FALL 2005

Executive Director's Report

Dear Friends of the Arts,

It is a pleasure to welcome Jack Lloyd, President of Harris Bank Palatine N.A. and Regional President, North Region, Harris Bank, to the Board of Directors. Jack and I had an interesting morning at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Palatine listening to "KMA"™ presenter Chris Graham teach students about the life cycle and migration habits of butterflies. Students then made and decorated butterflies that were attached to a display banner. The project used all recycled materials. Jack loves the "KMA"™ program and hopes to encourage the other Harris Banks to sponsor "KMA"™ in their communities.

The artists, Board Members, and staff of the Northwest Cultural Council sometimes feel they are working in a vacuum. Is anyone looking at the artwork on the walls of the corporate galleries? Are the students in the "Kids Meet Art"™ (KMA™) classes grasping the concepts we are teaching; and are they benefiting from and applying the newly acquired knowledge? Who's reading SPOTLIGHTS? Do they like it? Is it useful? Then we open the mail and receive letters, like those we've included in this issue of SPOTLIGHTS, and our efforts are validated.

Zoe Mather visited the Wellness Center and the NWCC Corporate Gallery at Northwest Community Healthcare and purchased two of Beverly Miotke's watercolors. With her check came this lovely note:

"Dear Ms. Miotke,

I am thrilled to be able to own your two watercolors, Snapdragons & Pansies. I love the delicacy and airiness of your work. This is what watercolor is meant to do, it seems to me!"

A letter to Bob Fiorani of Square D, a sponsor of "KMA"™, from Paula Pisani, a fifth grade teacher at Paddock Elementary School in Palatine, is the best recommendation for supporting "KMA"™ and a confirmation of the program.

"Dear Mr. Fiorani:

My fifth grade class and I participated in the Northwest Cultural Council's art class this year at Paddock School in Palatine. The lesson on perspective was interesting as well as appropriately presented for the grade level. It was also beneficial for the children to be exposed to an artist's point of view.

It was particularly exciting to see the reaction of one of my students. A boy in my class is hyperactive but very bright and artistic. He was so turned-on by the lesson that he continued to use the learned skills in his work. His parents were also pleased to see this enthusiasm and as a result enrolled him in further art lessons. This activity has resulted in him channeling his energy in a positive way. I was touched by this reaction to the program and thought you might be interested in hearing of this experience.

Thank you for your support of the educational program for our students. We appreciate your awareness of the potential benefits of community and school interaction."

We'll share additional letters and comments in future issues. We welcome your letters and opinions.

As we go to press the gallery is a whirlwind of activity getting ready for the Second Annual Poetry and Visual Art competition, "My Cultural Heritage." Please mark your calendar for the Sunday, November 7, 2-4 pm reception, recognizing artists and poets from around the world.

Warmest regards,

Kathy Umlauf

IN MEMORIAM

We lost two valuable friends of the Council over the summer.

Richard D. Goode October 20, 1934 - July 31, 2005

At the first meeting of the Northwest Cultural Council, Dick Goode offered this fledgling organization office space at Northrop Grumman. We stayed at Northrop for about one and a half years before moving to our current home in the Kimball Hill Complex. When NWCC began its first project, SPOTLIGHTS, Dick offered to print our quarterly newsletter. Now 17 years later we gratefully acknowledge this ongoing relationship with Northrop Grumman.

He was a patriot, and proud, excited and respectful of the work Northrop Grumman accomplished in its defense of the United States. Dick was a loyal supporter of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Palatine. He admired and stood in awe of the gentle kindnesses the nuns lavished on the old, the sick and the poor residents of their home.

We are honored that the Council was a part of Dick's good works.

Kathy Umlauf

Neil Henderson 1923 - 2005

Neil was a regular at the Council's Second Saturday Poetry Workshops for most

of the years of its existence, usually the first one in the door, always the first one to the coffee pot and ready to regale us with a poetic fresh look at something that had missed our observation.

A proud son of Scotland, he never quite lost the brogue he brought with him to his adopted country. Wonderful words tripped off his tongue with a natural lyricism the rest of us could only envy. Whenever a presenter asked us to read each other's poetry, we could only muster a pale imitation. Neil's poetry was best read by Neil.

With a fine eye for what he called the "unnumbered creations of beauty," he looked out his window and saw, in his own neighborhood, a universe of beauty, a canvas he painted with words.

His credentials would warm the heart of any Scot - the Robert Burns Federation, the St. Andrews Society, past Bard of Clan Henderson. The high point of his year may have been his annual delivery of the "Address to the Haggis," resplendent in crisply pleated Henderson tartan.

Neil was all brightness and color and fun in our midst. The Second Saturday poets are diminished by his passing.

Sherrie Kirmse

Arts Commentary

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

I have watched the end of the television shows that we all watched this past year, and this ritual came as no surprise to me or to anyone in America. Now, we all will watch to see what continues to happen to the usual assortment of doctors, lawyers, but no candlestick makers, as the start of fall takes us in its grip. I see that the fall season is to have an unusual number of new reality shows. We are seeing new demonstrations of how to get a job, how to eat a spider, how to run races, and how to live on deserted islands. Quite frankly I am looking for a reality show about how to survive playing in a major orchestra or the angst of hanging an art show in Soho. But, somehow I think I will not see that in the current fall lineups.

