Reveiw: From Brat to BFF

Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy entertains both youngsters and the adults who accompany them. The play is based on the Newbery Award-winning book by the same name and adapted for stage by the author, Sid Fleischman. It is in performances now through January 20th at the Des Moines Playhouse.

Fleischman not only entertains with his play, he also teaches about theatre. As the play begins, the cast fans out along the aisles and the stage front to shake hands with audience members and to thank them for coming. After the actors gather on stage, the balladeer (Brenton M. Brown) introduces them and the roles they play. Then it is on with the show. There is a fifteen minute intermission halfway through the hour-long play and that is almost the only time the action even slows down.

Prince Brat, aka Prince Horace, is played by Alex Spenceri, a fifth grader. This is his first role at the Playhouse but he has acted in other plays in Ankeny and in Altoona. The prince’s whipping boy, Jemmy, is portrayed by Kellen Schneider, a seventh grader. In addition to other acting roles at the Playhouse, Schneider has helped build set pieces as a volunteer. Spenceri and Schneider are on stage for the vast majority of the play. They deserve praise for that alone but their performances were also good. Spenceri was quite believable in the role of the spoiled royal who becomes a youngster trailing after a wiser albeit only slightly older sibling-equivalent, and then a self-confident boy heading into adulthood. Schneider does not have quite the equivalent believability as a long-suffering stand-in for the prince’s punishment but, given his age, that is understandable and the way it should be. His performance, as is the intent of the role, is more reminiscent of an older brother or friend.

In the audience, a young boy in the early years of elementary school hid his face when Petunia the Performing Bear (Joe Struss) was dancing at court or menacing the villains. After the play, though, he ended up facing the bear so he could get an autograph of all the performers. The broad smile he had on his face, a happiness that was widely reflected in other children’s smiles, told how much he enjoyed the show.

The top praise for this show has to go to Fleischman. It is a well-written play that serves as an excellent learning tool. Credit also has to be given to John Engerman who wrote the music that made the balladeer’s performance possible.

Some of the actors I enjoyed in other roles at the Playhouse are in Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy. There is no single performance that stands out as either exceptionally good or noticeably lacking in some quality. There is simply a pleasing consistency with a few ignorable hiccoughs.

In closing, I’ll give a quick nod to Director Ron Ziegler and to the ever-insightful Scenic Designer Kevin Shelby. There’s no room to thank everybody else individually.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa. 

Commentary: The Sound of Noise

A dance review written earlier this month generated considerable discussion when I commented about the most prominent feature of the performance, i.e., a disruptive audience. Some people thought I was being mean and ignorant and not writing a review. The fact that the audience behavior was more remarkable than the performance was, in itself, a review.

People I spoke with about my reaction and the responses to it split as to when it is acceptable to clap. There are many places in which I have no problem with audience clapping during performances. These include the highly-structured routines of the Rockettes, where motions resembling the playing of scales on a piano do not require musical interpretation.  Outdoor performances of marching bands, where other distractions are already included in the sensory perceptions, also do not suffer from applause. In a small space, such as Hoyt Sherman Place, clapping is more problematic. Sound carries well in that auditorium, e.g., the thud of dancers’ shoes hitting the stage could be heard clearly in the back of the theatre.

A search of the Internet for ballet etiquette pulled up sites that offered information about what to do at intermission while on a date and how children should behave. The rules included going to the bathroom before going into the theatre, not unwrapping throat lozenges, not talking, and being seated when the curtain goes up. Interestingly, after all these rules about how not to disturb fellow audience members or the performers, clapping was said to be acceptable during the performance after difficult movements or when there was something especially appreciated.

This reminds me of experiences I have when I go to restaurants by myself. At such times I am usually trying to read or to write, so a quiet place is important. Inevitably, when I ask for a quiet table prior to being seated, I am told about children in the restaurant. However, my requests are about noise, not about children. Restaurant staff continuously demonstrate that they do not consider music being played loudly through low-quality speakers directly over a table noise. If a restaurant is full, the crowd can dampen the sound of loud music. In turn, the music offers cover for conversations. In contrast, when a dining establishment is not busy, the only reason for loud music is to keep the rock-and-roll-deafened staff awake.

