Marcus Hotels & Resorts has expanded The Pfister Hotel’s successful artist-in-residence program to two additional U.S. hotels.

The Marcus-owned Hotel Phillips in Kansas City, Mo., and Skirvin Hilton in Oklahoma City, Okla., will also host artist-in-residence programs inspired by The Pfister’s residency.

The artist-in-residence program was launched in 2009 at The Pfister to support the work of talented local artists and generate awareness of the arts community in Milwaukee. It has hosted a number of community artists, including Reginald Baylor, Shelby Keefe and Katie Musolff.

German cellist Alban Gerhardt has a packed schedule during his five days as artist in residence with the Oregon Symphony, Oct. 25-29. He’ll give masterclasses for young cellists, play Bach in Pioneer Place Mall, coach rehearsals of the Metropolitan Youth Symphony, play for sick kids at Doernbecher’s Hospital and perform with the orchestra in Salem and Portland. All events except the symphony concerts are free. All except the MYS rehearsal are open to the public.

Gerhardt is a favorite in Portland. He made his fourth appearance with the Oregon Symphony last November, playing Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto. Like Yo-Yo Ma, he plays the cello with natural expressivenss and passion. He’s also an active and entertaining blogger. An example from his website:

“This might have been the laziest summer I have had in my entire life, and it felt sooo good! Directly after my two-week-stint in Colorady with my son János I did a bit of teaching in the beautiful city of Weimar. My first Meisterkurs ever, five days of giving lessons to the same people, quite a challenge: normally I gave little masterclasses of three hours, where I could spread my “wisdom” to a couple of youngsters and then take off. This time I was forced to see the lovely cellists every day and check if what I had told them made any sense and had any impact. It was rewarding but also frightening as at some point I started doubting everything I wanted to tell them. When I perform I am very sure of what I want to say with the music, but in teaching I don’t want the students to say what I am saying, I want them to develop their own voice, but it is easier said than done…”

Here’s his Portland schedule:

Thursday, Oct. 25, 5- 8 pm, Sherman Clay Pianos: Portland Youth Philharmonic Masterclass

Friday, Oct. 26, 4-5 pm, Pioneer Place Mall, Bach Suites performance

Saturday, Oct. 27, 12:30-1:30 pm, Roseway Heights (NE)    Visit/coach during MYS rehearsal    (open to MYS families)

7:30 pm, Oct. 27, Schnitzer Hall, Concert with Oregon Symphony

Sunday, Oct. 28, 1:00-3:30 pm, Lincoln Hall PSU, Oregon Cello Society masterclass

8:00 pm, Salem, Smith Auditorium, Oregon Symphony concert

Monday, Oct. 29, 1:00-3:00 pm, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, Bach Suites in two 20 min. sessions

Oct. 29, 8 pm, Schnitzer Hall, Oregon Symphony concert

Original Article by Mary Louise Schumacher for JSOnline.com

Marcus Hotels has decided to expand its artist-in-residence program, which it launched at the Pfister Hotel in 2009. Similar programs will be implemented in The Marcus Corporation’s Hotel Phillips in Kansas City, Mo., and the Skirvin Hilton in Oaklahoma City.

The Pfister’s annual program includes a studio space near the hotel’s lobby and a stipend for about a year. Hotel guests are able to stop in, see and talk to an artist at work. The artist is also there to show guests the Pfister’s collection of Victorian art, one of the largest such collections in a hotel in the U.S.

The programs at The Pfister and Skirvin Hilton will feature the art studio-gallery space, while the chosen artist at the Hotel Philips will be asked to wander the hotel and record the happenings of the day with a sketch pad. A new artist is selected each year and the application process open to working visual artists.

Artists who have been chosen for the Pfister’s program include Reginald Baylor, Shelby Keefe, Katie Musolff and, most recently, Timothy Westbrook. Trey Bryan was the first artist to be selected as part of the program at the Hotel Phillips and Romy Owens was recently selected as the first artist in residence at the Skirvin Hilton hotel.

AS220 is hosting Javier Hurtado, cialis a queer Chicano performer from Oakland, California, as the Artist-In-Residence for October 2012!