What is problematic to me is that if television is a mirror of our culture, then we are in a slump. I am the first to admit that sometimes mindless television viewing is just the thing after a long day at work, but it seems that the reality of television is more an appearance than reality. Let me explain.

I believe that at the end of each century, the last decade is one of decadence. I do not mean decadence in the sense of color your hair green and pierce some body part. I mean decadence in the sense of "change." Change can be seen in revolution, for example. In the 1790s, there was the French Revolution which ultimately toppled many European governments. In the 1890, there was the aesthetic period led by such aesthetes as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, whose views on art brought us into the modern period. In counter to such decades as these, the following decade may be generalized as a time of conservatism. The 1810s in England was the Regency period and along with it came a return to the conservative values that also characterized the 1910s. It is no surprise, then, that the first decade of 2000 is deeply marked by conservative views across our country. The nice thing about conservatism is that it brings a certain order to its environment. We return to the easy answers of what is right and what is wrong. Decisions are based on long-established, well-practiced views. Thus, a reality show illustrates absolute right and wrong. People who eat bugs and survive the outcast island or the perils of the boardroom do so because they did the right thing. But what about people who do the wrong thing? How about the "free thinkers" in America in the nineteenth century?

Groups like the Transcendentalists in America included people like Ralph Waldo Emerson. The movement flourished in New England from about 1836 until 1860. In his essay, Nature, Emerson wrote "Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God." Emerson makes use of the image of a giant eyeball that sees all around it and, at the same time, allows us to see into it. If Emerson is the eyeball, he makes himself transparent to all who are around him in all parts of his life. Nature was the first essay to put into words such a concept. The appearance of the eyeball transcends its own reality.

That is, to me, a pretty amazing statement that Emerson was making. He was not alone in this thought. Henry David Thoreau, a contemporary of Emerson's, also picked up on this idea in Walden, his book that recounts the year he spent living away from society. As he wrote: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived . . . ." In Walden there is a wonderful description of Thoreau fishing at night in a boat on the pond. In this chapter, Thoreau casts his rod up into the heavens and down into the lake in one movement. He is fishing both heaven and earth and by being the connection between the two places, Thoreau transcends the reality of the pond by the appearance of fishing. Fishing becomes his vehicle like the giant eyeball becomes Emerson's.

What do these two great writers have to do with the start up of the television season you may ask? Why would I look to them to demonstrate the ending decade and the starting decade of any century as decadence leading to change? Here is the connection: Emerson and Thoreau transcend the appearance of giant eyeballs and fishing into the reality of living "deliberately" or of feeling a "Universal Being circulate" through oneself. Our television offerings do not transcend the reality they attempt to present through scripted outcomes and clichéd narratives. Are we more lifted up when we see pop idols hire and fire on whim? Do we see our self worth increased with each mouth full of insects ingested? I do not believe we do, but some will disagree with me. Are we more comfortable with easy answers to complex questions because of conservative environments? Emerson and Thoreau were not satisfied with the conservative philosophy of their environments and sought refuge in transcending the reality of their time.

What did I do over the long, hot summer? I read Walden again for advice on gardening, which, if I recall Thoreau's quote, runs like this: "I made the ground say beans where it had never said beans before." I hoped to make the ground say "flowers where it has never said flowers before!" I was spending most of my time saying "drink the water, flowers, and stay cool and try to thrive." I read Emerson's essays. I went to hear orchestras play and saw an art gallery opening. I looked for you there; all of us gathered to transcend our realities.

Dennis L. Weeks, Ph.D.

AN ARTIST'S VIEW
Alone with Monsieur Monet

By Nancy Rayborn

The final visitor of the day departed at 6 pm - now, at last, was our time to enter the garden. A venue that sees over a million visitors per year became the exclusive domain of ten artists for the next two hours. This wonderful experience occurs every day during the eight month season at Giverny.

On Mondays, the garden experience is reserved solely for artists who have made prior arrangements. There are usually 40-50 guests on those days - sometimes more. But the evenings are exclusively for those staying at the artist's lodge two blocks away.

We arrive with our painting gear on wheels and head for a favorite spot to set up quickly in order to catch the early evening light. On this occasion I decide to work in the water garden. Following the paths through the whole garden, I head down the stairs under the road and emerge into a wonderland.

There are two arched Japanese bridges painted, of course, in green. One spans the middle of the pond and the other is at the far end. Willow trees swoop down and kiss the water's edge. The water lilies cover the pond and there are multitudes of blooming water plants as well as patches of colorful flowers along the paths. The real beauty, however, is the light pattern on the water as the sinking sun darts between clouds and trees casting sparkling reflections and changing patterns on the pond.

Each of us has chosen a different vantage point, far from each other. This truly gives us a feeling of being totally alone in the garden as Monsieur Monet himself experienced the beauty that he had created. It is very still, with bird and water sounds to keep us company as we paint.

At the end of two hours, we pack up our gear and head for the garage, where we silently turn off the lights and let ourselves out.

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