The weight of my work is in creating videos in Advertising and Marketing – commercials, corporate videos, capital campaign videos etc. The wonderful thing about Clark Creative is that we also get involved with many local arts and nonprofit organizations, including The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The BLUEBARN Theater, KANEKO, Omaha Performing Arts, and Opera Omaha. Because of this, I always feel that my work is going for worthwhile causes.
By KENT WARNEKE
editor@norfolkdailynews.com | Posted: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 9:00 am
It could be called the perfect storm — in the best possible sense of the term.
The collective presence and work of the Nebraska Cultural Endowment, Nebraska Arts Council
and Humanities Nebraska has been of benefit to communities, arts organizations and individuals
across Nebraska.
“It’s a really neat thing to have everything work together,” said Suzanne Wise, executive director
of the Nebraska Arts Council.
About 15 years ago while living in Chicago I came across an online article about fantasy occupations. In the men’s category on the top of the list were Airline Pilot and Professional Baseball Player. On the women’s list, the top fantasy occupation was Lounge Singer. I thought to myself, that’s what I do! There is a need here I could fulfill as I was already teaching jazz voice at the college level. I needed to design a simplified course to help adults (including men) fulfill their lounge singer/jazz singer fantasies with a top level band in hip music room (about that time, “The Fabulous Baker Boys” movie was out and I recall Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in a red sequin dress, stretched across a grand piano singing a torch song which may have inspired this too).
Special to the Norfolk Daily News | Posted: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 9:04 am
The Norfolk Arts Center will be host to a reception next week designed to provide an opportunity
for Norfolkans and area residents to meet representatives of three statewide cultural arts
organizations.
Special guests will be Marian Fey, the new executive director of the Nebraska Cultural
Endowment, along with Suzanne Wise, executive director of the Nebraska Arts Council, and
Heather Thomas, development director for Humanities Nebraska.
My interest in wordplay began in childhood. Growing up in North Omaha I found myself attracted to the wonder of certain words, usually multi-syllabic tongue twisters I heard television talking-heads wittily brandish. I also fell under the near fatal spell of alliteration.
As a farm boy, I was a spectacular failure. I wandered off from my chores, lost in imagination, mumbling to myself as I walked in circles. Today such a child would be drugged and counseled. My parents, however, let me roam; one of the paths I trod through a patch of weeds is still weedless to this day – nothing ever grew to cover my steps. Today, I pace as I write fiction, with my laptop propped on a fat dictionary atop the kitchen counter. I mutter aloud, considering the rhythms of words, performing lines of dialogue. I do have a writing desk in a writing room but I do no writing there. I need to be up and about fussing with things, my stories coming together on the sly. For me, I guess, writing must always involve wandering away from chores, and it must never become the chore itself.
I sometimes have trouble throwing things away. I still have this ratty (but exceedingly comfortable) t-shirt that I picked up in high school. The lettering on the front reads, “If you love me, tell me a story.” I like the simplicity of it. It sounds like the truth.