Berlin-based Boessert/Schorn know how to create an amazingly interesting shape. And although I’m not always in love with their over-the-top styling combinations, the cuts and draping alone are enough to keep me coming back for more. These looks come from their latest Spring 2011 collection (images via She Breathes).

posted by: Tricia Rock

Weekly roundup of the best art shows and art related events in and around the Lawrence/Kansas City area. After a great turnout for the very first Final Fridays in Lawrence we’re going right into a new First Fridays in KC. The weather is great, so here’s another chance to walk around and see some awesome art.

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 3

• Draw What You Dig
{:m Gallery – Chartwell Realty (2014 Main Street in Kansas City, MO)
Friday, September 3, 6-10pm
Featuring works of David Pjecha, Sarah Anderson, Colin Walsh, Brian Stokes, Tuesday Schmidt, Lauren Andrews, Amy Kligman, Ron Ahrens, Amanda Raymundo and Samantha Lewis.

• Art Fair to Benefit the Kansas City Rescue Mission
Kansas City Rescue Mission (1520 Cherry Street in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6-10pm
From the organizers: This is an annual event to raise money for the Kansas City Rescue Mission. Please come down and support us by purchasing items from local artists and participating in our silent auction. We will have live music and great food.

• Dr. Sketchy’s Group Show Extravaganza
Czar Bar (1531 Grand in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6-11pm
Featuring some of the best drawings of area artist from Dr. Sketchy’s last season, pop trio Minstrel Periods will perform, and the evening will include drawing sessions with burlesque and pinup models. The cover is $5.

• Hung Liu: New Works Opening
Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art
(2020 Baltimore Avenue in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 7-9pm
From the organizers: Artist Hung Liu, who will be visiting from San Francisco, is set to unveil a new series created from the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake of 2008. Additionally, new work from her Za Zhong, or Bastard Painting, series will also be on display.

• Spectacle: Blue Gallery’s 10th Anniversary Exhibition
Blue Gallery (118 Southwest Blvd in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6-9pm (Ongoing through September 25)
Featuring work by Jhina Alvarado, Nicole Cawlfield, Joe Gregory, Dale Jarrett, Bernal Koehrsen, Ann Piper, and Brad Williams.

• Russell Shoemaker Paintings
The Late Show Gallery (1600 Cherry in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6pm (Ongoing through September 30)
Painter Russell Shoemaker shows his works that are a range of abstracted scenes to full abstracts that have a collage/Photoshop filter feel. From what we have seen of his work, we highly recommend this show.

Caleb Taylor

• Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Awards Exhibition
Grand Arts (1819 Grand Boulevard in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6-9pm (Ongoing through October 30, with a gallery discussion by the artists on Saturday, September 4 at 2pm)
From the organizers: Celebrating its thirteenth year, having granted nearly half a million dollars in unrestricted cash awards to 70 artists living and working in the Kansas City Metro, the 2010 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards Exhibition honors three artists: Ari Fish, Sonié Ruffin, and Caleb Taylor.

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SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 4

• Benjamin Dory: Yellowheart
The Invisible Hand Gallery (801 1/2 Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, KS)
Saturday, September 4, 7-10pm
Lawrence artist Ben Dory will show his illustrations on paper, copper jewelry, and other objects.

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FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 10

• Earthwork Public Screening
Lawrence Arts Center (940 New Hampshire Street in Lawrence, KS)
Friday, September 10, 8pm
From the organizers: This award-winning film tells the story of Kansas crop artist, Stan Herd, who in 1994 traveled from Lawrence to New York City and risked everything to create a massive environmental artwork on land owned by Donald Trump. In dealing with the difficulties of bringing his unique, rural art form to an urban canvas, Stan unexpectedly encountered the true meaning of his art and its ultimate, lasting rewards. The film, by KU alum writer/director Chris Ordal, has won a staggering number of awards at film festivals across the country. The Arts Center is proud to bring it home for its local premiere. Friday, September 10 8pm: Public Screening (tickets $10.50). Saturday, September 11 10am-2pm: Film Intensive Workshops for Youth and Adults (prices vary), 8pm: Premiere Party featuring cast and crew of the film, music, wine, and hors d’oeuvres (tickets $50) .

posted by: Scott Stewart

This is renowned poet/singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen performing “The Stranger Song” from his debut album The Songs of Leonard Cohen live on the Julie Felix Show in 1967. The Songs of Leonard Cohen is a poetic masterpiece as much as it is a musical one, and remains to be one of the high points of not only folk but pop music in general.

