Your Ticket: Studio K Art Gallery celebrates new show, new owner | Entertainment

Karen Neppl, who purchased the gallery seven years ago, has decided to retire and has sold Studio K to Heidi and Jeff Sack.

A First Friday opening for “Heading Home,” is set for 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, June 3, and includes works from Neppl and Heidi Sack.

Neppl’s work for this show will focus on her 3D heads, and her paintings from her “Picasso Girls” series. She finds inspiration in puns and play-on-words and found objects when creating three-dimensional portraits. Her paintings are brightly colored Picasso-like portraits of faces. She uses acrylics as well as oils to bring these faces to life.

Sack’s portrait paintings are abstract realism in nature. These portraits express female faces in different circumstances.

“As women, we have good days, and we have bad days; we are human,” she says. “In today’s society we have been made to believe that we always must be at our best. But, as women, we need to celebrate that we are unique, and we are beautiful just the way we are.”

“Heading Home” will remain on display through June 30. The gallery at 112 W. Third St. is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call 308-381-4001.

The summer concert series sponsored by the Grand Island City Parks and Rec Department returns for 2022 with an opening performance by Blue Plate Special at 8 p.m. Thursday, June 2, at Grace Abbott Park.

The band features “American roots music,” covering rhythm and blues, jazz-infused Americana and a “touch of rock.”

The series continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays through July 7, with performances at Grace Abbott Park at West State and Cleburn streets or Buechler Park, 2316 W. Division. There is no admission charge; bring lawn chairs or blankets.

The summer lineup includes:

June 9: Mohanna with Red Shoes, Grace Abbott Park. This band brings a “broad variety of classic songs including history and humor.”

June 16: OK Sisters, Buechler Park. Kate Fly and Karen Lee have been performing acoustic music for more than 35 years together in mid-Nebraska along with close friend Martin Tilley, who plays the blues harmonica. Their music is a mixture of blues, country, pop and Americana.

June 23: The Kavas, Buechler Park. Bring your dancing shoes for this “upbeat and lively polka band.”

June 30: TTZ with Blackberry Winter Horns, Grace Abbott Park. “Seasoned performers on vocals, keyboard, sax, flute and percussion, playing classics from the American songbook and pop, swing, jump and more.”

July 7: Relevant, Buechler Park. “A great five-piece band that plays upbeat blues, country and rock covers with lots of originals.”

For more information, call 308-385-0290.

A summer theater program for children age 7 to 15 starts with a performance of the first of two shows on Saturday, June 4.

Sponsored by the Grand Island Department of Parks and Recreation, two plays are on the summer schedule. The first is “Folk Tales,” which will take the stage at 7 p.m. Saturday at Grace Abbot Park.

Next up is “Laffin’ School,” with auditions from 3 to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 11, and Sunday, June 12, at Buechler Park. Performance date is 7 p.m. Saturday, June 25..

Rehearsals will be from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. There is no pre-registration required and no fee involved.

For more information, call 308-389-0290.

“Tied to the Tracks,” the Grand Island Little Theatre’s summer musical, opens Wednesday, June 8, and tickets are now on sale.

This action-packed old-time musical western melodrama takes the stage at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 12, at College Park.

This melodrama could be the “most tuneful and wildest ever to the hit the stage.” Join stalwart Sheriff Billy Bold and the delicate Dakota Melody as they resist the evil machinations of Silas Scavenger and Wild Prairie Rose in this shoot-em-up, round-em-up extravaganza.

This wacky show boasts 10 original show tunes, including “A Rose with Plenty of Thorns.”

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students 12 and younger, and can be purchased by calling the Grand Island Little Theatre box office at 308-382-2586, at the door or online at githeatre.org. Student tickets must be purchased through the box office. Group discounts are available.

The sounds of Big Band music will fill the Liederkranz when The World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra takes the stage on Tuesday, June 14.

The band will play for “your listening or dancing pleasure” from 7 to 10 p.m.

