New Art Installations at UNI

Photo by Pat Beck

Installing Peter Drake's Shell-Shock in Redeker Center at UNI, an Iowa Art in State Buildings project purchase.

 Photo by Pat Beck

 Complete! Me to the left, Diane Morris and Peter Colver to the right.

An installation view of Myth & Narrative: It's All in the Telling, a UNI Permanent Art Collection exhibition co-curated with my buddy Dr. Charles Adelman. The two standing works are centuries-old vellum leaves. The one to the left is a partially finished Gregorian chant, and the one to the right is a page from the bible in the chapter Exodus. The Morris/Colver team formatted them this past summer.

Newly formatted UNI Collection works installed on the main floor of Seerley Hall at the request of the new UNI President. To the left is a David Delafield print, and to the right through the opening is a large painting by Michael Boyd.

A view at the opposite end (south) of Seerley Hall's main floor. To the left is a large painting by Michael Boyd, and to the left is a print by Robert Riseling.

The great halls of the University of Northern Iowa are brightening up each passing day!

Contraltos of the Great American Songbook

Sarah Vaughan, "Tenderly"

Rosemary Clooney "You Didn't Do Right by Me"

Toni Tennille, "More Than You Know"

Doris Day, "Autumn Leaves"

Judy Garland, "The Man That Got Away"

Ella Fitzgerald "Someone to Watch Over Me"

Peggy Lee, "When the World Was Young"

Eydie Gorme, "My Funny Valentine"

Billie Holiday, "Embraceable You"

Anita O'Day, "Body and Soul"

My brothers

(l-r) Darrell and Troy Taylor,

Chip and GR Briggs.

On the occasion of Bill Briggs' passing,

Clay City/Brazil/West Lafayette, Indiana,

summer 2013.

XO

We're friendly at the Iowa Irish Fest, no?

Iowa Irish Fest 2013 in Waterloo!

At the "Lucky" 7th Annual Iowa Irish Fest in Waterloo, Iowa!

 Beautiful Bev and Kilt Inspector Mark in front of the Park Avenue stage.

 Bev McCusker talking to the best - and handsomest - Irish band Scythian after an exciting and athletic performance on August 2nd.

 Me and Mark.

Bev and her buddies, Kris and Dottie.

Fun was had by all!

Vocal Jazz Gems

 Manhattan Transfer

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

Capim

Skyliner

Why Not!

Airegin

The Night that Monk Returned to Heaven

Sassy (as performed by Finnish singers Club for Five)

Rare Silk

Round Midnight (compare to Manhattan Transfer's "The Night that Monk Returned to Heaven") 

 Automatic Girl

Storm 

Watch What Happens 

How Can I Be Sure? 

Lush Life 

I've loved these songs, and especially these vocal arrangements, for decades now. Listening to them brings back such happy memories. Enjoy!

Hudson and Whiting at Faulconer Gallery

 A particularly magnificent detail of Scott Robert Hudson's Wild Horses.

 An installation view of Wild Horses, possibly a companion piece to his 2007 installation at the UNI Gallery of Art, which was titled Bison.

 Another detail of Hudson's Wild Horses.

Yesterday, I made a road trip to Grinnell, Iowa to see the latest work by my colleagues/friends Scott Robert Hudson and Margaret Whiting. It was a beautiful summer day and the right opportunity to once again engage in the ideas they consistently espouse - human interaction with wildlife and landscape as well as human cultural clashes that have impacted social development through the ages.

Hudson states that this latest installation is about "the socio-ecology of the North American wild horse herds, the atmospherics of the Paleolithic caves of Southern France, and the human drama of the Ghost Dance." Whiting says her exhibition addresses "deforestation and the ways human laws help and hinder environmental protection, the connections between human health and the land, and the patterns and systems that connect us all." Each presentation is distinct but together in the same space they create a rousing dialogue about authority, influence, and enterprise. The Great Themes!

Hudson's Wild Horses, Whiting's Environmental Concerns, and Lorna Bieber's From a Distance run through Sept. 8, 2013 at the lovely Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa.

 An installation view of Deforestation, which is an iteration of a piece presented in 2011 at the UNI Gallery of Art in a group invitational exhibition titled What You Will.

A Whiting collage.