Belhaven Artist Passes Away

Thursday night, Belhaven lost one of its gifted artists: Lallah Miles Perry. A prolific artist herself, she was also a teacher and leader in the arts community in Mississippi. Sherry Lucas writes about her in today's Clarion Ledger: "Artist, art educator, first director of Mississippi Art Colony dies at 82"

Hamilton Portrait

Sherry Lucas writes a column about a piece of art with a Belhaven connection in today's Clarion Ledger.

In the corridor of The Mississippi Story at the Mississippi Museum of Art, an 1884 portrait of James Stewart Hamilton Jr. has joined other works from the museum's permanent collection that evoke the state's people, history, land and life.

It's a five-foot portrait of a boy, intriguing as much for its period dress - a velvet smock with a lace collar, snug leather boots and riding crop - as for its details. An intent gaze counters rosy cheeks and a curling forelock.

The painting is attributed to James Thomas Poindexter (1832-1891), an itinerant painter who had a studio in Evansville, one in Kentucky and possibly one in Grenada for a while. He'd also apparently spent some time in New Orleans.

The boy is standing on what was then the family property. The family home, built by the boy's father, Col. James S. Hamilton, was named Belhaven in honor of his ancestral home in Scotland.

It's where Belhaven College sits today.

The Belhaven Lake in the background no longer exists. It was drained and filled in. And the mountain range behind the lake? That's a piece of artistic license.

What's not fabricated is that outfit. The museum has the actual smock and riding crop from the portrait, from the family, Piersol says. They've yet to figure out how to display those.

The rest of the story for young Hamilton is a sad one. He died at age 21 in a tragic train accident.

Just a couple of notes on it, though. Belhaven College today is not on the Hamilton property on Boyd Street. It moved from that land after the second Belhaven College fire in 1910, and the school reopened on its current property on Peachtree Street. Also, there is still a lake on the property at Belhaven College although it is much smaller (some of it has been drained) and I have no idea if it is the same water from the picture.

Chandelier

Interesting story in today's Clarion Ledger about this artistic chandelier created for the arts building at Belhaven College.

Food and Art

ChowHound.com has some positive posts about Basil's of Belhaven.

Roy Adkins posts about the Mississippi Improv Alliance's recent event at Belhaven College’s dance studio.

College: Music & Baseball

The Belhaven Music Department presents An Evening of Diamonds III, the third concert in its Mrs. J.R. Preston Sr. Memorial Chamber Music Series, 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Belhaven College Center for the Arts. The Belhaven Piano Trio and The Sachs Piano Duo will perform. Musicians include Belhaven faculty members: Song Xie, violin; Carolyn Sachs, piano; Stephen Sachs, Belhaven music chair. Mississippi Symphony Orchestra principal cellist Bennett Randman also is featured. Tickets, $10, are available through the Belhaven music department. Doors open at 7; a reception follows the performance. (Read the Full Story Here)

Congrats Coach Denson - The Belhaven College Baseball Team (5-5, 2-4) defeated the Crichton College Comets on Tuesday afternoon (Feb. 12) by a score of 9-1. The win gives Hill Denson his 700th career collegiate victory. Denson is in his 8th season with the Blazers where he has amassed 232 victories. His first 473 victories came at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he coached for 14 years. (Read the Full Story Here)

Talk DANCE

JFP has this profile of Belhaven College professor Stephen Wynne and his new project for Jackson's dance and arts community: Talk DANCE.

Belhaven Prof Earns Humanities Teacher Award for 2007

The Northeast Ledger reports, Louis Campbell, "professor of theater and founding chair of the theater department at Belhaven College, recently received the Humanities Teacher Award for 2007. The Mississippi Humanities Council gives it to one humanities faculty member at each institution of higher education in the state...Campbell, 66, grew up in Colorado and attended Westminster College in Salt Lake City, where he met Laura, his wife of 43 years. He earned a master's degree at Brigham Young University, received a doctorate in theater from the University of Minnesota, then started a theater program at a Catholic school in La Crosse, Wis. He conceived and directed the first International Festival of Mime and Pantomime in 1974 in La Crosse. Later, he worked with Ohio State's theater program and consulted for 20 years in the United States and abroad before Belhaven asked him to start its program...His own books include Mime in Our Time, Biomechanics for the Actor and Mime in the Twentieth Century. He continues to be a consultant for theaters in the U.S. and abroad, having helped with more than 100 facilities. He's working with Jackson Academy and the Ruth B. Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Fla. He and his wife co-founded The Joshua Squad, a missions-based physical theater performance team involving students in service and ministry through the arts. He also founded the Enclave of the Arts, an international performing arts networking organization." (Read the Full Story Here)

Belhaven College Singing Christmas Tree

Belhaven College will host the 75th Siniging Christmas Tree in the Belhaven Bowl this Friday and Saturday nights begining at 7:30pm. The annual event, started in 1933, is considered to be the world's oldest outdoor singing Christmas tree tradition. Read more about it this profile from Saturday's Clarion Ledger: Branching out: Singing Christmas Tree gets singers out of comfort zone.

