Circle Theatre explores social themes through HAIR

The well-known and thought-provoking rock musical HAIR is being presented by the Grand Rapids Circle Theatre for three weekends in September, showing from Sept. 9-11, 15-19 and 22-25. 

Rated R for adult content, language, and references to drugs, sex, race, and violence, HAIR explores and celebrates the sixties counterculture.

Executive and Artistic Director of Circle Theatre Lynne Brown Tepper said that the musical “tells the story of the ‘tribe,’ a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the ‘Age of Aquarius’ living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War.”

The musical centers around the main characters attempting to balance their loves, lives and the sexual revolution in tandem with the temptation to evade the draft and revolt against the war, their parents, and the society at large. 

Read more at www.lanthorn.com.

GV Art Gallery welcomes new art from frontline workers

The Grand Valley State University Art Gallery has added more pieces to their collection, the newest additions created at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic to celebrate the resilience of frontline medical workers.

As cases in New York climbed higher and higher, Brooklyn-based artist, Elizabeth Jaeger, and a nurse at Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital, Cady Chaplin, reached out to over 85 artists to create posters of hope and encouragement for intensive care units in New York Hospitals.

After receiving the posters ranging from intricate graphic designs to watercolor, Jaeger created a public Google Drive for the posters, making them available for all to see — and GVSU to scoop up.

Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. paints storm drains

In efforts to educate the community on Grand Rapids’ storm drain system Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. has gathered local artists to beautify the storm drains. 

The sidewalks around the drains are being painted with bright images of crabs, fish, frogs, and herrons to remind the public where the drains lead, and that what filters into them has a direct effect on the ecosystem. 

GV Art Gallery features new exhibition of “outsider art”

Curated by local artist Reb Roberts and housed in the Haas Center for Performing Arts Gallery, Grand Valley State University Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, “Honest and Unrefined: Art Outside the Academy” features what has been coined as “outsider art.”

According to the gallery’s website, “outsider art” is artwork created by artists that “live on the margins and reject the constraints of the art world.” It centers around self-taught, raw, visionary, outsider, and folk perspectives. 

The appeal to this kind of artwork is centered around the artist’s rejection of convention and experimentation with different materials in order to produce unique, individualized works. 

The artwork featured in this gallery was collected from GVSU’s collection as well as from collectors across West Michigan, and the exhibition will remain through Nov. 5.