McMullen: Sedalia's fine arts scene merits 2 thumbs up

Sedalia’s not perfect, not by a long shot.

But there are a few things we excel at as a community and one of those things is our capacity to embrace that slightly vague group of endeavors called the fine arts.

There is, of course, the Sedalia Symphony Orchestra, which will begin its 78th season in the fall. Sedalia is also home to a number of local bands and local venues that bring Sedalia evenings to life with representatives from many different genres. They feature both kinds of music, both country and western, and everything from blues to heavy metal.

Creative communities are being formed around venues like Dukes and Boots and Dickie-Doo Bar-B-Que — I’ve been especially privy to the adventures of the “Dukes & Boots Family” through my friendship with 2011 State Fair Idol champion Ryan Manuel.

Dale Malone’s establishment is a centerpiece in the relationship of a group of local artists and music lovers that provides up-and-comers with the opportunity to grow and learn from each other. It’s the sort of existence where you’re a member of any band that wants you and you’re happy for the experience.

The future of the Midwestern country scene might hail from a big red barn just outside of Sedalia.

The Dukes creative community has more of a country bent but there is also a community that tends to Sedalia’s metal scene: Justin Lawson’s “Making the Band” program provides the same sort of mutually beneficial creative soil for budding Sedalia metal artists. The now-annual culmination of months of hard work that is the single event that is technically called “Making the Band” is getting bigger every year and helping Sedalians of all ages realize their musical potential.

Events such as Missouri State Fair Idol and Smith-Cotton Idol help awaken potential musical talents and award the best of the best with serious opportunities. In any given year there are many who deserve the chances afforded them by winning these competitions but there can only be one winner. I’m surprised we haven’t seen someone start a “Pettis County Idol” or “Sedalia Idol” — we seem to love local our singing competitions that have a questionable relationship with Fox Broadcasting Company’s intellectual property.

But the community is not just concerned with audio — we’ve also got a good relationship with the visual arts.

Sedalia is chock-full of deeply talented artists who work in a wide variety of mediums from pig guts to poetry. There are too many to list here, but you might be shocked by the sheer number of people who tend to our local arts community.

The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art on the campus of State Fair Community College is one of the finest art museums in the state of Missouri and it’s high in the running for best in the Midwest. The Daum’s collection spans decades, countries and mediums and includes photography from Ansel Adams and art by Andy Warhol among others.

The Daum is currently celebrating a decade of making Sedalia a little more classy and the current exhibition celebrates some of the most widely acclaimed and obscure pieces from the permanent collection. These are the pieces that the museum actually owns, rather than the ones they merely display.

The Daum administration, made up of Museum Director Thomas Piché Jr., Museum Coordinator Victoria Weaver and Museum Specialist Marcie Teter, are always working to draw the finest traveling exhibitions and acquire the finest pieces. They’re on a never ending and occasionally thankless quest to make an excellent gallery better.

The Daum lies just behind the Stauffacher Center for the Fine Arts on the SFCC campus, a building you might recognize as the one with the quarter pipe on top.

But the beacon of the arts on the east side of Sedalia is the eternal Liberty Center and the creative minds who make up the Liberty Center Association for the Arts.

Sedalia community theater lives at the Liberty Center and tickets for their latest performance, a stage version of the racy 1997 British comedy, “The Full Monty,” go on sale Tuesday, Feb. 14. Performances are set for the first week of March and you can get your tickets at the Liberty Center box office or by calling 660-826-2899.

The LCAA sponsors Sedalia’s newest event, the Queen of the Prairies Arts Festival, along with First Saturday, which is a regular art class of sorts that starts Sedalia’s future artists early. And that initiative is funded by the Benefit Art Auction. I’m contributing my amateur art for the second year in a row and the date for the 2012 edition will be announced in the coming weeks. I hope to see you there, and I hope that I can raise enough with my pieces to justify the two artist tickets that they give me.

LCAA President Turf Martin, Vice President Madge Gressley, Secretary Janiece Dodick, Treasurer Courtney Wilken, Executive Director Terri Ballard and the rest of the LCAA Board work hard to cultivate the arts community in Sedalia and provide a historic space for arts of all varieties.

There are a lot of people here who work hard to make Sedalia a premiere destination for the finer arts and they deserve our appreciation.