Drive.

KU choir, barbershop quartet to perform at high school

The Kansas University Chamber Choir and Random Harmony, an award-winning barbershop quartet made up of KU students, will perform at 7 p.m. Monday at the Douglass High School auditorium in Douglass.

The performance is part of the Douglass community dedication of a new fine arts facility. Admission is $3 for adults and $2 for students. Tickets will be available at the door.

The Chamber Choir is the premier choral ensemble in KU’s music and dance department. The choir has sung at national and regional conventions and has toured throughout the United States, South America and Europe.

Random Harmony was founded in November 2000 by Olathe senior Shaun Whisler, bass, and Perry senior Michael Brown, baritone. With Eudora senior Josh Abel, tenor, and Douglass senior Dustin Peterson, lead, the group has competed at the international and regional levels of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

For more information, call 864-3436.

Dance company aha! to perform at arts center

Aha! dance theatre, a dance company whose mission is to awaken the creative spirit through dance, will perform “Here and Gone” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H.

Highlights of the performance include “The Attenders” and “Tantrum,” two pieces by artistic director Susan Rieger.

“The Attenders” involves a trio, connected to a soloist by several long braids. The soloist, who is representing the final moments of her life, moves freely as the attenders keep her free of entanglements. “Tantrum” was choreographed to a composition by the same name. In the middle section, a soloist performs on a bed of salt.

Admission is $12 in advance, $15 at the door and $10 for seniors and students.

For more information, call 843-2787.

Percussion ensemble to perform at church

Baldwin — Ethos, a four-member percussion ensemble from New York, will perform at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Baldwin First United Methodist Church, 704 Eighth St.

The group features Guatemalan marimba music, Japanese Taiko drumming and contemporary pieces.

Admission for the Baker University Artist and Lecture Series event is $10 for adults and $5 for children.

Sculptor to discuss art at Spencer Museum

African-American sculptor Renee Stout will speak about her art at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Spencer Museum of Art auditorium.

The event is free and open to the public.

Stout’s contemporary assemblages reflect and refract influences of community, ancestry, African art and aesthetics.

Stout, a Junction City native and Washington D.C. resident, finds artistic direction and visual inspiration in the belief systems of various African people and their New World descendants.

Tenor to sing concert at community college

Overland Park — New York tenor David Adams will perform in concert at noon Monday in the Recital Hall of the Carlsen Center at Johnson County Community College.

The event, part of the Ruel Joyce Recital Series featuring Kansas City artists, is free.

Adams has performed various roles in opera and oratoria settings. He recently joined the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera, where he has sung such roles as Acis in “Acis and Galatea,” Pissandro in “II ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria,” and Dancairo in “Carmen.”

For more information, call (913) 469-8500, ext. 3689.

India comes alive in travelogue

Overland Park — “India, Beyond Imagining,” part of Johnson County Community College’s fall Windows on the World Travelogue series, will be shown at 2 p.m. Tuesday in Yardley Hall of the Carlsen Center.

“India” explores the mysterious subcontinent full of vibrant color and ancient temples and mosques. The film reveals India’s amazing diversity of cultures through exotic festivals and celebrations in its major cities and remote villages.

Admission is $5 and available by calling the Carlsen Center at (913) 469-4445.

Nobel Peace prize winner to discuss families, trauma

Independence, Mo. — Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, a human rights advocate, will kick off the PeaceJam Kansas City conference with a discussion on “Families Going Through Trauma” at 7:15 p.m. Friday at Community of Christ Temple, 1001 W. Walnut.

Admission is free.

Perez Esquivel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1980, helped residents in Argentina overcome the oppressive military regime of that country in the 1970s, when thousands of people, called “the disappeared,” vanished from their homes and were tortured and killed.

In conjunction with the lecture, the Wylliams/Henry Danse Theatre will perform a short ballet, “Esperando en Silencio,” inspired by the mothers of Argentina who called international attention to the violent actions of the government.

For more information on the lecture, call (816) 521-3077 or e-mail confreg@CofChrist.org.

Mary Atkins lectures continue at Nelson-Atkins

Kansas City, Mo. — The Mary Atkins lecture series continues this week at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art with talks on collecting contemporary art and art that evolves from war.

Robert Storr, former Museum of Modern Art Curator, will present “To Have and to Hold: Collecting Contemporary Art in Private and in Public” at 6 p.m. Thursday in Atkins Auditorium. Cost is $10 for museum members, $15 for nonmembers. For tickets, call (816) 751-1393.

At 6 p.m. Friday, the Nelson’s Ian Kennedy, Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, will talk on “Art and Armageddon: Artists and the Great War, 1914-18” in the auditorium. His talk, which examines how artists responded to World War I, is free.