In a press release, the council announced that it has formed a search committee to find a successor. A nationwide search will begin this month. For more information about the search, contact board member Nancy Harbour at 263-2913.
Also in June, the council awarded $408,317 in operating support grants, $96,717 for Artists in Schools grants and $53,450 in grants for special projects to Alaska artists and arts organizations at its recent annual meeting.
Special project grants range from a $800 grant to Brett Dillingham of Juneau to present a storytelling workshop in Mons, Belgium, to $4,000 for Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center in Haines for a totem carving workshop. All grant funding is contingent on final appropriation -- which at this writing still needed to get the approval of the governor.
A complete list of the grants is posted at adn.com/artsnob and also at www.eed.state.ak.us/aksca.
Free workshop for young writers
Raven Words/49 Writers will present a free workshop for 10 aspiring authors, age 12 and up, at the new Teen Underground center in Loussac Library later this month.
The guest instructor is travel writer Jenna Schnuer, contributor to National Geographic Traveler and similar publications.
The topic of her week-long workshop will be "Your Alaska Online Travel 'Zine."
The workshop will cover the basics of reporting and writing news articles, taking photographs and the how-tos of building an online magazine. "I'm going to try and run it like it's a real newsroom," Schnuer says in a press release. "So we'll have a morning staff meeting and then get to the getting to. If the kids want to continue on after the class is over or launch other creative projects of their own, they'll have the skills to do it."
Applications are due Wednesday. Details and a link to the online application can be found at www.49writingcenter.org
Green kudos
The Anchorage Museum Expansion project has received certification as an environmentally friendly structure from the Green Building Certification Institute.
The new wing, designed by internationally acclaimed London architect David Chipperfield with the Anchorage firm Kumin Associates as architect-of-record, was noted for its vertical design ("preserving more public green space"), maximizing natural light (90 percent of interior spaces have exterior windows, highly unusual for a museum), using recycled content in the building materials, low-flow plumbing fixtures, use of native plants, numerous bike racks, and generally minimizing environmental impact and maintaining energy efficiency "while creating a beautiful public building."
New Cirque available
The fourth issue of Cirque is now available online at cirquejournal.com. Contributors to Vol. 2, No. 2 of the local literary magazine include Janet Levin, Tim Troll and Kathleen Tarr.
Tarr's contribution is titled "My First Discovery of Richard Rodriguez," the author and broadcast commentator who will be in Anchorage next Sunday to kick off the University of Alaska Anchorage Department of Creative Writing and Literary Arts' fourth-annual Summer 2011 Northern Renaissance Arts & Sciences Reading Series.
Rodriguez will speak at 7:30 p.m. July 10 in the UAA Fine Arts Building recital hall (room 150). More on this free series next week.
Tami Phelps' photos picked for Washington state show
Two hand-colored photographs by Anchorage artist Tami Phelps have been selected to be included in Art Port Townsend/Expressions Northwest, the Northwind Arts Alliance and Port Townsend Art Commission's 13th Annual Juried Art Exhibition. It will be held Aug. 6-28 in Port Townsend, Wash.
Juror Gary Faigin included Phelps' work among the 86 pieces he selected from 372 submissions received from artists throughout the Pacific Northwest. If you're not going to Port Townsend, you can see her pictures of Paris right here in Anchorage at Jens' Restaurant.
'Inuksuit' in New York
New Yorkers strolling through the Big Apple's Morningside Park on summer solstice got an earful as percussionists from throughout the area presented "Inuksuit" by Fairbanks composer John Luther Adams.
Performers were posted around the park following their scores as the surprised "audience" passed along the walkways.
Writing in The New York Times, Allan Kozinn noted that birds, planes and even an ice cream truck added their contribution to the composition "presumably not by design." But that's part of the deal with "Inuksuit," which is written for a varied number of performers and an elastic presentation, usually outdoors, that implies the presence of ambient sounds.
In an email from the sweltering city, Adams expressed great satisfaction with the event.
Mahler in Los Angeles
I haven't been terribly impressed by the movie theater presentations of Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts, but a "media alert" received last week has me hoping that they will put their Feb. 4, 2012, offering on the big screen.
Led by Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles ensemble will be joined by members of the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra from Dudmel's native Venezuela, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Pacific Choral, Los Angeles Children's Chorus and what looks like every community chorus group within 50 miles of Pasadena for a rare performance of Gustav Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand."
The piece, Mahler's eighth and most unorthodox symphony, is usually presented with a mere several hundred singers and instrumentalists. But this time there really will be more than 1,000 performers belting out the "Veni Creator Spiritus" hymn and the conclusion of Goethe's "Faust." (What do they have to do with one another? I don't know either, but it seems to work.)
Tickets are priced at $30-$170 and will go on sale starting Aug. 21 at laphil.com. The performance will take place at the appropriately immense Shrine Auditorium rather than in the smaller Walt Disney Concert Hall where the symphony usually plays. It's part of a cycle of all nine Mahler symphonies that will be repeated in Caracas after the American performances.
Reach Mike Dunham at mdunham@adn.com or 257-4332.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.