MFA & MAAE THESIS EXHIBITION 2017
Message from the President Sustainability. It’s a concept one hears often in conversations regarding the environment and our relationship to it. At NHIA we place a great deal of emphasis on sustainability and several related concepts (resiliency, longevity, transformation, etc.) borrowed from contemporary ecology that have particular resonance for us as artists. In our graduate programs we focus on two other definitions of sustainability, what Merriam-Webster defines as “a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods” and what the Oxford English Dictionary defines as a thesis to be “upheld or defended.” It is in this respect we ask our graduates to prepare and sustain their final thesis work. We realize that the most difficult challenge facing any artist is how can they sustain their artistic practice—emotionally, intellectually, financially—long after that initial burst of inspiration has subsided. In short, what happens after the residency concludes and the vicissitudes of daily life intercede once more? It is our commitment to help sustain our grads in any way we can, to help ensure that the work presented here is not just one big splash, but instead sustains far and wide, rippling out long after this culminating residency has drawn to a close. Kent Devereaux President
Message from the Dean It’s my pleasure to introduce the 2017 graduate programs catalogue of thesis work! It’s been an exciting year at NHIA, in part due to the launch of several new partnerships with institutions in Manchester and beyond. In fact, this publication is a product of one such collaboration, between NHIA and the innovative marketing firm, GYK Antler. As a college, we are increasingly committed to working outside of our campus doors, actively seeking collaborative partnerships, and embedding the vision of artist as citizen into our curricula. Each of the MFA and MAAE graduates represented here has achieved his or her graduate degree in the midst of a complex, busy life, and each has a unique story to tell about the courage and discipline it takes to claim a life in the arts. Each could also talk about the richness a life of creative pursuit brings and how training in the arts prepares one to uniquely see, think, and speak in and to a complex and troubled world. In these pages, you’ll find excerpts from Writing for Stage and Screen scripts, book excerpts from Creative Writing graduates, and images of work from our Photography, Visual Arts, and Master of Arts in Art Education students. This catalogue offers a glimpse into each student’s accomplishment, and each image or excerpt represents just a hint of a significant body of work. We encourage you to follow up and learn more about the work of these emerging artists and writers. They are up to fabulous things in the world! Lucinda Bliss Dean of Graduate Studies
Master of Fine Arts Our degrees in Creative Writing, Photography, Visual Arts, and Writing for Stage and Screen run as distinct two-year programs, each with its own faculty body and respective visiting artists, writers, actors, and critics. In residence, students experience the added benefit of cross-disciplinary workshops and collaboration between faculty, staff, and students across programs. Twice a year, our students come to campus for ten-day residencies, during which they engage with visiting artists and writers, attend presentations, performances, and lectures, participate in critique, and take seminars and electives that ground their work in historical and contemporary theory and practice. Professional practice courses built into each program equip students with a clear vision for their post-graduation artistic and professional careers. Between residencies, students work one-on-one with a faculty advisor and/ or a studio mentor, building on the creative foundation established at the residency in an individualized program of study and support. Throughout their time in the program, graduates gain an understanding of their place in contemporary practice, develop an expanding professional network, and achieve a transformed awareness of themselves as citizens and artists.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Emily Belz Forward From Where We Came is a series of large color photographs taken in three houses over a period of two years. Together the images comprise an inquiry into the immaterial aspects of inheritance. Each frame weaves between the formal and the ethereal, motivated by the idea that often, what we pass down to our children is not material, but rather, intangible, made up of so many stories, memories, and experiences that cannot be held or seen.
Emily Belz is a photographer and educator based in Cambridge, MA. Belz has exhibited her photographs in exhibitions at the Center for Fine Art Photography; Danforth Museum; the Griffin Museum of Photography; the Photographic Resource Center; Panopticon Gallery; and the Vermont Center for Photography. She was the recipient of a 2014 artist grant from the Cambridge Arts Council, and a 2015 Critical Mass Finalist. Belz holds a BA in Photography and Art History from Hampshire College (1997), and an MA in Art and Design Education from the Rhode Island School of Design (2009).
Julia Fisher History is not a closed book, but an open invitation to interact with remnants of time and contribute new meanings. My work illuminates the space between memory and imagination where history is transformed. I record Virginia’s aging landscapes along my ancestral line with an antiquated view camera. Surviving records are combined with my images and text to reveal layered experiences distant in time, yet constant in space. In these handmade narratives, family land and all of its complicated histories are rediscovered, reshaped, and relived.