Known for hits such as “In the Mood,” “String of Pearls,” “I’ve Got a Girl from Kalamazoo” and “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” Glenn Miller was one of the most popular bandleaders of his era. He disappeared while flying from England to Paris during World War II.

Officially sanctioned by the Miller estate, the present Glenn Miller Orchestra was formed in 1956 and has been touring consistently since, playing an average of 300 live dates a year.

Advance tickets are $17.50 for Liederkranz members or $20 for non-members. Tickets at the door will be $22.50 for members and $25 for non-members. Advance tickets are available at Ace Hardware, at the Liederkranz, 401 W. First St., or by mail. Mail payments (plus a self-addressed stamped envelope) to P.O. Box 325, Grand Island, NE 68802. Tickets purchased by mail can also be held at the door if requested.

For more information, call 308-258-2164 or 308-382-9337; if no answer, leave a message or call 308-391-1574.

GILT Jr, a program offered by the Grand Island Little Theatre for children who have completed third through the eighth grade, is set to start Monday, June 20, at College Park.

Throughout the week, students will prepare for a public performance of “Life is Like a Double Cheeseburger,” by Flip and Finn Kobler, while also attending classes and workshops. Those workshops will focus on other aspects of theater including make-up, audition preparations, character creation, singing, choreography and more. Leading the workshops will be certified teachers, paraeducators or former teacher from Grand Island and the area.

Classes will meet from 9:30 am. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Auditions for the show will take place during the Monday session. “Life is Like a Double Cheeseburger” will be presented at 3 and 6 p.m. Saturday, June 25, at College Park. There is a small admission charge.

Students interested in attending GILT Jr mus register in advance; the cost is $50 and includes a t-shirt. For more information, call Grand Island Little Theatre at 308-382-2586.

KEARNEY — The Nebraska Sandhills stand apart as one of the largest, intact grasslands and most unique biophysical ecosystems in North America.

Its 20,000 square miles comprise the largest area of stabilized sand dunes in the Western Hemisphere and the porous soils make the Sandhills the main area of recharge for the High Plains (Ogallala) Aquifer, the key source of groundwater for Nebraska and multiple surrounding states.

Documentary filmmaker and Creighton University professor John O’Keefe explores this vitally important region in “The Last Prairie.” Completed in November, the film offers an intimate portrait of the Sandhills, presented through the voices of three different communities: ecologists who study the region’s biodiversity; people who live and work there; and Native Lakota people whose ancestors were killed to make way for American westward expansion.

A screening of “The Last Prairie” is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday, June 9, at The World Theatre, 2318 Central Ave. in downtown Kearney. The event, which is free and open to the public, includes question-and-answer sessions with O’Keefe before and after the film. It’s sponsored by the University of Nebraska at Kearney Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Tye Family Foundation.

“The Last Prairie” was created as part of “On the Range,” a place-based initiative launched by O’Keefe and fellow Creighton University faculty members Mary Ann Vinton and Jay Leighter, who came together to study the Nebraska Sandhills as an interdisciplinary team.

O’Keefe is a professor of theology and director of the Center for Catholic Thought at Creighton. His current research focuses on environmental theology and rethinking Christian attitudes toward nature. Since 2010, he has produced or directed seven films, several of which have won national awards.

“Downton Abbey: A New Era” is showing this weekend at the Grand Theatre, 316 W. Third St. Showtimes are 7:15 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The Crawley family goes on a grand journey to the South of France to uncover the mystery of the dowager countess’s newly inherited villa.

The movie is rated PG for some suggestive references, language and thematic elements.

Admission is $5 for adults and $4 for children and seniors. For more information call 308-381-2667 or visit grandmovietheatre.com.

Your Ticket briefs are published every Thursday in The Independent. To submit arts and entertainment announcements, submit to Terri Hahn at [email protected] at least two weeks prior to the event. No information will be accepted over the phone. There is no charge for publication, but announcements must follow newspaper style and policy.