Miami City Ballet to honor Balanchine

Kansas University’s Concert Series opens its 100th anniversary season Wednesday with an all-Balanchine program by the Miami City Ballet.

The 7:30 p.m. performance at the Lied Center features one of the largest ballet companies in the United States, under the direction of founder Edward Villella.

On the program are “Rubies,” the second movement in George Balanchine’s “Jewels” ballets; “Apollo” and “Who Cares?”

Tickets range in price from $18.50 to $42 and can be purchased by calling 864-ARTS.

Lawrence artist invited to international exhibit

Lawrence painter Joe Ray Kelley has been invited to exhibit three paintings Dec. 6-14 in the Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy. Kelley is one of 600 artists invited from around the world.

The Florence Biennale was founded in 1997 as a venue for displaying a panoramic survey of contemporary art from around the globe. In 1999, the exhibit had 40,000 visitors in nine days.

Participants are nominated by the International Committee of Critics, which has nearly 50 members. Prizes are awarded by an international jury made up of distinguished museum curators and contemporary art critics.

Kelley also has received the best in show prize of $1,500 in “Art from the Heartland,” an exhibition juried by Spencer Museum of Art director Andrea Norris at the Coutts Memorial Museum of Art in El Dorado.

Kelley paints at his home studio in Lawrence.

His “Survivor — Winter of ’85,” an acrylic on canvas, above, was one of the works chosen for the Florence show.

Lawrence high schools present pops concert

Free State and Lawrence high schools will perform a pops concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the auditorium in Free State High School, 4700 Overland Drive.

Both orchestras will play selections. The groups will then join for a combined performance by more than 120 musicians of Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance, No. 6.”

Rachel Dirks is director at LHS, and Lynn Basow is director at Free State.

Admission is free.

Award-winning Web site features Shimomura

A Web site titled “In the Shadow of My Country: A Japanese American Artist Remembers” featuring the work of Kansas University art professor Roger Shimomura has won an “Outstanding Website of 2003” award from the Web Marketing Assn.

The bilingual multimedia site, designed by UBG Digital Media, LLC, Bellevue, Wash., provides a virtual, interactive exhibition that details Shimomura and his family’s memories of living behind barbed wire in America’s prison camps during World War II. The site features images of Shimomura’s paintings and excerpts from his grandmother’s diary.

Shimomura is Distinguished Professor of Performance and Painting at KU. His paintings, print and theater pieces address socio-political issues of Asian America and have often been inspired by 56 years of diaries kept by his late immigrant grandmother. He is the recipient of four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in painting and performance art; a recipient of a McKnight Fellowship; a Civil Liberties Public Education Fellowship; and was the first artist internationally to be awarded a Japan Foundation grant.

Students plan to blow it at Tuba/Euphonium FEST

The Tuba/Euphonium FEST Grand Recital, an annual celebration showcasing tubas and euphoniums, will be at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Swarthout Recital Hall.

The free event, now in its 22nd year, features the students of Scott Watson, professor of tuba and euphonium.

Students will perform a wide variety of original works and transcriptions for the tuba and euphonium, including pieces by Mozart, Alexander Lebedev, Anthony Plog and others.

Watson has commissioned many new works for tuba and is former editor of the Tuba Press. He served two terms as secretary of the Tubists Universal Brotherhood Assn. and is a member of its board of directors, and president elect. A prominent soloist and clinician, he is also co-artistic director and member of Symphonia, America’s first professional tuba-euphonium ensemble.

For more information, call 864-3436.

KU Chamber Winds does Mozart over lunch

The Kansas University Chamber Winds will perform for Brown Bag Classics, the popular Wednesday lunchtime concerts, from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

Admission is free.

The Chamber Winds group, which features eight soloists from the KU Wind Ensemble on oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn, will perform Mozart’s “Serenade in Eb,” a piece that will be performed again during the Wind Ensemble’s Saturday concert at the Lied Center.

Director of Bands John Lynch will conduct both performances.

The Union provides free sodas to go with your lunch. For more information, call 864-3436.

Art Affair features Baldwin painter

Baldwin — A show featuring the work of Tom Russell, Baker University emeritus professor of art, will open at 6 p.m. Friday at Art Affair, Baker University’s student-run art gallery.

The show, which will remain on view through Nov. 7, will include 12 oil paintings of landscapes in the area.

Russell has work in the permanent collections at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.; the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence; and the Albrecht-Kemper Art Museum in St. Joseph, Mo. He has also shown in galleries in New York, Chicago and Santa Fe, N.M. Russell studied under Tom Benton, Henry Moore and Ross Brought.

The opening reception will be from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Gallery hours are 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. The gallery is at 622 High St. in Baldwin.

Sudlow artwork to hang in Highland gallery

Highland — “Spiritual Journeys: The Art of Robert Sudlow” will be on view Tuesday through Nov. 7 in the Walter Yost Art Gallery on the campus of Highland Community College.

The retrospective exhibition, on view from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, premiered last fall at the Lawrence Arts Center.

Sudlow, born in 1920 in Holton, received a bachelor of arts degree from Kansas University and joined the KU art faculty in 1946, where he was professor of painting until his retirement in 1988. He now lives and works at his home studio south of Lawrence.