Julia Fisher’s creative work aligns her deepest interests in history, genealogy, and photography to bring together collective memories associated with landscapes and legacies from all across Virginia. Her career has spanned over the past twelve years as an art educator at Atlee High School in Mechanicsville, VA. She serves as the Fine Arts Department Chair and also implements the International Baccalaureate Visual Arts Program, which is an extremely rigorous, college level course that fosters globallyminded artists and scholars.
Lori Pedrick A portrait is a celebration of an individual, a commitment to slow and careful observation of beauty and uniqueness. The desire for acceptance lives within us all. I seek to embody the spirit of real women in their glorious, natural state. I aim to capture the strength and confidence in each of my subjects so that she too may see herself in the most positive and healthiest light. My portrait sessions are a collaboration, a time of openness shared between women. The culmination of this exchange helps to empower the subject, the viewer, and me. I am exploring current standards of beauty in our culture.
Lori Pedrick is an artist living in New England. Her skills include creative direction, graphic design, photography (both commercial and fine art) and brand development. With over twenty years in publishing, she has art-directed magazines with a variety of topics, including home, food/entertaining, travel, wedding, and both long and short-form narrative. She is presently the Art Director at Yankee Magazine. She has recently received a Master’s degree in Photography at NHIA (2017). Her photographic series entitled Growing Up Girl is a collaborative
project, a female-based portrait series accompanied by personal essays written by her subjects. Born from her passion to explore standards of beauty within our culture, this project has expanded into areas of empowerment, confidence, and the support of women of all ages and backgrounds.
Michael Seamans In Between Past and Future: Incidental Traces, I run the Great Brook Trail and look for its marks, its shul. In so looking, I see evidence of myself, proof of my existence. My footprints, and therefore my legacy, join those who have traveled the same path and will remain after I am gone. As I run, just as I move through life, I will carry the traces of everyone who has crossed my path as well as traces of those who may have crossed theirs. In the portraits of the people I run with, I see traces of our time together, and I know I carry traces of them and those experiences. As scholar Stephen Batchelor explains, we are “the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed (us).”
Documentary photographer Michael Seamans grew up in Central New York, where he learned about hard work and creativity doing chores on a friend’s dairy farm. He sold his prize cow, Jenny, to buy his first “real” camera.
Michael’s images have been included or commissioned in a wide variety of print and digital media, and exhibited in shows at the Staley Wise Gallery in Manhattan and The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA.
Michael holds a BFA in Photographic Illustration from Rochester Institute of Technology and for nearly a decade was an award-winning staff photographer at the Boston Herald.
Happy whenever he can see mountains, Michael owns Michael Seamans Photography in New Hampshire, where he lives with his wife Kate, horse Fredd, two cats, and 20-odd chickens.
He was one of eleven photographers tapped to produce the official commemorative book of the 2002 Winter Olympics, The Fire Within.
Cheryl Zibisky My work explores the concepts of memory, loss, and time. My current body of work, Under the Oval, combines portraits of deceased loved ones with botanicals using the lumen printing process. I choose to leave the prints unfixed, meaning they remain sensitive to light. Over time, these images of my departed loved ones will slowly become overexposed, fading to a ghost image. Like a memory shifting and changing over time, I feel the emotions of loss in the remnants of the photo.
Cheryl Zibisky uses alternative processes photography to reveal concepts about memory, loss and time. She is a part-time Lecturer in the Commercial Photography Program at Appalachian State University and works as a commercial photographer in addition to her artistic practice. Her work has been exhibited in approximately fifteen group shows and one solo show. Her commercial work has been published in over twenty different national magazines as well as a handful of local and regional publications.
