Art Beat

With a degree in advertising design, Melody Allen thought she would make her career in graphic art. She was right – almost. Art was in her future, just not in the way she originally thought. So Allen took up pastels instead, eventually showing her work and winning awards in juried shows.

Retired Western Michigan University professor Miriam Bat-Ami crosses many literary genres. She writes books for kids and young adults as well as memoirs, creative nonfiction, and fiction for adults. To choose her genre, she considers her audience and asks, "Who will be part of this conversation?" With her new poetry collection, Measuring the Marigolds (Caffeinated Press, 2018), Bat-Ami speaks to adults experiencing the ups, downs, and in-betweens of family relationships.

What if, looking back on a night in the past, you remember only that you drank until you blacked out? Then you find a video that seems to indicate that you murdered a friend while you were out. That’s the crux of The Lost Night (Crown Publishing Group, 2019), a novel by Brooklyn-based journalist, Andrea Bartz.

The Midwest RAD Fest is hosted and supported by southwest Michigan’s oldest professional dance company, Wellspring Cory Terry & Dancers. RAD stands for Regional Alternative Dance. It’s a juried event at the Epic Center in Kalamazoo featuring the best in modern, post-modern, and contemporary dance.

According to Oscar Wilde, “only the shallow know themselves.” An exhibition at Western Michigan University's Richmond Center for Visual Arts by that name features the work of three recent Gwen Frostic School of Art graduates.