Portrait Of A Young Man As An ArtistIf you tried to draw a circle around 17-year-old Greg Gandy, you would most likely fail. One of his lanky arms might poke through an arc, or an errant foot may render the circumference incalculable. He could pop up into …
New Stage Anticipates Coming SeasonNew Stage Theater is quiet. Artistic director Francine Reynolds sits in the lobby at a hardtop table littered with yellow acting class flyers. She is thoughtful, mirroring the calm anticipation humming in the theater.
Ballet Magnificat!In 1986 when Kathy Thibodeaux and her husband, Keith, decided to start a Christian ballet company, people thought they were crazy. At the time, Kathy, a silver medalist in the 1982 International Ballet Competition, was a dancer with Ballet Mississippi, …
A Boy and His MailboxIn "Glorious Mail," Mississippi natives J.D. Evermore and co-writer/co-producer Alice Walker tell the story of Cesar Nutley Willingham IV, an antiques dealer, community theater actor and flamboyantly green-eyeshadowed homosexual from Sinnaville, Miss. Willingham's good friend and artist, Kymeleon Cockerham, has …
Men We LoveWith Father's Day just around the corner, the Jackson Free Press has renewed its annual tradition of honoring the men we love. They are activists, news men, politicians, espresso Dadaists and rock stars. They are fathers and sons, brothers and …
Summer Arts PreviewA sweltering Mississippi summer is the perfect time to find something creative to do to get your mind off the heat and humidity–preferably, something indoors, at least until the sun goes down. There's no need to look very far for …
Summer Movies SizzleOne of the best things to do to avoid the Mississippi heat is to sit in an Antarctic-chilled movie theater in a bucket seat with a big, buttery, unhealthy bucket of popcorn and over-sized soda watching something blow up, a …
The Museum RebornWhen museum director Betsy Bradley walked me through the new Mississippi Museum of Art building in February, the mostly finished museum felt like a chrysalis—placid and even ordinary on the outside, but host to a dramatic metamorphosis within. Formerly the …
Transmitting ReflectionsRoy Adkins and Jerri Sherer are familiar figures in the Jackson art scene. These talented artists, also a married couple, have opened their studio, Light and Glass, in the Old Capitol Green District (which is being redeveloped) on South Commerce …
Flat World, Deep GameWhen reviewing a game like "Super Paper Mario," it's difficult to avoid comparing it to its predecessors. "SPM" is technically the sequel to the two "Paper Mario" games released on the N64 and Gamecube, which were loose continuations of "Super …
So Cynical I Could CryLike Vincent Van Gogh and Jackson Pollack, few recognized the artistic genius of Hiram "Hank" Williams while he was alive. He was only 29 when he died in 1953, on his way to a gig in Canton, Ohio. Williams was …
Venus EnvyTo see the toll that time exacts, consider two images of Peter O'Toole.
Back In The USSRIn 1972, Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky, brothers who were celebrated Russian science-fiction writers, published a short novella called "Roadside Picnic." It chronicled a man's journey into "The Zone," a quarantined area where alien forces had crash-landed, spreading strange radioactive anomalies. …
Comics, Black And WhiteThe history of comic books in America is proof that you can't kill an art form. When Dr. Fredric Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocents" came out in 1958, on the eve of the Superman-dominated "golden age" of comics, many thought …