CREATIVE WRITING
Maxine Marshall Looking for Home Among the Redwoods
I
visit the redwoods for the first time in the rain, looking for a place where I feel at home. It is March in the East Bay and the rain seems to rise from the earth. It hangs in the air, cool but not cold. Seeking an escape from the damp, I had thought it might be drier beneath the bows of great trees. But they hold the water in. With my hood pulled tight around my ears I hear nothing but the pattering of heavy drops and an occasional spoken word. I will always picture California in the rain. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve just moved across the country for the second time in three years, this time from East to West. I’m just beginning to find my bearings in this foggy, season-less place. Within the ever-present circle of fog, my world feels murky and small. I’m on the path in Muir Woods, exploring the groves of redwood trees. People round a bend in the trail and appear in front of me as if from nowhere. The fog hides them as it does me; we are all searching. The first redwoods were found in Jurassic deposits. These are dinosaur trees. They grow here, along the Pacific coast of the Northern United States. They grow too in China, though there they were so rare they were thought to be extinct. The giant redwoods. Some live to be two-thousand years old. John Steinbeck wrote that the feeling of looking at a redwood tree cannot be reproduced. “From them comes silence and awe,” He wrote, “No, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.” As a child in Utah, I was surrounded by a different kind of tree, stubbier and less mighty though magic in its own right. For years we had an apple orchard in our back yard. There were twelve or fifteen trees, carefully spaced to give the yard a look of abundance. These trees had been planted by pioneers after they first settled the Salt Lake Valley. I loved the story. I loved to pluck the small, firm fruit from the tree and imagine a bonnet-wearing young girl
I am fascinated by the intersections of setting and character, in terms of both fictional creations as well as the identities we craft for ourselves. Authors who influence my work include Annie Dillard, Anthony Doerr,
one hundred years ago doing the very same thing. It is in that orchard that I began to understand what a tree could be, began to see trees as root-deep connections to place and time. Near the trees, my feet felt linked to the ground; they showed me that I too was part of history. Apple trees do not grow tall, but they grow round with age, each limb plump and solid. I would read for hours in the arms of those trees, behind the privacy of gentle, oval leaves. I was home in the apple tree. From my perch in the branches, my sightlines were clear and the world stretched out around me abundant, unobscured. Here in California I wake in the mornings to windows misted with fog. The hills slowly emerge as I walk the dog around our new neighborhood. The redwood trees love this fog that reduces their loss of water into the atmosphere. The fog permits the trees to have a home in this otherwise dry place. In the Utah desert where I grew up, we had no fog. There the plants are short and fragile. They are sharp and close to the ground, often huddled in the shade. From my childhood home we did not see the hills lifting the veil of the fog. Fog has become California for me, a concealing cloud. I work remotely, in the company of the dog, not speaking a word until the evenings. My life here is fed by the slow drip of moisture; my days are lonely and solitary. I hover near my neighbors as a bank of fog sits slung near the surface of the earth—a presence felt but less-than-solid. I’m unsure how to introduce myself. I float adrift in this fog, feeling masked and obscured by its presence. I fumble about for familiar shapes, something that I recognize. It is this need that draws me to the redwood trees, the need for something that feels like home.
Leslie Jamison, Anne Carson, and Annie Proulx. The pieces incorporated in my thesis collection range widely— from essay to prose poem to historical fiction—but all ask essential questions about our connections to the places we inhabit.
Maxine Marshall lives in Berkeley, CA where she works for the San Francisco Chronicle and for a boutique literary agency. Along with her partner, Parker, Maxine moved to California from her birthplace of Salt Lake City, UT via a twoyear stint in New Hampshire. Maxine loves cacti, bottles of wine shared with friends, and walking her German Shepherd, Hanna.
Alexandra Woodford Heart Baby
I
n the procedure room, they pushed the catheter up a vein in Vanessa’s wrist. She felt—or maybe she heard it—a kind of scratching in her arm, but no pain. Just numbness—numbness and grogginess from the drugs kicking in. She could make out the murmurings of doctors and nurses, and a sound like someone crunching potato chips. She thought this must be O.K.: it wasn’t open-heart surgery. Streaks of light began to pulsate around her eyes. Angel rays, she thought. No, angels don’t have rays, they have winks, floppy winks. She felt like she was in the room but under water, with the voices around her growing more and more distant, until she was roused by one voice. “Aha. What have we got here?” the surgeon in charge said. It was hard to get a read on him, Dr. Larch. He’d introduced himself minutes before in the pre-op cubbyhole. He had on thick glasses and now his head was capped, nose and mouth masked, and he was wearing a lead smock, like a butcher’s apron. He seemed to be pointing up at something. It must have been the screen where they could watch her heart thrash dance. Vanessa tried to say, “What? What?” but realized she could barely make a sound, especially not over another new sound— were they chuckling? She felt a hairball of protest welling up in her, then noticed how the bright lights overhead were so pretty, as their halos and the sway of green scrubs around her eased her awareness back into its mossy nest, where it lolled sleepily. “Is it really one?” said the young nurse. “Wow, I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard about them. It’s kinda cute.” Someone else, maybe the anesthesiologist, Vanessa thought, started to let out a snicker of disagreement, which he quickly stifled. Maybe because he knew she was awake. Or maybe Dr. Larch didn’t like joking in his cath lab.
