art

Calling all artists! High Plains Public Radio wants YOU and your talent to participate in an upcoming art show at an Amarillo gallery.

It's called "POSTCARDS FROM THE HIGH PLAINS," and it's a juried exhibition by The Cerulean Gallery and High Plains Public Radio (HPPR) open to artists from Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska.

Francophiles and cinephiles on the High Plains will have reason to celebrate over the next few weeks, as West Texas A & M University will host a French film festival: The Tournées Film Festival. The series comes after WT received a grant from the French American Cultural Exchange. Films will be screened at Mary Moody Northen Hall on WT's campus, Room 189. Click for more information on our community calendar.

A legend in the Texas Panhandle art world died last week.

Lightnin’ McDuff is perhaps most famous for his sculpture “Ozymandius,” two massive stone legs on a pedestal that can be found in a cow pasture between Amarillo and Canyon. The statue, which is based on Percy Shelley’s poem of the same name, has been featured in Slate and Atlas Obscura.

Derek Klingenberg of Peabody, Kansas is kind of a farmer celebrity. His Youtube channel which has over 70,000 subscribers, features everything from ag-themed pop-music parodies to trombone covers, but what really caught our attention was his cow art.

Tuesday, Klingenberg took his cow art to the next level, when he posted a video where he herded his cows to spell out the word “Hi,” and took a snapshot from outer space. 

**** RESCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY, SEPT. 30TH! ****

***WOW, THIS EVENT IS CURRENTLY SOLD OUT! If you'd like to be on the WAITING LIST, please email Jenny at jinzerillo@hppr.org. If you have questions, please call HPPR at 806.367.9088.

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It's the last day of our pledge drive, and we're thrilled to be featuring the community of Hays, KS.

We''ve got a giveaway, thanks to the generosity of High Plains artists MICHAEL JILG and LEON STAAB.

Their show, Eufloria, is from 4/7 - 4/29 at Garden City Arts in Garden City, KS. 

Texas Legislators held a hearing this week to debate abolishing the Texas Film Commission, which some lawmakers have referred to as a form of corporate welfare.

As The Austin American Statesman reports, Texas currently budgets about $32 million in tax incentives to attract the movie industry to Texas. That’s down substantially from almost $100 million two years ago.

A beloved West Texas artist will be remembered this weekend by the West Texas A&M art program. Jim Harter was born in Lubbock in 1941, and later lived in Canyon and attended WT.

This past weekend, young filmmakers in Amarillo participated in a harrowing competition. The effort was part of a nationwide contest called the 48-Hour Film Project. Actors, producers, directors and photographers from Amarillo raced around town, bringing their stories to life.

Texas Panhandle independent filmmaker Randall Derrick will be releasing a film this weekend in Amarillo. The movie examines a mysterious and little-known incident in Llano history.

Perjury of Time explores the true story of a double mass homicide that occurred along the Canadian River about 1450 AD. Archaeologists excavating in the Canadian River flood plain near Fritch discovered a Native American burial that contained the complete skeletons of twenty-one men, women and children. Eleven skulls without bodies were also uncovered.

A very old craft is taking on some contemporary qualities, reports Texas Standard. It’s called modern quilting, and it’s inspired by modern art. Traditional quilts have followed a column and row format. But new, modern quilters are changing that pattern up.

If you’re traveling to Minneapolis by plane any time soon, don’t forget to look out the window. As reported by inhabitat.com, Kansas artist Stan Herd has recreated Vincent van Gogh’s Olive Trees painting on a massive scale in a Minnesota farm field. The artist used native plants to create the image, and the result covers an area of 1.2 acres.

In 2009 the photographer Lucas Foglia got lost in the Western wilds of Wyoming. For Foglia, who was raised on Long Island, the West was bigger and harsher than any landscape he’d ever seen. In a piece in The New York Times, Foglia talked about a realization he had. Folks in the West, he noticed, take care of each other; the unforgiving landscape requires it.

This week, the third and final finalist for the 2015 Texas Observer Short Story Contest was posted on the Observer’s website. The story, “Hands Moving Through Hair” by Rebecca Wurtz, joins the two previous selections, K.C.

In regional news, a beloved Kansas painter is putting away his brushes, reports The Hutchinson News. Hutchinson resident Larry Lambert went deaf at age 3 following a bout with measles. But he eventually learned to express himself with paint, and art became a lifelong passion for him. 70 years later, after selling thousands of paintings, Lambert is retiring. His vision is failing, and he is going blind.

Member station KCUR in Kansas City has reported the charming story of the poet Lisa Stewart, who has traveled thousands of miles on horseback over the past few decades. Her recent series of poems is called The Points of the Horse, in which she explores various parts of the horse, like the jaw or the flank, giving each its own poem. Stewart has ridden horses throughout the Rockies and the Midwest. In 2012 she rode 500 miles through Kansas and Missouri.