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Autumn Arts

> An annual
festival
welcomes fall
with a potpourri
of artists.

MEGAN SWOYER
Special to The Jewish News

here's nothing like an all-
encompassing arts festival to
rouse our creative spirits.
Illinois-based painter Al
> Lachman sums up art well. "Art," says
Lachman, "is a vehicle to convey emo-
tions."
The world of art in all of its many
emotional splendors stops in town
Sept. 19-21 for the annual Detroit
/Festival of the Arts, to be held in
Detroit's University Cultural Center
area.
) This year's lineup of festival partici-
pants includes several renowned
Jewish artists. Two of note are
Lachman, an impressionist painter
who lives in Illinois, and Jessica
Goldberg, a dancer from Montreal,
Quebec. She and her husband have
/Produced a unique show with a blend-
ing of eclectic dances.

di

JOINING THE
CULTURE CLUB

Al Lachman loves art fairs.
Especially the kind that will be held at
the Detroit Festival of the Arts. "Van
Gogh didn't sell anything in his own
lifetime because there were no art
fairs," explains the artist, from his
home and studio in Grayslake, north-
west of Chicago.
Lachman would like to see a grow-
ing interest in art in the United States
and believes that art fairs can be a
vehicle to promote awareness. "In
France, 85 percent of the people feel
that art is a crucial part of their lives,"
says Lachman. "Here, it's probably

Megan Swoyer is editorial consultant
for Style magazine.

You might say she's pretty passion-
ate about it. Probably because her
partner is her husband, Eugene Shaka
Poku, who hails from Ghana, West
Africa.
Poku, 37, has been dancing with
Goldberg for some 15 years.
The two will headline one of the
most vibrant acts at the festival.
Featuring just about everything but
bebop, Goldberg's show, called Special
Blend, cooks with break, ballet and
contemporary dance steps along with
martial arts, masks and a variety of
acrobatic moves.
According to Goldberg, the duo's
performance includes a lot of lifting.
Her husband has to lift her as much as
she lifts him — "which I'm not crazy
about," she laughs.
"A lot of people don't know dance
that well. So we do five or six styles
and we use object manipulation," she
explains.
"We want to turn people onto
dance," says Goldberg.

About The
Festival

Jessica Goldberg and her husband, Eugene Shaka Poku, comprise the
dance duo Special Blend.

more like 15 percent."
The 60-year-old painter has had art
in his blood for a long time. "My
mother was a doodler," he says. At the
age of 6 he watched an aunt paint a
picture of a barn, and his appreciation
for drawing and painting stuck. Since
then the New York-born painter has
had 14 years of art schooling and "a
thousand sketch classes."
Lachman, a father of two who lives
with his wife, Arlene, never tries to lit-
erally interpret what he paints. His
landscapes, figures and still lifes tap
feelings and emotions.

"I don't want to show how skillful I
am," he says. "I want to move viewers
and let them partake in the feeling."
"Feel it," says Lachman, referring to
paintings. "It's more fun when you're a
part of it ... and more meaningful."

YOU GOTTA MOVE IT

Street, break and ballet dancing
keep entertainer Jessica Goldberg in
great shape. For two or three hours a
day, five days a week, the 35-year-old
Montreal, Quebec, resident trains for
her peppy act.

Painters, musicians, street
dancers and artists of all types will
dazzle at the Detroit Festival of
the Arts. A palette of fun for all
ages, the three-day arts extrava-
ganza fills a 15-block area of
Detroit's University Cultural
Center Sept. 19-21.
A children's fair, puppets, food
booths, carriage rides, artists mar-
ketplace and more will entertain
at this free event.
This year's headliners include a
50-ton sand sculpture; the Parable
of the Great Fish pageant, which
weaves its way through the event
with puppets, masked characters
and live music; and Denny Dent
and His Two-Fisted Art Attack!, a
painter who uses three brushes in
each hand to rapidly paint por-
traits on 6-foot canvases.
Other scheduled artists and
entertainers include artists Janet
Kelrnan, Robert Briclenbaugh,
Rick Shapero and Janet
Rubenstein; Detroit poet and pro-
fessor M. L. Liebler; and song-
writer Dick Siegel.
For more information, call the
University Cultural Center
Association at (313) 577-5088.

9/12
1997

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