Vanessa used her last hiccup of strength to squawk, “WHAT IS IT?!” She was sure she’d made some kind of sound. But they paid no attention to her, only to the screen. Dr. Larch said, “We don’t see these too much anymore, but this is definitely a heart baby. I assisted in extracting one when I was a resident forty, no, forty-one years ago.” Vanessa willed her mouth to form the question, “What is a heart baby?” though at this point, she seemed to have the vocal power of a landed trout. To her relief and horror, Dr. Larch decided to make this a teachable moment for the staff. “Heart babies,” he explained, “develop in adults, usually women, but not always, who are overly emotional—they used to say their hearts were too full of love, or some such nonsense, and their bodies needed to find something to do with all those extra feelings. Not surprisingly, we know now they’re simply the product of hormone imbalances and certain neuroses.” Fuck you, Vanessa thought. Plus she was sure there was no way she could’ve gotten pregnant. “But is it a real baby?” the nurse asked. “In a way,” Dr. Larch said and stopped talking. Vanessa was desperate for more information, but her eyelids were giving up under their own weight. She found herself floating on a raft on a sunny pond, drifting away from the procedure room. It was soothing and peaceful the drifting, and she began to feel something else, something small and slightly heavy radiating warmth. She gazed down to see a baby nestled on her chest. Vanessa’s eyes sprang open, as she heard someone say, “It’s really agitating around that left ventricle.”
Dr. Larch said, “We’ve got to get it out. It shouldn’t be difficult, but I’d like everyone to focus. We’ll have the pictures if you’re interested in examining it more later.”
The catalyst for my stories is often an idea that stretches the bounds of reality, like a person spending a meeting under a table or a dead grandmother occasionally thawed out and dressed up for family photos. I put a character—her desires, anxieties,
and emotional baggage—into this new reality and see where she connects and disconnects. I’ve been inspired and influenced by many writers, most notably George Saunders and Lorrie Moore.
Alexandra Woodford, a New Jersey native and current New Hampshire resident, has been working in the education field for more than twenty years, developing assessments and college curricula. Her creative writing includes both fiction and poetry.
VISUAL ARTS
Kaylan Buteyn In abstract works made with painted acrylic and drawn pastel, I study the tension between Mother and Artist, and the inspiration these roles draw from one another in my life. I piece together the form of Mother from painterly but awkward shapes, to resemble the way my body feels as a mother: strong but thin, lumpy, soft, burdened, and radiant. I draw looser, gestural marks with pastel to represent my untamed bodily responses to mothering—joyful trembling and outbursts of rage. In this way, painting is a vehicle to process the responsibilities, experiences, and deeply profound narrative of motherhood.
Kaylan Buteyn is an artist living in rural Tennessee. An avid gardener and dedicated locavore, she tends a flock of chickens with her Great Pyrenees, Gesso, and enjoys watching birds, reading books, and drinking her husband’s home-brewed kombucha or beer in their historic farm house. Kaylan has two children, Finley Reynolds (five) and River Rae (one) and paints about the painful and joyful perspective of mothering, using abstraction as a framework for processing the complexities of her identity as Mother and Artist. Kaylan is an active member of her community, teaches art and intentional living classes at her local art center and she and her husband lead music weekly at their church where Kaylan serves as Worship Arts Minister.
It Was 1991 And Summer Time In Lincoln, A Small Former Gold Mining Town In The Mountains Of Western Montana With, At The Time, A Population Of Around 900 People Who Rarely Saw Each Other, Separated In Part By The Blackfoot River That Slipped Around Sparsely Positioned Cabins And Where My Grandmother, Who I Was Close To, Lived Alone And Where I Spent Summers Playing In The Woods And Feeling Small In The Shadow Of The Big Mountains That Loomed Over Us. My Grandmother Slept With A Loaded Pistol Under Her Pillow And When Asked About It She Would Say It Was Not For Fear Of The Four-Legged Animals, But The Two-Legged Ones, And I Knew What She Meant Because I Was Beginning To Know Such Things. It Was A Hot Day In August When, Bare Legged And Pink From The Sun, I Had Made The Trek Across The Old Cow Pasture To My Grandmother’s Neighbor’s House, A Similarly Aged And Alone Woman, Similarly Tough And Hard, With Whom My Grandmother Had Fallen Out Of Friendship Over A Claim To A Share Of A Gold Mine, But Who Had Two Grand Daughters My Age Who I Played With When We Were Each Visiting. Being As The Property Was A Former Cattle Ranch, That Afternoon The Three Of Us Girls Explored The Derelict Bunkhouses Where The Hired Hands Used To Sleep, Small Wooden Squares Somehow Still Smelling Of Old Leather And Sweat. In One Dusty Shack, Suddenly Realizing I Was Alone, I Stepped Outside To Locate My Friends And On Hearing A Sound From The Roof Of The Crumbling Structure I Turned To See A Mountain Lion Perched Atop It, Likely The Very Same Whose Footprints We Had Seen In My Grandmother’s Yard Just Days Before. It Was Young But Still Large, Eyes Fixated On Me And Amber-Colored And Somehow Burning The Entire World Away Except For My Heart Beating Thick And Hard In My Ears And Some Ancient Part Of Me Saying ‘Do Not Turn Your Back, Do Not Run’, And So I Backed Away Slowly, Breathlessly, Out Of Its Sight And Away From It. Away From My Friend Chrissy, Who Was Studying The Blue Of A Flower Amidst The Ruins Of Another Old Bunkhouse, And Away From My Friend Robin Who Was Menstruating For The First Time Near A Fir Tree Over The Hill, And Away From My Grandmother On Her Porch Studying The Hummingbirds And Away From My Grandmother’s Former Friend Who Was Secluding Herself In Her Shabby Forest Cabin. Each Of Us, We Were Alone.
