On Christmas day, songwriter Vic Chesnutt died. Listen here as Michael Stipe recalls Chesnutt’s life. Or listen to Vic Chesnutt on Mountain Stage at NPR.org.

MP3 - Like a Monkey in a Zoo

This is a gratuitous “arts and culture” post and horn tooting, your weekend chance to grab a cup of coffee or a Goose Island and do some art and music browsing.

I really should actually be getting ready for this show instead of writing about it, but hey, it’ll only take a few minutes, right? (more…)

Most of the time you already know it, but then sometimes you’re reminded just how cool your friends are. The Good Fear just put out a great video for the song “Tools of Trade.” You can also see it and other stuff at the Deluxe 36 MySpace site.
Tools of Trade

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Looks to me like the tour shirts turned out good. I haven’t seen the posters except for in a brief flash during the crazed brawl between Mr. Bill Krejci and the Murder by Death merch guy. Anyway, can’t wait to see them in person. Shall I take orders? Maybe I can snag a few of the leftovers.

I’ve been wanting to rave in detail about Art Amiss here for a while now. And now that Miss Haley Duke (one of the Art Amiss organizers) has graciously posted a boat load of pictures, I can more easily and thoroughly rave on.

Art Amiss was started a few years ago as a one-night-only event to showcase the scads of little-known Arkansas painters, writers, fashion designers, photographers, and musicians. The event quickly blossomed into an annual gathering and then into a website, which now promulgates 131 artists and 643 pieces of art, then a bi-annual show. Thus far, each event – four shows and two benefits – has been hosted at the Dickson Street Theater in Fayetteville (excluding the benefit shows which have been held at both JR’s Lightbulb Club and Teatro Scarpino,) which seems to be an ideal location for such a space-sensitive event.

There are many places across Arkansas to get your work in front of people and more than a handful of them are in Fayetteville. The significant bonus of showing your work at Art Amiss is their devotion to betraying those who have not had work shown in those places or have not been published to any significant degree elsewhere. The benefit of this being that one who attends the show is guaranteed fresh, original work, most often for sale. I have picked up on a “first dibs” friendly competition at times when one certain piece is particularly favored.

Every event so far has also featured several Arkansas bands and performers and each show is genre specific. Art Amiss 4 featured Little Rock’s 607 and Conduit Family and Big Jake with Lucio and Rasmey of Fayetteville. Art Amiss 3 was an all instrumental show. And so on. And then there are the chapbooks and compilation cd’s.

The next Art Amiss, I believe, is scheduled for sometime this next fall and may or may not be a two night event this time. For more information about Art Amiss check out their website at ArtAmiss.org.

Or you may email the folks at Art Amiss if you wish to ask a question or talk about all things concerning art in Arkansas.[tag]art, art amiss, arkansas, music, gallery, painting, sculpture, photography, Fayetteville, Little Rock, hip-hop[/tag]