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Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Yahoo
Travelers highlight Route 66's economic impact
JOPLIN, Mo. — It could be a long weekend a couple of hours away, or a full week at the beach. Travel takes on a wide range of trips, and impacts the economy even right here in southwest Missouri. 'This is my first time in Joplin. Yes, it will be my first time going through Missouri,' said Maria Kyson, Louisiana traveler. Maria Kyson is traveling Route 66 through Missouri and Oklahoma. 'We're doing the whole week. We just stayed tonight here. In Catoosa, we stayed two nights, and then we're going up towards St Louis. We'll stay a couple of nights,' said Kyson. She and her husband are just a small part of a much larger tourism picture for the Joplin area. In 2024, Jasper and Newton County alone combined for hundreds of millions of dollars in spending from travelers. 'The almost $450 million that comes into the two counties drops our taxes locally that we have to pay because it's outside, money coming in and doing things like buying gas, buying food, attending attractions and events, and is that those impact our local markets, the local municipalities and the counties,' said Patrick Tuttle, Joplin CVB dir. Joplin CVB Director Patrick Tuttle points out the two counties have more attractions than you might think… everything from fan favorites like Precious Moments and Jefferson Highway to other, much broader attractions. 'Route 66 has been around for 100 years now, is on the map and great draw. We've got some national parks in the area, you know, Carver National Monument's great to have. The fish hatchery down in Neosho is a nationally known fish hatchery. It's a lot of small things put together to make the big picture,' said Tuttle. And while travel and tourism is great for the local economy, that also boosts the workforce. Tourism related jobs account for more than eight thousand positions in a four county area. Catering to tourists like Maria Kyson and what she calls her 'vintage' travel on the Mother Road. 'It shows you a lot of different things that you wouldn't see if you go to, you know, New York City, or LA or anything, you're not going to see,' said Kyson. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Art for Everybody' Review: The Hidden Life of the ‘Painter of Light'
One of my high school jobs was stocking shelves and tending the register in a Christian bookstore in upstate New York. 'Bookstore' is a bit of a misnomer: while we did sell books — Bibles, relationship manuals about love languages, 'Left Behind' novels — most of the store's floor space was devoted to things that were not books at all: Christian music CDs and cassette tapes, plus 'gift' items, usually displayed in themed zones: baptisms, amusements and brands like Willow Tree, Precious Moments and Veggie Tales. When I was there in 2001, our biggest sellers came from one section in the store that was set up to resemble a small living room, with a couch and a rug and a wall hanging. This was the Thomas Kinkade section, named for the artist who created the images of colorful homes nestled into sweet landscapes that were then painted and embroidered and printed onto anything a typical Christian bookstore patron might desire. You could buy Thomas Kinkade collectible plates, Thomas Kinkade throw blankets, Thomas Kinkade lamps, Thomas Kinkade crosses, Thomas Kinkade mass-produced cross-stitched Bible covers. With the flick of a button, Thomas Kinkade framed prints would convert images of glowing windows to actual glowing windows via little embedded lights. You could deck your whole life out in Thomas Kinkade. Kinkade, who turned out these original images and called himself the 'Painter of Light,' is the subject of the new documentary 'Art for Everybody,' directed by Miranda Yousef. Kinkade is sort of the Kenny G of American art, ubiquitous and beloved and very easy to deride. The documentary brings in a variety of art critics, journalists and historians to do just that, with reactions ranging from sniffs to an earnest consternation over what Kinkade's anodyne, even retrograde images signify about their buyers. The New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, who profiled Kinkade in 2001, provides some background from a decidedly outsider perspective: she hadn't heard of Kinkade in his '80s and '90s heyday, and found him to be as much of an oddity as a cultural phenomenon. But I suspect Orlean is an outlier, and not just because according to the documentary, at one point one in every 20 American households purportedly purchased 'a Kinkade' — meaning a licensed print — to put on the wall, and possibly many more. For those who grew up in and around Christian culture in the United States, especially the evangelical flavor, he was ubiquitous from the 1980s onward, present in church lobbies and grandma's living room. As the art critic Blake Gopnik notes in the film, Kinkade 'fed on the disdain' of critics and the establishment, positioning himself as diametrically opposed to an art world seen as degenerate and anti-family during the 1980s and '90s culture wars. Kinkade served up a vision of a perfect, beautiful world, with himself as a defender (as he says in archival video) of 'family and God and country and beauty.' All of this was very lucrative for Kinkade, who was a marketing genius — one interviewee suggests Warhol might have been jealous — and an outspokenly religious family man. But that makes his death in 2012, at the age of 54, even more startling. After a precipitous decline owing to mounting alcoholism and including public urination, heckling and erratic behavior (plus a failed stint in rehab), Kinkade died of an alcohol and Valium overdose. It was easy to