Call for entries: FIU College of Nursing and Health Sciences public art project

Florida Art in State Buildings Program announces:

College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL

Budget is $50,000

Deadline: Thursday March 31, 2011 (received by 5 p.m.)

For Project Inquires please contact:
Carol Damian damianc@fiu.edu
Alexander Garcia aogarcia@fiu.edu

Florida International University is Miami–Dade County's first public, four–year university. As one of South Florida's anchor institutions, FIU has been locally and globally engaged for more than four decades finding solutions to the most challenging problems of our time.

For complete guidelines, go to http://thefrost.fiu.edu/artinstate.html

National Museum of the American Indian features webcast of Native American writers Feb. 5

The annual conference for The Association of Writers and Writing Programs in Washington, D.C., features some interesting off-site events that will be simulcast on the web. Here's one that showcases Native American writers:


Reading & Webcast, The Florida Review Native Issue

Location: National Museum of the American Indian, Rasmuson Theater, 4th St and Independence Ave, S.W.

When: Saturday, Feb. 5, 1-3 p.m.

Cost: Free and open to the public

Website: http://www.americanindian.si.edu/

Description: In celebration of the special Native issue of The Florida Review, a reading, live webcast, and book and issue signing. Featured writers include Sherwin Bitsui, Orlando White, Santee Frazier, Sara Marie Ortiz, Allison A. HedgeCoke, and Toni Jensen. 

Call for entries: "Embracing our Differences" public art project

EMBRACING OUR DIFFERENCES: CALL FOR ARTISTS

http://www.embracingourdifferences.org/

Deadline: January 10, 2011.

"Embracing Our Differences," an annual public display of billboard-sized art works, invites professional artists and photographers, amateurs, teachers, and students to participate in its eighth annual visual art exhibit celebrating diversity. Forty-five artists will be selected for the exhibit. The Embracing Our Differences exhibit will be displayed throughout the months of April and May 2011 along Sarasota, Florida's, beautiful bayfront.

Florida's JJ Grey and Mofro headline free Sept. 5 Teton Village concert

JJ GREY & MOFRO will perform in concert with special guests Rotating Superstructure at the Village Commons in Teton Village on Sunday, Sept. 5, 4 p.m. FREE. All ages. Presented by Poppa Presents.

From Poppa Presents:

Singing with a passion and fervor directly influenced by the classic soul heroes, JJ Grey has written and recorded five albums of original songs steeped in the rhythm & blues, rock, and country soul of his native backwoods home outside Jacksonville, Florida. Grey comes from a long tradition of Southern storytellers and, in that spirit, he fills his songs with details that are at once vivid, personal and universal. After a decade of hard touring, he still spends eight months of the year on the road, bringing his music to a loyal, ever-growing, worldwide fanbase.

Novelist Carl Hiaasen on his "litmus test" for choosing books

Mystery novelist Carl Hiaasen on how he chooses a book to read:

When I’m deciding to read a book, I never open to the first chapter, because that’s been revised and worked over 88 times. I’ll just turn to the middle of the book, to the middle of a chapter, and just read a random page and I’ll know right away whether this is the real deal or not. You can tell right away, if it’s really good, it’ll be really good on page 158. Lots of people can write a good first page but to sustain it, that’s my litmus test. If I flip to the middle of the book and there’s a piece of dialogue that’s just outstanding, or a description, then I’ll flip back to the first page and start it.

Read the entire interview with the author on Entertainment Weekly's "Shelf Life" at http://shelf-life.ew.com/2010/08/12/carl-hiaasen-star-island/

Hiaasen will be signing copies of his new book, "Star Island," as Tattered Cover LoDo in Denver on Wednesday, Aug. 18. FMI: http://www.tatteredcover.com/

Dome artist's work at home on the range

Brian Burkhardt's glowing dome sets the stage for his fabricated hybrid plants and organisms to be presented at the UW Art Museum. Photo courtesy of Gallery Diet.

This info was posted on the UW Art Museum blog:

Florida artist Brian Burkhardt will be in Laramie this week to assist with the installation of his solo exhibition, "moss doesn't grow on rolling stones . . . a vision of nature" by Brian Burkhardt.

Dome is the studio in which this rather "mad-scientist/artist" has playfully re-figured nature. His "Office Plant" series offer hybrids of plants and office machinery -- cell phones and fax machines.

For his Wyoming exhibition, he has created a new work, "Take Heed," an installation of caterpillers that include in braille "take" and "heed."

Three public programs are scheduled at the UW Art Museum in Laramie during Burkhardt's residency, all on Thurs., Sept. 3:
10:30 a.m., Gallery Talk-Through
6:30 p.m., Art Talk
7:30 p.m., Panel: "Scientists View Nature Through the Lens of Art: The Seen and Unseen." UW faculty scheduled to respond to Burkhardt's work include Naomi Ward (microbial genomics, Molecular Biology), Carlos Martines del Rio (ecophysiology, Zoology), Pete Stahl (microbial and fungal ecology, Renewable Resources), Stephen Jackson (director, Program in Ecology) and Jeffrey Lockwood (natural sciences and humanities, Philosophy).

Get more info on the Art Museum webpage and its press release.

Before he began to focus on art, Burkhardt was a field hand and then an organic farmer. Here's a section of an article from Miami New Times about Burkhardt's Gallery Diet show last winter:

Burkhardt says that conveying a sense of the symbiotic relationship between man and nature in a world we are threatening to destroy is what keeps him motivated to create during these economically grim times.

"As a farmer or as an artist, you are always worried about the market," he rues. "To me, farming is like the art world in many ways. Right now I'm looking at my dome as a song with the sample of everything I've ever done inside it as the notes."

Read the rest of the article at http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2008-11-13/culture/artist-brian-burkhardt-s-biodome-wows-in-wynwood/