Category: Art
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Authoritarian Rule in a College Town
Our world has no shortage of power-hungry dictators, sadly. What might the college town of Champaign-Urbana have looked like in 1991 under an authoritarian government? Author Sarah Lariviere, a Champaign, Illinois, native with deep roots in Central Illinois, offers a look at such a life in her rousing novel Riot Act, published in 2024 by…
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An inspiring Christmas book for aspiring artists
The paintings in “A Village Christmas” are best viewed in a dim light, perhaps next to the glow of lights on a Christmas tree. That’s because most of them are nighttime illustrations of extravagant, lit-up houses surrounded by snowy yards and streets, lots of dressed-up people, and horses and carriages. Kinkade’s pieces take place in…
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Author Daniel Kraus Shares His Whalefall
Daniel Kraus is an unapologetically multi-genre author who has written almost every type of fictional book except a western, and even that type of read is coming soon from the Chicago resident. An “omnivorous” reader and writer by his own account, Kraus enjoys everything from romance books to thrillers, calling himself an “agent’s nightmare” because…
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Grace McClellan Thriving in Her Creation and Teaching of Art
Meet artist Grace McClellan, whose work as a senior at Eastern Illinois University is getting noticed.
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Laugh Magazine. It’s Free!
This is my attempt to create a version of Mad Magazine back in the early 1980s. I called it Laugh Magazine, and it had a glorious run of one free issue.
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‘Sam’s Hobby’: A Preview
One of my final literary journalism stories I wrote as I was finishing up graduate school in 2016 was on my brother-in-law Sam Logan. He had a photo project in mind, so I asked if I could feature him and he said yes.