Music is art to the ear and art is music to the eye
The Eureka Springs Art Symposium and Garden Party is this Saturday, following directly after the Artrageous Parade. This event is to honor the history and showcase the diversity of artistry in town. Hours of local music will float through the air to accompany one’s stroll through an artistic garden of Eureka flowers.
Larry Mansker will be giving a talk, “Why and How Artists made Eureka Springs Home,” starting at 3:15 p.m. He will be showing his newly finished collection of Ozark Forest Impressions that will be hanging from a free-stacked stone retaining wall.
“What it is, is impressionistic paintings of the Ozark forest, but there is lots and lots of variety in the way it’s presented. Lots of variety in its color, contrast and shapes. It’s very complex,” Larry said.
Larry Mansker has been, from this project’s inception, the cornerstone it is built on. He even created the event’s logo.
Other local artists showing at this event include Pat Keller, Robin Bray and Andelyn Crawford. Pat Keller, who built and resides in a straw-bale house, will showcase his freshly completed art-deco painting, which Larry Mansker said belongs in a New York or LA museum. Robin Bray is not just a painter, but also a historian of our town, who works at the Eureka Springs Historical Museum. Andelyn Crawford is currently being a showcased on the front wall of Visions on Main, owned by Janie Davis.
The music line-up reads like a dream: Roscoe Van Jones, Los Roscoes, Dr. Fred Mayer and Tim Hillwood. Los Roscoes will be doing a tribute for their namesake, who is coming out of retirement for this special event. Music starts at 3:45 p.m.
Los Roscoes was founded at Roscoe’s Espresso Cafe. “I wanted to sell something you couldn’t buy on the internet,” Roscoe said. “So I got out of the guitar business and into the coffee business. You can’t buy a cup of coffee on the internet.” They first gigged for $50 dollars and free cheeseburgers.
“I describe art through music,” Mansker said. “Very primitive music was consistently the same. It went boom boom
boom boom boom. As culture became more sophisticated, different sounds, creating more texture and contrast, were added. That’s very similar to the history of art. In the beginning of art, it was the same case. The usage of the same lines and very simple. During the Renaissance it became more complex.
“Today the art being produced mainstream is very similar to the early art, in that it is very simple and primitive. It is not complex. Our culture has gone this way. When looking at a piece of art, a painting in my case or a piece of music in a musician’s case, the mainstream has become very elementary, consistently repeating itself rather than trying to expand on the shapes and sounds. I try to teach this in my class.”
“I grew up around here and left for 25 years,” Roscoe said. “I came back in 1990 and couldn’t figure out why I left in first place, but that’s another story. When I first got here, I was playing music with the Jones Brothers. They were a guitar and harmonica duet, and I was playing upright bass. When that dissolved, Jerry Jones and I formed Jones Van Jones.”
“You know in the sixties, when I first started playing, we just learned the tunes we liked. It didn’t matter if it was church songs or honkytonk songs. Black folks or white folks, we just learned the music and played it.”
The event is being produced by Matthew Nagy, in partnership with Robin Busby and the Inn at Rose Hall. Tickets are $20. BYOB and food. There will be T-shirts that Larry designed for $20, and posters for $5.
The event can be accessed from Spring St, via King St. or from Harmon Park via Spring Garden Trail. Extra parking will be provided at the parking lot at the bottom of Hillside, across from the train station. Valet parking service will be provided to and from this parking lot.
The Art Symposium and Garden Party is from 3 – 8 p.m. on Saturday, May 3 at 56 Hillside Ave, the Inn at Rose Hall.