• "Puzzling"

Arkansas painter Kathy Bay's watercolor, "Puzzling," has been accepted in the "2012 Watercolor USA Exhibition" in Springfield, Mo., she informs Eye Candy. The show runs June 9-Aug. 5 at the Springfield Art Museum. Juror Miranda Lash, curator of modern and contemporary art at the New Orleans Museum of Art, chose 113 paintings by 102 artists from among 666 entries.

The watercolor is the second work Bay has on exhibit at the museum, she says; the other is in a National Watercolor Honor Society exhibition there.

Something there is that loves a stick in Arkansas. (I am resisting the temptation to write stick in the sticks.) Artists are making sculpture from stripped branches and fallen limbs all over the place in Northwest Arkansas. In Fayetteville, it's Patrick Dougherty, who's been working for weeks on a stick sculpture on the Tyson Plaza of the museum, a project that's involved lots of Fayettevillians as well as the artist. In Eureka Springs, it's Lorna Hirsch and David Pettit and Steve Beacham and lots of other artists contributing to the "Finding Nature: Artworks in the Landscape" gallery exhibit and woodsy installations.

Here's Dougherty's work at Walton Arts Center:

• Stickwork at Walton Arts Center

And a picture of CEO Peter Lane (in green T-shirt) and Dougherty:

And Lorna Hirsch's cedar structures in the woods around her at her studio, Fire Om Earth Retreat Center, 872 Mill Hollow Road, through June 15:

Eureka artist David Pettit's sculpture made cedar logs and stones gathered from Hogscald Creek, Keels Creek, and the Kings River, installed near Wilson Branch.

Steve Beacham and bamboo poles, part of the Finding Nature show:

And this on Rockhouse Road, posted on the "Finding Nature" facebook page by Ranaga Fabiarz:

• Cade adding leaves to "Arkansas' Fallen"

Since we mentioned an acquisition of the Arkansas Arts Center earlier, here's another announcement: The College of the Ouachitas in Malvern has added to its permanent collection Barbara Cade's "Arkansas' Fallen." Cade's work — leaves of handmade felt, linen and acrylic on handmade paper, records the names of all Arkansans who died in the Iraq war. The original had 45 inscribed leaves; the Arkansas war dead at the war's end December 2011, now totals 101. She is adding the last 10 names now; the ground is fairly carpeted.

• "Wandering Thoughts"

"Wandering Thoughts" is the first Southall in the Arts Center's permanent collection. The pre-Raphaelite work is one of only a few on paper, Arts Center director Todd Herman said in a press release. His comment on the work:

“Drawing on paper that has been treated with a thin, colored gesso ground requires a very high level of skill,” said Herman. “Lines must be precise since errors cannot be erased nor changes made without smudging and ruining the gesso ground layer. Not only is this a beautiful drawing, but it adds depth to our collection in terms of quality and technique.

The drawing is on exhibit in the Winthrop Rockefeller Foyer.

Full release on the jump.

• Community School of the Arts

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has decided to shut down its Community School of the Arts, a year-round, 33-year-old institution bringing high-level instruction to students of all ages in the visual and performing arts, Kindermusik and Chinese language instruction.

Leslie J. Mangiamele, school director for 18 years and an adjunct professor of visual art in UALR's art department, said the program will end Aug. 15, after its Summer Arts Camp and Summer String Camp end.

"The problem is the bottom line," Mangiamele said. "The dean could not see a way around not cutting our salaries." She said the school has been under threat of closure for several years, but survived an attempt to close it two years ago because of support support.

Deborah Baldwin, dean of UALR's college of arts, humanities and social sciences, said yesterday she considers the closing of the school as temporary. She said the university will study a consultant's report made in March on how to make the program self-sufficient and present a proposal to the provost in July 2013.

About 1,000 children and adults are enrolled in the program, which has seen growth over the years. Tuition pays for faculty (81 percent), operating costs (8 percent) and reimburses UALR for facilities' use (11 percent). It does not pay the salaries for the director and her assistant. Baldwin said the school "has regularly been $75,000 to $85,000 in the red" — by which she means the university is paying the salaries — and UALR would like the program to be entirely self-supporting. Baldwin said she did not know how many university community schools are self-supporting. Mangiamele said that deficit budgets for the schools "are sort of the nature community schools."

The school was opened in 1979, Mangiamele said, "to make these wonderful professors [at UALR] in the arts accessible to people in the community." The faculty includes arts professionals and those with advanced degrees as well as UALR instructors teaching the once-a-week classes.

“I feel terrible about the students we have been nurturing from age 5 to their teen-age years” to become arts professionals, Mangiamele said.

Mangiamele is one of four visual art instructors. There are also 12 music instructors, a dance instructor and a language instructor. A string instructor, the language instructor, an art instructor and three piano teachers will lose their only employment, Mangiamele said.

"I'm sorry we're in this position," Dean Baldwin said. "We would love to be able to continue ... we just have to figure out how to make this work."

Ironically, the school was created because of cutbacks in the arts in the public schools. The Community School's website includes this statement:

"When considering the education of the children in our community, we discover that for a variety of reasons our schools have been unable to provide consistent and varied arts instruction. Sadly, music and visual art classes are the first to be cut when money is short. To address this, the UALR Community School of the Arts, initiated in 1979, was created."

The school will continue after a fashion, Mangiamele said, thanks to an offer of studio space by Rhythm 88 on Bowman Road. She'd like to see the program get its own space. "We could use a house, a building ... empty strip malls. ... Give us a space and we will continue to do high quality stuff."

UALR ended its planetarium and Urban Design programs in the past few years; neither was resurrected.

Eureka Springs is in the midst of celebrating its annual May Festival of the Arts, with visual and performing artists appearing all over town, in galleries, restaurants ("A Taste of Art"), banks and Basin Springs Park. There's a class in winemaking today at Keel's Creek Winery and Gallery, and the White Street Studio Walk, the Books in Bloom Literary Festival and a garden tour are coming up later in the week.

But Eureka always goes out on a limb, and it did so literally this year with the "Finding Nature — Art in the Landscape" installations around Carroll County. Artists were invited to create outdoor sculptures from fallen dead limbs and branches collected on pasture land at the Hills of Keels Creek (see above).

Organized by Christopher Fischer and John Rankine, the exhibit features 23 Eureka Springs artists. There will be a gallery exhibit as well the site installations; opening reception is set for 5 p.m. May 19 at The Space, 2 Pine St., across from the Post Office.

Because Eureka is Eureka, artists will celebrate the closing of the exhibit May 27 by setting several of the outdoor sculptures on fire. The blaze is set for 5-10 p.m. that day. The Hills of Keels Creek is off of Rockhouse Road, and is the first road left after the second bridge.

A pocket map giving directions to the installations will be available at various locations. You can read more on the Finding Nature Facebook page.

• Jim Larkin, 2012 Arkansas Living Treasure

Hot Springs pottery Jim Larkin, who with his wife, Barbara, has owned Fox Pass pottery for 40 years, has been named the 2012 Arkansas Living Treasure by the Arkansas Arts Council.

The award recognizes an Arkansas artisan for his career, preservation of his traditional craft and efforts educating others. Larkin, 65, has participated in the Arkansas Arts Council's Arts in Education program, taught ceramics at the National Park Community College, taught at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Science and Arts and has given classes around Arkansas.

From a news release (read in its entirety on the jump):

"I've always been a maker," he said. "You know how people sometimes say that their most influential book is the Bible? As a kid, mine was W. Ben Hunt's 'Big Book of Indian Crafts.' "