Knox in the News

From the Register-Mail:

The Knox College Music Department will present fall-term concerts by the Knox-Sandburg Community Concert Band and the Knox Wind Ensemble and three recitals by music students. All performances are free and open to the public in Kresge Recital Hall, Ford Center for the Fine Arts.

The Knox-Sandburg Community Concert Band will perform at 3 p.m. Nov. 15. Directed by Laurel Kay Filzen Etzel, associate professor in applied music, the band includes musicians from Knox College, Carl Sandburg College and the Galesburg area.

The Knox Wind Ensemble will perform at 7 p.m Nov. 16. The ensemble is a student group directed by Jill Marasa, associate professor in applied music. Individual music students will perform in recital at 4 p.m. Nov. 16.

From the Register-Mail:

The sound of children singing. Half-seen images of women, dark hair dangling over their faces. And the Japanese urban legend of a beautiful woman who sheds a surgical mask to reveal a cut mouth.

The horror offered Friday night inside Knox College’s Lincoln Room was based on implication — and comforting images twisted in terrifying ways.

A group of about 20 Knox College students in the Japanese Club offered a different take on Halloween horrors, hosting what they called a “Kimodameshi.” The haunted house with a distinctly different flavor was free and based on ghost stories from both long-standing and popular Japanese culture.

“A kimodameshi is translated as a kind of test of courage,” said 22-year-old Yumi Kusunoki, a Knox student from Osaka, Japan and co-president of the Japanese club.

From the Register-Mail:

Don’t let the set fool you — ornate Victorian sofa, tall white pillars. Don’t let the costumes distract you — fitted corsets, long dresses and three-piece suits. The display on stage may seem like a passport to 1901 — and to an extent it is — but the themes of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” performed by Knox College still resonate today.

“The audience will be spending two hours with people who existed long before them, but whose preoccupations and struggles are very much the same as those we face today,” said director and chair of the theater department Neil Blackadder.

The play, at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 4-7 in Harbach Theatre, tells the story of three sisters in a small 19th century Russian town filled with “snap shots of moments” and “snippets of life,” said Samantha Newport, one of two assistant directors and a Knox senior.

From the Quad City Times:

Before Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, there was Andy Warhol. “The way he treated photography was like a visual diary. I think he was very prophetic and anticipatory of a lot of the communications phenomenon like sharing images over the Internet,” said Gregory Gilbert, the guest curator of a Warhol photography exhibit on display at Augustana College.

Likewise, the pop artist may have invented reality television.

“You know his quote of ‘Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes,’ and he said that long before reality television,” Gilbert said. “He prophesied a lot of the treatment of mass media.”

The artist’s (1928-1987) quote is the basis for “Beyond Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Andy Warhol’s Photographic Legacy,” on display through the end of the month at the Rock Island campus’ art museum….

The Warhol exhibit is somewhat an introduction of Gilbert to the Quad-City community. Besides being guest curator for the Augustana exhibit, he was hired late this summer as senior curator of the Figge Art Museum in Davenport.

The 51-year-old, who was born in Kansas and raised in several spots around the United States as an Army brat, has been the director of the art history program at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., for the past 14 years.

He became acquainted with the Figge after being asked to serve on a museum advisory council two years ago and was offered the job this summer by Figge executive director Sean O’Harrow.

“I always thought that having an academic appointment and a museum position would really be the ideal combination,” said Gilbert, who is spending three days a week at Knox and two at the Figge. “It took me a while to get there, but I finally have the opportunity.”

Gilbert and O’Harrow said it is rare for a museum and an institution of higher education to share a person in such a way unless it’s a museum already connected to a college or university.

“Some of the best art museums I’ve encountered have been university museums, and the best museums I’ve encountered are where the curators and the professors are the same people,” O’Harrow said. “It’s all about teaching, and that’s what museums do best - or should do best.”

From WGIL radio:

There were all kinds of pieces of art at an annual event Saturday in downtown Galesburg, but other than the work of one Galesburg man, none that could be made with a brush and a couple spray cans of Rustoleum.

Greg Leibach is from the St. Louis area but came to Galesburg to attend Knox College where he later graduated, and is now an art teacher at Lombard Middle School. He was one of around 50 different people displaying their art at Saturday’s “Art in the Park” at Standish Park in downtown Galesburg. Leibach uses spray paint to create various types of portraits, working with them, in many cases, like one would work with normal paint.

Leibach tells WGIL he learned how to work with spray paint about five years ago, and almost gave up as soon as he started. “It’s very frustrating to try and manage the paint, and paintings can go wrong in a hurry,” Leibach said. “But, now that I’ve got five years under my belt, It’s a little smoother. I’m used to the process. I’m really comfortable working with the paint, and now I love it. You can make brilliantly-colored paintings in such a fast way.”

Leibach drew quite a crowd when making one of his creations yesterday morning, applauding his work when it was done. Leibach tells WGIL he uses spray paint in his art classes at Lombard, but not to this degree.

Also from the Register-Mail:

Dressed in a baseball hat, gym shorts, T-shirt and tennis shoes, Greg Leibach looks more like he’s heading to the gym than an art fair. But the paint on his shorts provides a hint. At the far end of Standish Park, a small crowd gathers around Leibach. A gas mask covers his face as he sprays bright paint onto a thin canvas. Beside him are other examples of his work, a tropical beach, the St. Louis skyline at dusk, sparkling stars of outer space — all created with spray paint.

Leibach adds tiny birds to the mountain sunset he’s working on using a folded piece of cardboard dripping with black paint. He quickly signs his name and holds up the finished painting as the crowd erupts into applause.

“It’s always more fun to paint in front of a crowd,” 23-year-old Leibach said. “It’s more exciting, especially if it’s for the first time with people who have never seen it before.”

Leibach, a 2008 graduate of Knox College and Lombard Middle School art teacher, started creating paintings with spray paint after seeing another artist use it while on vacation in San Diego.

“I like the fact that you can make a full painting really fast and everyone can sit and watch,” he said.