Arts

MOSCOW — There’s snow on the cupola, sunlight in the brandy and a lot of talk about metaphor, mythical symbolism and how the rich will pay incredible amounts of money for a portrait. With a prolific brush and a deft understanding of ego, Nikas Safronov, who flutters like a designer moth amid canvases in his studio, is Russia’s artist to the powerful.

"Every morning I shower with Milton,” says Jenijoy La Belle, referring to tiles she found on eBay and installed on her shower wall. “They show Satan watching with envy as Adam kisses Eve,” a reproduction of William Blake’s drawing for John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

Shortly before he died in 2004, entertainment journalist Arthur Unger began helping to catalog articles, notes and personal memorabilia he had donated to MU’s Western Historical Manuscript Collection.

During February’s meeting of Columbia Weavers and Spinners’ Guild, several members showed off their latest creations: towels made in a guild study group and baskets woven from palms by a member on a trip to Hawaii.

Dancers in the Missouri Contemporary Ballet will lend their bodies to a different kind of art form — body painting — during a new series of Columbia events, ArtRageous Fridays, which begin April 27.

Graham Caldwell is one of the bravest young artists in Washington.

In the late 1970s, Shellie Antel walked into a department store and fell in love with a single-strand coral bead necklace. At least until she learned it was $600.

“Sweet Home Columbia” is one song title that could put $150 in your pocket.

Wearing a choker made of black ribbon, a stud in her nose and a lipstick-red corset over a black short-sleeved shirt, Apryl Smathers strutted into the Spanish Fly Dance Club a little before 7:30 on a Thursday evening. She wore black, strappy shoes with just a bit of heel showing underneath charcoal-gray suit pants with light gray pinstripes, and she’s here to teach people to dance.