SPRING 2004

Executive Director's Report

Not-for-profit organizations cannot survive without the generosity of dedicated volunteers, who donate their time, talent and funds. NWCC has benefited from a cadre of giving organizations and people throughout its 15-year history. We'll periodically introduce you to board members, artists, staff members and friends of the Council that conceive of, organize and execute the programs that NWCC brings to communities and residents of the northwest suburbs. The first profile will be on David Hill.

Diane Kostick has been integrating the arts into her curriculum for the 39 years she has taught school. It is appropriate for her to edit this page of SPOTLIGHTS to acquaint teachers with new ideas and methods of presenting art to their students. The charming mobile pictured with her column hangs in the gallery, and it makes me smile each time I pass it.

NWCC Corporate Gallery Artist Lynne Railsback's watercolor entitled "Maple Leaf Lace" has recently been purchased by the Racine Art Museum for its permanent collection. The piece was the winner of the Elizabeth Kehl and Jean Nelson Memorial purchase award given to the outstanding participant in the Watercolor Wisconsin 2003 Exhibition that took place at the museum through March 14, 2004.

Poet Jude Rittenhouse's poem Boxes appeared in the Spring 1999 issue of SPOTLIGHTS. She was a finalist in the prestigious Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry 2003. Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971.

An exhibition of art by the "Friends of the Council" will fill the NWCC/Kimball Hill Galleries during the months of April and May. We will be showing some of the wonderful artworks by area artists and art instructors. These are artists who have contributed their efforts to our "Kids Meet Art"™ program, or have lent us their support in many ways over the years. Please plan to attend the opening reception on Saturday, April 17, from 2 to 4 p.m. to join me in thanking them and applauding their efforts on behalf of the Council.

In the month of June the Council will exhibit a fabulous print show, "Artists For Aids." This exhibition is mounted by Artists International Direct Support, a Canadian artists' initiative that aims to raise funds through the sale of original limited edition prints produced by highly recognized artists from around the world. All proceeds from the sale of works helps to finance the care of African children affected by HIV/AIDS. Featured on our cover is the lithograph Verdana 2 by Canadian artist Bill Dobrinsky. Reception date is Saturday, June 12 from 1 to 3 p.m.

A generous donation from Larry Moats will allow us to refurbish our scrapbook. This book is a record of NWCC's history and accomplishments and, after years of use, it has become tattered. NWCC artist Leslie Altman has volunteered to redo the book and redesign the pages.

Visit the gallery to see the "new" scrapbook, applaud our "Friends of the Council" show and support the children in Africa with HIV/AIDS with your purchase of a fine print.

See you all soon at the gallery.

Sincerely,

Kathy Umlauf

NWCC Volunteer Profile

David Hill, President and CEO, Kimball Hill Homes, Inc.

Kimball Hill developed Rolling Meadows in the 1940's to make affordable housing available to returning World War II veterans and families wanting to migrate to the suburbs. One of David Hill's passions has been to continue the legacy of his father. David was the catalyst in the formation of the North West Housing Partnership, whose mission it is to assist low income families in attaining home ownership.

Contributions to the NWCC: Hill has donated space to the council for 13 of its 15 years, and three Kimball Hill employees serve on the Council's Board.

Philanthropy Hill provides to other groups: The company sets aside a percentage of its pre-tax dollars for charitable endeavors. The funds have been used to promote education, support the arts and devise and build transitional and affordable housing. Locally, David is a Board Member of the Harper College Educational Foundation, Board of Trustee Member of Roosevelt University, and a founding member of Northwest Philanthropic Trust. Kimball Hill is working in partnership with HomeAid Chicago and the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago to build an emergency domestic violence shelter in Rolling Meadows for the WINGS Program, Inc. WINGS (Women In Need Growing Stronger) provides long-term transitional living services and supportive programs to women and kids facing homelessness and domestic violence in Chicago's north and northwest suburbs. NWCC hopes to find a niche to assist these women and children once the home is opened.

Why NWCC is important to Hill: "My wife, Diane, and I love the arts and find in paintings, music, theater and literature such inspiration and insight that we search for opportunities to further spread this richness. The Northwest Cultural Council has brought us high quality performance and pictorial art, introduced us to several local artists and given us a wonderful chance to enhance art awareness and enjoyment throughout the region. Supporting and enjoying the work of the Council is pure pleasure."

