Looking for a taste of the arts featuring local lake artists? A short drive to Jefferson City will bring you just that.

The Capital Arts Gallery opening, in the winter of 2009, fulfilled a dream that begin more than 40 years ago with the formation of Capital City Council on the Arts, known today as Capital Arts. Housed in a renovated building, the gallery is a work of art in its own right, featuring open beamed ceilings and Missouri limestone walls.

The Ozark Brush & Palette Club celebrates its 37th anniversary this year with a special art show and sale to be held at the First National Bank of Camdenton, during the Dogwood Festival week.
This year, the theme of the festival is “Lovin’ the Lake!” The art show will open April 11-16, on the first and second floors of the bank, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The First National Bank provides a year-round gallery for the club.

Hand-crafted items made by local woodworkers will be on display at the Camden County Museum in Linn Creek during Dogwood Days, including toys, clocks, lamps, household furnishings, jewel boxes and other creations. Many of these items are competing in this year’s Lake Area Woodworkers Guild Prize woodworking contest.

There’s a little bit of kid in all of us, and a new business in Osage Beach has just the place to unleash the artistic creativity.

The Clayground, billed as a paint-it-yourself pottery playground, opened in early February with the idea of creating a place where children and adults can express themselves through painting at an affordable price. There are an estimated 400 different pre-cast forms in-house that range in price from a few dollars to more than $50.

Two lake-area women will have their original art featured as part of an exhibit in a Springfield, Mo., gallery in October.
An artist reception will be held Oct. 1, featuring work from local artists Louise Thies, of Roach, and Lyn Phariss, of Macks Creek, for “WAM: Women artists of the Midwest” exhibit at Hawthorn Galleries in downtown Springfield.

Camdenton artist Bill Merritt is a featured artist in the August 2010 edition of Copper in the Arts, a publication of the Copper Development Association. Each month, Copper in the Arts delivers  profiles and articles highlighting American-produced copper, bronze and brass artisans, along with  articles detailing the artistic history of these metals.

In addition to showcasing up and coming copper artisans, Copper in the Arts also provides detailed overviews of copper-related exhibitions from across the country.

Merritt has been handcrafting garden art from copper and repurposed glass for seven years. He is a Best of Missouri Hands Juried Artist and a member of the Columbia, Mo., Art League.

ArtXpressions is offering challenging art programs for motivated youth who want to develop and refine artistic skills and explore their creative potential.

Joe Mathieu has illustrated more than 100 children’s books and has created thousands of illustrations for Sesame Street books and other products.

Nothing kills the mood before a show like a clunky cell phone announcement or fundraising pitch from the stage.

Five questions with Femke Hiemstra about "Rock Candy," her lovely and surreal book of collected art.

Leon Chiappini hooks a tire-sized cymbal around his finger and spins it like a basketball. He hits it and listens for the ding, the gravel and the growl: elements of crash that the average ear can’t hear. If it’s not perfect, Chiappini tosses it in the reject pile. “After 49 years, I’d better know if it’s good,” he said with a laugh.

I like to think of film critic Roger Ebert as a sieve. When Hollywood releases a film, it's probably going to go through him. And after taking in a flick and sharing his thoughts, his readers are left with just the stuff that they can use - a solid opinion, a little humor, an idea of whether or not they'll be wanting to shell out their money to take a look themselves.

Checklists, writes Boston surgeon and author Atul Gawande in his book “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right,” are considered by many to be beneath us. Yet Gawande proves, without a doubt, that checklists — cognitive safety nets — save lives, millions of dollars and untold heartache, whether the task is flying an airplane, building a skyscraper or operating on an adrenal gland.

Bruce Brown of Springfield first discovered comic books as a child. A specialist recommended them to Brown’s parents to help their son overcome some reading difficulties. Now he not only enjoys reading comic books, he writes them, too. Brown’s latest graphic novel, released earlier this year, is “Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom.”

Jonathan Dee’s new critically acclaimed novel “The Privileges” starts with a wedding, impressive for the deft writing that conveys the controlled chaos, the edgy anxieties, the many tensions springing from family members’ vying needs.

In bestselling author Chris Bohjalian’s “Secrets of Eden,” some mysteries untangle themselves as we approach the last pages of his cleverly told novel.

In 2007, Dr. David Dosa wrote an essay for The New England Journal of Medicine about a cat at the Steere House nursing home in Providence, R.I., who apparently had the ability to sense when a patient was going to die. The media picked up the story and almost overnight, Oscar the cat became an international phenomenon.

With winter coming in and out of the lake area, sometimes a trip for a day isn’t enough of a getaway. Why not try a weekend trip to Chicago?

Daniel Menaker, author and editor, has been thinking a lot about the qualities of good conversation. His new book, “A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation,” is an entertaining, thought-provoking, at times irritating compendium that considers the history, the structure, the process, the value of conversation.

Artists and art enthusiasts alike will find something to buy or see at The Art Center in Washington, Mo. Home to its own art gallery, featuring original pieces — paintings, ceramics, blown glass, wood and more — and special sales and events throughout the year.