ENTERTAINMENT: Chow down at Wingstock; art displays, band concert on tap

FUN

Winging it this weekend

Area restaurants and vendors will compete for People’s Choice and Golden Wing awards at the all-you-can-eat chicken-wing extravaganza Wingstock, noon-2 p.m. Saturday at North Little Rock’s Simmons Bank Arena. A variety of domestic and craft beers will be available (for purchase) to wash down the wings. Presenter is the Poultry Federation. Tickets are $31.95 and $63.45 (including fees), the latter for “Wing-I-Ps” that includes early entry at 11 a.m., access to an “exclusive lounge,” private bar and restrooms “and more than you can handle.” Visit Ticketmaster.com. A complete list of participating restaurants and vendors is available at tinyurl.com/3bp8d7hz.

MUSIC

British band music

The North Little Rock Community Concert Band performs at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Patrick Henry Hays Center, 401 W. Pershing Blvd., North Little Rock. Music Director Rico Belotti conducts the 100-plus musicians in a program he calls “Sounds of the British Isles,” including two pieces from Ralph Vaughan Williams — “Seventeen Come Sunday” from his “English Folk Song Suite” and “Flourish For Wind Band”; “Irish Tune From County Derry” (aka “Danny Boy”) and “Ye Banks And Braes O’ Bonnie Doon” by Percy Aldridge Grainger, the latter featuring the band’s woodwind and brass choirs; and Kenneth J. Alford’s march “On the Quarter Deck.” Associate Music Director Bill Spainhour will conduct Alford’s “Colonel Bogey” March and Patrick Glenn Harper’s ode to the Scottish Highlands, “Highland Castle Echoes.” Admission is free. Call (501) 920-2539 or visit nlrcommunityband.com.

ART

Playing fowl

“Chicken Houses of Arkansas,” a series of large pastels by Eureka Springs artist Cynthia Kresse, goes on display with a 6-9 p.m. reception Saturday at Boswell Mourot Fine Art, 1501 Main St., Little Rock. The series earned Kresse an Artists 360 Practicing Artist Grant in 2024 from the Mid-America Art Alliance and the Walton Foundation. The exhibition, accompanied by other large Kresse pastels, remains on display through Sept. 6. Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday and by appointment. Admission to the reception and gallery is free. Call (501) 454-6969 or visit boswellmourotfineart.com.

Library exhibitions

◼️ The Arkansas League of Artists’ Opportunity Show opens with a 5-7 p.m. reception Friday at the William F. Laman Public Library, 2801 Orange St., North Little Rock. The league is a nonprofit organization “dedicated to supporting and promoting individual artists and their right to free expression,” according to a news release. The exhibition will be up through Sept. 30 during regular library hours: 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Admission to the reception and the exhibition is free. Call (501) 758-1720 or visit NLRlibrary.org.

◼️ “Connected Through Color: Parts of a Whole,” explorations of how color can be reimagined and transformed across several media, including animation, digital illustration and collage, by Adrianna Kimble-Ray, opens with a 5-8 p.m. Argenta Art District Third Friday Art Walk reception Friday at the Argenta Library Gallery, 420 Main St., North Little Rock. The show will be on display through Sept. 5. Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday. Admission to the reception and the library is free. Call (501) 687-1061 or visit NLRlibrary.org.

◼️ Also opening with a 5-8 p.m. Argenta Art District Third Friday Art Walk reception Friday: “Creatures of Play,” an exhibition of mixed-media works by Central Arkansas artist Carol McCreight at the Innovation Hub Gallery, 204 E. Fourth St., North Little Rock. “McCreight’s work invites viewers to reconnect with their innate sense of joy and wonder,” according to a news release. The show stays up through Sept. 26. Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday; 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. the third Saturday of each month. Admission is free. Call (501) 907-6570 or visit hub.nlrlibrary.org.

ETC.

Living Craft Saturday

Little Rock’s Historic Arkansas Museum, 200 E. Third St., hosts Living Craft Saturday and Summer Scout Day, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday on the museum’s historic grounds. Students can print an ad for schoolbooks in the print shop, test their knowledge with historic education trivia “and solve our teacher’s problems,” according to a news release. Girl Scouts and Scouting America members can work toward multiple merit badges. Admission is $2.50, $1.50 for senior citizens 65 and older, $1 for youngsters under 18, free for museum members, veterans, first responders, teachers and active military. Scouts and groups can register at tinyurl.com/HistoricArkansas. Call (501) 324-9351.

