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Press Releases, 10/31/07 Memory paintings from the French community of At 2:00 Tuesday afternoon, November 13, the Memorial Union
Gallery will open an exhibit of paintings by Leo Beauchamp, of Olga, and host
a conversation with and reception for the artist. Beauchamp, a stalwart of
the arts organization known as the Brush Bunch in Walhalla, North Dakota,
grew up in the nearby On Thursday, November 15, the campus hosts the Parisien brothers—Vincent, Joe, and Jimmy—fiddlers from Folk festival events will conclude with the History Department Colloquium at 3:00 Friday afternoon, November 16, again in the Memorial Union Gallery. History PhD student Suzzanne Kelley then will present “Allen Sapp’s Memory Art: Rural Living and the Red Pheasant Cree.” All events are free, and the public is welcome. Events in the Great Plains Folk Festival provide enrichment for HIST 431 and also serve to highlight the region’s cultural heritage for the general public. The festival is organized by NDSU’s Center for Heritage Renewal in cooperation with the Department of History, the Division of Fine Arts, and the Memorial Union Gallery. For information call Tom Isern at 701-799-2942, or visit the center’s website: www.ndsu.edu/heritage 11/5/07 He’s rebuilding “Memories Paintings of Leo Beauchamp” is an exhibition that will open at the Memorial Union Gallery, North Dakota State University, on Tuesday, November 13. Gallery director Esther Hockett will host a gallery talk by Beauchamp at 2:00 that afternoon. Beauchamp will relate stories of growing up in Olga, a French Catholic settlement (once the hideout of Canadian Metis resistance leader Gabriel Dumont) and discuss his efforts to document his home through memory painting. A farmer for thirty-two years, Leo Beauchamp and his wife Lenore (Benoit) Beauchamp are now retired, giving Leo more opportunity to paint. In 1996 he accepted an invitation to join the Brush Bunch, an association of artists in Walhalla. This helped him overcome his sense that as an untrained artist, he could not paint. “I paint well when I’m with the group,” Leo says. “Home alone, I just don’t take the time.” He says simply of his style, “I want it to look realistic.” Whereas many memory artists paint in a strongly primitivist style—think Grandma Moses, for instance—Leo Beauchamp is near the realist end of the spectrum. He admits, though, that he usually paints people from behind, because he has trouble with faces. At the center of Leo’s memories of Olga stands Our Lady of Sacred Heart Church, with a rectory on one side and a school, staffed by the Presentation Sisters, on the other. North from the church stretches the single street, businesses on either side, old women gossiping in the street. The blacksmith works at his forge, while farmers thresh their crops. “Memory Paintings of Leo Beauchamp” is an event organized by the Center for Heritage Renewal, NDSU, in cooperation with the MU Gallery. It is a feature event in the center’s Great Plains Folk Festival, which runs November 13-16 at NDSU. For information call center director Tom Isern at 701-799-2942, or visit the center’s website at www.ndsu.edu/heritage. 11/8/07 It will be an evening of “old-time fiddling” in the “ “ Parisien’s ancestors hail from Vincent, learning from his father and other local fiddlers, not only began playing dances but also entered fiddling competitions. He began fiddling late in life, at age 36 (he is now 68). He boasts a shelf of “ten or twelve” trophies from fiddling competitions, but perhaps his best musical memory is opening for Merle Haggard and other feature stars at the first WE Fest in Detroit Lakes in 1983. Parisien, making no predictions as to what tunes he and his brothers will play on Thursday night, says he will “just play what comes to mind.” For additional information about the Parisien Brothers concert, call 701-799-2942, or visit the website of the Center for Heritage Renewal at www.ndsu.edu/heritage. |