During his residency at AS220, Javier will develop and present a one-person drag performance titled “Perra Pumps: Last Call” on Friday, October 26^th at 8pm in AS220’s 95 Empire Black Box Theater. Admission $7.

Javier will also facilitate a one-day Special Effects Make-up workshop on Saturday, October 27^th at 95 Empire from 11am to 2pm. The cost of the workshop is $25. You can purchase tickets for the workshop at shop.as220.org

Javier Hurtado is an actor, writer, playwright, drag performer, and make-up artist. His work is deeply influenced by Mexican music and queer culture. Javier is a founding member of NosJotros Crew, a theatre and performance group, and produced theLove Through Deviant Ears performance series. The breadth of his work is informed by his experience as a member of El Teatro Campesino’s Core Ensemble, where he worked under the artistic mentorship of Luis and Kinan Valdez and other veteran Chicano actors. Javier is a also member of The Hybrid Performance Experiment (“The HyPE”), an experimental performance collective that took residency at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, California.

“My hope is that I can show my audience a part of themselves, their family, or community…. Through my work as a playwright, I aim to expand the narratives that highlight queer brown people, and the expression of love and desire in American theater. I’m interested in telling stories about people who look like me, love, fight, fear, and laugh like me. – Javier Hurtado.”

Special thanks to NALAC and Rio Yañez, graphic artist and photographer who constantly collaborates with Perra Pumps.

Check out a mash up of Javier’s work from “Deviant Ears Work” and a show called “Jotos and Homeboys”:

Taking the kids beyond the neighborhood for Halloween tricks and treats

by Eileen Ognitz

Timber Ridge Lodge and Waterpark , just 90 minutes from Chicago in Lake Geneva, Wis., promises a gigantic corn maze, pumpkin painting and haunted hayrides.

Original article by Shelly Hickman for the Oklahoma Gazette

Local artist Romy Owens has earned a gig that’s literally high-profile: For the next year, her studio is streetside in the Skirvin Hilton.

In its storied, 101-year history, the Skirvin Hilton Hotel has accommodated some of the most influential people in the world, but no one until now — other than its legendary ghost, Effie, of course — stays for an entire year.

Yet, in partnership with the Paseo Arts Association, the Skirvin announced last week that local artist Romy Owens is to be its first artist in residence. As such, she will work and exhibit at the downtown hotel for the next year.Her studio space is already created and accessible from within the Skirvin, open to hotel guests and visitors, as well as prominently visible from Broadway Avenue.

Original article by Tom Streuli for The Journal Record

Stroll past the Skirvin Hilton Hotel these days and you’re likely to see a picture in the making. And the person you’re likely to see making the picture is Romy Owens, who, by her own description, spends most of her time taking photographs and sewing them together.

If you missed her recent show at JRB Art at the Elms in Oklahoma City (it closed Sept. 29), fear not. Owens gets around. She already has two Oklahoma City exhibitions booked next year, as well as one in Ada. And you can spy some samples on her website, which will lead you to some fun stuff on Flickr that hasn’t been subjected to the needle and thread.

But if you want to see how the art is made, you’ll have to go to the Skirvin. Owens is the hotel’s first artist in residence, selected from a sea of applicants that was pared to a dozen semifinalists, then to three finalists, and, ultimately, to Owens. The prize was one year of free studio space in the hotel, the high-visibility area previously leased to Avis Scaramucci for her Painted Door boutique. The rent-free studio comes with a stipend of undisclosed amount paid by the hotel.

The Skirvin is the third of the Milwaukee, Wis.-based Marcus Hotels and Resorts to launch an artist-in-residence program.

In the newspaper business, no one gives a hoot about watching reporters type stories or seeing salespeople fill out insertion orders. But everyone – everyone – will stop to watch the presses run. When elementary school classes used to take field trips to newspapers, the highlight of the tour was always the basement, where those giant, noisy machines magically applied ink to an uninterrupted stream of newsprint that wound its way through mazes of metal rollers at speeds known only to astronauts and physicists. Astute newsmen eventually took note and designed office buildings that put the presses behind windows at sidewalk level instead of in the basement. Sure enough, passersby stopped passing by and stopped to watch.

