Zinta Aistars

Michigan

Host, Between The Lines at WMUK 102.1 FM (Kalamazoo, MI)

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Articles

Art Beat: Ode to Detroit

1 week ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

Michigan Notable Author and Poet Brittany Rogers was riddled with doubts about her first poetry manuscript. During edits, she dropped all the poems on the pages until she had only four left. Then she deleted those, too. When a professor took a look at the finally finished manuscript, he told Rogers: “Print and submit. NOW.” Rogers is a poet, visual artist, essayist, high school teacher, and lifelong Detroiter. Her new collection is titled, Good Dress (Tin House Press, 2025).
Art Beat: Creating presence

1 month ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

For Linda Rzoska, she finds her muse in trees -- great, craggy trees. For Ellen VanderMyde, her muse can be found in the faces of loved ones. For both artists, it is the life presence they find in their muses that inspires them to paint. The two are exhibiting their art in a partnership, called Presence, at the Eastend Studio & Gallery in Marshall, Michigan. “I happened to be visiting Ellen’s studio with a group of other artists,” says Rzoska.
Art Beat: Sweeping with style

1 month ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

When Morgan Pell, then a real estate agent, showed her then-boyfriend, now husband, the house, they knew they had found something special. The house was hidden behind years of growth, long neglected and unloved. With care, they have brought it back to its glory. Part of that process for Pell was to learn a variety of skills – blacksmithing, stone masonry, wood working, and broom making. It was the brooms that became a work of art. Functional art, as Pell says.
Art Beat: The thin line between destruction and prosperity

1 month ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

There is a narrow border between destruction and prosperity, between positive and negative feedback, says Péter Érdi. Érdi is a computational neuroscientist at Kalamazoo College. He has written a book called, Feedback: How to Destroy or Save the World. When Kalamazoo College art professor Tom Rice got his hands on the book written by his colleague, he realized the patterns he created in his artwork reflected negative and positive feedback in some manner.
Art Beat: Art for the senses

1 month ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

Allie Wist spent more than a decade as a photo director for food media in New York, most recently at Bon Appétit. As an artist, Wist wanted to portray food in an entirely different way. As a Prairie Ronde artist resident in Vicksburg, she plans to design a sensory installation dinner based on insights (and ingredients) related to some of the paper mill's sustainability-related projects, featuring local, foraged ingredients, edible clay sculptures, and “postindustrial” perfumes.
Art Beat: Theater for younger audiences

2 months ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

When Farmers Alley Theatre introduced the first ever Lumen Playwriting Competition at the conclusion of 2024, Gordon Bolar had just the submission for it. He submitted his play for youth, titled “Animals of North America,” and he won first prize. We talk about his prizewinning play as well as plays Bolar brings to the Senior Readers Theatre. After retiring as General Manager in 2016, Bolar has continued to review theater for WMUK.
Art Beat: Celebrating poetry

2 months ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

The Kalamazoo Poetry Festival, first held in 2014, has since grown and thrived, featuring poets from the Kalamazoo community as well as from across the nation. This year, Casey Grooten has been named first executive director of the Festival, helping to make it grow – perhaps embracing all literary arts, not just poetry. A conversation with Casey Grooten “I’m coming up on a year in May of being the first full-year-round executive director,” Grooten says.
Art Beat: A landscape in post cards

2 months ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

David Phillips crossed the ocean to spend five weeks as the Prairie Ronde Artist Resident in Vicksburg, Michigan. A trained architect living in London, Phillips is a landscape artist, leaning to the abstract. He will be exploring the former Lee Paper Company mill and its adjacent 80 acres of property along with the historic town of Vicksburg. Phillips anticipates creating somewhere between 100 and 200 postcard-sized images while in Vicksburg as part of his art project.
Art Beat: Breaking glass ceilings and an Iron Curtain

2 months ago | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

Dagnija Lācis was just a toddler when World War Two swept over the Baltic States. As the Russian Soviet army occupied Latvia and her family was slated to be deported to concentration camps in Siberia, a sure death, they escaped to Germany. There, Lācis lived with her family for five years in a Displaced Persons camp, until they were sponsored by a church in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1950. She was 7 years old at that time and entered public schools knowing just a few words in English.
Art Beat: Weaving tradition into baskets

Mar 6, 2025 | wmuk.org | Zinta Aistars

Kelly Church brings her cultural heritage and environmental activism into her art as a fifth-generation Odawa-Ojibwe basket weaver. She uses the black ash tree for her baskets, and she explains the role the tree plays in a heritage that dates back before this country existed as the United States. She lives in Hopkins, Michigan, but her baskets are on exhibit nationwide. “I come from one of the largest black ash weaving families in the Great Lakes,” Church says.