write this off as an example of hypocrisy on his part, just another outwardly upright man who kept his real life secret until it burst out of him. But 'Art for Everybody' — which is well structured, meticulously researched and revealing, even for a Kinkade-jaded viewer like me — manages to complicate the narrative, thanks in part to sensitive interviews with family and friends, including his wife, Nanette, and their four daughters. Kinkade, they say, was a vibrant and multifaceted man who was forced, partly by his own fame, into showing only one facet of himself in his art: the glowing, bucolic, faith-and-family side. For instance, at various points in the '90s Kinkade's images appeared on the cover of the magazine published by the conservative evangelical organization Focus on the Family, headed by the influential culture warrior James Dobson. Kinkade's branded stores were in shopping malls, and he filmed TV shows that showcased his perfect family, loving life and deep devotion to his Christian faith. The real Kinkade was more complex. The most surprising revelation in 'Art for Everybody' is the existence of what his family calls a 'vault' of his work. Only about 600 of 6,000 have been 'published,' as they put it, as part of the Kinkade brand, but in the vault we glimpse thousands of works that would never hang in a Christian bookstore. They show a far more fascinating artist, one who experiments with forms and styles and frequently depicts the darkness that lurked inside of him. In several images, dark brooding figures rendered in charcoal seem haunted; others feature grotesque caricatures that are bleakly humorous. There's audio tape of him, as a youthful art student, vowing to 'avoid silly and sweet and charming pictures; I want to paint the truth.' Stuffing these impulses down, the film suggests, may explain why he succumbed to addiction. But that art wouldn't have been for everybody, and it couldn't have been marketed to the masses, at least not as work from the 'Painter of Light.' That means that while 'Art for Everybody' unveils plenty about Kinkade's real life versus the fantasy he peddled, it's even more revealing about the nature of art, and what it takes to be financially successful in the mass market. It's not wrong to call Kinkade's art products kitsch: They are sentimental and factory-made, designed to send the viewer into a nostalgic reverie in which critical thinking can simply fade away. The world they represent was distinctly designed for white American Christians who wanted to collect objects that reinforced rather than challenged their faith. (One interviewee notes the conspicuous absence of people of color in Kinkade's cityscapes.) There are questions raised in 'Art for Everybody' that the film lets linger rather than answering directly. What sort of culture requires artists to make themselves brands in order to make a living? The blockbuster success of Kinkade's empire among evangelical Americans is revealing — but of what, exactly? The film prefers to let the audience draw its own conclusions. But it may not be much of a leap to see the glowing windows of Kinkade's cottages and see, as one interviewee does, the blazing flames of a house fire that may burn the whole structure down.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Woman's Super Sad Thrift Store Find Has People Feeling All Sorts of Sentimental
When the people we love pass on, one of the most difficult but important things we do is go through their belongings. It's during this process many tears are shed as we sort through the items of a life once lived, by the people we still love who are no longer with us. While some of their things get donated, if we're lucky, we're able to keep some of their more sentimental items. After my Granny passed, I was able to get one of her jewelry boxes. Every time I open it to grab a pair of earrings, I think of her. It's a simple way to be reminded she's still with me, even if not physically. I find comfort in that. Of course, we don't usually think about the previous owners of thrift store finds when we're sorting through the boxes and shelves looking for a coffee mug, but sometimes, it's impossible not to think about. This is what happened to TikToker Tameka Janes during a recent trip to the GoodWill. She stumbled across an entire collection of porcelain Precious Moments figurines that were still in excellent condition. "One of the saddest things I've seen at the thrift store," Tameka wrote, imagining why such cherished items would now be living on thrift store shelves. TikTok definitely saw what Tameka was thinking too: Those belonged to someone's grandparent. "you know someone's Granny loved every last one of them❤️" commented Teffany Delaine. "Precious Moments!! 💔💔💔 my great grandma loved those." said Panda. "Stop. 🥺 My great grandma got me one of these for every birthday until I turned 16 and she couldn't anymore because of dementia😭❤️" commented alexacatherine. Of course, TikTok is still TikTok, so there were plenty of people who didn't really understand the sentiment behind Tameka's TikTok. "let's normalize not always a sad reason. 😂" said orangecrush333. "A lot of parents started collections for their kids of things they liked, doesn't mean the recipient cherished those things. My dad collects everything on earth so nothing is special at this point." said Elizabeth Christine. Of course, we'll never know the true story behind this specific collection. For all we know, they could have just been random decor gathering dust on someone's shelf they just wanted to be rid of so they took them to the thrift store. However, with a bit of empathy and some imagination, it's not hard to picture those Precious Moments figurines on a shelf in a warm home, dearly loved by someone once.
