theCLog

This just in from the folks at The Mint Museum:

Bring a canned good to The Mint Museum and receive $1 off admission! The food drive will benefit Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions. Best, Elizabeth

The Mint Museum Offers Reduced Admission for Food Donations Museum asks for community’s help to restock local food bank

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (November 18, 2008) ? This winter Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup Cans won’t be the only food items on view at The Mint Museum. Through February 15, 2009, visitors to the Mint Museum of Art and the Mint Museum of Craft + Design will receive $1 off admission when they bring in a canned good or other non-perishable food item. The food drive will benefit Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina.

“With the struggling economy and the holidays around the corner, we would like to do as much as we can in helping keep Second Harvest stocked,” said Elizabeth Isenhour, Marketing & Public Relations Manager. “Offering reduced admission is a great way to get the community involved in giving back.”

The Mint Museum of Art is exhibiting Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life & Legends through February 15. The exhibition spans the artist’s career from the 1950s through 1986, and features key early works from landmark series such as Endangered Species, Flowers, Jews, Myths, Muhammad Ali and Space Fruits from the Bank of America Collection.

The special exhibition Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection is on display through January 4 at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design. One of the most comprehensive collections of contemporary studio jewelry in the world, Ornament as Art features jewelry made from materials ranging from gold and sapphires to television bulbs and No. 2 pencils.

For more information, visit www.mintmuseum.org.

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Artist Antoine Williams, a member of the Charlotte-based art collective known as God City, is hosting an art show tonight at the Art House (3103 Cullman Ave. in NoDa) titled “Minority Report.” Here’s a sneak peak at some of the work that’s set to be on display:

(more…)

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North Carolina Dance Theatre will present “Innovative Works” on Oct. 30 and 31 and Nov. 1, 6, 7 and 8 at the Booth Playhouse. Tickets range from $25 to $69.

Here are some photos from the performance:

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Writer Harvey Pekar stopped through at Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find comic book shop today with comic creator Alison Bechdel. Check out these photos. (PS- He really does look like his character in his comic books!)

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Unless you haunt the PAC’s labyrinthine web site you are unlikely to have heard the news. Our Asheville-based benefactors, North Carolina Stage Company, will be launching another season at Duke Energy Theatre on Nov. 12. We extracted this info upon receiving NC Stage’s announcement, released earlier today, that the Asheville season will be opening on Oct. 22 with a new production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt.

Now you might ask what caused our paroxysm of interest in the possibility of seeing this production in Charlotte. Having seen Cherry Jones here at Belk Theater as Sister Aloysius, and with Meryl Streep’s pass at this plum role scheduled for a nationwide screen release in December, I wasn’t getting on the road to see the NC Stage version just because a two-time CL Actor of the Year, Brian Robinson, is playing Sister’s charismatic prey, the enigmatic Father Flynn. Robinson is a fixture with a bunch of pro companies in Western NC, so this isn’t that special an occasion.

No, but when you toss in two-time CL Actress of the Year Rebecca Koon as Sister Aloysius, I’m definitely up there unless Doubt is headed down here. Koon’s string of stage exploits with Charlotte Repertory Theatre was one of the key reasons why the demise of that company was such a keen blow to the local cultural scene. As Koon’s valedictory CL Award attests — Best Dramatic Actress in Wit – Koon was Rep’s go-to performer for the great diva dramatic roles of our time.

Of course, Koon’s coming shouldn’t come as a shock. She and her husband, Rep founder Steve Umberger, have been lurking in the Tarheel State all year, beginning with Koon’s reprise of Shirley Valentine for NC Shakespeare Festival last winter. Umberger directed another Rep stalwart, Graham Smith, in a fine NCSF production of King Lear that closed in High Point this past weekend. Right now, he’s parked off Exit 30 on I-77, directing rehearsals of Communicating Doors, set to open the Davidson College theater season on Oct. 22.

If you don’t care to hunt down that student effort, we can definitely recommend watching Koon hunt Robinson down as the implacable Sister Aloysius. Doubt will run for two weekends at Duke Playhouse, closing on Nov. 23, with tickets priced at $16-$26. Even before Koon was added to the lineup, NC Stage productions imported to Spirit Square, including It’s a Wonderful Life and Chesapeake, were self-recommending. With their 2008-09 runs extended to a second week, we now consider Charlotte to be NC Stage’s second home. So yes, we’re penciling in Koon and Robinson as eligible for CL’s 22nd Annual Charlotte Theatre Awards.

First, they will have to earn their nominations!

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What are you doing tonight? Nothing? OK. Then you should go to Petra’s Piano Bar & Cabaret (1919 Commonwealth Ave.) around 7:30 p.m. to check out the much-awaited Volume 1 of Pecha Kucha Charlotte.

Described as a “the mix of kindergarten show-and-tell, open-mike night and happy hour,” Pecha Kucha is a fun social event where one can take the stage and present 20 images at 20 seconds per image. Read more about it here.

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Introducing CL’s brand-new original TV series Tales of Charlotte, which features folks recounting true-life stories about the most bizarre incidents they’ve ever experienced. Check it out on our video blog CL-TV.

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“I was born because a man came to kill my father. If he hadn’t showed up with a gun in his pocket and bad thoughts in his head, I wouldn’t exist, much less have a story to tell. This tragic footnote to my conception left me feeling as if I had three parents: a father, a mother, and a murderer.”

— Pharmakon by Dirk Wittenborn (Viking, $25.95; now available)

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For you avid This Modern World fans, here’s this week’s cartoon, which we weren’t able to fit into the paper (because of the Best of Charlotte issue. Have you seen it? It’s amazing!!)

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Now you can get comics on your iPhone. Check it out:

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