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(01/08/13 5:40am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>At 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, the large, white trailer is backed into a corner parking spot directly across the street from Kilroy’s Dunnkirk. A small generator starts, and the lights come on. The Big Cheeze is open for business.Chad Sutor and Joe Morton, two friends who grew up together in Bloomington and started the grilled cheese food truck eight months ago, begin preparing to serve their late-night snacks. Sutor sets up his iPad-turned cash register while Morton checks temperatures of the propane-fueled deep fryers and cooktop. The truck’s menu puts a creative spin on a familiar favorite.The popular “Momma Smacker” consists of smoked gouda, pulled pork and caramelized onions. The “C.B.R.” combines cheddar, chicken, grilled cheese and a ranch dipping sauce. Sutor and Morton entered the food truck business when they faced graduation. Sutor graduated last spring from Purdue University with a degree in selling and sales management, and Morton graduated from IU in 2011 with a degree in political science. After starting in West Lafayette in February while Sutor finished his degree, they moved their operation to Bloomington in June.“The next thing you know we’re on a trailer slinging grilled cheese to drunk kids outside of bars,” Morton said. “The idea of being an entrepreneur is what really entices me.”
(05/24/12 12:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Not much beats the combination of cupcakes and art. Juliana Burrell, local artist and elementary school art teacher, spoke Tuesday at The Venue Fine Art & Gifts about her paintings currently on display. Guests were treated to refreshments including chocolate cake and cupcakes as they listened to Burrell’s stories of growing up in South America , attending college at Indiana University and spending four years as an aerialist in a circus.“I loved (oil paints) at IU, and then when I was in the circus I used it to paint elephants ... but it was too cumbersome to take oils in a trailer in a circus, so I quit painting,” Burrell said. Eight years later, she said, she was painting again and wanted to paint big.While her artwork varies from flowers she remembers from Brazil to contorted forms of circus performers, they are all clearly from the same artist. She uses a squeezable bottle instead of a paintbrush to render the texture and depth along the borders in her paintings. Like the many pieces of a stained glass window, individual shapes are clearly defined by a margin of separation and the colors within, clean and vibrant, come together like a puzzle to create the larger composition.Burrell currently teaches art to first through fifth graders at Centerton and Smith elementary schools in Martinsville. On Tuesday at The Venue, Burrell brought examples of an interesting exercise she asks her students to complete. A highlighter is used to draw architecture from a reference image. She then asks the students to trace around those lines with a fine-tipped Sharpie, not crossing the highlighter lines. This exercise creates bright works that resemble the jigsaw puzzle shapes that define Burrell’s style. “I’ve learned a lot from my students ... It’s amazing how free they are and how able they are,” Burrell said.Burrell’s paintings will remain on display at The Venue through May 31. Her work can also be viewed on her website www.julianaburrell.com.— Darryl Smith
(05/23/12 11:59pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Fishing, kayaking, canoeing, hiking — if you haven’t taken advantage of what Griffy Lake Nature Preserve has to offer, you had better do it soon. The small reservoir just north of campus will be drained this summer for repairs on the reservoir’s dam. The dam suffers from cracks and other problems requiring attention. The dam water must be drained in order to facilitate fixing these dam maintenance issues, said Jon Callahan, City of Bloomington Utilities spokesperson.“Dam-related repairs are tentatively scheduled to begin in September 2012,” Callahan said. The repairs are made possible by a federal grant requiring the work to be completed by the end of 2013. A portion of trails near the dam and the dog park will be shut down to allow shoreline repairs and the regrowth of trampled vegetation. Water from Griffy Lake runs into the White River, and a large portion of the aquatic life will find a way downstream once the draining begins, said Steve Cotter, national resource manager for Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department. Cotter said it is also a goal to leave small amounts of water in low spots on the lake bed where possible. “Like a natural system that has its wet and dry years, the wildlife will rebound,” Cotter said. In the summer of 2010, for example, water levels dropped low enough to suspend the use of boats, and the lake bed was exposed in several places after a year of dry weather, according to the City of Bloomington website.The 1,179-acre nature preserve on North Headley Road is walking or biking distance from IU. Hiking trails zigzag over forested hills and through ravines echoing the sounds of the creeks that trickle down to the 109-acre lake. Adjacent is the Indiana University Research and Teaching Preserve. Along with other properties throughout the region, this preserve provides IU students with a place to take their research and learning into the real world. Griffy Lake is a fishing hotspot with species including channel catfish, bluegill and large-mouth bass.With the draining of the lake in the near future, an emergency rule change has been established to help clear the fish from the lake before it is drained.“Maintenance of the Griffy Lake dam will require draining Griffy Lake this summer,” according to the City of Bloomington website. “In order to make the best use of the fishery prior to the lowering of the lake, the Department of Natural Resources has removed the large-mouth bass size limit and has doubled the daily bag limit for all species.”
