Posts for 'Arts' Category

A 91-year-old woman won the top prize at Australia's main open-air art exhibition at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Thursday for a granite carving she completed 13 years ago. May Barrie's sculpture beat 113 other artworks at the Sculpture By The Sea festival, Australia's largest annual outdoor public display of art which is expected to draw half a million visitors over the next fortnight.

Barrie has been sculpting for more than 60 years and completed Time and Tide Granite Monolith II in 1996. Exhibition organisers described the huge sculpture, which has wave-like indents, as peaceful, subtle and sophisticated.

"I know it's a good work and now I'm glad that other people agree. I'm surprised and pleased to have been given this award. I hope I'm not just dreaming this," Barrie said. Sculpture By The Sea, in its thirteenth year, allows people to view artworks as they walk along a two km (mile) stretch of Sydney's iconic beaches.

Festival founding director David Handley said Barrie was "quietly elated" by the win. "She's been very private for the last decade or so and I wasn't even aware that she was still alive. I picked her up, I said, 'May, why haven't you been in our show before?'," he told Reuters. He said Barrie had drawn out the natural beauty of the stone, despite granite being particularly difficult to work with. Barrie said she would share the A$60,000 ($54,000) first prize with her family.

Brechin is playing host to painters, sculptors, musicians, and actors as the town's arts festival takes place. There will be drama, folk, and classical weekends, along with exhibitions and workshops. Famous percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie will be hosting a masterclass and putting on a concert.

There will also be performances of community play Journey of a Dream, based on the history of Brechin from the 1600s to the present day. In previous years the festival has seen visitors from Alaska, Siberia, South America, Canada, Australasia and Europe.

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Oscars organisers have been given the identity of someone who tried to sell two tickets for this year's ceremony without permission for $5,000 (£2,516).

A judge in Los Angeles ordered website Craigslist, where the tickets were offered, to reveal the vendor's name. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences said that person would join other individuals and companies it was suing for selling or brokering tickets. It said invitees were forbidden from selling these for security reasons.

Lawyer David Quinto, for the Academy, said: "If you don't know who's inside the theatre, it's very difficult to provide security." 'Trespasser' The poster identified themselves on Craigslist only as Daniel. In March, the Academy announced it was suing a number of parties over the sale of tickets. Some of these cases have now been thrown out.

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An arts and cultural festival that began 13 years ago as an attempt to fill a tourism gap between the Reno Rodeo in June and the Hot August Nights car rally is coming of age as a key component of civic leaders' efforts to revive the city's image and restore its sense of community.

The month-long Artown festival offers free events each day of July in a downtown park along the Truckee River as well as ticketed-performances at area stages and theatres by headliners ranging from Ringo Starr and Wynton Marsalis to the Harlem Gospel Choir and the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago troupe.

Two decades ago, organizers concede, the arts would have been one of the last images to come to mind in the Biggest Little City in the World, where quarter blackjack tables and 99-cent breakfasts were the main draw for tour buses of visiting Californians.

Since then, the river that rolls through downtown, once strewn with garbage, has been cleaned up and is home to a world-class kayaking and tube float park. Free summer concerts are held at an amphitheatre on an island in the park, and a 5,500-square-metre Nevada Museum of Art has been built just blocks away.

"This is our lucky 13th year," said Beth Macmillan, executive director of the festival that features music, dance, and opera; hands-on arts programs, film screenings and theatre performances.

"It's grown in size and scope. And I think Artown continues to change the way the rest of the country sees Reno. We're using arts and culture as a tool to do that, so that people around the country will say, 'They are doing WHAT in Reno?"'

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Two Picasso prints were stolen by three armed robbers from a museum in São Paulo, Brazil, on Thursday, The Associated Press reported. Along with the Picasso prints, “Minotaur, Drinker and Women” from 1933 and “The Painter and the Model” from 1963, the thieves took paintings by two Brazilian artists “Couple” by Lasar Segall and “Women in the Window,” above, by Emiliano Di Cavalcanti from the Pinacoteca do Estado museum. The works were estimated to be worth a combined $612,000. The robbers paid the museum’s entrance fee of $2.45 and then overpowered guards to take the framed works. In December another Picasso, “Portrait of Suzanne Boch,” and a painting by the Brazilian artist Candido Portinari were stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art after men used a crowbar and car jack to force open the museum’s doors. The paintings from that robbery were later found leaning against a house on the outskirts of the city.

French skydiver Michel Fournier's bid for a record-breaking parachute jump from Earth's stratosphere was aborted Tuesday when the balloon that was to carry him into the far reaches of the sky slipped away from his flight crew.

