This Week in Ozarks Arts: Public Art Across Missouri and an '80s Pops Concert

Vol. 2 , No. 21, June 19, 2026

As the weather warms, summer arts season is in full swing across southwest Missouri. The much-anticipated return of Pops in the Park brings a free outdoor concert featuring a collaboration between the Canadian rock group Jeans ’n Classics and members of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra for a night of 1980's hits at Phelps Grove Park. KSMU’s Mavis Parks also explores SHOW ME Neighborhood Art Month, a statewide initiative encouraging Missourians to create and share public art in their own neighborhoods throughout June, including right here in Springfield.

Looking for more ways to get involved in the arts scene? This week's Hip Happenings section links you to Juneteenth events, including tonight's SGF Juneteenth Concert featuring Trina at The Riff and Saturday's Mosaic in the Park celebration at Silver Springs Park, as well as Live From Downtown, KSMU's Tiny Desk Showcase, Tent Theatre’s season opening, and the White Hart Ren Faire. Check out Hip Happenings each week to stay up to date on upcoming events.

Our community is bubbling over with opportunities to bring more art into your life, and I'm glad we can share them together each week. Welcome back to The Green Room.

Jimmy Rea

Host, Arts News

KSMU 91.1 - FM

Ozarks Public Broadcasting

The Green Room is sponsored by Springfield Community Gardens

Audience members enjoy last year’s “Pops in the Park” concert at Phelps Grove Park. Photo Credit: Springfield Art Museum.

Presented by Guaranty Bank in collaboration with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Pops in the Park will feature Jeans ’n Classics performing hits of the ’80s during a free concert open to the community...read more.

Route 66 Birthplace Plaza in Springfield, Mo. The Colonial Hotel ghost sculpture is part of MU Extension's Show Me Neighborhood Art. Photo Credit: Chris Drew/KSMU.

The annual event, created by the University of Missouri Extension and Creating Whole Communities, allows any Missouri resident to register art that they have created in their neighborhood...read more.

Arts News on KSMU is your long-standing source for what's happening in the Ozarks arts scene spotlighting local creators, performances, and cultural events every week. Tune in Fridays at 10:00 a.m. on 91.1-FM or stream at KSMU.org, or subscribe to the Arts News podcast wherever you get your podcasts. New podcast episodes are released every Friday.

The Green Room is supported by Maple Hill Fine Arts

👉Got a story, event, or artist I should know about? Share your arts and music tips with The Green Room, and help us shine a spotlight on the creative pulse of the Ozarks! You can email them to me at jrea@missouristate.edu

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🎶Friends don't leave friends out of the music and arts scene - they share all the local arts and music happenings. Just forward this email to a friend!

I have a good friend that hates horror-comedy. He is perhaps one of the greatest aficionados of horror cinema I have ever known, and he’s no slouch in loving a laugh, but when it comes to the blend of the two, he would sincerely prefer it if you kept your chocolate out of his peanut butter. No sweet with the salt. But here’s the problem: horror and comedy are so close they’re almost twins. All but inextricable when it comes to one another. Each one inhabits the same space of tension and release. Fear and anticipation. Both have consequences; it’s just how you react.

What we consider to be modern horror fiction goes back just over 200 years to the early 19th century, and examples of horror-comedy go back almost as far as the genre itself; whether in the spooky slapstick of Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” or the grim gallows humor that pervades the works of Poe. Leaping forward in format, some of the earliest silent film hits were horror comedies - one of Cecil B. DeMille’s first features in 1914 was “The Ghost Breaker,” (certainly not an influential title). No less than Robert Bloch, the author of 1959’s “Psycho,” (you know, the one with the man who really loves his mum) said that horror and comedy were “opposite sides of the same coin.” In the modern moment, arguably two of, if not the two most significant horror auteurs of the last decade, Zach Cregger and Jordan Peele, are themselves accomplished sketch comedians of serious pedigree. Per Peele: "The difference between comedy and horror is the music."

Embracing this concept fully (maybe with a few more laughs than screams), are The Slice Girls. Formed in 2022, The Slice Girls are a truly unique part of the Springfield scene. Think Weird Al meets Comic-Con, meets dinner and a show (if they’re somewhere that serves food). Currently with a roster of six, these ladies dress as some of the great icons of horror and offer up self-composed, scary parodies of songs by artists ranging from Chappell Roan to Blink-182. With a style that is as much Tales from the Crypt as Taylor Swift, they offer a set of frightfully funny musical delights.

Intrigued? Appalled? Hungry? You can come check it out for yourself this Sunday at Ruthie’s Punk Rock Brunch along with the folk punk of Averill Cates!

We’ll see you next week!

Local Radar with Ran Cummings is a weekly music and conversation radio show on KSMU featuring bands and performances from in and around the Ozarks every Friday night at 9:00 p.m. 99.1 FM or stream KSMU.org

Missed an episode of Studio Live or Arts News? Can't listen live? Find them both as a podcast on KSMU or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Studio Live with Jess Balisle and Melissa Rea airs on the second Friday of every month at noon. Tune in at 91.1 FM or stream at KSMU.org for an hour of live music and conversation with talented local artists.

July 10: Jin J. X

August 14: Patti Steel

September 11: TBA

October 9: Drifters Mile

November 13: Pomfret

📺In the mood to stay in? Queue up one of these videos handpicked by our staff at Ozarks Public Broadcasting, perfect for a night in when you're skipping the scene but still craving culture.

Stories from the Stage: Love, Still. Rona Leventhal gently coaxes the words “I love you” from her emotionally guarded dad; Yunus Quddus finds an unlikely best friend in a small alley cat who helps him survive a lonely adolescence; and Julie Seltzer revisits a mysterious connection that proves love can be real, even when it doesn’t last.

James McNeil Whistler and the Case for Beauty. The original art star, Whistler was a caustic wit and man-about-town. Best known for his painting popularly called “Whistler’s Mother,” by his death, Whistler was one of the most recognized artists in Europe and is today placed in the first rank of modern painters.

Fanny: The Right to Rock. Co-founded by Filipina American and queer teenagers, Fanny is the first all women band to release an album with a major record label. Revered by David Bowie, meet the most groundbreaking rock group you've never heard of... yet.

Sarah McLachlan: Tiny Desk Concert. During a Sarah McLachlan performance, the chills come when you least expect them. One of the most expressive singer-songwriters of her generation, McLachlan makes the goosebumps happen with her gloriously gentle, iridescent voice.

These favorites from KSMU and OPT are just the beginning. There's a whole world of storytelling, music, documentaries, and local gems waiting on you to dive in and discover at your local public broadcasting station.

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