The Art of Quilting PBS program

Next Saturday, the documentary The Art of Quilting will air on our local PBS station. Check out Lisa Call's quilt in the background of the PBS website, hopefully it will be on the cover of the DVD when it's released! Last March a crew from Wisconsin came to my studio to do an interview. I haven't seen the show yet, but I've been told by the producer that my interview will appear in the first segment. Check your local PBS schedule, because this program is supposed to be airing nationally in March. For Springfield, the PBS - KOZK schedule is:

Saturday, March 3 at 8 a.m.
Thursday, March 8 at 12:30 afternoon
Saturday, March 17 at 12:30 afternoon

Coincidently, that first showing is the same day that 50 art teachers will be touring our studio as part of their spring state conference. Yikes, next week is going to be a scrabble to get things in some kind of order. I had this idea to get a bunch of tarps, cover everything, and label them "Top Secret Projects", but I don't think that will work!

More Bright Lights

Although our studio is still a wreck, good things keep happening. Yesterday afternoon we had our third photo session with Bob Linder of Signature magazine for a feature article that should come out the end of March.

We did the session in the back warehouse with lots of Russ's metal cutouts in the background. It's hard to know what to wear for these things, and the lighting was so wacky, I couldn't take anything very good, except for this photo of his beautiful crinkly light umbrella. But Bob is such an excellent photographer that I'm excited to see what he's taken. But I did get this photo of Russ and Bob on a website I'm using to learn WordPress.

2007 Missouri Arts Awards

On Wednesday, we were at the capital for the 2007 Missouri Art Awards. Here is Russ standing between Missouri State Govenor Blunt and the First Lady, just after he received recognition in the Individual Artist category -- the highest honor an artist can receive in the State of Missouri.

The ceremony was held at the State Capitol building. Although I grew in near this building, and it was always a part of our hometown landscape and culture, I don't think I really appreciated it when I was there.

Since then, I've read some histories of the building. Most surprising to me was that 25% of the original architectural budget for the building was earmarked for decoration. Decoration! Do you realize what that means? That means ART! It does put some of our current 1% for the arts programs to shame, and remember that many building budgets don't even have that.

This explains a lot about the building -- the fact that there are statues, carvings and paintings everywhere throughout the capitol. Most famous are some large murals painted by Thomas Hart Benton. Above is a photo looking up through the rotunda, but I don't know who painted these murals. There also should be a huge chandelier in the center, but it got dropped during cleaning and maintenance last fall. I think it's going to take $600,000 to replace.

After the ceremony, we all traveled a couple of blocks to the Governor's Mansion for a nice reception. Many friends of the arts in Missouri were there to celebrate because Governor Blunt has recommended $8 million in his budget to go the Missouri Arts budget, up from $3 million last year and up from zero in 2004. Yay! All in all, it was a good day for the arts.

Russ's Award

Not all the news from RuBert Studios is bad. On Wednesday, we'll be traveling to the state capital for Russ to recieve his award from Govenor Blunt and the Missouri Arts Council. Each year the State of Missouri recognizes only one individual artist (including performing artists), so this is a huge honor. The award ceremony will be at the capitol rotunda at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, with a reception following at the state Governor's Mansion.

Another notable artist is Susan Leslie Lumsden. She's a member of Uncommon Threads and also a friend. Her work (an art quilt) was selected to grace the cover of this year's poster and invitation.