Take some time and read the brilliant lyrics from “The Stranger Song” here

posted by: Harold Johns III

Streetwear label LRG highlights the technique of Chicago-based graffiti giant Pose in their two-part “Artist Driven Series”.  Pose based each piece on the graphics he originally designed for LRG t-shirts.  Watching Pose wield a spray-can is like watching poetry in motion.

See more of Pose’s work via the Known Gallery.

Check out Pose’s blog here.

Read a recent interview he did with Juxtapoz Magazine here.

posted by: Harold Johns III

Synopsis:

Thirty-eight years after it was completed, a 1972 documentary following Leonard Cohen—the enormously influential poet, folk musician and, since 2008, member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—on tour in Europe finally has its moment. Originally made as a promotional film for the artist, whose record sales were meager at the time, Bird on a Wire was produced and edited by Tony Palmer, then famed for his seminal 1968 documentary All My Loving, an eye-opening dissection of rock n’ roll that featured, among others, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Donovan. In Bird on a Wire, Palmer neatly captured the tour itself––threadbare, fraught with technical difficulties and emotional upheavals––but on first viewing, Cohen balked at the bare bones honesty of the film and demanded a complete re-edit from another source. The result was so disastrous that the film opened and closed on the same day, was forgotten about, then lost. In 2009, 294 cans of celluloid labeled Bird an a Wire were found locked in a Hollywood warehouse and immediately shipped to Palmer, who set about re-creating the original film he made all those years ago. The work is a visual poem—Palmer’s camera followed Cohen without judgment, opening the floor to the man as well as the artist. Today’s exclusive clip shows the music legend during an abortive attempt to ask a young German fan out on a date.

Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire by Tony Palmer is available now on DVD.

Synopsis:

Mesrine: Killer Instinct – the first of two parts- charts the outlaw odyssey of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s who came to be known as “French Public Enemy No. 1″ and “The Man of a Thousand Faces”. Infamous for his bravado and outrageously daring prison escapes, Mesrine carried out numerous robberies, kidnappings and murders in a criminal career that spanned continents until he was shot dead in 1979 by France’s notorious anti-gang unit. Thirty years after his death, his infamy lives on. Mesrine was helped along the way by beautiful and equally reckless Jeanne Schneider (Cecile de France), a Bonnie to match his Clyde. Mesrine made up his own epic, between romanticism and cruelty, flamboyance and tragedy. Both a thriller and a biopic, Killer Instinct explores the man behind the icon.

In select theaters now. The sequel Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 hits select theaters on September 3.

Synopsis:

In his feature–length documentary The Big Uneasy, humorist and New Orleans resident Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Simpsons) gets the inside story of a disaster that could have been prevented from the people who were there. As we approach the fifth anniversary of the flooding of New Orleans, Shearer speaks to the investigators who poked through the muck as the water receded and a whistle–blower from the Army Corps of Engineers, revealing that some of the same flawed methods responsible for the levee failure during Katrina are being used to rebuild the system expected to protect the new New Orleans from future peril.

In short segments hosted by John Goodman, Shearer speaks candidly with local residents about life in New Orleans. Together, they explore the questions that Americans outside of the Gulf region have been pondering in the five years since Katrina: Why would people choose to live below sea level? Why is it important to rebuild New Orleans?

The Big Uneasy is laced with computer imagery that takes you inside the structures that failed so catastrophically, and boasts never–before–seen video of the moments when New Orleans began to flood and the painstaking investigations that followed. The Big Uneasy marks the beginning of the end of five years of ignorance about what happened to one of our nation’s most treasured cities — and serves as a stark reminder that the same agency that failed to protect New Orleans still exists in other cities across America.

The Big Uneasy was only in theaters for one night on August 30, it will eventually make its way to DVD sometime this month. Check the film’s Facebook page for more information and updates.

Bonus: Chloë Sevigny co-stars in Barry Munday, the story of a suburban wanna-be ladies man who loses his testicles after he is attacked at a movie theater.

posted by: Brent Carter

In honor of 9/02/10, here’s some 90210. Check out our 90210 Style Trends post from back in the day here.

Note: Watch for Tori Spelling’s intro scene, while everyone else got to come off looking relatively cool, poor Donna just eats a sandwich.

posted by: Tricia Rock