The former paratrooper had hoped to set new records for the highest jump, fastest free fall, longest free fall and the highest altitude reached by a man in a balloon. But those hopes drifted away over the plains of Saskatchewan when the balloon escaped.

Still clad in his bright yellow pressure suit, the visibly frustrated Fournier waved away cameras after his ride slipped away shortly after 5 a.m. (7 a.m. ET). There was no immediate word on how the effort was botched, but his flight crew was attempting to recover the balloon, according to his official Web site.

Fournier, 64, planned to start his "Big Jump" at 40 kilometers (25 miles) above the Earth's surface and land safely -- a risky proposition that French authorities already had barred on their territory.

He later got the approval of Canadian authorities to make the attempt over sparsely populated Saskatchewan.
The safety of the mission has been questioned by some scientists. At around 12,000 meters (40,000 feet) there is not enough oxygen to breathe and he could suffer a fatal blood clot.

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  My name is Cuty Boy and please don't conclude from my appearance that I am merely a feline of Persian origin.Try to understand me and then reach a conclusion. I am reserved, quiet and self-disciplined.I hardly make a sound or cry.When I have visitors or my family around, I have the proven ability to look into their hearts and minds and know exactly what is going on inside them. But I will not do any of these if I do not happen to like my visitors as I'm very choosy about whom I mix with!  I have varied communication skills for which I mainly use sign language and even facial expressions. Yes, my face can clearly express feelings! When my mom cooks chicken for me and serves it I will not eat until she asks me to. Anyone who wants to interact with me can speak to me in their own language and I always understand them perfectly. I have the documented ability to understand different languages. Renowned experts, including animal behaviour scientists, have conducted tests on me and they are simply amazed at what I am capable of. It seems my brain has greater capacity than that of a human. Trust me, just about my only handicap is that I cannot speak or write. I have never killed or eaten lizards, insects, cockroaches, or spiders.Neither do I chase tabby cats! We have a parrot at home who always screams my name but I have never troubled him.  You are most welcome to meet me and I will demonstrate my varied skills to all of you. But please remember that I am not a cat and should not be treated like one. You should also not call or refer to me as a cat as that will make me rather unhappy! I am just like you but in a different physical form. This cat sorry to call it one is gifted in a mavlous manner.

If this was the best top 24 ever, then it stands to reason that this is the best top 12 ever. I may be drinking the kool-aid because, to my eyes, this top 12 looks as strong, top to bottom, as I’ve seen. David, is this the best top 12 ever?

It definitely has some strong competitors, but I never like to talk about the strongest group ever – or really anything as an overall group. There are some contestants who are super-strong, and others who aren’t. I think the winner may already be obvious, but we know that what appears obvious now won’t be as apparent in a couple months. So we’ll just take it a week at a time. (As always, when David is speaking, it’s in boldface.)

Last week, we said goodbye to Luke Menard and Kady Malloy. A surprise to no one – not even them, based on the looks on their faces.

Indeed, we both picked Luke to go before their performances, and I picked Kady as well.

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The leaders of the two major political parties here, in an unexpectedly strong show of unity against President Pervez Musharraf, agreed Sunday that they would reinstate the judges fired by the president and would seek to strip him of crucial powers.

The accord created a direct threat to Mr. Musharraf because the restored judges could act on petitions challenging the validity of his re-election last October when he was still head of the army. Mr. Musharraf’s critics contend he dismissed the judges last November for the very reason that he was fearful they would invalidate his presidency.

The deal, announced by Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the biggest party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, and Nawaz Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, also dashed the hopes of the Bush administration that Parliament would work in harmony with Mr. Musharraf.

The White House considers Mr. Musharraf a favored ally in the American fight against militants aligned with Al Qaeda and the Taliban who have regrouped in Pakistan, but Mr. Musharraf is deeply unpopular here.

Mr. Musharraf had no comment on the accord. As of late Sunday in Washington, the State Department and the White House also had no comment.

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The owner of Penthouse magazine, once known for its hard-core brand of porn, plans to hit up Wall Street this year for $250 million as it cleans up its act and aims to make a name for itself on the Internet.

Penthouse Media Group, formerly known as General Media Inc and reorganized in 2004 under financier Marc Bell, said it would file a registration statement in the second quarter to sell common shares in an initial public offering.

Proceeds from the sale, expected to be $250 million, would be directed at paying down debt, the Boca Raton, Florida-based company said in a securities filing on Wednesday.

Bell, chief executive of Penthouse Media, said the company has repositioned the magazine, which had been losing subscribers, along the lines of popular "lad" magazines like Maxim.

"We put the magazine back to its roots, where it used to be," he told Reuters Wednesday. "We made it a young man's magazine, slightly edgier pictorially than Playboy."

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