Prairie Fire: Season 2 - Episode 4 - December 2024
This month, we meet entrepreneur Kayla Brown, who combined her love of healthy living, music and candlemaking into a beautiful space downtown Champaign called Fire Doll Studio. Then -- Sarah has a conversation with the wife of reknowned late poet Michael Holloway, who made his life in Champaign Urbana. We discuss his work, his humor and his legacy. And you'll hear a few poems, of course! We end with a performance at Fire Doll Studio from operatic soprano Elena Negruta.
Established in 2011, Fire Doll Studio is an artisan chandlery, crafting beautiful, health-conscious candles of all shapes and sizes while celebrating bold, rich fragrances. Owner and artist Kayla Brown has always loved candles but struggled to find a commercial candle that didn’t aggravate her asthma. Most commercial candles are created with synthetic fragrances and chemical waxes that release airway irritants when burned. So, Brown decided to make them herself, using natural materials including soy wax, beeswax, and essential oils.
The Poetry of Michael Holloway
When Michael Clark Holloway died in 2022 at the age of 79, he was a relative unknown in the poetry world, even though he had a loyal following in his native Champaign-Urbana community. Holloway’s work -- notable for its funny, irreverent, sometimes off-color and beautiful musings on nature, politics, the mundane, the meaning of life and so much more
Elena Negruţă performs at Fire Doll Studio
Elena Negruţă is the 2023 winner of The American Prize in Vocal Performance. She was born in the Republic of Moldova, where she began singing as a folk artist and won many national competitions and earned the only folk music scholarship in the country. After receiving a full scholarship to pursue a Masters in Vocal Performance, she immigrated to the US, and profoundly fell in love with opera and started to study operatic singing.
After finishing her master’s degree, her vocal technique evolved, giving her the flexibility to sing multiple repertoires from baroque to more contemporary operatic music. We head back out to Fire Doll Studio in Champaign where Elena treats us to a very special holiday performance.
