By John Maruskin
This week will begin and end “arty.” Tonight, we’ll have the Blackout and Cutout Workshop in the community room.
What’s that? I mean blackouts and cutouts, not the community room. Blackouts and Cutouts are all the rage these days. It’s a way of assembling a piece of writing, with or without illustrations, by blacking out text from an already published article in order to leave just the words that are meaningful to you, and then perhaps embellishing your selected text with a few pictures from a newspaper or a magazine. Or, instead of blacking out text, you can cut out pieces of text and then glue them to a page in the order you like to create a new text. It is, in a word, a collage, and like all collages, designed with found objects.
It’s also a lot of fun. As you become involved in the possibilities of using words and pictures artistically instead of discursively, your brain just loosens up a little and begins to have a jolly time playing.
Remembering playing? Physiologists tell us it’s good for our bodies. The brain is a muscle and wants, needs and appreciates play too. Think of your mind as that abandoned sandbox where you lost your favorite shovel, toy truck or charm. Come to the Blackout and Cutout Workshop tonight and find some of that fun again. In the words of Kentucky folk artist Bet Ison, there’s no “wrong” when you’re making art. You just have fun. The fun will start at 6:30 p.m. Please call to register to attend.
At the end of the week, on Friday from 3:30 to 5 p.m., we’ll be having the closing reception for this summer’s Open Community Art Show. The show is wonderful and if you have not seen it yet, come Friday afternoon. We’ll have refreshments for you to enjoy.
Bill Berryman and Chuck Witt will give short talks about their work, and, and — this is a big AND — work from Allison Swanner’s Hannah McClure Elementary School art classes have been added to the display. So now the walls of the community room are covered top to bottom with wonderful art by Clark County adults and children. One thing’s for sure, it’s the most colorful place you can find to spend some time Friday. You’ll also be able to meet and talk with the artists.
The reception is free and open to the public, no need to register, just come and enjoy.
The Kentucky Picture Show series has a bit of fun of its own Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. when it shows what most film critics (and most anyone with a brain that has not been scorched to a Cheeto by an obsession with Entertainment Weekly) consider to be the worst film of 2011.
This film is so bad it garnered a record 11 Razzie nominations in February of this year (the Razzies are a parody of the Oscars) including worst film, screenplay, directing, and worst actor and actress, who — and get this — are played by the same person. We are talking cult classic here. Mystery Science Theater may have to come back just to cover this film. It concerns a happily married, successful ad exec’s tribulations dealing with the yearly visit of his crazy, aggressive twin sister. It’s classic bad, thus swell, and hey, the popcorn’s free. You’ll love it. You’ll laugh. Just don’t guffaw too powerfully when your mouth is full of popcorn. That stuff’s hard to get out of the carpet.
Come to the library. We have more definitions of fun than the O.E.D.
