Phil Darius Wallace – actor, playwright, director, producer and Flint native – has made a name for himself since his time with Flint Youth Theatre.
Take your sweetheart or friend to an early Valentine’s Day date. Performances of “Ragtime: The Musical” are at The Whiting on Friday, February 12 at 8pm and Saturday, February 13 at 2pm and 8pm.
Saturday, January 23, 2016 is the Flint Institute of Arts’ Community Gala for the exhibition, From Heart to Hand: African American Quilts form the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. The gala will feature a conversation between artist, Yvonne Wells, and Stephanie James, Mott-Warsh Curator and Collection Educator who focuses on contemporary art and art of the African Diaspora.
Beginning her acting career at age nine as a talking refrigerator, Sarah Sullivan continued her career on and behind the stage with Flint Youth Theatre. There, Sullivan found that she was challenged to participate in many different ways besides acting. By the time she graduated from Grand Blanc High School in 2002, she had experience working as a stage manager, light and sound board operator, backstage crew, scene shop, and as a performer. “My work as an artist is deeply influenced by my time working at FYT,” Sullivan says. “Flint Youth Theatre is the first place where I really experienced ensemble-based work, and this is a driving principle of my artistic practice.”
Born and raised in Flint, Andrew Ranville began pursuing his artistic education in college. He started studying graphic design, but soon felt that something was missing. “After my first semester of going down the graphic design track, I realized I was much more interested and engaged with projects that were my own, as opposed to doing any type of corporate branding,” he shares. “I was more drawn to the artistic aspect than the commercial aspect.” In 2008, he earned his MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art at the University College of London in the United Kingdom. Since then, his work has led him down a new path – literally and figuratively.
After the three-day weekend of classes from the masters, lectures, luncheons and competitions, the festival ended with a highly-anticipated concert, put on by both teachers and students. Hhosted by Flint Institute of Music, Flint’s Cultural Center and The Whiting, the concert incorporated tap, African, hip-hop artists, and Tapology’s Youth Ensemble. The concert is Tapology’s largest fundraising event where a portion of every ticket sold is donated to help support arts and dance instruction for youth throughout Michigan.
Believe it or not, October has nearly come and gone. Before the month dances away completely, the 13th Annual Tapology Dance Festival is set to commence this weekend, October 23-25.
Flint has been an inspiration to many who have hopes of either improving in their field of endeavor, or improving the city itself. Donovan Entrekin, Director of the Flint Institute of Arts’ Art School, continues to find beauty in his hometown and capture it in his artwork.
Imagine the pioneers of Flint’s past greeting you as you submerge into the basement of one of Flint’s oldest houses – a basement currently passing for an artist’s studio. Its inhabitant, Joe Rundell, resides there most of every day, re-capturing Flint’s founding fathers in clay, bronze, and brass sculptures. Among the various tools and hunks of clay strewn about, something incredible happens.
In 2013, the Artomotive Program was formed between the Back to the Bricks Statue Committee, the Flint and Genesee Convention & Visitors Bureau, and the Greater Flint Arts Council to raise funds for the Automotive Pioneers Statue Project, in which Joe Rundell contributes his statues of Flint’s founding fathers (see p. 46).
Would you consider renting a beautiful piece of art to display in your home or business? The Art Sales & Rental Gallery located at the Flint Institute of Arts offers a great opportunity for local art lovers to rent paintings and prints for just that purpose – and at a low cost.
In June, one of the Flint Institute of Arts’ most adored and valued paintings was painstakingly inspected, packed and cautiously trucked to the highly esteemed Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The painting is titled Garden Study of the Vickers Children by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and it joined the MET exhibition Sargent: Portraits of Artists & Friends, which runs through October 4.
