Arts

This month the Tallgrass Film Festival will celebrate 10 years in the community.

It all started back in 2003 when Tim Gruver left Los Angeles to return to his hometown and start a film festival. First step: assemble a team.

“We were really good friends and he called me up and said do you want to come to Wichita to produce this film festival and I was like, ‘I don’t know what that means, but OK, that sounds great,‘“ says Lela Meadow-Connor.

The state of Kansas doesn’t offer a license to art therapists, and as a result there are not many, especially in the south-central part of the state. Here is a profile of Ian Gingrich-Gaylord, one of the few art therapists in the area.

The storm shelter below the main offices on the Prairie View campus in Newton is cold and dark but brightly decorated.

It serves a dual purpose – storm shelter and art-making workshop.

It’s kind of a nice metaphor; the storm shelter says Ian Gingrich-Gaylord, Prairie View’s art therapist as he pushes open the heavy door.

In 2011, Kansas made headlines by eliminating all public funding for the arts. That meant the state no longer qualified for federal matching grants of more than $1 million. But some recent changes mean the state will reapply for the lost federal dollars.

During the last legislative session, lawmakers restored state funding for the arts. And now, the state’s arts agency, the Creative Arts Industries Commission, will reapply for federal grants.

American architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed more than 1,000 structures during his lifetime. Among them is the Corbin Education Center on the Wichita State Campus.

Walking tours of the building will be offered Friday in honor of Wright's birthday.

Alan Aagaard is a WSU professor and will lead the tours. He'll talk about the architect's career and other familiar buildings in Wichita designed by Wright's students.

The Ulrich Museum of Art has received $250,000 in federal grant money to fund the second year of the five-year process of the museum’s signature Miro mosaic piece.

After 33 years of outdoor exposure, the 80-panel piece was removed form its position last fall to prepare for restoration. This mural is the only predominately mosaic piece ever created by Miro and the largest of only four Miro pieces in the United States.

The National Endowment for the Arts awarded $100,000 to the project, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded $150,000.