Art by Zee

Norman Laliberte’ is a North American artist who was born in Massachusetts, raised in Montreal, and educated at the Institute of Design in Chicago where his teachers included the likes of Buckminster Fuller, Groplus, and Mies Van der Rohe. His skills include teaching, painting and illustration. He has written, designed, or illustrated some 35 books, and taught at the Kansas City Art Institute, Boston College, Notre Dame, and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Influenced by such artists as Marc Chagall, Rauschenberg, and Rouault, Laliberte’ has amassed an impressive body of work in his six-decades long career. His work has appeared in hundreds of shows and has been honored by five retrospectives, including at the Chicago Public Library and the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal. His major public works include banners for the 25th anniversary of the Chicago Lyric Opera, aluminum panels for the International Terminal at Logan Airport, and large scale projects for the New York State Bar Association, Standard Oil, IBM and Alcan Corporation.

Next up for the accomplished artist is a new retrospective of his work including textural paintings on tar paper, handmade books and a variety of mixed media pieces. Animals, flowers and various whimsical figures populate his abstract expressionism style.

Laliberte’: 60 Years of Joyful Creation opens March 5 with a Gallery Walk Exhibition and runs through April 9 at Gallery DeNovo in Ketchum.

Happy Fat Tuesday!

Cities all across America celebrate Mardi Gras but no one does it quite like New Orleans. Huge floats in huge parades attract revelers for one of the biggest parties on the planet. One of the most popular features of these parades is a tradition that dates back to the 1830s: the tossing of beads from float goers to their clamoring audiences begging: “Throw me something, mister.”

This simple plea used to be enough to have a chance at scoring some of the highly-prized beads, but as Tom Jacobs reports in this piece for Miller-McCune, University of Louisiana, Lafayette criminal justice department head Craig Forsyth took his toddler son to Mardi Gras and couldn’t figure out why no one would give the kid some beads until a nearby woman explained that there’s no catching beads when the female flashers are around.

Forsyth interviewed 51 women and 54 male float riders about stripping for beads. His conclusion? “Some forms of deviance apparently do ‘work,’” he concluded, “and parade stripping is one of them.”

Check the story’s links for more details on the social science tied to Mardi Gras.

One of the Northwest’s most talented musicians is Carrie Akre who has a long history of brilliant musical work with Hammerbox, Goodness and her own singer-songwriter career. Carrie has a massive amount of musical intelligence and now you can learn from her: Her six week singer/songwriter course begins February 24 and runs for six weeks at EMP/SFM. EMP members pay a mere $135 for the course; non-members pay $160. In either case, it’s a genuine bargain for the opportunity to learn the basics of writing and performing your own songs in a friendly, encouraging, and artistically challenging environment with one of the best instructors you could ever imagine.

For more information on the class, check out the class listing online.

If I were going to be anywhere near NYC in late February or early March, I would totally go to the New York International Children’s Film Festival (NYICFF).

If it seems to you like children’s movies are inherently dumb, only appealing to the young and unsophisticated, then you probably only watch mainstream releases which are, indeed, by and large glurge churned out in the hopes of making a buck or a few million via merchandising. Consider what the major houses seem to think of adults’ level of intelligence and it’s no wonder that so many kids’ movies are written as if children are inherently stupid.

Ah, but there are plenty of excellent movies made for children, many of which have a genuine appeal for adults, too, and not just in that arrested development in which would-be hipsters co-opt childhood as a substitute for actual personality.

Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou and the Sorceress (France, 1998) retells an old African legend with stunning, wonder-inspiring imagery. Another French film, 1973′s Fantastic Planet has long been a cult classic among adults for its psychedelic artwork and complex, provocative storyline but is an entirely suitable film for tweens and teens as well.

The French are really good at animation; this is represented at NYICFF with a program of French short animation and several more shorts and features.

NYICFF also features shorts and full-length films from places other than France. Notable is In the Attic from Czech filmmaker Jiri Barta, a leading light in stop-motion animation who hasn’t made a movie in 20 years. Like any good fairy tale, his story about a doll and her toy friends is equal parts dark to the light.

Film production workshops help educate kids and their families to what it really takes to make a movie and, who knows, maybe influence them to make their own.

One of my coworkers just got back from Kenya, a place I’ve always wanted to visit, so the flyer I just got about filmmaking seminars to be held in Kenya, and in Panama, too, are timely.

Well, if I ever get into filmmaking myself, I hope to produce, but wouldn’t it be fun to learn to shoot a movie in such lovely landscape?

Elevate Destinations is the organization providing these classes with experienced teachers whose pedigrees include winning Emmys and being affiliated with respected academic institutions. The Panama class takes place in May, the Kenya class takes place in August. Both classes include expert instruction on cinematography as well as trips to see the local flora and fauna up close.

For more information, visit their website, e-mail elevatedestinations.com or phone 617.661.0203