Happy birthday, Bill

The Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., is offering free admission in honor of former President Bill Clinton’s 79th birthday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. Visit clintonfoundation.org.

In conjunction with the center’s current “Portraits From a Presidency” exhibit, artist Virmarie DePoyster will lead three 90-minute lessons — 10 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. — teaching visitors “to see themselves leading and serving with an eye-drawing activity,” according to a news release. Using colored pencils, participants will learn how to build layers of color, how to draw an eye from the frontal view and what makes our eyes come to life on paper. It’s free and art supplies will be provided. Spots are limited — reserve one at clintonfoundation.org/events/clinton-presidential-center/free-art-lessons.

Garden talk

Arkansas Master Naturalist Lynn Foster will discuss “What Not To Do With Native Plants (Cultivars and Pesticides)” for the the August meeting of the Mt. Holly Garden Series, 9 a.m. Saturday at the Bell House, in the center of Mt. Holly Cemetery, 1200 Broadway, Little Rock. Take along a lawn chair; there will be door prizes. Admission is by suggested donation of $10 (or more), benefiting the cemetery. For more information, email [email protected].

Blood, sweat & Trail of Tears

Historian David Ware, director of the Arkansas State Archives, is the keynote speaker for the presentation of “Water Route for the Drops That Filled the River: Blood, Sweat and the Trail of Tears,” a project highlighting the resilience of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, Seminole and enslaved people of each tribal nation that was forced along the Water Route of the Trail of Tears across Arkansas, 1 p.m. Saturday in the Riverfront Room of the Old State House Museum, 300 W. Markham St., Little Rock. Admission is free and open to the public.

It’s part of the Arkansas chapter Trail of Tears Association’s annual meeting. The project includes custom artwork, wayside exhibits, rack cards and digital content to interpret the Water Route of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail through Arkansas, which covered more than 400 miles from Arkansas Post National Memorial to Fort Smith National Historic Site. For more information, email [email protected] or [email protected].

TICKETS

Candlelight concerts

Promoter FeverUp is bringing its Candlelight concert series — the revolving-membership Listeso String Quartet performing classical music and pop tunes in the glow of thousands of candles — back to Little Rock, starting with a Halloween program “carefully curated to pay tribute to the spooky, the fantastical, and the supernatural,” according to a news release, 6:30 p.m. Oct. 18 at the Albert Pike Memorial Center, 712 Scott St.

The “Candlelight: A Haunted Evening of Halloween Classics” program includes “Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint-Saëns, “Funeral March of a Marionette” (better known as the theme for TV’s “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”) by Charles Gounod, and the second movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, plus Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” (the theme from “The Exorcist”), “Night on Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky (featured in Disney’s “Fantasia”), “Prelude” from “Psycho” by Bernard Herrmann, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (arranged for string quartet), “Time Warp” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and the main themes from “Beetlejuice,” “The Addams Family,” “Ghostbusters,” “Halloween,” TV’s “Stranger Things” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Tickets are $26-$47.50. Visit feverup.com/m/192221.

That same evening, at 8:45, and at the same venue, using (presumably) the same candles: “Candlelight: Neo-Soul Favorites,” the quartet performing a program that tentatively includes SZA’s “Good Days,” Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor,” Solange’s “Don’t Touch My Hair,” Miguel’s “Adorn,” Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You,” Prince’s “Purple Rain,” Sade’s “Smooth Operator,” Childish Gambino’s “Redbone,” Alicia Keys’ “You Don’t Know My Name” and Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road.” That program will repeat at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 17. Tickets are $26-$47. Visit feverup.com/m/395889.

The rest of the lineup (except as noted, all performances at the Albert Pike Memorial Center):

◼️ Dec. 20: “Candlelight: Christmas Classics,” 6:30 p.m., feverup.com/m/395890, and “Candlelight: Tribute to Adele,” 8:45 p.m., repeated at 8:45 p.m. Jan. 17, feverup.com/m/255272

Visit candlelightexperience.com.