Artifice

May 06 2008 – According to researchers, the three Rs of education need another companion.

Apr 22 2008 – Controversy and art are familiar partners, frequently feeding from mutual furor.

Apr 08 2008 – As mentioned a couple of issues back, Arts Alive is changing shape this spring into a multi-day, annual event akin to Huntsville’s successful Panoply festival that has become a signature happening in the Tennessee Valley.

Mar 25 2008 – Of the three musical disciplines with a home in "the academy," all are present to greater and lesser extents in the Port City.

Mar 11 2008 – The dust hasn’t settled but a form is emerging from the haze.

Feb 25 2008 – I’ve always taken a shine to Uncle Anthony. A musician for around a half-century now, he has endured life as an underappreciated and diligent jazz pianist.

Feb 12 2008 – Who said leap year was only about bounding forward?

Jan 28 2008 – The fertile soil of youth yields a wealth of cultural riches and the toil of Mobile’s cultivation has earned notice.

Jan 15 2008 – The challenge is to see what you can’t, to go where you’re unable and to open a new world of boundless limitation.

Jan 01 2008 – One of the first things taught in the most rudimentary art classes is the use of perspective.

Dec 18 2007 – Ah, December, when everything is bursting at the seams.

Dec 04 2007 – Space 301 hopes the pairing with their latest curator generates sparks of a whole different variety this time around.

Nov 20 2007 – Consider the following: Linda Zoghby – A Mobile native who made triumphant starring performances in New York’s Metropolitan Opera and at Carnegie Hall in addition to the Washington Opera.

Nov 06 2007 – Another night of hope has come and gone with little clear in the exact future it heralds.

Oct 23 2007 – An Internet perusal landed Artifice on the musings of a local arts participant and journalist.

Oct 09 2007 – Amazing how a stranger can dredge up so much within you.

Sep 25 2007 – First things first; this is the BayFest issue after all.

Sep 11 2007 – A war rolled into Mobile on Sept. 8 led by a field marshal more benign than bellicose.

Aug 28 2007 – It happens every year. As Labor Day looms and worried eyes turn toward the Gulf, rejuvenation irrepressibly springs within.

Aug 14 2007 – For Mobile artist Heather Petterson, a credo is evident.

Jul 31 2007 – You’ve got to hand it to him, his timing was impeccable.

Jul 17 2007 – It’s never smooth. The nature of existence finds broad plains of time uninterrupted by cataclysm or benchmark that periodically yield to rockier terrain with no warning.

Jul 03 2007 – Let’s get the inevitable out of the way: I’m biased, slanted as they come.

Jun 19 2007 – The moment has passed, the mania has died but the medium may never be the same.

Jun 05 2007 – Summer is typically the slow season locally but not in 2007.

Jun 05 2007 – Clarence David "Dave" McCann passed away on Wed., May 23, from a very aggressive brain cancer at age 59.

May 22 2007 – Rejuvenation is popping up all over and inspiring those beyond the tonier sections of recent renown.

May 08 2007 – The mood was mildly fatal, the subject mostly grim.

Apr 25 2007 – For most of us, a trip to another nation or even another continent seems the journey of a lifetime, but for David Doubilet, travel goes further.

Apr 10 2007 – Maybe it sounded so good because it all seemed so familiar.

Mar 28 2007 – "I went down to the restaurant and dragged him out of there," she said.

Mar 13 2007 – Up or down? Forward or back? Recently, WHIL-FM announced a change in programming, a culmination of research ordered by new station general manager Mario Mazza.

Feb 27 2007 – All good things come to an end and so it goes with the leadership at Mobile’s Saenger Theatre.

Feb 13 2007 – One of the benefits of studying history is the potential perspective it gives us.

Jan 30 2007 – One Mobile artist is an unknown key to the Gulf Coast Exploreum’s latest blockbuster exhibit, but its unlikely you’ll notice him particularly.

Jan 16 2007 – Like a plush chair, a favorite food or the warmth beneath a layer of your grandmother’s quilts, "comfort" speaks to us all.

