Thingies: a rural arts roundup, oil boom stories, etc.
If your Thanksgiving holiday was like mine, your bouts of sustained face-stuffing were only given slight reprieve by Instagram photos of everyone else’s food adventures, with some shopping, maybe, in there. Here, then, are some healthy arts and culture snacks to put some fiber back into your regimen.
Rural arts
At TAP, we are full-throated advocates for the development of the arts in rural areas (see: our Rural Arts Partnership, which seeks to bring arts education into neighboring rural communities), so we were pleased to see the launch of the online magazine Rural America Contemporary Art (RACA). RACA is based in Mankato, Minn., and focuses entirely on American rural art and artists. Can’t wait to see what they produce.
Speaking of: mark your calendars for the 2013 Rural Arts and Culture Summit, June 5-6 near Morris, Minn. And, take a look at the North Dakota Museum of Arts’ new exhibition Winged Shadows: Life Among Birds, a traveling exhibition that is part of the Museum’s ongoing Rural Arts Initiative. You can read more about it here.
Out of the oil boom
Kurt Wensmann graduated in 2010 from the University of North Dakota’s ceramics program. Rather than, say, get an internship or wait tables, Kurt started driving an oil truck to pay down his debt. When he’s finished, he’ll open a ceramics studio. It’s an unexpected–and welcomed–turn on many of the stories we see come from the oil half of the state. See the rest of his story in this piece at The Forum, and be sure to take a look at Kurt’s blog here.
Want more oil country stories? Independent radio producer Todd Melby has been collecting stories from Western North Dakota’s oil boom for several months now over at Black Gold Boom, and you could probably get drawn in for hours with what he’s collected. American Public Media’s Marketplace (it’s the one with the dreamy-voiced Kai Ryssdal) got drawn in, and has featured a few of his stories over the past couple weeks. Check ’em out.
Etc.
- Beautiful digital composite nudes over at The Verge.
- A mashed potato DeLorean.
- From Pitchfork, a breakdown of the royalty money musicians see from online streamers like Spotify and Pandora (it ain’t much).
- A number of 3500+ year-old petroglyphs in California have been stolen and vandalized.
- Elton John shocked a Beijing audience by dedicating his show to dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
- How pop culture and fashion are appropriating (and ripping off) microtrends from the internet.
- Who’s the new U.S. Cultural Ambassador to Bahrain? Why, it’s Andrew WK. Time to party hard!
- Gangnam Style is now, officially, the most watched video in the history of YouTube. News of this on Morning Edition today made my three year old squeal with delight and was followed up with a request to watch said video again. (BTW, when I sing it with her, I change the line to “heeeeyyy, clever lady.”)
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Image: a cloned video animation by Erdal Inci via Colossal.