Restaurants can adjust their extraneous noise to capture different types of customers. Such is not possible with dance groups. There are alternatives to clapping during performances, though. The energy of an audience is palpable even before the curtain goes up and receptive clapping at the end of the first dance can set the mood for the ones that follow. During the dancing, audiences’ breathing can reveal excitement or boredom. At the performance that I reviewed, several audience members stopped clapping during the final bows rather than get pulled into the rhythmic clapping coming from one section. This raises a question, was the clapping rewarding or punishing the performers?

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa. 

Review: Stellar Axis

Midnight blue, the color of a summer sky, wraps warmly around human emotions. Imagine that shade pulled from the sky to clothe a circular sphere. Then imagine returning that sphere to the sky as a celestial body. Blue as a deep ocean, but the sphere is not to be an earth-like planet. It is to be a star. Red and yellow plasma leaps out from the fiery furnaces that burn at the heart of stars; yet, from Earth they are merely points of bright white light. Imagine a multitude of these stars, the constellations, captured by humans and brought to our planet as blue balls settled into the cold snow of Antarctica. This is Stellar Axis.

Lita Albuquerque’s vision was to create a map of the stars at both the south and the north poles. With the help of a variety of financial backers, she achieved the first part of that goal on December 22, 2006, the date of the southern hemisphere’s summer solstice.

The 99 balls used in that map and corresponding paintings are for sale in galleries throughout the United States. In Des Moines, some of them can be found at Hentschel Art Gallery (835 42nd Street) through January 2, 2008. The orbs are displayed at the gallery on 800 pounds of salt laid on the floor. They can be mounted on a wall or placed on a stand. The north pole still awaits and sales of the spheres that graced the southern tip of the planet will help finance the second part of the artist’s vision. Albuquerque favors pure pigment which can easily rub off so these objects are strictly hands-off works of art.

Any single piece of the project, including the small 6-inch and 8-inch spheres that were not included in the south pole map, stands alone as an amazing work of art. Together, they are far better than a planetarium in creating a sense of being among stars. The power of the pieces grows even greater as the history of the installation art project is learned. For instance, since everything that is taken to Antarctica must be removed, the pigment that is now on the spheres could not be added until after the balls were brought back to the North American continent. The spheres had to be painted first with a medium that would not transfer onto the snow or blow off in strong winds.. Albuquerque was involved personally in setting up the display at the art gallery. Thus, a visitor can appreciate first-hand the artist’s installation vision.

     

If you can tear yourself away from Albuquerque’s work, go a bit deeper into the gallery and look at paintings by Larry Roots. Viewing his Causation Series No. 81 immediately after Albuquerque’s stars made me think of nebulas. Roots works mostly with oils but also uses acrylics. Most abstract work appeals to me on an emotional level; however, there is a form in Roots’s paintings that I find both surprising and entrancing.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa. 

Review: The Nutcracker

In the program book for Ballet Des Moines‘ performances of The Nutcracker, Todd Elverson, president of Ballet Des Moines Board of Directors, comments on how the ballet has grown over the past six years. This observation was of interest to me because I was told by several local art-oriented people about three years ago not to bother with the ballet. When I attended the December 8th performance of The Nutcracker, I almost got up and left but that was because of the audience not the dancers.

My advice to anyone who might be considering bringing opera to Des Moines is to forget about it. Audiences would clap when a soprano hit high C and not care that the rest of the aria was missed. Ballet is an art form. It is not just about the dancers; it is about how the dance melds with the music. On several occasions I was listening to the music and enjoying the dancing only to be rudely disrupted by the audience clapping for a single feat. There were even times when a dancer was applauded merely for entering the stage. As the dancers appeared on stage for their final bow, the clapping changed from the rapid beat of appreciation to the staccato sound used to accompany a folk song or western dance, or someone chugging a full mug of beer. The ballet did not begin well, either. Audience members were still finding their seats as the curtain rose.

There were a couple dancers who looked overly thin, including one who seemed to be very bony. If Ballet Des Moines does not include a talk on the dangers of anorexia during its auditions, I would strongly encourage such action.

As long as I’m mentioning all the negative aspects of attending the ballet, I must include the lack of bus service as an option for the audience. If people are serious about establishing a quality ballet company in Des Moines, they need to realize that there are people who would like to attend but need transportation..

