Just because things quiet down in the classrooms a bit at Marquette University in summer, don't think that the near West Side campus is lacking interesting diversions.
At the university's Haggerty Museum of Art, it's just the opposite, thanks in part to events surrounding the current exhibition featuring Racine native Theodore Czebotar.
The museum, located on campus near 13th and Clybourn Streets -- the latter being a great place to find inexpensive meter parking -- hosts a slate of summer events, starting with "Variegated Landscapes" at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 30. Milwaukee artists Robert Lewis Smith, Evelyn Patricia Terry and Dave Niec will give presentations and take part in a discussion.
A few weeks before the "Theodore Czebotar: Paintings from the Olympic Peninsula" show -- which opened April 28 -- closes on Aug. 15, there will be a series of related events.
The exhibition features works created by Czebotar, a Racine native, from the 1940s through the 1960s during his annual summer trips to the northwestern section of Washington State with his wife, Els, who was also an artist.
During the visits, Czebotar made sketches and paintings of the then-relatively unexplored Olympic Peninsula and its coastline, its rainforests and other microclimates.
But more than straight representational landscapes, Czebotar's interest in abstraction, reduction and stylization makes these works unusual and engaging.
On Tuesday, July 27 at noon, there will be an installment of "GROW with Marquette/Lunchtime Learning" that includes a gallery walk-through of the Czebotar Paintings with Czebotar's niece Pati Hamilton.
The following day at 5:30 p.m. Racine gallery owner Emile Mathis -- which helped organize the show -- will lead another walk through the exhibit.
A short reception precedes that event at 5 p.m.
At 6 p.m. environmentalist poet Tim McNulty -- who lives in Washington's Olympic Peninsula -- will give a lecture based on his book, "Olympic National Park and the Olympic Peninsula: Stories from the Land," published last year by the University of Washington Press.
McNulty will also read passages from his book.
Then, on Thursday, July 29 at 7 p.m., McNulty will read his poetry at Woodland Pattern Book Center, 720 E. Locust St., in Riverwest.
Admission to all events and to the museum is free. The Haggerty Museum of Art is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. -- tt stays open until 8 on Thursdays -- and noon until 5 p.m. on Sundays.
Call (414) 288-1669 or visit marquette.edu/haggerty for more information.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
