ARTSCAPE '93

Where else could you hear Ted Hirschfield read his searing poetry, watch Nanci Joplin's Drawing Group try to capture a human being's essence, and hear Jack Smoot play melancholy mountain dulcimers while Mark Farmer, who freezes time with his pen and ink drawings of local edifices, grazes about costumed as city founder Louis Lorimier?

The event is the first-ever ArtsCape, and it draws together artists from diverse disciplines in a weekend of performances and appreciation that holds the potential of resurrecting a Cape Girardeau arts tradition that faded away a decade ago. That tradition is the Missourian Art Show, which for 45 years gave the region's artists both great and small a chance to show their work.

"The Missourian shows attracted a lot of people. I guess they liked being seen and socializing and all that stuff," said Laura Brothers, chairwoman of the ArtsCape Committee.

"We tried to set up something that would be just as attractive to people."

The backbone of this weekend's ArtsCape at Southeast Missouri State University is the same kind of open show.

In its first year the open exhibition has drawn only 65 entries compared to the hundreds once exhibited in the Missourian shows. But Brothers says it still begins to achieve its goal: "To show off what everybody's doing."

Also shown off, a la Missourian shows, will be the work of six guest artists: Judi Brey of Cape Girardeau; portraitist Cleda Curtis-Neal of Oran; Cape native Charles Ketcham of California; Cape native Ron Koehler of Mississippi; Joan Robbins of Sikeston: and Jake Wells of Marble Hill.

ArtsCape begins at 6 p.m. Friday with a private pre-opening reception in the Program Lounge at the University Center. Robert Fruhwald, a faculty member at the university, will perform flute and electronic music at 6:30 p.m., followed by the opening of the ArtsCape exhibit to the public.

Artist Craig Thomas will begin composing a chalk mural during the evening, which will end at 9 p.m.

The exhibit will reopen at 10 a.m. Saturday. Thomas will be back at work, Hirschfield will begin reading, and Farmer will be patrolling the corridors.

Also on hand at 10 a.m. will be: Robin Hankinson, who will spin fiber; Aaron Horrel, who will demonstrate painting and photo collage; and potter F. Mark Burnett.

Beginning at 11 a.m., artist Pamela Boyd will demonstrate her unique work. She makes mosaic pictures from car vinyl.

Kids art activities will be conducted by Corliss McCallister from 1-4 p.m. Saturday.

Becky Fulgham and the Southeast Missouri Music Academy Youth Orchestra will begin playing at 1:50 p.m.

The mountain dulcimer performance and Drawing Group demonstration are scheduled for 2 p.m., followed by pianist Dan Cotner at 2:30. The building will close at 5 p.m.

ArtsCape will reopen at 11 a.m. Sunday, and Thomas will continued his mural. Fulgham and music academy piano students will begin performing at 1:10 p.m., followed at 1:30 by vocalist Charlene Peyton.

At 2 p.m., vocalists Chris Goeke and Lori Shaffer will perform, and Robert Parsons will demonstrate stained glass-making. Joplin and the Drawing Group will work from 2-4 p.m.

The final performance of the event will be by Gary Miller and the Southeast Missouri Double Reed Band at 3 p.m.

ArtsCape will close at 4 p.m. Sunday.

Brothers said the intention is to make ArtsCape an annual affair.

"It's really meant to be a family event," she says. "The kind of thing you can all go to together."

ArtsCape is sponsored by the Bicentennial Committee, Southeast Missouri Council on the Arts and Southeast Missouri State University.

The singular disappointment of the Bicentennial-themed events so far has been the postponement of the Bicentennial musical "Lou-ee." David Kaempfer's original work about Louis Lorimier's life in Cape Girardeau was to have been performed next weekend but timing appears to have scuttled the show.

It requires a cast of nearly 35 people, and finding singers for some important roles reportedly was difficult because of competing shows now in rehearsal.