Anchorage Daily News

Performing magic requires a certain meditative spirit -- the focus, form and fluidity to make showmanship and illusion look easy despite one's thundering heart.

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Picasso and Minou" features artwork by Pau Estrada, who has some Alaska connections.

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In April, West High School senior Eric Giliam of Anchorage proved his cool at the Lance Burton Teenage Stage Competition at the World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas, not only making the finals but also winning the Siegfried and Roy talent award for the most creative and original stage act with a prize of $500.

"The morning of the show was crazy because I was so nervous," he said weeks later, "and before I went out onstage my heart was racing so fast, all I was doing was taking deep breaths."

The tactic worked. He performed his act without mishap and went on to have the time of his life, meeting master magician Burton and big cat showmen Siegfried and Roy. Fourteen teenagers competed in the event, eight in the finals.

Competitors from Korea, Louisiana and South Africa won first, second and third place in the event, but Giliam already has his eye on next year's competition. By then he hopes to put together an act that will beat them all.

-- Dawnell Smith

Money for singers

Soprano Gloria Allen has established a scholarship fund to honor her late husband, Dean. $2,000 in prize money will be awarded at the Dean Allen Vocal Competition on July 9 at the First United Methodist Church, with auditions to begin at 1 p.m. The deadline for application is July 3. Each applicant must be 18 to 28 years of age on July 9 and a resident of Alaska. Accepted applicants must call for an appointed time. For more information, official guidelines and an application form contact Liz Millikan at 696-0174 or by e-mail at millikan@gci.net.

-- Mike Dunham

Scholarship honors Alex Combs

For the last 30 years of his career, the late Alaska artist Alex Combs was more closely associated with Kachemak Bay and the Kenai Penninsula than with Anchorage. He lived in Halibut Cove and was the first Honor Member of the Kenai Potters Guild. He presented a workshop on the guild's behalf, juried that group's first all-clay juried show and supported this event by bringing Halibut Cove potters' pottery to be entered.

Longtime guild member Peggy Thompson recalled that getting the art to the show was probably more difficult than making it in the first place.

"Such effort involved checking the tides so as to place pottery on a boat in Halibut Cove to bring this precious cargo to the Homer Spit dock," she said. "Then up the ramp to a vehicle so as to travel north to Kenai."

It's fitting, therefore, that Homer's Bunnell Street Arts Center, with which Combs was long associated, has set up a scholarship fund in Combs' name for ceramic and painting workshops for adult learners. Inquiries and donations may be addressed to Bunnell Street Arts Center/Alex Combs Memorial Scholarship, 106 W. Bunnell St., Suite A, Homer, 99603 or online at info@bunnellstreetgallery.org.

More tributes to Combs are found at his online tribute page at adn.com/artsnob.

em>-- Mike Dunham

Back in Print

A few years ago we reviewed a new children's book by P.L. Maltbie, illustrated by Pau Estrada. Estrada has some Alaska connections, but what we liked about "Picasso and Minou" was the way he tweaked well-known paintings by Picasso (who once had the honor of having his work displayed in a show that also included Alex Combs' work) into the story line of the starving young artist and his resourceful cat.

But when we went looking for it at bookstores, it could not be found. Turned out that the Picasso estate put a hold on distribution on the grounds that the book violated copyright.

Recently, Estrada send us an e-mail with good news. "Thanks to the tenacity of our editors at Charlesbridge (the publisher), all legal issues have been solved and a wonderful new edition is out with extra contents and improved printing."

-- Mike Dunham

ArtBeat is a compilation of local arts news and gossip. Send items for consideration to arts@adn.com.

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