(05/20/12 11:27pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The sounds of journalism: the snap of a shutter, the scratch of a pencil, the relentless clicking of a keyboard and the crack of a softball bat. Well, that’s at least true for the students of Bloomington High School South’s yearbook and newspaper staffs. The two publications have faced each other in an annual softball game for the past six years, and the newspaper has won every time, including Friday’s match.“There’s a lot of trash talking a month or so before the game” said Kathleen Mills, former Indiana Daily Student desk editor and now the adviser for The Optimist newspaper, the student publication at BHSS. Mayor Mark Kruzan, who also worked for the IDS while attending IU, was present to throw the first pitch of the game Friday. Once a more formal awards ceremony and year-end celebration, the softball game now provides an alternative way for the school’s two publications to end each school year. It was a hot day in Bryan Park as the 43 students, along with Mills and her counterpart for The Gothic yearbook Kelsey Rigdon, played a loosely regulated game of softball. Students cheered for their teammates and the occasional friend who happened to be playing for the other team. After about five innings, the game ended as the newspaper staff won 11-8. Soon, a student ran onto the field with a gold spray-painted typewriter that served as the competition’s trophy. After the customary “good game” high fives, the players made their way to a nearby shelter where food and drinks had been set up for the remainder of the celebration.“That was the most competitive you guys have ever been,” Mills told Rigdon. As the new yearbook adviser and Bloomington High School South English teacher, Rigdon found herself coaching the yearbook team of 19 students for the first time. “We did a great job for having zero practice,” Rigdon said.Mills said her team had an advantage. The school newspaper staff doesn’t have as much work to do at the end of the year as the yearbook’s staff. “I will be the first to say that they have more work to do until the end of June, and we put out our last issue today, so we had some practice time,” Mills said.
(04/13/12 1:51am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Venue Fine Art & Gifts slowly filled with artists and art appreciators Tuesday night for a presentation by author Rachel Berenson Perry.Attendees enjoyed refreshments and chatted about Perry and her book as seating to accommodate the large group became scarce. “The most we’ve had stuffed into that room was 55,” Venue owner Gabe Colman said.Perry is the former fine arts curator of the Indiana State Museum and is considered the foremost expert on Indiana art, especially art originating in Brown County. Perry was at the Venue speaking about T.C. Steele and other artists who made up the Hoosier Group. “T.C. Steele was an early artist in Indiana, and is probably the best-known artist in Indiana, who came to Brown County in 1907,” Perry said. “The group, who included William Forsythe, John Ottis Adams, Richard Greulle and Otto Stark, pioneered the ‘Plein Air’ style of painting in America.”Perry said IU’s campus was a subject of many of Steele’s paintings because he was an artist in residence from 1922 to 1926. His studio was located in Franklin Hall, she said.Perry has already authored “T.C Steele and the Society of Western Artists, 1896-1914,” which won a silver medal in the Fine Art category in the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Her latest book, “Paint on Canvas: A Biography of T.C. Steele,” was the subject of Tuesday’s presentation and book signing.A projector was set up in one of the four small rooms at the Venue, and eventually, almost everyone found a seat in the room — others watched intently from the two doorways. Paintings were splashed across a blank wall as Perry introduced them and encouraged discussion about the artist and the history. It was a constant Q-and-A format as Perry fielded questions.One audience member asked how the artists maintained their supplies of paints, brushes and canvases in what was a relatively remote Brown County in the 1900s. “They really lived in Brown County seasonally and wintered in Indianapolis until after 1922,” Perry said.Janet Barnes, an art teacher at Rogers Elementary School, said she enjoyed hearing Perry’s answers.“It’s always fun to learn how they were real people sort of hanging out doing their thing,” she said. “It makes them very real.”Perry is working on another book. She is also considering writing a memoir. She said she would have no trouble filling a memoir, with experience as curator for Indiana State Museum and a work history that includes driving a cab and shoeing horses for nearly 12 years.“I was very pleased with the number of people who showed up,” Perry said as she continued signing books after her presentation.