Andrea Joyce Heimer I hope that my work serves as an example of the practice of telling painful and embarrassing stories in a deadpan matter-of-fact visual manner, as a means of acceptance through serenity. In these four pieces I confront one of my greatest fears and sources of pain: loneliness. I have chosen the four loneliest moments of my life to expose in extensive visual detail, further described by accompanying descriptive text. This is my way of making myself most vulnerable to you, the viewer, as an action to overcome the very fear these stories describe.
Andrea Joyce Heimer is a narrative painter and writer known for her exploration of loneliness within the suburban experience, drawing inspiration from the neighborhood mythos of her childhood home in 1980s Montana. Much of her work is influenced by the feelings and events surrounding her adoption. Heimer’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, as well as Germany, Italy, Denmark, Iceland, Turkey, and China.
Michele Johnsen I’ve considered myself a landscape painter for more than a decade, but my Master’s work has prompted me to inquire into precisely where my work fits into the landscape tradition and why I choose this particular motif as my primary focus. The description of intimate spaces and sublime vistas is my response to the way the landscape reflects the light and creates patterns on the forms of natural surfaces. Through the use of graduated hues, abstracted mark-making and highly saturated color, I am able to articulate a range of emotional responses that speak to aesthetic rationales and to psychological and spiritual concerns, allowing access into the magic of those special places. The recent body of work that emerged as a result of my graduate studies exhibits an understanding of my relationship to the land and the trees and undergrowth in a way that I hadn’t explored before. My current interest is in the layers and underpinnings I perceive that may possibly be unique to
my own vision. I’ve begun to manipulate the medium in ways that articulate an emotional resonance and bring to mind magical moments. There’s simply no better word than that. While producing my work, I find myself feeling nostalgic for childhood memories that revolved around sweet spots in the environment. In order to have a greater engagement with these ideas, I invited friends and neighbors to take me to the places that resonate most deeply with them. Along with the pure attachment to aesthetic qualities, my new work reflects an engagement with events that cause a disruption through the hand of man and nature. I have addressed issues concerning “saving place” through an involvement with installation that incorporates constructed sculptural forms, creating an environment that invites viewer interaction. Ultimately, this passion to articulate the landscape is a long and never-ending journey that brings attention to both beauty and responsibility.
Michele Johnsen is an artist and educator currently teaching art to students in grades 1–12 in the Colebrook School System. She is a January 2017 MFA graduate from NHIA in Visual Art. Her primary focus is the landscape influenced by the Northern New Hampshire environs where she resides. She has exhibited her landscape paintings ex tensively throughout the Northeast.
James O’Brien Working within the tradition of romantic landscape painting, I integrated this historical practice with contemporary tools and technology to examine how my perceptions can transform. I started by constructing apparatus that I placed across the landscape, each attempting to capture evidence of change. Carefully observing the subtle shifts within these environments, I could better understand how my connection to a place would be continuously in flux.
James Michael O’Brien is an avid outdoorsman and skilled landscape painter who was inspired by the British and American romantic landscape painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. Captivated by the powerful forces of weather, light, and the natural sublime, his work evolved over the past two years while examining the physical and natural transformation of his surroundings. Moving beyond paint he began integrating a wide arrangement of materials including dirt, liquids, and electronics into his work as he explored symbolic narratives connected to alchemy and considered the spiritual dimensions of the landscape.
Brett Parenteau My work focuses on systems of transformation. I am heavily inspired by religious art in mysticism and alchemy. I design kaleidoscopic fields of intricate design, symbols, and text. I immerse figures with-in the complex networks to allude to subliminal transformative desires. How we develop in our inner lives has embodied implications. Our personal evolution—how we develop vertically—can change things horiz ontally and outwardly. I mimic and mix the aesthetics of money and religious art to draw a parallel between the vertical and horizontal. Our physical existence, our consciousness, and our identity can be perceived as a form of currency. Through our ideas, acts, and deeds we become our own form of currency to exchange amongst others.
