Travel exhibit kick off at library

Described as a “feast for the eyes,” the 35th annual Ohio Watercolor Society (OWS) travel exhibit is scheduled to kick off its season with a three-week stay at the Piqua Public Library beginning Wednesday, Jan. 16 through Saturday, Feb. 2. The travel show is being coordinated through the combined efforts of the Piqua Public Library, Friends of the Piqua Library and the Piqua Arts Council.

A total of 40 paintings have been selected by a jury representing a wide range of work created by current watercolor artists throughout Ohio. The public is invited to view this unique and prestigious exhibit between the hours of 12-5 p.m. every day – excluding Sundays – through Feb. 2 at the library. There is no admission charge. An exhibit catalog will be available for a nominal fee with partial proceeds earmarked for host organizations. A number of the paintings will also be available for sale, according to OWS President Barbara Rollins. Terms of payment will be available at the exhibit.

This represents the first time the OWS traveling exhibit will be hosted in Piqua. Other sites in 2013 include the Amos Library in Sidney; Wassenberg Art Center in Van Wert, BAYarts in Bay Village, Troy Hayner Cultural Center, Mansfield Library and McConnell Arts Center in Worthington in July.

Rollins, who became president of the OWS in November, notes she is “delighted with the diversity and quality of this year’s show.”

“There are pieces to either awe, amaze or amuse you and always to satisfy you with our members’ abilities to conceive and accomplish all that they do in the ways that they do it with consistent ability,” she said.

The OWS, she explained, was established by a small group of nationally recognized Ohio artists in 1978 and the first annual show took place that year. “We have associate and active/signature members,” she said. “An associate becomes a member by simply joining and paying annual dues. This entitles one to receive our quarterly newsletter, a full color catalogue of the annual show, one free entry into the annual competition and an opportunity to serve on committees.”

Exhibiting artists are chosen by a juror who selects submitted works from digital images. After selected pieces are delivered to the hosting venue, she added, awards are made from the actual works. Jurors are chosen by the OWS board and are all national/internationally known artists from outside Ohio.

“All the award winners and enough pieces to make 40 constitute the travel show,” added Rollins. “Works are for sale and several have been sold already from the Riffe Gallery of Art in Columbus.” She emphasized that sold pieces from the travel show must continue with the show until it closes in July.

“We have professional artists and part timers, including myself, as both active and associate members. Many of our artists also teach and/or hold occasional water media workshops. Our member covers the entire state and is recognized as one of the strongest state watercolor/water media organizations in the country.”

Throughout the OWS exhibit showing in Piqua, several local and area watercolor artists will be demonstrating their skills on Saturdays – Jan. 19 and 26 and Feb. 2 – in the front lobby at the library. The public is invited to meet these accomplished artists beginning at 12 p.m. each Saturday.

His portraits of Heisman Trophy winners are on exhibit loan to the College Football Hall of Fame. His murals hold places of honor in locations across the country. His work has been on gameday programs, on posters, and on display.

While Watts tells his story with pictures, his story will require plenty of ink. It’s a story that started in Miami, Okla., took a turn in Coffeyville, ended up in Oswego, and made its way into frames, posters, programs, walls, athletic facilities and galleries across the country.

“I just want to go in there,” Watts said, pointing to his workspace in the studio, and sit at my drawing table, and draw and paint. I want to do what God told me to do, and that’s draw and paint.”

Watts wasn’t always a painter. In fact, he started off as a sportswriter for the Coffeyville Journal.
“I always happened to be a bit better at drawing things,” he remarked with a smile.

At some point, he began drawing cartoons for the Journal, “then it just mushroomed.”

Universities began seeing his work, and it wasn’t long before he got his first call, setting up a meeting in Manhattan, Kan., with officials from Kansas State University. But K-State wasn’t his only client for very long.

“I took that trip and saw K-State, and I signed a contract to do their press guide cover,” Watts said. “I thought, ‘I have gas in my car.’ So I drove straight to Lawrence. Then, I thought this is going pretty well, so I drove to Tulsa. The University of Tulsa and Oral Roberts [University] became clients. I drove to Stillwater, then on to OU.”