Now, what did I like about The Nutcracker? The costumes top my list.

Overall, Act Two had better performances than Act One. The size of the stage at Hoyt Sherman Place probably had a role in this. With the stage crowded by scenery and dancers in Scene One, the choreography relied heavily upon movement of arms and hands instead of feet. Such movement effectively kept the story apace with the music, but I found it distracting.

There are a limited number of youth who dance well in a community the size of Des Moines and The Nutcracker requires many young dancers. The result of that equation means there were performances that fell short. There is some talent in the community and in Ballet Des Moines, though. The Spring Show, scheduled for May 30-31, 2008, will be a triple bill of original choreography. There is enough potential to make it worth seeing.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa. 

Review: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Describing the Des Moines Playhouse’s production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever as ordinary is a compliment. Every year Christmas pageants are staged in real life, just as in the play. Every year pageants follow the same structure with the same adults managing them. Every year, the same young people within an age group are cast in the same roles. Every year, something new is tossed into the mix but in the end all turns out right. The message of the play is that even when circumstances reach their most destructive points, it may just be the miracle of Christmas correcting what was wrong.. The audience leaves the theatre feeling as though everything is as it should be.

This is the seventeenth year for the play in Des Moines but the first production that I saw. Kathy Pingel has done a fine job directing. On December 7th, the action moved quickly and smoothly even with a large cast of young performers. I particularly appreciated the coordination when phone lines were burning faster than applesauce cake. Brandon Lee repeats his service as assistant director.

Much of this year’s cast is new to the Playhouse. An exception is Logan Ely who has acted in earlier performances of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and was confident and at ease in her role as Beth Bradley, the play’s narrator. Sydney Pierick who is one of the new Playhouse performers alternates the role with Ely. The entire cast gave consistently good performances both when acting and when singing. A few of the actors need to work on their vocal projections and a few words were flubbed, but these were little bumps.

The audience clapped appreciatively for the actors portraying the Herdmans. Sierra Renée Perkins as Imogene gave a strong performance. Jessica Lambert as Gladys, the youngest Herdman, was one of the actors needing better control of her voice but the power of her body language helped to offset the spoken words that were less than clear. Perkins and Lambert alternate performances with Madeline Palmer-Chase and with Amy J. Flavell. The remaining four of the lying, stealing, and cigar-smoking Herdmans are played by Jimmy Ogburn (Ralph), Aaron Primrose (Leroy), Samuel Amadeo (Claude), and Anthony Caligiuri (Ollie).

Kevin Shelby’s scene designs helped create the proper moods. The atmosphere is set before opening curtain with holiday lights and continues as wreaths are lowered over the main stage in preparation for the pageant within the play.

The audience on opening night was noticeably older rather than younger, but this is a play all ages, 5 years and up, can enjoy. The play runs through December 23rd at 831 42nd Street. Tickets are $12-$15. The phone number is (515) 277.6261.

The playbook lists the names of people who volunteer with the Playhouse in various capacities. Since this is the time of year to acknowledge the efforts of all those people who have given us joy throughout the year, it is only appropriate to thank these men and women.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa. 

Review: Greater Des Moines Exhibited 14

This is the 14th year of the juried Greater Des Moines Exhibited show at the Polk County Heritage Art Gallery. There are 37 artists whose works were selected for the exhibition. Although, with only one judge there are unifying themes.

The color green and a celebration of life is common in the objects. Louise L. Koch’s watercolors of a snow-covered landscape are noticeable exceptions, on first glance. Yet, one painting has evergreens and the other has trees full of leaves, albeit brown, as though winter can be ignored by force of will.

My favorite piece is Nancy Briggs’ pottery vessel. The shape of the vessel is that of an oval pod. The muted green color is that of a mature plant. The handles resemble ribbed stalks. The struts on the sides evoke thoughts of vines intertwining. All of these items draw attention to the shape of the top opening, its roundness and increasing width suggesting a rare and prominent single flower.

The shape of Ben Harle’s ceramic Raku teapot suggests a thrush or similar bird. The curves of a side design resemble both a leaf and a partridge. The lid brings to mind a chickadee or other song bird. All of these comparisons are based on subconscious thought without the use of overt avian images.