From a young age, Brett Marcel underwent formal art training via private instruction. As a Catholic school student in his youth he was heavily influenced by iconic religious art, and later by the abstract geometric motifs seen in Buddhist and Alchemical mandalas. Marcel received his BFA and MFA from NHIA.
Debbie Roy My work is about the objects we accumulate and their impact on our lives, wallets, and environment. It questions the value and meaning of the things in our lives. I work with recycled objects in a variety of forms including collage, sculpture, and photography. I believe that our domestic environment is a mirror to our natural environment, and my work seeks to draw parallels between the two.
Debbie Roy received her Bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame College with a dual major in Fine Art and Commercial Design. She graduated with honors as Valedictorian of the Arts and Communication division. After working in all aspects of design including print, web, and video, her daughter inspired her to continue her education, prompting her to pursue an MFA degree. She resides in Derry, NH with her husband and two children.
Christine Ryan Christine’s time is spent working with rust, wood, photographs, paint, tools, and found objects through sculptures, digital photographs, and oil paintings. She has a strong personal affiliation with rusty old cars and metal because of her experience working with her family-run antique car restoration shop in Southern New Hampshire. The hues of rust resonate with her and feel like home. The oxidation of rust tells a story of its decomposition and loss. Recovery or restoration can take on varied meanings, whether those be personal or about an automobile.
Christine is a New England native and started drawing and painting in 2004. Her floral and landscape paintings have been on display for the past ten years in local galleries, businesses, hospitals, and libraries. Her current work is more centered on contemporary paintings of rust and landscapes. In 2017, Christine earned her MFA in Visual Arts from NHIA.
WRITING FOR STAGE AND SCREEN
William Benjamin Tootles
Int. Cramped Closet - 2AM Tiger Lily is curled up in Allie’s lap. Allie’s head bobs-she fights to stay awake.
The Little Red Hat and little ladder disappear behind the pedestal. A moment later the Little Red Hat pops up on top of the pedestal.
The sound of little feet walking down the hall can be heard. At first, they are quite light-barely noticeable-but they build into a sound that can only be described as a micro-thud.
CUT TO:
The footsteps stop in front of the bedroom door. The door creeks as it opens ever so slightly—startling Tiger Lily, which, in turn, startles Allie.
He hesitates for a moment, checking his surroundings one more time, and goes to open the box on the pedestal.
They look through the slats, but all that can be seen is a LITTLE RED POINTED HAT that rests on the creature’s head.
Int. Allie’s Room Standing at the top of the ladder is the gnome from their garden.
SLAP goes a mouse trap down on his hand.
Wide-eyed, Allie watches as the little red pointed hat bops through the doorway and around the room pausing every few steps, checking that the coast is clear. Tiger Lily expresses her excitement, whipping her tail back and forth. The Little Red Hat stops at the base of the pedestal, looking it up and down. A golden light glimmers up from below the Little Red Hat-followed by a LITTLE LADDER.
I view writing more through the lens of it being craftwork over artwork. It is something that can be learned and mastered. Think of each script like a chair. It can be elegant and complex or it can be simple and plain, but it has a purpose. The chair’s purpose is to hold the weight. The script’s purpose is to hold the weight of a story. Both require a solid structure. It takes a good craftsperson to create that structure. This view has solidified with me as I have struggled through projects.
Once I start working on a project I generally focus on the world as a whole. I believe that outside factors have great influence on who a person turns out to be, so when trying to develop a character I need to have a sense of the world he/she is in before I can delve deep into defining who the character is. I think this is especially important when trying to figure out how the character will try and achieve their goals.
William is a performer/writer originally from Oregon. He currently lives in Chicago with his fiancée and two cats. He is currently working on a project with fellow alum Owen Robertson.
Hilary Bluestein-Lyons If I Knew the Way SCENE 1 INT. A DIVE BAR. LOS ANGELES. 1987. It is either very early or very late, depending on how one looks at it. There are remnants of karaoke having occurred on a makeshift stage, a projection screen with lyrics from the song “Truckin’”, a couple of microphones, a sound box with laptop. There are four people in the bar, MICHELLE, the BARTENDER (a male in his 20s), a MAN and WOMAN (in their 20s). Michelle has short hair and is dressed in black. The man and woman are making out. MICHELLE I can’t believe you don’t remember me! Gin and tonic with two limes. Who orders that? BARTENDER Lots of people. MICHELLE Ok, but with a Guinness too. BARTENDER Like I said, lots of people. MICHELLE But not that combination. (To couple) You guys. Smooching in the corner. The couple stops kissing to address Michelle.
