Gautreaux to present Heasley Prize lecture and reading

Dr. Tim Gautreaux, a critically acclaimed writer of fiction, will deliver the 2005 Heasley Prize lecture and public reading on March 22 at Lyon College.

Gautreaux will present a lecture at 11 a.m. Tuesday, March 22, in Nucor Auditorium. He will participate in an interview and luncheon at noon in Bevens Music Room. The public reading will be at 7:30 p.m. in Bevens. All events are free and open to the public. (The meal cost at the luncheon is $3.50.)

Gautreaux has taught creative writing for more than 30 years in his native Louisiana. He has published two collections of short stories (Same Place, Same Things and Welding with Children,) and two novels (The Next Step in the Dance, The Clearing), and his fiction has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, GQ and many other magazines.

His work appears frequently in annual anthologies such as Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and O. Henry Prize Stories, as well as in university textbooks.

Among his awards are the National Magazine Award, Southeastern Booksellers Award for best novel, Mid-South Booksellers award, and an NEA Creative Fellowship. His collection Welding with Children was chosen by the New York Times as a notable book of the year.  His latest novel, The Clearing, published by Knopf, has made several top 10 lists, including the USA Today list of the 10 best books of 2003.
 

Regional Science Fair will be March 18

The North Central Arkansas Regional Science Fair, sponsored by Lyon, will be held Friday, March 18, in the Derby Center. About 100 junior and senior high students are expected to participate. An awards ceremony for the event will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Brown Chapel.

To emphasize the importance and impact of mentors on a young person’s life, Beebe recalled several influential figures who “took him in” when he was growing up in Newport with an “inordinate amount of freedom,” the son of a single mother who worked a lot. Although the dangers and pressures upon youth were not as intense as exists today, he asserted, there was still a definite risk that was averted due to individuals who directed him down the right path.

Beebe stated that because he promotes mentoring, he has now taken on the challenge himself and is mentoring a third grade boy. He stated that he does not have much time to devote, a problem for many people, but that even a little time can make a big difference in a life. Contact information was given to those in attendance and all were urged to become a part of “Mentor Arkansas.”

Professor Chris Valle’s most recent exhibition, “Culturally Constructed,” opened in the Kresge Gallery at Lyon College on March 1. This exhibit, developing the themes from his inaugural exhibit at the college last year, explores the interrelationships between sexuality and consumerism, beauty and death, the microscopic and the macroscopic, nature and artificiality, observation and participation, through images that are layered, juxtaposed, startling, and disturbing.

Visually, Professor Valle’s paintings are impressive for their technical achievement – painting literally hundreds of layers of images upon each other to form works of art that seem to swell from two dimensionality into three dimensionality. The physical depth of the image is enhanced by the way they reflect and hold light, almost like polished obsidian with a mirror-like finish.

But I was struck primarily by the way Valle’s paintings engage the mind as well as the eye. Most of the paintings center on a realistically depicted nude figure standing amidst a cosmos-like scene – which we learn from the titles, is not constellated by stars and nova, but by enlarged images of microscopic viruses and bacteria: Chlamydia, syphilis, HIV…. In a parody of the Book of Revelation, most of the human figures carry the mark of a bar code on their foreheads, clearly a symbol of the Beast of Consumerism. In the genital area, one may see the interpolated image of a person sitting in front of a computer or television screen: the lurking consumer who can only see the beauty of the human body as a sexual object to exploit.

Observing Valle’s paintings is to view a social and religious commentary about our media-manipulated society which has constructed a culture of sexual exploitation and commodification that leads figuratively and literally to death by a thousand diseases. But the observer will also discover that these works are saying something on a more personal level. The combination of the obsidian-like finish with the placement of the nude, has a disturbing effect on the observer. For as we contemplate the image in front us, we inevitably see ourselves. And so we are confronted – albeit in a “mirror darkly” – with our own role in the construction of our culture.

Six Lyon College student athletes earned TranSouth All-Conference honors in men’s and women’s basketball. The all-conference players from Lyon are:

1st Team - Norris Weintz (two years in a row)

2nd Team - Dalun Smith

All-Freshman - Jonathan Donaldson

1st Team & All-Freshman Team - Andrea Sublett

2nd Team - Prescilla Mathias

2nd Team - Candace Pettis

The TranSouth Conference All-Academic Team (Scholar Athletes) includes all players from across the conference that meet the requirements set forth by the NAIA. These requirements include being a sophomore or higher in classification and holding a current GPA of 3.0 or higher.

Pipers who made the All-Academic Team are Kim Edmondson, Carrie Stewart, Mika Seay and Jennifer Steele.

Scots who are on the All-Academic Team are Andrew Shepherd, Ty Sims, Norris Weintz and Chris Wilkinson.