Art Beat

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.

Steve Hughes has an unusual way of collecting stories. The Detroit-area writer gathers them at local watering holes, talking to people he meets sitting at the bar, video camera in hand.

Most artists pick a medium and then pursue excellence in it. But Anne Mehring calls herself a perennial student of many arts. Every Friday you’ll find her working in copper at a studio at Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. On another day she may be working in a studio in Mattawan, creating glass objects. Or she may stay home and weave on a loom.

Whether with pen or camera, Kaitlin LaMoine Martin has an eye for the world as it is. She’s not good at editing out wrinkles and shadows on faces, and she doesn’t want to be. The young artist finds beauty in the real, not plastic imitation.