Jan 02 2007 – A new year is just starting, but for WHIL-FM a new era has already begun.

Dec 19 2006 – As years go, 2006 wasn’t the most momentous or monumental.

Dec 05 2006 – To some, art is vocation and calling. To others, it’s diversion or mere distraction.

Nov 21 2006 – Is it mountain or molehill? Well, that depends on whether you’re looking down from the top or up from the bottom.

Nov 08 2006 – The sky was grey, the wind chilling but what was found inside was enough to color the most dismal of early winter days and warm the soul.

Oct 25 2006 – Of all their ideas, this one has the most innate glitz and pizzazz.

Oct 10 2006 – "How many thousands nobodies there are whom Fame blows up to importance and authority.

Sep 27 2006 – The small storefront at 5 Jackson Street in downtown is getting yet another facelift and this one seems poised to fully exploit the space’s familiarity to Mobile’s arts denizens.

Sep 13 2006 – Point Clear native Watt Key ’s first novel, "Alabama Moon," hit the shelves Sept.

Aug 29 2006 – So what changed? Well, everything and really nothing at all.

Aug 16 2006 – The idea was noble enough. The intent was fine. When Mobile Arts Council Director Bob Burnett announced in 2004 a grand gathering of arts personnel from all disciplines around the area, it sounded like something tailor-made for Mobile, a place where people certainly are drawn together for quick events and easy crowds.

Aug 01 2006 – What feeds your muse? Where does the lightbulb spark and your insights emerge into something new?

Jul 19 2006 – Change is a constant in a dynamic existence. People breathe and die.

Jul 05 2006 – The ghosts are thick in the old house at 355 Government St., lacing their way around the porch’s wrought iron and filling every nook inside.

Jun 21 2006 – A shower of "firsts" will fall in midsummer and some hope the growth that springs from it will bear a future harvest.

Jun 06 2006 – The trappings are nice, but the human element makes it memorable There’s no doubt the surroundings, artifacts and technology for the Mobile Exploreum’s latest exhibit are impressive.

May 23 2006 – Tucked away in the woods north of Mobile, Monroeville sits as an unassuming cultural center for Alabama.

May 09 2006 – Death is vacillation. Sure, it’s a lot of other things: finale, beginning, victory, defeat and a host of ideas, some too dreadful to name.

Apr 26 2006 – Consider the threshold crossed. While certainly nothing on the scale of Cannes or the once-important-but-now-shameless Sundance, the first Gulf ArtSpace Film Festival has forged important headway for the Mobile area cultural scene.

Apr 11 2006 – First of all, let’s turn the clock back a bit. In February of 2004, Artifice conducted a quick poll at a Fairhope gallery, asking the question "What aspect of the Bay Area cultural scene is of the most immediate address?

Mar 29 2006 – Spring is in full flower and new growth abounds. Nowhere is that growth more evident than at Gulf ArtSpace, Fairhope’s enclave of artistic adventure.

Mar 14 2006 – The strains of a jazz trio drift through the pristine hallways and bounce off the glass walls of the foyer.

Mar 01 2006 – For some of us, lines and categories don’t matter. Barriers are made to be broken and classifications bridged.

Feb 14 2006 – The papers are shuffled, the bodies adjourned and the presentation complete.

Jan 31 2006 – Mobile’s Exploreum is prepared to build on the success of last year’s Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit with another historic journey through the ancient world.

Jan 18 2006 – As discussed in the last edition of "Artifice," cinema seems to be surviving on shakier ground in our nation.

Jan 04 2006 – A shaman was looking for answers. In an attempt to better treat his newer patients, the Native American healer sought an inroad into "the white collective subconscious." He wanted to know where our healing stories lay; the tales we used to analyze ourselves and our situations, to provide us with answers or catharsis.

Dec 21 2005 – Another year over, another history laid, another slate of opportunities arises.

Dec 07 2005 – Four little letters; one short syllable. It’s an awfully meager representation for a concept and feeling that touches us all.