The Lasso: Snow-creatures gone wild, Final/First Fridays, giraffes and help for JJ’s

Your weekly roundup of local art stuff, oddities and — this week only — snow-creatures from the web.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2013/feb/28/250441/

Snow-creatures gone wild

No way to quantify this, but I’m pretty certain Lawrence’s higher-than-average population of creative types has something to do with its more-awesome-than-average snow sculptures. With two two major winter storms in less than a week, this phenomenon is worth a photo recap. Last Thursday’s storm brought us snow-behemoth, snow-dragon, snow-truck, snow-toad and snow-Yoda. (For obvious reasons, Snowda pretty much went viral.) After Tuesday’s storm we got snow bears, snow horse, snow-Hawk, snow-D2 and this weird snow-viking thing. Larryville Artists has at least one creation we didn’t but I wish we did — snow-DJ Buddah is truly legit.

Final Fridays on First Friday … and other days

Because of big snow No. 1, many of last month’s Final Fridays events were rescheduled for tonight. Check out the Final Fridays blog for a list. Two events we featured in the paper have been rescheduled for different days. Erika Nelson — purveyor of “The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things” — will present “Hucksters, Barkers, and Sideshows,” a talk about how sideshow workers of Kansas plied their craft, at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Percolator Artspace, 913 Rhode Island St. To see the chopstick murders and Burroughs footage promised to kick off Wayne Propst’s exhibit in the Lawrence Arts Center’s new Antecedent Gallery, you’ll have to wait until next week, from 7-9 p.m. Thursday, March 7.

Behind the scenes of “Errant Line”

“An Errant Line” doesn’t open to the public until tomorrow, but the Spencer Museum of Art offers a sneak peek of behind-the-scenes work involved in realizing the major installation, a new exhibit in which artists Ann Hamilton and Cynthia Schira meld new textile and digital art with objects from the Spencer’s deep collection. Very cool images by the Spencer’s talented in-house photog’s.

A concert for JJ’s

When a gas explosion and resulting fire leveled JJ’s restaurant on Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza Feb. 19, one JJ’s employee was killed and numerous others were injured, some critically. KC is banding together for a big benefit concert March 5 at the Uptown.

Inventory No. 12: Giraffes

A lot of weird stuff goes into — and comes out of — the Social Service League Thrift Store trash bin. In January, I wrote about artist David Loewenstein’s project to document this alleyway phenomenon. He’s been updating the project as he goes on his blog, and his latest inventory is worth the suspense.

Photo gallery! SXSW Fest

I Heart Local Music this week posted band and party pix from [Day 1][14] and [Day 2][15] of the SXSW Fest at Jackpot. The first post kicks off with this quotable quote: “We don’t care what chicks think of us, we sing about anime.” — Isaiah Radke, one of the three brothers in Radkey.

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