100 GRAND: At the biannual BRAVA breakfast at the Hult June 5, hosted by the Arts & Business Alliance of Eugene (ABAE), executive director of the city of Eugene Library, Recreation and Cultural Services Renee Grube announced that a private donor gave ABAE $100,000 for its loan program for “quick-turnaround, low-cost financing for arts organizations and artists, as well as small, specialty creative and arts-related businesses.” Grube, also vice president of ABAE’s board, told the crowd that the loan targets “a sector that often struggles to find capital.” The program will be rolled out over the next year. “We’ve anticipated doing this since ABAE’s inception,” Grube said. See artsbusinessalliance.org/loanprogram for details. Of course, EW has several ideas that the loan could jumpstart: more citywide public art, more art galleries, more art programming in the city center or an art center downtown. And there are plenty of ideas in the art community that have been brewing: Artist Jerry Ross through the POEM (Post Office>Eugene Museum) group has long been advocating for transforming the post office at 520 Willamette into a museum “for historical and contemporary Pacific Northwest art.” Meanwhile, Amy Isler Gibson, owner of the Gallery at the Watershed, had a letter to the editor in the R-G May 25 urging that the EWEB Steam Plant be devoted to the arts. Gibson writes that she hopes “whoever takes on the property does something we haven’t seen in any proposals but is a wish in the air, held by many, and that is to turn part of that beautiful, quaint, already aesthetically wonderful steam plant building into what we’re missing in Eugene: a world-class visual arts center.” 

Extra action marching band

On Friday, June 12, at Old Nick’s Pub (211 Washington), vaudevillian cabaret performance troupe The Red Raven Follies host special Oakland guests the “boylesque” BluBall Revue and the 30-plus member Extra Action Marching Band, the latter of which Spin Magazine has called “a gonzo group of musicians and flag-twirlers” for an audience who likes “alcohol, violence, pelvic-thrusting men, acrobatically inclined women, random nudity, madcap dancing and a marching band blasting brass-and-drum anthems.” The debauchery begins at 9 pm.

FREE: Gather friends, family and visitors because the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural and Cultural History open their doors without cost of admission for Art and Culture Weekend June 13-15 in celebration of graduation and commencement June 15 on the UO campus.

Lane Community College art student Joslyn Jones nabbed first place in the League for Innovation in the Community College’s national student art competition for her sculpture “Broken Bones.” Jones made the piece in LCC instructor Andreas Salzman’s foundry class. Her artist statement for the work reads, “I want people to be drawn to my art and unable to look away because of the emotion that it can bring over someone.”

There’s still time to catch the Maude Kerns Art Center’s popular annual Oregon Made for Interiors exhibit. The show, which features artisan tables, chairs, tapestries, lights and other handcrafted furniture and decor, runs through June 26 at Maude Kerns (1910 E. 15th Ave.).