Us?
MAN
MICHELLE (pause) Seriously? MAN Does our kissing annoy you? MICHELLE Oh, no, no, not at all. It’s very endearing. In a finding a tick in your hoo-hah kind of way. WOMAN Don’t mind her. She’s just jealous. MICHELLE Jealous? In the words of the great Miss Piggy, Moi? MAN Where were we?
I am a person who takes chances, and I’m not afraid to see how far I can take things. My plays, and the characters I create, are a reflection of that. Many of my plays are historical fiction with strong female characters. I am inspired to fill in the blanks of the stories of our past, and often find humor in the darkest places.
MICHELLE Wait a minute. You guys remember me, right? From a year ago? You eloped. That means this must be your one-year anniversary. WOMAN It is! Yeah, so?
MAN
MICHELLE Well, I was here. Along with my friend Tanya. Tall, blonde, guy with a dress. WOMAN Oh, yeah! I remember him... her. You were here too? Michelle addresses audience. MICHELLE Sheesh. They remember Tanya but not me. Isn’t that typical. “I AM SOMEBODY” I AM SOMEBODY, I THINK I’M SOMEBODY I’M PRETTY SURE I’M SOMEBODY, WHO WILL BE REMEMBERED. I MAY NOT BE THE SOMEONE THAT EVERYONE EXPECTS ME TO BE. BUT I AM SOMEBODY, WHO KNOWS WHO, WHO KNOWS WHO THAT SOMEBODY WILL BE. I OWE THIS TO TANYA I OWE THIS TO TANYA WHO I MET ONE YEAR AGO. I WOULDN’T BE HERE IF IT WEREN’T FOR HER I OWE THIS TO TANYA, YES I KNOW I OWE THIS TO HER. THE STORY IS STRANGE THE STORY IS STRANGE BUT IT’S TRUE AT LEAST THAT’S THE WAY I REMEMBER. FROM THE TIME SHE WALKED INTO THIS BAR YES, SHE WAS SOMEBODY SHE REALLY WAS SOMEBODY AND I WILL BE SOMEBODY BUT WHO KNOWS WHO THAT SOMEBODY WILL BE. SOMEBODY INSPIRED BY TANYA, CAUSE THAT’S THE LEAST I CAN DO TO REMEMBER YOU AND ALL THAT YOU DID AND ALL THAT YOU WERE, AND NOW THERE’S JUST ME. SO TANYA I WISH YOU COULD SEE THAT I’M GOING TO BE FREE I HAVE TO BE FREE I’M PRETTY SURE I’LL BE FREE FROM WHAT THEY THOUGHT I SHOULD BE. AND I’LL BE WORTH REMEMBERING MY LIFE WILL BE WORTH REMEMBERING AND YOU WILL BE REMEMBERED AS SOMEBODY.
Hilary Bluestein-Lyons is a playwright, actor, and director. Over the past twelve years, Hilary has acted and/or written for several of Tucson, Arizona’s Old Pueblo Playwrights Festivals. Her one-act experiential play, Level Up, was part of the 2014 Tucson New Play Festival and Tucson Fringe Festival. Her one-act play, The Green One, was part of the 2015 Tucson New Play Festival. And her play Tighten Your Borscht
Belt was a semifinalist in the 2017 Eugene O’Neill National Playwright Conference. She has been a member of the comedy improv troupe, Not Burnt Out Just Unscrewed, for over twelve years. She currently teaches improv and sketch comedy writing to teens, and draws her inspiration and sense of humor from her six kids and step kids, eleven chickens, one very fat cat, and a Yorkie.
Amanda Burdine INT. Underwater Room - Night
Luna - 14, pale and slightly emaciated-looking girl with a surprisingly bouncy voice - is standing in the center of a strange dome-shaped room with glass panels covering almost all of the walls and ceiling. The room is dark and cold.
you’re going to have to listen to me. Phoebe looks at Luna’s arm, digging into her own, seeing that her knuckles have gone white. PHOEBE What’s going on?
Just on the other side of the d room’s windows, it is mostly dark with a few orbs of light swaying and swirling slowly through the darkness giving the room an otherworldly feel.
LUNA Everything is about to change. PHOEBE What? Why?
The arched door with a detailed etching of a red harvest moon directly behind Luna slams shut. This exposes the carving of a firefly on the back of the door, complete with a glowing light. This startles Luna, causing her to look down into the room instead of up at the ceiling.