At the University of Oklahoma, he ran into old friend Steve Owens, who also came from Watts’ hometown of Miami, Okla. More on that later. Owens put Watts in touch with the OU officials.

“They all bought in,” Watts said. “But I wasn’t done. I thought, ‘Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas.’ So I drove to Fayetteville, where I sat down with [then-Arkansas head coach] Frank Broyles. I said, ‘I’m Ted Watts, here’s what I can do.’ That’s how it all started.”

Beach Haven School Students May Be at Eagleswood Until June

Beach Haven School students can expect to be at their temporary home at the Eagleswood Elementary School for the balance of the school year.

“I’d like to say we’d be out of there sooner, but I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep,” said Patricia Daggy, superintendent/principal of the Beach Haven School.

The school’s 63 students and 20 teachers and staff members were displaced following Superstorm Sandy. Daggy said the storm severely damaged the ground floor of the school, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last spring.

“The building took in 2 feet of water, and because we couldn’t get back to Beach Haven for two weeks after storm, the water just sat there, and that made the situation worse,” she said. “A lot of families couldn’t return to their homes, and some lost their homes and had to move off the Island. But we still kept most of our students. There were two families who were fairly new to Beach Haven, and they moved out of the area after the storm.”

She said loosened floor tiles resulted in asbestos being exposed, since it was part of the adhesive glue that held the flooring together.

“That’s the way it was done in older school buildings such as ours,” said Daggy. “When that gets done, then there has to be a lot of environmental testing. School buildings and hospitals are subject to the strictest building safety codes in the state.”

“Everything has to go out to bid, and that contributes to this being a very time-consuming process,” she said. “That’s why I’m really not counting on being back in the school until the school year ends and we can be back together again in September.”

“Helping to ease the transition was the wonderful outpouring of donations of school supplies, books, coats mittens and other items,” she said. “I had one parent tell me that while she felt so poor, at the same time she felt so rich because of all the kind-hearted people.”

Retailers had hoped that Christmas 2012 would mark a turning point when they could start to relax safe in the knowledge that consumers are in the mood to spend freely again. Sadly, this scenario did not materialise, and the latest festive period will be remembered for its fierce discounting, particularly in the fashion sector. While some chains, such as John Lewis, shot the lights out, for many, healthy, like-for-like sales – which strip out the boost from new space – only served to mask the fact they had to sacrifice margins to entice shoppers through their door. Here is what we learnt.

Morrisons blamed its weak performance on the fact that it still does not sell food on the web and only has a handful of smaller convenience stores. These weaknesses contributed to the Bradford-based grocer posting a 2.5 per cent fall in sales over Christmas, in contrast to its rivals. Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s delivered booming online grocery sales over Christmas, up by 18 per cent and 15 per cent respectively, as well as enjoying robust growth in their convenience stores. Dalton Philips, the chief executive of Morrisons, will update on March on its online plans with a trial expected later this year.

Marks & Spencer’s latest clothing and homewares sales not only missed City expectations by a country mile, but also marked its sixth-consecutive quarter in negative territory. Its chief executive Marc Bolland described the performance as “not yet satisfactory”, but blamed the fall on the company’s decision not to match the fierce discounting of rivals as it sought to protect profit margins. M&S said this enabled it to sell more products at full price and running 7 per cent fewer promotions helped it avoid a profit warning, but analysts downgraded it.

Tesco delivered its strongest UK underlying sales before Christmas, following a period of under-performance. The 1.8 per cent rise in sales over the festive period put listed grocery rivals Sainsbury’s and Morrisons in the shade. Its Christmas performance vindicates the ￡1bn investment by Philip Clarke, chief executive, unveiled in April, to turn around the UK operation with more staff, revamped products and refurbished stores.

