Happy Friday

Hello, everyone. I'm back from Florida. Never did see any art, but did spend a morning on a rather lovely beach before I left. Took a boat about 25 minutes from my resort to an island; the beach was chockablock with shells. I picked up a few and was reminded both of the power of the ocean - which never fails to scare me a little bit - and the beauty of what it spit out at my feet every few seconds. I guess you could call that art, huh?

Meantime. Here's some actual art news.

I got an email from Peter Burr this morning. He's a former Bemis resident who put on a great show when he was in town along with his band Hooliganship. Now he's coming back to town as part of a new project: the Cartune Xprez wagon, a travelng show of cartoons and video performances. Burr and his collaborators just finished a new movie called the 2008 Cartune Xprez DVD; its his second video compilation with this group. The traveling show will bring a group of cartoon performers around the country, including performances by Hooliganship and videos by Bruce Bickford, Takeshi Murata, Adrian Freeman, Blu, Martha Colburn, Paper Rad, Shana Moulton, Timo Katz, Emanuele Bortoluzi, Shayne Ehman, Seth Scriver, Eric Dyer, Ola Vasiljeva, Jeff Kricshun, Corey Lunn, E*Rock, Mumbleboy, Tars Hrabowsky, Lief Hall, Josh Mannis, Jim Trainor, Christopher Doulgeris and Burr himself. The animation party comes to Concordia University in Seward on Sept. 10 and to the Bemis Center in Omaha on Sept. 11.

I'm sure most of you have heard that artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude are coming to Omaha for a Sept. 16 lecture at the Kaneko on their two new projects. I'm interviewing them on Monday for a story in The Reader the week before the lecture, which I am looking forward to hearing. I'll be posting a sort of Q&A style rundown of the interview in the blog, and hopefully will be able to include more than I can in the newspaper.

Have a great weekend, everyone.