High-school students from all over the county joined professional artists to talk about turning passions into a career at the 2011 Express Yourself Arts Conference, held October 26 at Patterson Park Community Center in Murfreesboro. EYAC, a collaboration of the Business Education Partnership, Read To Succeed, Destination Rutherford, Middle Tennessee Electric Customers Care and the Friends of Linebaugh Library, is all about getting teenagers to focus on the arts and proving to these students that their talents don’t have to be accessories to their futures. The conference aims to encourage these students to explore, practice, and hone their skills, from painting to graphic design, writing to music criticism, music to theater.
Workshop leaders included Lee Rennick, Executive Director of the Business Education Partnership and conference chair, teaching improv and a GLEE workshop; Linebaugh Library’s Roy Lee, teaching improv; Aaron Shapiro, MTSU professor and lauded poet and writer; Bracken Mayo, founder, editor and publisher of The Murfreesboro Pulse; MTSU professor Jacqueline Springfield, teaching West African Dance, Sheana Firth, owner and operator of local graphic design company Break Away Graphics; Diana Rice of Nashville’s Documentary Channel; local poet Kory Wells and daughter Kelsey, performing their unique blue-grass-meets-poetry-jam hybrid; Alex Blackwelder, teaching photography; and MTSU apparel design professor Lauren Rudd, leading a workshop on fashion illustration. Lauren Shouse, Artistic Associate at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre, J. Brooks Christol, a partner in Murfreesboro advertising firm Barker & Christol, John Iaccheri, founder of the locally-started HobNob websites, and costume technician John Darmour—whose work has been featured in recent films like Contagion and Dark Knight—led a panel discussion.
The Express Yourself Arts Conference is sponsored by the Business Education Partnership of Rutherford County’s Chamber of Commerce, Read To Succeed, Destination Rutherford, Middle Tennessee Electric Customers Care, and Friends of Linebaugh Library. Other generous donors include Murfreesboro Parks and Recreation, Linebaugh Library, Copy Express, Legacy Ink, Wax Family Printing, Hobnob Murfreesboro, Smyrna High School Culinary Arts, Ganache, Painted Clay, and Starbucks.