The Value of Concert Music

"Music is the most abstract and sublime of all the arts. A piece of music sends us a terrific amount of information: aesthetic information, historical information, expressive, and even philosophical information. …

Now why should an understanding of concert music be important anyway? …. The skills one brings to listening to music, imagination, abstract non-linear thinking, intuition and instinctual reaction … must be nurtured every day if they are to remain strong with us. Music as a universal, non-verbal language allows us to tap into the social, cultural, religious and aesthetic norms and traditions of many cultures, and many different places, and many different times. We become more aware of our shared humanity through music, and we respect the vision and wisdom of others … through music, we can open our imaginations in ways other arts can not, and through music we can become more intellectually flexible, and better problem solvers.

And good music folks is like life itself, there is an everyday surface, and in a piece of music we might call that the melody, but below the melody are layers upon layers of more subtle meaning, abstract ideas, constructive detail, and metaphor and that is very, very exciting. …."

Director Robert Greenberg, Professor of Music at University of California, Berkeley, CA
Excerpted from The Teaching Company audio course How to Listen to and Understand Great Music

NWCC Artist Members Photography Exhibition

and

Diane Kostick signing her new book Voices of Barrington

November 15, 2003

We were delighted when member photographers Elizabeth Buchanan, Deanna Goldberg, Dick Gunther, Gale Kuffel, Cheryl Quick, and Connie Vepstas were joined in this exhibit by a sculptor, Bert Coons; and two painters, Eric Meyer and Bobberate Monley. These artists, who juried into the Corporate Gallery Program in other mediums will now join our roster as photographers, as well.

Sarah Long: Innovative Leader
Sharon Findley Kirmse

Today's library is a central gathering place for the community it serves, a place where we expect to find a whole array of services not dreamt of fifty years ago. As our expectations multiply, library services increase exponentially. Now our local library contains more audio and visual tapes, DVDs and CDs than many of our hometown libraries had books on their shelves just a few decades ago.

Supporting our local libraries as they extend their reach to their communities is the North Suburban Library System (NSLS). Two hundred fifty members strong, the system serves public, academic, school and special libraries throughout the north and northwest suburban area. For the past fourteen years the system has been under the able leadership of Sarah Long. After an extensive career in library services, she served as director of the public library system for Portland, Oregon before assuming her current position.

Long has been an invaluable liaison for the Northwest Cultural Council, allowing the Council to link with the NSLS' distribution system and disseminate our information to the public libraries it serves. This enables us to reach a far greater audience than we would otherwise. We have found consistently that this is one of our most effective avenues for advertising our activities.

"Our Libraries," her weekly column in The Daily Herald provides Long with a forum to reach the public at large with library news. In a recent column she announced the start-up of a new "librarian approved" web site that should be stored on all of our "favorites" lists. Librarians organize information; but the Internet has been a formidable challenge. The gangling giant defies organization techniques applied to books, periodicals and audio-visual material. Search engines deluge the searcher with hundreds and thousands of hits on any subject imaginable. How do you make sense of it? You go to www.illinoisclicks.org. Spearheaded by a Skokie librarian, Frances Roehm, developers of this web site have done much of the work for us. Librarians with various areas of expertise culled through voluminous material seeking the most authentic information. Their choices for reliable sources can be found here. They may not be able to organize the Internet, but they have gone a long way toward making it more manageable for us.

Two years ago the system went on the air. "What's New In Libraries" is a half hour show filmed once a month and broadcast on more than 50 local cable outlets. Check www.whatsnewinlibraries.org to find the listing for your town.

Perhaps one of the most exciting innovations in recent years has been the Literary Circle lecture series. Lectures are held four times a year featuring writers currently in the literary news. In conjunction with each lecture, area high school students are given the opportunity to submit manuscripts. The winning student has dinner with the guest speaker before the lecture and patrons of the Literary Circle gather afterward for a reception. These lectures on the most current topics are open to the public. The annual schedule can be found at www.librarycommunityfoundation.org.

Clearly librarians have learned to use the latest marketing techniques to convey their message. Under Long's innovative leadership, the North Suburban Library System continues to find new ways to serve the public and support its member institutions.

Integrating Art Into the Curriculum:

Creating a Hero Mobile

Diane Kostick

Experienced teachers know the arts are the perfect complement to any subject. In the primary grades students study heroes through in a "Some Day I Want to Be" unit. Older students study the lives of famous people while they work on a biography-research-based unit. To begin the topic of heroes, teachers should have students define what they think a hero is, record their responses and have students reevaluate and define their definitions at the end of the study.