Count on that same phenomenon to occur as tourists and office workers and basketball players and singers and land men stroll up Broadway just north of Park Avenue. We can see art anywhere, just as we can find a newspaper on most corners. But the chance to watch it being made is extraordinary and the impulse to pause and consider is insuppressible.

I do not know Romy Owens, but I would. Her Flickr gallery called “Kids I Know” makes me wish she knew mine, because I’d maybe have better pictures of them. Now that her studio is but a paint splatter from my office, I will ramble down Park, turn left and gawk through the window from time to time. Eventually, I will send her a friend request on Facebook. Or perhaps I’ll just march in and introduce myself. We journalists have an odd relationship with the whole introvert/extrovert thing.

No matter, because anyone who posts things like “there’s glass between us” as her Facebook status is probably pretty cool. Besides, we have 66 mutual friends already. How could she say no? And her occasional abstruse posts are balanced with the pragmatic. From installing Friday’s 12×12 OVAC (Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition) fundraiser: “we still don’t have a lunch donor for today and by noon, we might be so hungry we start to eat the art. can you donate lunch for six volunteers? please?”

Owens at the Skirvin for a year is a great confluence: The baroness of city hotels has just the right bit of stodginess about her amid her renaissance, and she is paired with a young, ascending artist who has never met anything stodgy.

It’s cool squared.

Halloween for the Younger Set

by Mali Anderson

September 25, 2012 | For USA Today Travel by Barbara De Lollis | Original Article

Downtown Lincoln, Neb., will soon have a Marriott hotel again.

Downtown Lincoln, Nebraska’s 297-room prominent Cornhusker Hotel is about to get renovated and again fly the Marriott Hotels flag. Marriott had cut its ties with the hotel earlier this year.

Milwaukee-based Marcus Hotels & Resorts recently has agreed to buy the financially troubled hotel, and it has already taken over daily management. The company, a division of the publicly held Marcus Corp., has restored various landmark hotels such as the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, the Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City and the Hotel Phillips in Kansas City.

The Cornhusker was developed by Castle & Cook in 1983 on the site of another hotel.

The Cornhusker lobby.

The Cornhusker’s renovation, according to Marcus Hotels, will give the hotel a new lobby, newly designed guest rooms, newly revamped meeting space and new dining outlets.

The hotel, for instance, will get a MillerTime Pub & Grill, which serves 20 types of special burgers and beers, plus salads, soups and wings.

The company hired Charles Harper, the one-time general manager of the Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis, as general manager. He’s coming from the company’s Sheraton Clayton Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, Mo.

“We believe we can make this distinctive hotel an even greater asset to the community and return the property to its former position as the social center of Lincoln,” Marcus Corporation CEO Gregory Marcus said in a press release.

The hotel has some catching up to do. According to TripAdvisor, the No. 1 and 2 hotels in town respectively are the New Victorian Suites (rates start at $73) and Embassy Suites (rates start at $160). The Cornhusker is ranked No. 21.

In terms of business travel potential, Lincoln is home to offices of companies such as Kawasaki, State Farm Insurance, Verizon, Pfizer, Novartis, Dell and Duncan Aviation.

Neither Marriott’s website nor the hotel’s website mention the affiliation yet.

Holland native Martin van der Laan welcomes ‘custodial’ challenge of historic  Skirvin Hilton Hotel in Oklahoma City.

September 23, 2012 | For NewsOK.com by Paula Burkes | Original Article

As a 30-year hotelier with six years on luxury cruise ships, Martin van der Laan has had some amazing experiences. His career has taken him from Buenos Aires to St. Petersburg, from Iceland to Venice, the Caribbean to Alaska and beyond. He lived and worked five years on Grand Cayman island and was based another five in sunny Boca Raton, Fla.

But when van der Laan and wife, as empty-nesters, had the opportunity to move to Oklahoma City from Florida in February 2011 for him to manage the Skirvin Hilton Hotel for Milwaukee, Wis.-based Marcus Hotels and Resorts, it “was a no-brainer,” van der Laan said.

General manager Martin van der Laan.

The industry veteran said he embraces the history of the hotel, likes and respects the community that saved it — after being shuttered for 17 years — and considers it a privilege to serve as the hotel’s “custodian,” along with a staff of 160.