'Tutus and Turning Wheels' puts a new spin on dance

From the Clarion Ledger:

The jaunty sound of Dueling Banjos twang through the rehearsal studio at Belhaven as two men square off in classic high-noon style.

Big and tough Tom Burnley of Madison and the smaller, lightning quick Benji Tompkins of Winter Park, Colo., dance with the wiliness of winking cowpokes. Burnley's crutches come in handy, not only bracing his imposing frame to full advantage, but also as a percussion instrument and a prop for Tompkin's agile antics.

Dance? Crutches? Wait till they get on wheels, Burnley in a wheelchair and Tompkins on a rolling desk one.

That's the idea that Tunes, Tutus and Turning Wheels, a Saturday dance event at Belhaven College Center for the Arts, takes for a spin onstage.

The program combining dancers and dancers with disabilities is a collaboration of the USA International Ballet Competition, VSA arts of Mississippi, Methodist Rehabilitation Center, Mississippi Paralysis Association, Collage arts organization and Belhaven College. (Full Story Here)

Belhaven to hold arts and music festival

Clarion Ledger: "Jackson’s historic Belhaven neighborhood will host an arts and music street festival this weekend. Bright Lights, Belhaven Nights begins at 6 p.m. Saturday and stretches along Carlisle Street from New Stage Theatre to McDade's Grocery parking lot. The festival will feature various musicians, artists, craftsmen, vendors and children’s attractions. Admission to the festival is $3 for those 13 and older; $1 for ages 12 and under."

Belhaven College Arts

Today's Clarion Ledger writes, "Belhaven College is among a stellar group of America’s institutions with all four of its arts majors — theatre, visual art, music and dance — nationally accredited....Belhaven is among only 25 colleges and universities in the nation that can boast arts accreditation by four independent national organizations...including the University of Southern Mississippi, Florida State University, the University of Alabama, James Madison University, Ohio University, Arizona, and Ohio State. Belhaven is among four schools in the Southeast with that distinction." Read the full story here.

Rockwell images at Belhaven College

From the Clarion Ledger: "Boy Scout images by famed illustrator Norman Rockwell, his successor Joseph Csatari and other artists will be featured over three days at a Belhaven College gallery. The Andrew Jackson Council of the Boy Scouts of America will host the BSA Foundation Art Tour Trail to Eagle on Wednesday through Friday at the Bitsy Irby Visual Arts and Dance Building, 1500 Peachtree St. on the Belhaven campus.Hosted by the Andrew Jackson Council of Boy Scouts, the show is open to the public 4:30-8 p.m. Wednesday, 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Thursday and 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday. It’s free.For information on a donor’s seminar, reception and private showing Thursday, call the council at (601) 948-6111."

Sherry Lucas writes 'Trail to Eagle' Scout exhibit features Rockwell originals in the Clarion Ledger here.

Canvas and Clay

Bewey Bowden, who chaired the speech department at Belhaven College for 27 years, will present a spring show of her art at The Cedars (she discovered as an adult a wonderful talent for painting).

Canvas and Clay
Today through March 31; opening reception 5-8 p.m. today
The Cedars, 4145 Old Canton Road, Jackson
More Details

Also, Sherry Lucas writes about it in today's Clarion Ledger.

BC Arts

Belhaven College Among Only 24 Schools in Nation With Comprehensive Arts Accreditation: "Belhaven College joins only 23 other colleges and universities nationwide...in having all four branches of Arts - Music, Visual Arts, Dance, and Theatre - accredited by the respective National Association of Schools accrediting board."

Shadowlands

The Belhaven College theatre department presents "Shadowlands", by William Nicholson, on February 15-17 and 21-24. The show is at 7:30 p.m. in the Flexible Theatre. The touching story inspired by acclaimed Christian writer C. S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed". C.S. Lewis falls in love with American divorcé Joy Gresham. Lewis struggles to come to terms with his love and her terminal illness. "We are like blocks of stone, out of which the sculptor carves forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much, are what makes us perfect." $10 admission for adults, $5 for students, children, and seniors. Doors open at 7 p.m. For more information, please call 601.974.6494.

Eudora and Opera

Christian Science Monitor: The view from Eudora Welty's window

The Mississippi Opera's 'Love in the Afternoon' at Belhaven College.

Mozart by Candlelight

Mozart by Candlelight by the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra at Belhaven College this Saturday night.

Horton Foote play at New Stage

Northeast Ledger: "If the film adaptation of Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" had an emotional impact on you, it's partially because the Oscar-winning screenplay is by Horton Foote, whose southern drama "The Trip to Bountiful" opens on Tuesday at New Stage Theatre in Jackson. It replaces the production of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," but season tickets are still valid."

Tonight at Belhaven College

Belhaven College's Center for the Arts hosts the Mississippi Jazz Foundation's Night of Musical Artistry, featuring renowned clarinetist and saxophonist Victor L. Goines at 7 p.m.

Saturday Night

Mississippi Community Symphonic Band Christmas Concert: A Musical Christmas Gift to Mississippi, 7 p.m. Saturday; free; Belhaven College Center for the Arts, 835 Riverside Drive, Jackson; (601) 605-2786