On November 3rd, we hosted another PechaKucha Night. It was a transitional event, being the first PKN for Springfield since founder Amanda Snelson has moved and turned the organizing reigns over to RuBert Studios and LemonDrop.

Turnout for the evening was great, over 150 people and maybe more if you could have counted the overlap of few people arriving late or leaving early. We had a dynamic line-up of presenters, with the lovely Meganne Rosen O’Neal as our mc.

Here’s the order of presenters:

Russ RuBert – Studio as Laboratory
Jonathan Gano - Crime Prevention through Environmental Design
Julie Taylor Jones – Stop-motion Animation
Mark Frank – Working in Sake Breweries in Japan

At intermission, we served sake in honor of Mark’s presentation about making sake, and he walked around explaining all sort of interesting tidbits of information about the proper tasting of sake and how different sake cups are designs relate to the tasting.

Linda Dollar & Jodie Adams – Community Olympics Development Program
Nick Nelson – inspirational people
Kim Flores – Tearjerker Novels You Will Need Kleenex to Read
Paula Rosen – Drury University Fiber Arts
Art of Space: Julia Dicus, Gerard Nadeau, Pema Wangzome – Knitted Space

We also had a great group of volunteers to assist at the door, the bar, making signs, and serving sake. Thanks to everyone involved, Springfield eagerly awaits PechaKucha vol. 9 which should be held in mid-January, time and place TBD.

During his visit, we introduced George to local artists and other arts community venues such as the Creamery Arts Center and Drury University’s Pool Art Center Gallery.

After the meet and greet for George Neubert, a few people lingered and living discussion about public art ensued. George explained the process that he used to commission Claus Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen’s Torn Notebook for the Sheldon Art Gallery – three visits involved first artists, then patrons, then the larger community was invited to participate development of the project.

Brainstorming led to cutting and sewing, and this smiley character who looks a little like the “Hey Koolaide” character from the 70s.

At a PechaKucha Night, presenters have 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide to present their material which makes for 6 minutes and 40 seconds which keeps the evening moving at a lively pace. Presentation topics varied from artists sharing their work, to how Joplin is planning on rebuilding the tornado affected areas of their city. Following are videos of some of the presentations:

Stephanie Cramer presents her paintings and ” … the figure—a snapshot before the gesture is complete”

Russ RuBert presents his sculpture and thought process in “The Space Between Space.”

Kat Allie presents her work “Queen Bee and Encaustic Painting”

Christine Schilling presents “Burning Man”

PechaKucha Night raised $360, and combined with the $160 PechaKucha St. Louis raised at their Joplin Benefit, $520 will go to AIA Springfield for their masterplanning services to help Joplin rebuild smarter. For more information on PechaKucha Night, visit www.pecha-kucha.org.

The Community Olympic Development Program (CODP) was established in 1998 to address the needs of progressing athletes from the beginning stages of development to the elite level, and Springfield is one of only seven development programs in the country. This program is exciting because it is being looked at as a model, with athletes traveling from St. Louis and Kansas City to train, and partnering programs representatives coming from Chicago and California to see tour our training facilities.

Working in the studio on a series called “Wish You Were Hair.” This one is about our trip to Tokyo, traveling from a garden of 1000 Stone Buddha’s down the mountains, back to Tokyo and intense civilization – the technology that uplifts us, and the same time puts us at risk.

wonder if it will be hard to drive?