The works in the exhibit can be broken down into three categories. The most common is rural and other scenes of nature. Studies in the human psyche are also plentiful. The rest of the pieces fall into social commentary. Not all works fall neatly into just one category.

Some of the pieces seem to have been selected based on the artist’s exploration of technique. This is how I viewed Stan Greenwood’s pencils. I found myself looking at individual strokes and patterns instead of appreciating how, together, they create a scene of a horse grazing in a pasture. In contrast, lines, straight, curved, and circular, are used very effectively by Suzanne Pfutzenreuter in her woodcut, “Heavy.” In this piece, based on my frames of reference, I saw a person crawling out of the tunnel of a wormhole, disoriented and drained, sliding head first across the open matrix of a blank software program. On the other side of the matrix is a swirling turmoil that could be either another maelstrom or winds of change that might, just might, be brining hope.

Cheerful colors, the hope of spring green, and the order agriculture bestows upon the land are easily identified in Jennifer Lynn Bates’s “Roots: 3.” There is something disturbing in the picture, however. A lone plant, the size of Jack’s beanstalk, has sprouted. The impression given is that this one plant is sapping all the energy from the fields. As a result, none of the remaining crop, although in a flood of new growth, will yield produce.

Another example of horror or humor, depending on one’s gastrointestinal fortitude, is Kevin House’s digital collage, “Bad Night on the Midway.” The deep fried oreos and deep fried twinkies are only the beginning of the nightmare.

Due to its size, Nick Werner’s sculpture, “A Brief History of the Future Being,” will attract people who attend the show. Ignore the three-dimensional object and look up at the sketches. They are much more interesting.

The exhibition also includes works done in pastels, with mixed media, in oils, with photography, as serigraphs, and with other materials. Several of these pieces deserve more attention than I had time (or space) to give them.

Eight cash awards were presented at the opening reception. The show runs through January 31, 2008.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.

Review: Tuck Everlasting

Mark Frattaroli’s stage adaptation of Natalie Babbitt’s book Tuck Everlasting is playing at the Des Moines Playhouse now through November 25th. The Kate Goldman Children’s Theatre at the Playhouse is an intimate space. The stage is small but all four corners of the room serve as points where the actors can enter and exit.

Kevin Shelby’s scene design offers different levels of platforms upon which the actors move. The backdrop was painted in half circles of blue, representing the sky but also a pool of water after it has been disturbed. It is a good use of scenery as foreshadowing.

The story is set primarily in the 1880’s, approximately 80 years after the Tuck family found a forest spring. Eventually they discovered that the water from that spring gave them everlasting life. They kept the secret of the spring for decades, until 11-year-old Winnie Foster caught a Tuck quenching his thirst.

The play has several elements to which younger children can relate. Winnie is an only child, which causes her parents and grandmother to be overly protective of her. In turn, that makes Winnie yearn for freedom from the constant scrutiny. The story reveals that freedom has many interpretations. Unfortunately, the story also repeatedly stresses the natural cycle of life and what living forever can mean. No doubt there is some intention to help children cope with a loss, but it comes across as excessive repetition. Another distraction was the use of descriptive interludes in which multiple actors give descriptions of the weather and the land. The information was conveyed more effectively in dialogue. Moreover, not only were most of the vocal resonances weak, the words themselves did not echo through the imaginary landscape to create a strong sensory image.

Two young actresses, both in middle school, portray Winnie Foster. Ruthie Dearth was playing the role when I saw the matinee on Saturday, November 10th. The other actress is Halen Becker. All the actors were at their best as the play reached its climax and the action sped up.

Joe Smith as the stranger in the yellow suit, the villain, gave the best performance. The gleam in Smith’s eye suggested he enjoyed playing the role.

Preshia Paulding offered a strong presence as Mae Tuck, the mother of the everlasting clan. Given the size of the theatre, her performance would have been better had it not been so intense.

The first and biggest audience reaction came when a comment was made about the dust in theTuck’s home. Mae apologized for not cleaning better and said, “I just never find the time.” It was meant to be a joke about Mae having everlasting time, but the mothers in the audience laughed at it out of shared understanding.

The best line of the play came at the end, but I cannot say what it is without giving away a key moment in the story. All I can say is that the line is about a toad.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.

