On Thanksgiving Day, 2007, I took a tour of Joe Malin’s garage-turned-studio for the inaugural DESIGNOJEK studio tour. Joe lives and works in Plainville, Kansas, a small town about 80 miles from the geographic center of the United States. He was born in a farmhouse his father built right on the outskirts of Plainville and has called Kansas his home all of his life. After retiring from a career on farms and oil fields, he put his welding skills to work again and started creating sculptures made from scrap metal, bolts, nuts and various other items lying around his shop. Although not formally trained as an artist, he creates wonderful pieces of folk art that have immense character, meticulous attention to detail, and fascinating historical significance. Also a modest man, he chuckled when I called his work space a “studio” and would likely correct me if I called him a “sculptor”, but his love for what he does and the care he puts into his wonderful pieces makes him as much of an artist as anyone.
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Ann Evans, the executive director of the Lawrence Arts Center, has announced her retirement effective Dec. 31, 2007. She has been a monumental force in not only the rise of the LAC since it’s creation in 1974, but also in promoting local artists. Her hard work has helped make the Lawrence Arts Center one of the premier art centers in Kansas and it will be interesting to see what direction the LAC will take under new leadership in 2008. Thanks to Ann for all the work she’s done and congrats on the retirement!

Congratuations to the 2007 Phoenix Award winners! The Phoenix Award is given by the Lawrence Arts Commission to recognize outstanding achievements in the arts in the Lawrence community. This town is really lucky to have such amazing support for all art forms and there are so many world class artists living in the area who’s talents help make it a great place to live. This year’s winners were:

Kathy Pryor, Arts Administrator
Ted Johnson, Arts Advocate
Janeal Krehbiel, Musical Arts
Vince Gnojek, Performing Arts
KT Walsh, Visual Arts
Joyce Schild, Arts Volunteer
Linda Frost, Arts Volunteer
Barb Wasson, Exceptional Artistic Achievement

I’d especially like to congratulate my dad, Vince Gnojek for winning in the performing arts category! I could tell at the awards reception that he was deeply touched and honored to be on stage with everyone. He is truly one of the finest musicians I know and I’m extremely happy that all of his hard work has been recognized! Also, thanks to Kip Haaheim for his kind introduction.

A memorable moment at the awards ceremony was KT Walsh’s speech who asked everyone to take a pledge to the arts which was a humorous way remind people that there is an instinctual need for creativity in our lives and we need to recongnize it on a daily basis. She also gave out several bags of found items that the audience will take and create street art with for display downtown on Nov. 24th.

You can read more about each of the winners here online.

On October 14, I was able to see the results of several months work come together for a Lawrence-based event called the River City Reading Festival. This project was very exciting for me because I was able to work with Tad Carpenter, a friend of mine who is an award-winning illustrator, graphic designer, and all around great guy. I’ve been a big fan of his work ever since we went to school together and I had been hoping for a project to come along that we could collaborate on for some time. Tad did all of the illustration for this project and I did all of the design and layout and was very pleased with the final result.

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This weekend, we took a trip 30 minutes from Lawrence to visit the Maple Leaf Festival in Baldwin, KS. It’s what you’d expect from a small town arts and crafts fair, but it’s quaint and the weather was great, so we had a lot of fun.

Here’s a quick description from the official website:
“Started in 1958, the Maple Leaf Festival began as a community event inspired by Dr. Ivan Boyd, a biology professor at Baker University. He noted that the third weekend in October was the optimum time to view the changing colors of the Maple Leaves in the area and the perfect time to celebrate the successful harvest.”

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