JD Sports continues to struggle with Blacks and Millets, which it bought out of administration in January 2012. JD described the trading of the two outdoor chains as “disappointing” over Christmas and said that it now expects the group’s full-year profits to come in at about ￡60m, which is at the low end of City expectations. However, the sportswear group vowed to deliver a “substantial improvement in trading” at Blacks and Millets this year.

While Sainsbury’s and Tesco battle it out to lay claim for the crown of the grocery sector’s Christmas winner, low-profile Aldi continues to power ahead. The German discounter has charged ahead of its rivals by launching a huge expansion in its fresh fruit and vegetable offer, as well as ramping up the brands its sells, including Marmite and Carlsberg. Aldi grew its sales by 30.1 per cent over the 12 weeks to 23 December, according to Kantar Worldpanel, giving the company a small – but fast-growing – market share of 3.2 per cent.

Frac beach mining’s not accordant with Great River Road

On a contempo Sunday morning, my wife and I collection to Alma, forth the Wisconsin ancillary of the Great River Road.

According to a adult from Columbia, Miss., with whom I batten at the GRR Visitor Center in Prescott, the Great River Road, which follows our river from Lake Itasca in Minnesota all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, is absolutely a civic treasure. She had apprenticed the absolute route, and told me there was no catechism but that the Wisconsin breadth was the a lot of breathtaking and acceptable to drive.

Along the alley to Alma, we met with the owners or advisers of seven altered businesses that depend on day-tripper traffic. They were all busy. In fact, there was a band of barter cat-and-mouse to get into the Smiling Pelican Bakery in Maiden Rock.

There are several hundred businesses forth the “West Coast” of Wisconsin that depend on tourism. They accommodate jobs for bounded association and are important to the traveling accessible and to their communities.

The proponents of frac beach mining, an industry ability atomic advance in Western Wisconsin, affirmation that mining action will not accept a abrogating appulse on tourism. Unfortunately, the beach that comes from the mines will accept to be transported and candy locally, consistent in a cogent access in barter cartage on the Great River River Road.

I accept annihilation adjoin frac beach mining; however, this action is not accordant with the Great River Road/National Breathtaking Byway. A lot of association forth the alley accept little or annihilation to accretion and the achievability of a lot to lose.

Bureau of Acreage Management admiral said they will affair a added Ecology Appulse Account apropos the Federal Coal Charter Application from Alton Coal Development LLC, A Cedar City company. Alton Coal seeks to charter mining rights on about 3,581 acreage of accessible and clandestine acreage abreast Alton.

A abstract Ecology Appulse Abstraction created by the BLM was accessible for accessible ascribe from Nov. 4, 2011, until Jan. 27, 2012.

Keith Rigturp, a commune artist for the BLM, said the added account would investigate issues brought up during the accessible animadversion period.

“This is mainly issues brought up by our accomplice agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the (Environmental Protection Agency), and the Civic Park Service,” Rigturp said.

Rigturp said the added account would abode apropos apropos impacts to wetlands, air superior and the abode of the greater sage-grouse, abacus that the apropos weren’t necessarily with the aftereffect of the EIS’s studies, but with the adjustment of abstraction itself.

“There are a few studies which our federal ally appropriate application newer methods, and that is what we are doing,” Rigturp said.

One archetype Rigturp gave involves the way the BLM advised bulb impact. Rigturp said the BLM advised the plants in the abstraction breadth during the autumn, while avant-garde practices advance belief plants in the summer.

“In some cases it agency traveling aback and acquisition all new data,” Rigturp said. “It’s not a complete reworking, though. Much of the account will abide the same.”

The proposed amplification has brought a lot of altercation with ecology groups such as the Sierra Club alive to block the amplification beneath the abhorrence of damaging adjacent Bryce Canyon Civic Park. Alton Coal is about 10 afar from the western bound of Bryce Canyon with a abundance ambit in between.

Tim Wagner, a civic acclimation agents affiliate for the Salt Lake City affiliate of The Sierra Club, said the BLM’s accommodation to accumulate added abstracts is a footfall in preventing the abundance expansion.