Sudlow received the first-ever Governor’s Arts Award in 1974 and was named Kansan of the Year in 1997. He is considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of Kansas.

The Sudlow exhibit is organized and toured by ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance.

Photography exhibition takes design faculty’s work to Iowa

Des Moines, Iowa — The photography of Pok Chi Lau, associate professor of photography at Kansas University, is featured in a solo exhibition titled “Dreams of Migration — from Asia to the Heartland” until Oct. 18 at Des Moines Area Community College in Des Moines, Iowa.

The exhibition, which includes 40 photographs, is based on Lau’s book, “Dreams of the Golden Mountain,” which documents the lives of Chinese and other Asian immigrants during the past 25 years.

Lau’s work is exhibited at the George Eastman House; the Smithsonian Institution; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Tolerance.

The Iowa Asian Alliance and KU’s Center for East Asian Studies, along with an anonymous gift from a friend of the Pacific Rim cultures, are the sponsors of Lau’s exhibition and presentation.

Hallmark Symposium draws top art, design professionals

The 21st year of the Hallmark Symposium continues Monday with a talk by Jhane Barnes of Jhane Barnes Textiles.

The symposium, sponsored by an endowment from Hallmark Cards Inc., brings designers, artists, writers and educators to the Spencer Museum of Art. Admission to the 6 p.m. lecture is free.

Barnes began sewing clothes for herself in high school, where her school principal noticed her talent and asked her to make uniforms for the marching band. She went on to study fashion at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. While still a student, a retail executive ordered 1,000 pair of pants from Barnes after he spotted a model wearing one of her designs.

Barnes, founder of Jhane Barnes Textiles, now designs and markets textiles internationally. Her product lines include menswear, carpets, upholstery and draperies. Her collections are known especially for their intricately patterned knit and woven tops and the quality, fit and sophistication of her garment design.

Folk artist to perform at Unity Church

Folk singer Tracy Grammer will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Unity Church of Lawrence, 900 Madeline Lane.

Grammer and her late partner Dave Carter were called “one of the fastest-rising acts in folk music.” In just four years they released three internationally-acclaimed albums, toured with Joan Baez and earned a solid following with their live performances at festivals and venues across North America. Despite Carter’s sudden death in July 2002, Grammer’s career continues.

Grammer plays violin, mandolin and guitar, but she’s best known for her voice. Her set will include songs from the duo’s three albums (“When I Go,” 1998; “Tanglewood Tree,” 2000; and “Drum Hat Buddha,” 2001), unrecorded duo material and songs by favorite writers across all genres.

Admission is $15 for adults, $12 for students.

KU Visiting Artist Series to feature young violist

Violinist Eric Nowlin, a former Lawrence resident, will perform a program of Shostakovich, Franck and Schumann sonatas for the viola at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Swarthout Recital Hall.

Admission is free.

Piano performances by Jack Winerock, professor of piano, and Kansas University student Melanie Hadley will accompany Nowlin.

Nowlin is a graduate student at the Juilliard School in New York and a student of Samuel Rhodes, violist with The Juilliard String Quartet. He has performed with orchestras in the United States and in Japan and has won various awards, including the Naftzger competition (2001); the Hellam competition (2002); and the Klein International Strings Competition in San Francisco (2003).

Nowlin’s parents live in Lawrence.

For more information, call 864-3436.

Retrospective features Kansan Ernst Ulmer

Topeka — Famous for his U.S. Civil War depictions, nostalgic cityscapes and images of the Kansas prairie, painter/sculptor Ernst Ulmer is featured in a show at the Framewoods of Topeka Gallery.

Twenty of his paintings are on view in the show, titled “Ernst Ulmer, A Lifetime of Work.”

Ulmer, who employs mediums such as oil, watercolor and acrylic, describes his style as “loose realism.”

Ulmer graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute and lives in Bonner Springs. His work has been featured in national publications, such as Sports Illustrated, U.S. News and World Report and Time magazine.

The show, which opened Friday at Framewoods, 3074 S.W. 29th St., Topeka, runs through Dec. 31. For more information, call (785) 273-5994.

El Dorado to show concurrent art exhibits

El Dorado — Two juried fine art exhibitions, the National Juried Art Exhibit and the regional “Art from the Heartland” will be featured in El Dorado galleries in October. The events are part of the city’s ongoing Fine Art of Living Well Initiative.

Juror for the National Juried Art Exhibit will be David Kohan, Virginia Commonwealth University art instructor. The exhibit will be at the Erman B. White Gallery on the Butler County Community College campus. Andrea Norris, director and chief curator at Kansas University’s Spencer Museum of Art, will preside over “Art from the Heartland,” which will be on view at the Coutts Memorial Museum of Art.

Lawrence painter Joe Ray Kelley’s “Native Guardian,” an acrylic and oil, received the best in show prize of $1,500 in the regional exhibit.

Of the 600 entries received from throughout the United States, 75 works will be displayed in the two exhibitions. The majority of the work will be available for purchase. The pieces range in price from $200 to $3,900.

The exhibitions will run until Oct. 31. For more information, go to www.eldoradokansas.com.