Series allows students to meet with career artists

This week, students will have the opportunity to hear how a variety of artists have taken what they love to do and made a career out of it, as part of the Honors College Visiting Artists Series.

Jon Berry, an Honors College faculty-in-residence and one of the event's organizers, said each night's speaker will aim to educate and entertain students through informal readings, performances and question and answer sessions.

"It's not just a matter of, 'Hey, it's neat to talk to someone that does neat things,' but it's also a business move in the sense of educating students about how to do things and make a living at them," Berry said. "You can get a degree in religious studies or English or art, and you don't have to wait tables - you can do what you really want to do, and there's a way to make money at it, and all these people are successful at it."

The series is an initiative of the Honors College geared toward expanding the Honors College experience by bringing in different types of artists to speak to students in small groups.

"It's open to the general public, but we are targeting primarily honors students, because the idea is that this will be a part of the honors experience," he said. "It will allow people to ask questions of these artists, like about the life of a singer-songwriter, life on the road and also get in to some good cultural questions."

A different artist will come in today through Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Smith Hall Grand Gallery. This week's artists will include authors Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin today, singer/songwriter Van Eaton on Tuesday, folks/soul musician on Wednesday and blues musician Willie King and primitive painter Lennie Jones on Thursday.

Next year, the series will bring in one or two artists every month, and Berry said they are considering having another weeklong series at the end of the year.

Like the Bankhead Visiting Writers Series, the visiting artist series will bring in acclaimed writers, but will also bring in an array of other artists outside of the creative writing realm.

Berry said the visiting artists series might overlap at some point with the Bankhead Visiting Writers Series and will work with other programs to compliment their offerings.

"There will be some crossover by us inviting some people that Bankhead would invite," he said. "We are just going to try to be cognizant of what's going on, and try to build relationships with other programs like New College, Creative Campus and Blount [Undergraduate Initiative] so we can all pull together our resources and bring in bigger names."