For younger students a mother, or father, a teacher or a cousin could be the hero. Older students should select people to research via texts, audio or visual tapes, and the Internet

To integrate art into the project, ask students to bring pictures of their heroes to the classroom. The photos can come from magazines, be downloaded from the Internet, or be photocopied from a book. As students study heroes (Some Day I Want to Be) or research the life of a famous person (Biography), they need to keep at hand their pictures. After they have clear images of these heroes, students should draw a representation of their heroes by creating mobiles with the heroes as the focal point, an easy and engaging way to add an art experience into these units of study.

Students can use a wide variety of materials to fashion their mobiles. They should select different colors of construction paper for the person's face, hair, and clothing. Markers, colored pencils, fabrics, yarns or other materials can be used to help bring their figures "to life."

Students can share what they have learned from their study by introducing their heroes to their classmates. They can present memorable facts about their heroes' lives and use their mobiles during their oral reports to teach others about these people.

The mobiles add a colorful dimension to students' oral presentations. Creating the mobiles also asks students to think about what a hero is and why they chose the person they did. In choosing heroes with whom they identify, students have the opportunity to express their individuality as they develop their hero-mobile and as they select significant facts about their heroes' lives and careers. While students are learning about famous people, they will no doubt be learning about themselves as well. What could be a better "art" lesson than that?

The staff at the Northwest Cultural Council invite teachers to submit their classroom-tested art lessons which can be "woven" into the curriculum. Send copies of your plans to NWCC, C/O SPOTLIGHTS, Integrating Art Project, at 5999 New Wilke Road, Suite 307, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008. A small honorarium is offered for each project we include in SPOTLIGHTS.

Arts Commentary

Dr. Dennis Weeks, Dean of Liberal Arts, Harper College

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest who wrote in the first half of the last century and was part of the team that discovered Pekin man in China. His work, The Future of Man, speculates on forward motion in relation to man's place on this earth. Chardin speculates that man is impatient to move forward but is at the same time loath to change because evolution is slow in coming. This irony started me thinking about what change is in relation to culture. For example, can culture, in and of itself, bring about change or is it a product of change? Can art, music, and writing, three vehicles of culture, initiate change or do they simply reflect change? I believe that these three areas are instantaneous in their ability to move forward and to reflect.

In order to support my assertion, we only need to look at the cyclical nature of time. Arnold J. Toynbee, the British historian, believed that history was cyclical and George Santayana, the American skeptic, wrote in The Life of Reason that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I fall into their camps because it seems to me that the last decade of a century is filled with change, revolution, and subsequent reflection. In 1789, for example, the French Revolution took place; the 1890s are described as the Decadent period, meaning decadence as change. Each of these decades has been followed by a decade in the new century that was more conservative. The pattern is that change brings about a reflective, conservative corresponding period after a decade of change. We need this pattern to move us forward and to reflect. Culture has shaped the past and will impress itself upon the future. We can only understand the future by reflecting upon the past and that allows us to accept what is yet to come.

Michelangelo, the Italian master, believed that the figure he was to sculpt lay within the stone. His idea of the statue within the block has been already shaped by the past, which I define as the intention or the idea of the statue. Culture brings us to see the statue as it is being sculpted and once it is finished, we reflect upon the artifact. The "past" or the "intention" of the statue within the block is the prologue to its future. The artistic movement of Impressionism may be seen in much the same way it seems to me.

The Impressionistic painting is designed to provide the "impression" of the painting, not necessarily the reality of it. Thus, the painter calls us to reflect upon the painting and determine our reality. The past or intention of the painting happens and then there is an instant, the creative instant, followed by the future of the paining. It is only for that creative instant that the painting is contemporaneous with us. Before that moment and after that moment, the painting is past and future combined.

The same concept applies to music and to writing. In musical scores there is a creative instant, and the reflective process follows it. The creative instant is then written down and then only brought to life by being played. We then reflect only when the music is brought back to life by being performed. The music is frozen on the page by its notation, just like the words that you are reading here are frozen by print. Even if you were to read this column out loud, you would find that the words go out of existence as soon as they leave your mouth. The only time they are animated is when they are spoken, just as the only time that music is given life is when it is played. (I know that some people will say that as they read a printed page or a printed musical score, they hear the words or music, but again the creative instance is translated into a different form, the "heard" interior thought.)

My contention ultimately is that culture depends upon its past in order to actualize its future. We build upon our past, actualize it, and reflect upon it.