Oct. 18: Lynn Rossy | Nikos Karabetsos

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 18, for nonfiction by Lynn Rossy and art by Nikos Karabetsos.

NIKOS KARABETSOS

Nikos Karabetsos is a candidate in the MFA program at the University of Missouri. He holds a master's degree in studio arts from Marshall University, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. His work has been shown in places such as Ireland, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland. Karabetsos has partnered with the Hotei Gallery in Chicago. He has worked as an artist for Tommy Bahama clothing company, an illustrator for the children’s book Joha’s story, and an instructor in drawing and art appreciation. His current multimedia project utilizes practices in fibers, printmaking and painting. Weathering handmade paper causes the object to undergo a manner of materialization and de-materialization. Using this concept as primary subject matter, he creates multiple versions of the same thing. His presentation discusses his current project and place in reference to art history.

LYNN ROSSY

Dr. Lynn Rossy recently became the director of integrated wellness at Veterans United after spending many years as the health psychologist for the University of Missouri wellness program for faculty and staff. She specializes in teaching, researching and writing about mindfulness-based interventions for stress, weight management and wellness. The successful concepts in her empirically validated mindful eating program have been translated into her book The Mindfulness-Based Eating Solution.  She is passionate about helping people have a healthier relationship with their food and their bodies while creating lives filled with joy and meaning.

May 17: Marlene Lee

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 17, for an evening with novelist Marlene Lee.

Courtesy Columbia Daily Tribune

When she’s not reading, playing the piano, or talking to other writers, Marlene Lee holds down a table at the Lakota Coffee House in Columbia, Missouri, confronting blank pages during business hours and postponing the inevitable with another cup of coffee.
 
Before writing full-time, she carted her stenotype machine from place to place (eventual settings for her fiction) in a moveable feast of court reporting: Brookings, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Chico, California; San Francisco; and New York City.  She now lives in Columbia, Missouri.

Before court reporting she taught high school, children’s special education, Freshman and Sophomore college English, and vocational school classes in stenotype. Always and in-between, she was writing short stories and novels.  These works of fiction have been recently revised, edited, and published by Holland House Books of England.

 Two of Marlene Lee’s books were published in 2013: The Absent Woman and a collection of short stories, Rebecca’s Road.

Scoville, a collection of three mystery novellas (“Three Blind Mice,” “Always On Thursdays,” and “Recesses of the Mind”), was published in spring of 2014 under the Grey Cells Press imprint.   Limestone Wall, a novel, came out November 1, 2014, from Holland House Books.

No Certain Home, a historical novel  based on the life of international journalist Agnes Smedley, was published by Holland House Books in April 2016.


Orr Street Studios is located at 106 Orr St. in downtown Columbia, Missouri. Join us the third Tuesday evening of each month during the academic year for literary readings and visual-arts presentations.

April 19: Unbound Book Festival Preview

Join us at 7 p.m. April 19 for a special sneak preview of the Unbound Book Festival.

An insiders' guide to a new literary extravaganza! We'll talk to organizers about what goes into planning a huge, super-awesome literary event in wee Columbia, Missouri. We'll hear wonderful excerpts of fine literature by festival-featured local authors such as Eric Praschan and Laura McHugh. We'll view beautiful artwork by festival-featured author/illustrator Deborah Zemke. As always, we'll ask lots of questions, eat snacks, drink wine, make friends and chill out amid colorful Orr Street Studios artwork.

What's not to love?

See you at Orr Street April 19.
See you at the festival April 22-23.

http://www.unboundbookfestival.com/ 



Orr Street Studios is located at 106 Orr St. in downtown Columbia, Missouri. Join us the third Tuesday evening of each month during the academic year for literary readings and visual-arts presentations.

March 15: Elise Rugolo

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 15, for an art talk and a viewing of paintings by Elise Rugolo.

Elise Rugolo's work currently is on display at Orr Street Studios in an exhibit title "Tension + Repose."

 ELISE RUGOLO

Elise Rugolo is an abstract painter who celebrates the physicality of her artwork through an exploration of various media and layering of imagery. Her rhythmic and sometimes calligraphic style is suggestive of dance or motion borne out of a sense of urgency. She favors vivid color, energetic mark making, and intricate compositions that incorporate both geometric and organic elements. Her paintings often combine acrylic, gouache, or encaustic paint with other materials, such as drawing media, collage, fiber, and photo transfers. Her observations of nature and human behavior serve as the conceptual and/or emotional springboard for her intuitive working process, which is directed and shaped by her quest for visual balance.

Rugolo was born and raised in Columbia. She was fortunate to have an art professor father (Lawrence Rugolo), who encouraged and nurtured her creative spirit in her formative years. She left town to go to college and went on to live in a variety of places, most recently Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She moved back to Columbia in September 2015.

Rugolo earned a BFA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from Arizona State University. She has exhibited extensively in galleries and juried shows throughout the country. Her artwork is held in numerous private and public collections. She taught as an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin, and currently teaches workshops and private instruction. She is represented by Concept Art Gallery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

www.eliserugolo.com

Feb. 16: David Spear | Charlotte Pence

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb 16, for poetry by Charlotte Pence and an art talk and a viewing of paintings by David Spear.

CHARLOTTE PENCE

Charlotte Pence’s poetry merges the personal with the scientific. Her first book, Many Small Fires (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) explores her father’s chronic homelessness while simultaneously detailing the physiological changes that enabled humans to form cities, communities and households. A professor of English and creative writing at Eastern Illinois University, she is also the author of two award-winning poetry chapbooks and the editor of The Poetics of American Song Lyrics (University Press of Mississippi, 2012). Pence is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Redden Fund, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Alvin H. Nielson Memorial Fund, the Discovered Voices Award, New Millennium Writing Award, and many others. New poems have recently been published in Epoch, Harvard Review and The Southern Review.

DAVID SPEAR

David Spear earned a BFA from the University of Missouri-St.Louis in 1999 and an MFA in painting from University of Missouri in 2012.

His work can be seen throughout Columbia at venues such as Addison's Restaurant, the Wabash Bus Station, Memorial Union, Boone Hospital, Jefferson Middle School, the traffic box on the corner of Ninth Street and Broadway and the ROTC Cannon fired on Faurot Field after a Tigers score.

Spear currently works on private and public commissions for a variety of patrons and teaches drawing and painting at the University of Missouri.

Temporal Auxiliaries

 

Dec. 28, 2015 - March 6, 2016

Orr Street Studios

This collection of works by David Spear considers and weighs the transient nature of time in terms of antecedent appropriations, historical recollections and artist as individual.