The Arts Connection - February 28, 2008

 Click here to listen to Part 1

Art News

Jerry Eisinger, host of WMFE-TV's This Week, talks to Mount Dora mayor Melissa DeMarco about the proposed ordinance in Mount Dora for developers to pay for public art as part of any building project that's more than $1million.  The city council will vote on Tuesday, March 4.

Read more art news at ArtsJournal.com


Butterfly Art and the Unilever International Schools Art Project

        

We'll be speaking with Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary School of Fine Arts's art teacher, Vickki Thacker, about her commitment to bringing the "World of Art" to her students, and her recent notification that one of her students won the Unilever International Schools Art Project (USIAP). The USIAP is a competition that is part of a series of annual contemporary art commissions at the Tate Modern in London. The goal is to encourage young people to create original works of art on a given theme relating to the work of the commissioned artist for the Unilever Series. Entries are judged within the U.S., with finalists being sent to London for international judging, and the final winner's art will be exhibited at the Tate Modern. Sixth grader Amanda Tutera won the national award with her entry with this year's theme, "Beauty and Difference," and was selected for international judging. Both Amanda and her teacher will travel to London, where Amanda's entry will compete with student work from 24 countries. 

Amanda made her entry for an assignment in Ms. Thacker's class, which incorporated science, geography, social studies, history, math, language arts and Spanish into an art project of creating butterflies with dot painting technique native of the Aboriginal Tribes of Australia.

Leap Year Day

We will have an interview with performance artist, Brian Feldman. His next piece will be in honor of Leap Year called "LEAP YEAR DAY", an unprecedented performance art piece in front of Orlando City Hall at City Commons Plaza. Beginning at 12:00 a.m. Friday, Feldman will leap off of a 12-foot hight summit, repeating the leap every 3:56 seconds for a total of 366 times in 24 consecutive hours.  

 Click here to listen to Part 2

This Week's Highlights

Bach Festival

The annual Winter Park Bach Festival is a multi-week program of events, including world-class lecturers, soloists, and ensembles. Some of the festival highlights are the performances by the highly acclaimed Bach Festival Choir and Orchestra, featuring the works of J.S. Bach and other great composers. This weekend includes Haydn's The Creation, on Saturday at 8, and J.S . Bach's St. Matthew Passion on Sunday at 3, in the Knowles Memorial Chapel. For more events, see the festival schedule.

Stellar Sung and the Orlando Philharmonic

In collaboration with the Orlando Museum of Art, opening the touring exhibition "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell", the Orlando Philharmonic will welcome composer Stella Sung. She has written a new work for the show that will be performed with live projections of Norman Rockwell's paining. The performance is Saturday at 8. Secily Wilson of WMFE-TV's Arts Connection, will have more.

 Click here to listen to Part 3

The Young Composers Challenge

The Young Composers Challenge is a competition among young musicians, ages 13-18, in the Southeastern U.S. The musicians are invited take part in an day-long, extensive workshop, where they will attend small group sessions with guest world-renowned composers, learning composition skills that include how to write scores for films, music calligraphy, and which software compositions programs are best.
Following the workshop, the musicians will spend the summer writing their own original score. In September, a panel of judges will choose the top three ensemble and orchestral pieces to be performed by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra at the Bob Carr Auditorium. There will also be a cash prize awarded to the winners and their music teacher.  

The Arts Connection will introduce two musicians who have chosen to participate. James Everett, 17, from Winter Park, and Jennifer Russell, 16, from Lakeland, are young composers who will allow the Arts Connection to follow them throughout the competition, getting to know them and to examine the process of the challenge of composing an original score from a firsthand perspective. 

 
 CASTING CALL -
Auditions and other artist opportunities can be found at the Arts & Cultural Alliance website.   Auditions are also listed on Elizabeth Maupin's blog, Attention Must Be Paid.  Elizabeth is the theatre critic for the Orlando Sentinel.