Review: Then and Now

Nine artists, collectively known as Paintpushers, opened their annual show at the Fitch Gallery (304 15th Street) on October 27.  Kathryn Downing’s display of humor evoked thoughts of The New Yorker’s cartoons and attracted me after a long day of covering political events. I particularly liked the farm buildings seen through the outline shape of a UFO and the canine archeologist brought a smile. Even when Downing’s theme turned to political messages, her simple lines and bright colors cheered my soul. This was the case with her painting of a young woman blowing bubbles shaped like doves. According to the artist’s statement on the Paintpushers’ web site, Downing uses an encaustic paint, made from refined beeswax, danar resin, and pigments.

Jacqueline Roate’s focus is linear. Curves are created with changes in line angles which distortes portraits. This was particularly visible in the face of one painting’s subject. Roate compensates for the lack of curves by using long lines to direct the viewer’s eyes and also by leaning some of the portrait subjects in one direction or another. Her palette, consisting of shades of brown, intensifies the power of the lines.

Several people at the opening were having fun with Julie VandeBerg’s interactive art. A statement at the show told a story of two birds that inspires VandeBerg. The girl bird wanted a better place to live so she left the nest to search for a new home. The boy bird grew lonely and went in search of the girl bird. He could not find her so he returned home, where the girl bird waited. All the other nests had their own problems, which made her home not seem so bad. VandeBerg paints plaster blocks with images of buildings and laundry and creates metal backgrounds with birds perched along a utility line. She also makes faces from four blocks (two eyes, a nose, and a mouth). The interchangeability of parts was emphasized in one piece where four sets of four blocks formed a contained square.

Roy Cacek works in computer designs for his paid jobs and has incorporated the idea of pixels, standing in for mosaic tiles, into his art. I was looking at his work close-up, trying to decide what random ridges of paint meant when I saw a woman looking at the paintings from a distance. I stepped back and asked her what she thought of Cacek’s work and she said it makes much more sense when viewed from several feet away. We both particularly liked the scene of a city at night, with cars’ headlights creating a brilliant blur at street level, a condition that is accentuated by rain.

The other five artists (Amy Wood Thomas, Charlotte Redman, Chris Vance, Kristine Clemons, and Claudia Cole Meek) also have their own strengths and weaknesses. The show runs through November 8 (9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Saturday noon to 4:00 p.m.) and offers visitors the opportunity to see a variety of ways in which paintings can be conceived and executed.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.

Review: Iowa to Japan and Back Again

The pieces in Elinor Noteboom’s Prolonged Tranquility show at the Heritage Art Gallery bring to mind the Nacza drawings at La Paz. The scenes also resemble the lines of art in a miniature rock garden that might sit atop a desk with a small rake. Noteboom’s scale is much larger, though, and her gardens are Iowa’s farms and Japan’s Mount Fuji viewed from an aerial perspective. In “Metamorphosis” she literally moves from a hill in Iowa with cattle perfectly positioned as though they were rocks to the sacred Japanese volcano. In another piece, her point of view transforms acres of soybeans from a cash crop into a field of meditation.

Several of the pieces in the show are on loan from collectors. The mediums include oils, etching and colored pencil, and acrylics. Noteboom uses an impasto technique on many pieces. This creates an impression that the paintings were shaped through the placement of pebbles.

In the atrium of Capital Square, works by a few members of the Associated Artists of Central Iowa are on display. Connie Guillaume’s oils of nature’s food caught my eye despite their relatively small size. In particular, the obvious image of yolk spread across a tabletop from a cracked egg drew my attention to the paintings. The amount of yolk, the absence of albumen, and the thickness of the eggshell are not consistent with nature, however. Yet it is those imbalances that bring the art to life.

Heyoung McBride paintings of men at work capture natural poses that make the people the central focus of the pictures. The pieces are enhanced by objects of the men’s trade that are included in the scenes, but it is McBride’s ability to capture light appropriate to the place that really pulls everything together.

There are the standard landscapes and seascapes, still lifes, and portraits. Muriel Hawkins painted mountains but her colors are so muted that there is not enough contrast to give depth to the landscapes. Her “Inside Passage (Sunset)” comes the closest of any of her work to arousing emotion. In that painting the yellow and other colors of sunset are offset by the blacks and grays of jagged peaks. The setting also helps to build conflict as the scene cannot be one viewed by a person safe on land but only by a person on a ship about to slip between imposing towers of rock as night beckons.

