Arts DEVOté

Actual music
It’s true. Arts DEVOté has been known to indulge in occasional hyperbole when he’s drooling over his new fave-of-the-moment, but he tries to restrain himself enough to retain at least a tiny bit of cred. With that said, the set by Bear Hunter’s Maurice Spencer (aka Catlike Reflexes) during the Band vs. Band event at Nick’s Night Club on March 21 was the greatest artistic performance since Lord Chamberlain’s Men opened Henry V at the Globe! That’s not true. But his complete immersion as the Tony Clifton-esque jerkface counterpoint to (very) good sport Erin Lizardo was one of the best A.D. has witnessed in Chico in the last five years.

It was performance art. It was a rock show. It was a tribute to Andy Kaufmann’s abrasive alter-ego Clifton (with some of anti-comic Neil Hamburger thrown in), made even more caustic with a fully prepared arsenal of insults for his roasting targets (including this columnist, who was ordered to “get off my fucking stage!”).

Spencer took up every ounce of oxygen in the room, prowling around in his powder-blue suit, with four drinks in his arms at all times, setting up his friends by inviting them to the stage to accompany him and then knocking each down one by one. It was painful and funny and a little scary as the feeling of the crowd possibly turning on him began to grow. A seamless and complete experience. And dangerous, too. Bravo!

Feeling Petrarchan?
April is the National Month for celebration of Poetry
And the 1078’s panel of published poets and writers
Offer workshops every Saturday (four total) in honor
Merely pay the fifty dollars and embrace your possibility
But if you are not too daunted, try the Festival of Fresh Ink
It’s the Blue Room’s invitation to all local writers
To submit original one-act plays which the theater considers
For June-time production—deadline April 16
If springtime muses have yet to inspire, lean back on your bushy laurels
And consider this modest honor for your fiction previously published:
If not more than 1,000 words, such works will be looked upon
By the Micro Award judges, first by author Robert Laughlin (he’s local),
Then by two old-school profs, Clark Brown and George Keithley, poet
For full details please visit WWW dot micro award dot com

The Crux Artist Collective is moving …
… the art show from the gallery to the streets of Chico. April 5, during Art First Saturday, the Cruxters will be leading a “living procession of art and sound” between First and Fifth streets, and Salem and Flume streets. The people and the concrete will become the gallery walls, musicians will serenade the strollers and there will even be hors d’oeuvres. You have no excuse to miss something that promises to be so fun.

Bi-weekly devotions
• Public Art Policy Committee: Meets Thursdays, April 3 & 10, 5 p.m., in the City Council Building.

• Art Outreach & Education Committee: Meets Tues., April 8, 3:30 p.m., in the City Council Building.

• Arts Commission: Meets Wed., April 16, 7 p.m., in the City Council Building.