Van der Laan, 50, recently sat down with The Oklahoman to talk about his professional and personal life. This is an edited transcript:

Q: Can you tell us about your roots?

A: My hometown is Hengelo, Holland, a city of about 80,000, 20 miles from the German border. Three of our five TV stations were German ones, so speaking German, along with Dutch, came second nature to me. I started learning English at age 6 at the privately-funded public school I attended and where I played soccer and other sports, with students from Austria, England and elsewhere. People don’t know it, but Holland is a tremendous melting pot.

My brothers — three years older and five years younger — still live in Holland. Our parents are deceased. My father worked as an export manager for a German company that made scales and slicing machines for food stores. My mother worked for a foundation that helped integrate foreign workers into Dutch societies.

Q: How’d you decide on a career in the hotel and restaurant industry?

A: Originally, I planned to study geography and history, because they were subjects I loved. But at the last minute I decided to go to hotel school at Hanze College, some 100 kilometers from my hometown. From age 16, I’d worked as a disc jockey at clubs and restaurants, and my boss was the owner of multiple restaurants. So the industry is what I knew. I graduated third in my class.

Q: What was your first job after college?

A: I worked for a year for a small, family-owned hotel in Switzerland. The owner doubled as the executive chef and his wife, executive housekeeper and front-office manager. I was the maitre d’ for two restaurants. It was great hands-on experience. I lived in the hotel and every morning woke to a view of three mountaintops: the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau.

Q: How’d you meet your wife?

A: Some 26 years ago on a weeklong cruise from Cozumel to the Grand Caymans to Ocho Rios, Jamaica. She was a passenger from outside New York City, where she worked as a former claims consultant for Prudential. And I was two years into a stint as maitre d’ of the dining room on the ship, one of Carnival Cruise Lines’ first three super liners. My college dean referred me for the job, which I loved. But after I met my darling, I worked only one more year before we married and I moved to the states. Over that year, Diane and I kept in touch. I’d send letters and flowers, and at the Grand Cayman post office, would drop $100 for a phone line to talk to her for an hour.

I’d spend an occasional long weekend with her in New York, or she’d join me in Florida when I had a week off.

Q: What’s your favorite room in the 225-room Skirvin Hilton?

A: The 20 rotunda suites. They’re very unique. Each is one-bedroom and features an adjoining oversized living area, which is situated in the hotel’s rotundas.

Q: What are your proudest contributions to the Skirvin so far? What’s on tap?

A: I was proud to be a part of planning the hotel’s 100th anniversary celebration last year, and, versus one big gala, deciding on a series of public events — from a ’20s flapper night in the original ballroom to a ’70s disco night in the Red Piano Lounge. I think my proudest moment was when Dannie Bea Hightower — the daughter of the late Dan James, who ran the Skirvin in its glory days — said the celebration would’ve made her father very happy.

We’ve recently introduced an 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday brunch in the Park Avenue Grill, with guitarist Edgar Cruz as the entertainment. And in place of our former gift shop, we soon plan to open an art gallery. We’ve partnered with the Paseo Arts Association to introduce an artist-in-residence program, where we’ll every year give free studio space to one emerging artist. We’re constantly looking for better ways to not only serve our guests, but also our community.

PERSONALLY SPEAKING

Position: General manager, Skirvin Hilton Hotel

Birth date: Dec. 10, 1961

Birthplace: Hengelo, Holland

Citizenship: He obtained his American citizenship three years ago

Family: Wife Diane, married 25 years next month; son Daniel, 22 of Orlando, Fla.; and daughter, Ashley, 19, a sophomore at Florida State University

Education: Hanze College, bachelor’s in hotel and restaurant management

Professional affiliations: The Oklahoma Hotel and Lodging Association and the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber

Pastimes: He and Diane go to the movies most weekends. His love of film grew from his boyhood when his family most Friday nights would watch Gregory Peck, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart movies dubbed in German. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is his all-time favorite; his most recent watch is “Hope Springs” with Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep

Favorite TV show: The travel channel’s “No Reservations,” in which chef host Anthony Bourdain shares worldwide culinary and cultural adventures

Favorite destination: “The artistic and vibrant” Buenos Aires, Argentina