Myrna Morris’ “Deep in the Woods” hit me on the emotional level because of the rich red color of the flowers’ petals. While a perfectly acceptable painting, with competent execution and nicely done focal points, I was attracted primarily to the prominent color. Consequently, I wanted to see how Morris might have created a floral abstract.

The impression of a working country kitchen is what Nancy Rauh conveys with her “Blue Pitcher” watercolor. Rough edges, simple color patterns, and the suggestion of details make this painting more powerful than it would have been with another medium.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.

Review: Valley Junction’s Art Fair

My original plan for September 16, 2007, was to attend Tom Harkin’s 30th annual Steak Fry held in Indianola. I protested the Democrats’ inability to coordinate travel for people who did not have transportation and went to the Fall Art Fair held in West Des Moines’ Valley Junction instead. I want to thank the Democrats for persuading me to select another option.

Except for one potter from Missouri, all the artists I noticed in the juried show were from Iowa. There was even an author. Jan Fleming was sitting outside of Heart of Iowa with copies of her book to sign. “Grotesques in Des Moines” is a collection of photographs of architectural decoration in Des Moines, in Iowa, and abroad. Fleming wanted not only to show the faces and animals in the local grotesques but also how they compared to stonework elsewhere. The book is available at local bookstores and at Barnes & Noble, its national distributor. Profits are donated to Drake University for scholarships in the fine arts.

Jewelry was a popular item at the art fair. Cindi Weyer and Jodie Marshall make their own beads, but that is where the similarity ends. Weyer has a BFA from Iowa City. Marshall is self-taught after doing beadwork with her grandmother. Weyer’s pieces with gem stones are more sophisticated, while pieces with colored beads are more freeform. She incorporated seashells into a necklace with a roll of beads symbolizing a crashing wave that was shown at the 2002 Iowa State Fair. Marshall goes for bolder, larger styles. She had necklaces that brought to mind Venetian glass set in a Victorian home, African tribal jewelry, and ceremonial symbols of a lord mayor.

Rachel Tone makes jewelry using a precious metal clay. She said it is a material created in Japan in the 1990’s that includes silver dust. Enamel paint adds color to the designs. Tammy Coy’s pieces can be described as grown-up charm bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. She identified herself as a dental hygienist and likes to include dental mirrors into her jewelry. She also likes to make puzzles out of words and letters she incorporates into the charms, such as one bracelet that read, “U C it’s all about me.”

Then there were the painters. For her watercolors, Marybeth Heikes takes pictures but doesn’t really look at the objects until she starts to paint them. I started my conversation with her because I noticed she had bubbles in the stems of glassware. This is the type of detail that a photograph, but not necessarily the naked eye, will capture. Eventually I caught sight of a purple cat sitting in front of a partial rainbow. For that acrylic collage, she sketched the designs before painting and then cut them out to create a single-layer picture. Toni Grote paints on antique ceiling tins and on masonite. She can distort the shape of the material which creates textures that usually are not seen with acrylic paintings. Her designs are uncluttered and sometimes are as simple as a tree on the horizon or a pear.

Karen Cooper took several design courses in college and her training in fashion and textile design shows in her paintings. She uses a limited palette of six colors and the result is an impression of cheerful light. She enjoys painting people but it is the draping of cloth and the flow of seams that really stand out.

Michelle Hanson and Dana Steele as Slicksugar create designs based on music that are screenprinted onto tops for young children. One dollar from each top is donated to Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, which supports music education for children. Kay Gibson Baldus shreds theater tickets and other paper then creates bowls and note card designs from the resulting pulp. Sticks, potpourri, and other natural items are added as decoration. She does not yet have a web site.

Note: There were several male artists at the fair, but I was focusing on female artists. This is because Leading Voices: Iowa seeks to promote women’s voices as they often are not heard in well-established news publications. If I had attended the political steak fry, I would have been talking with women so I chose to do the same at the art fair. Several of the artists reviewed here accept commissions, while others are kept busy with their own ideas.

Guest Writer: M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.

« Previous Page — Next Page »