Getting creative
Staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged people to get creative and use the materials around their houses to initiate various projects. For some businesses, that meant finding unique ways to reach their audiences, such as making a parody video, and for others, it meant using their expressive talents — new or old — to break up the boredom they faced while under quarantine.
‘We don’t want the COVID’
One day, toward the middle of April, members of the Downtown Little Rock Partnership staff were in a virtual brainstorming session, talking about where they were with things in the middle of the COVID-19 quarantine, when Executive Director Gabe Holmstrom said, “We have a whole new set of words and phrases that have taken on a new meaning as a result of the pandemic.
“I jokingly said we could write a song with all these words. Then we made a list of all the words and phrases that we’re now using on a frequent, if not daily, basis.”
He said that a couple of days later, the concept of reworking the Billy Joel song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” with the pandemic words just hit him, and Holmstrom started working on it.
“I sent what I had come up with to Derek and Angela [Wood], and they, being real musicians and songwriters, tweaked it and improved it to the final form,” Holmstrom said. “I knew I wanted to showcase a variety of local artists performing the song, so then came the logistical challenges of soliciting and organizing them.”
Derek and Angela Wood live just outside of Conway and have been musicians for 20 years, mostly as a hobby. It was not until the past 10 years or so did they actually start playing for a purpose.
“Gabe sent us the lyrics, and he had a lot written, but we wanted to come up with some short verses, to stay true to the original song, so everyone could get the idea that it was a parody,” Derek said.
He said the couple had worked on a few projects in the past that were conducted semi-remotely, but this one was especially unique because everything was remotely recorded.
“Everything was recorded in different ways — some used professional equipment; others didn’t. There were about 10 people who sang on [the video of the song],” Derek said. “I have never done anything on this scale. It was a relatively complicated project, actually.”
Derek said that even with all the different audio qualities, he had to sort of weave the recordings together, and most of the video “turned out really well, considering what it is.”
“We had a whole bunch of people who did the first couple of verses, but almost no one did the rest of the song,” Angela said. “We had to go back and record the last couple of verses.”
Holmstrom said a ton of credit needs to go to Ellen Lampe, director of communications for the Downtown Little Rock Partnership, and to Derek for collaborating on making the video work.
“Ellen was able to piece together the video to match with the audio mix that Derek put together, combining multiple formats and artists who might not have all adhered to the given directions 100 percent,” Holmstrom said.
Tinkerfest
The Museum of Discovery’s Tinkerfest is typically a daylong celebration that allows guests to explore “how things work through hands-on activities,” according to the Museum of Discovery’s website. In 2020, the decision was made to break Tinkerfest into four separate Saturday events for last fall.
“During a normal year, Tinkerfest would be host to more than 40 activities outside and inside the museum and draw 2,000 people,” said Kendall Thornton, chief marketing officer for the Museum of Discovery, which hosts the event. “The adjustment helped us prevent overcrowding and allowed more staff to be devoted to ongoing sanitization efforts during each event.”
Last year was the ninth annual
Tinkerfest.
“It is an event people look forward to every year,” Thornton said.
“We had a great turnout [last year]. In fact, we sold out a number of our time slots during the four events,” he said.
“We did have to think about our activities from a material and spacing perspective,” said Thomas Lipham, program director for the museum.
“We wanted to have multiple instances of the same activities that were spaced out so multiple families could engage simultaneously,” Lipham said. “Additionally, we did have to reschedule one of the events due to rain.”
Art studio moves downtown
After about 10 years of being located in The Heights area of Little Rock, Boswell Mourot Fine Art made the move to downtown Little Rock. Owner Kyle Boswell said he had considered moving the studio to South Main Street, as well as to Argenta in North Little Rock, for the past several years.
“After a couple of years, I became more comfortable with the idea of moving into SoMa,” he said. “There is a positive vibe in the area and some people doing great things to bring in new life.
“The SoMa district has now become a destination neighborhood of Little Rock. With the renovation and expansion of the Arkansas Arts Center, [now called] the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, I feel more retail development will start taking place.”
Boswell said that in the past year, he has seen a shift of creativity in many of the artists he represents, and in his friends.
“Not only have some become much more productive; they have also become much more expressive about the current state of society,” Boswell said. “I’m seeing stronger politics statements in art.
“There is a lot of emotion tied to the pandemic, social unrest, political change — artists are some of the first groups of people to address those types of issues.”
He said many artists have also taken this time to explore new mediums and techniques for their creativeness.”
The new studio is at 1501 S. Main St., Suite H, in Little Rock. For more information, visit boswellmourot.com.
“Not only do I represent outstanding local and regional artists; I represent a number of international artists as well …,” Boswell said. “I use my gallery to promote political awareness through art, and this will continue at our new location.”