LUNA This place isn’t safe for you. PHOEBE Here? What are you talking about this is your LUNA Many things will happen and you will feel lost, but you must listen to your gut.
Phoebe - 14, a defiant kid of noticeably mixed heritage - comes out of thin air, feet firmly planted on the concrete floor of the room, standing about four feet before Luna. Luna rushes to Phoebe, the two girls embrace tightly. I didn’t think you were coming. PHOEBE I know I’m late it’s just The door handle starts to jiggle behind the girls. Luna grabs tightly onto Phoebe’s arm. LUNA We don’t have much time. PHOEBE What are you talking about? LUNA I wish I could explain, but
I am passionate about telling stories that have subjects others might shy away from, namely mental illness, diversity, and LGBT issues. I also enjoy adding supernatural elements to my work, whether they are overt or understated. I believe firmly that these elements can combine into moving stories that humanize people and allow for creativity.
PHOEBE Luna, please, will you just knock this off? Phoebe struggles to get out of Luna’s grip, but is unsuccessful. Luna’s eyes start to go cloudy with a smoky gray substance swirling on them. Luna!
PHOEBE LUNA When the time comes, dive deep. Keep those you love closest to you. Nowhere is safe, Phoebe. Forgive me. PHOEBE Forgive you? For what? Luna tell me what’s going Off screen we can hear the door behind the girls opening.
Amanda Burdine is a 29-year-old currently residing in Indianapolis, IN with her boyfriend, John and dog, Millhouse. She is due to complete her MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen in the summer of 2017 and plans to move to California to pursue a career in writing for television.
Hadasa Mercado The Roots of our Ceiba MIZRAIM walks into the kitchen and she still has her school uniform on. She drops her backpack on the floor as she is notably excited to continue to write. She takes out her notebook and pencil and starts to write. The stage lights begin to change into the same toned green that has shone before. From the window starts to come in a small breeze. Suddenly, MIZRAIM is startled from the slamming of the front door. The stage lights quickly change to normal. In walks an angered ROSA and slams her purse on the kitchen counter. ROSA Just who the fuck do you think you are? MIZRAIM Mom I-ROSA -- No, tell me! I’m just dying to know why the hell did my daughter want to do her story about her bitchy mother whom she’ll never in a lifetime understand. It’s an interesting topic, am I right? What, do you feel the need to explain yourself to others? Is that it Millie? Jesus, I have a hard enough life and I don’t need this right now! Why Millie? Do you need other’s pity in order to validate yourself? Tell me! MIZRAIM (nervously) How did you find out? ROSA Well, you were never going to tell me now were you? You were just going to submit the story and if you “hopefully” won,you were going to let others read how damn difficult you have it in this house, right? Right? MIZRAIM I haven’t finished it-ROSA -- Yeah well good luck trying to. You know, if it weren’t for your sister finding that notebook of yours on the table, you would continue to write about my bitterness, right? MIZRAIM Angelica!
As a writer, I’ve found out that I’m mostly inspired by what surrounds me. I love to observe how us humans relate to one another, and to be able to put it on page is an amazing experience. Human beings are made up of complex relationships and I enjoy writing about them! Whether mother-daughter, fatherson, husband-wife, the more real it gets, the better.
ROSA Don’t get mad at her! What she did wasn’t wrong Millie. At least she had the guts to come to me and tell me what the fuck was going on. But you don’t care, do you? You don’t give a shit about who you throw under the bus in order to win, right? MIZRAIM Mom, it’s like you don’t even know me. How could you think that? ROSA How could I think that? Well, let’s see, I’ve recently read a couple of pages about a poor, lonely girl that lives in an island and thinks that her mother is as hard as a tree’s bark! A mother that is so awful, she takes the peace away from her daughter! A mother that does nothing but work and is a slave even at her own house. No, wait a minute, the best part of the story was when the DAUGHTER feared turning into a fucking deeprooted, damaged tree that would wear the bitterness in her face and be hateful her whole life! Damn it Millie. You don’t know me! You don’t know the shit I’ve been through to get to the place where I am today. (pauses) Life has never been good to me. I swear... I must have been a mistake-- You want to know why I am the way that I am? You want to know what my buried roots are? Why my flowers never bloom? Well here it is: it’s because of life Millie, and that’s something you cannot and will not escape! Bitter? Let me tell you something, if I’m bitter it’s because even when I was as young as your sister, I still felt old! I felt old and useless! Twenty-one and I was already divorced! Yeah, that’s right Millie, I was married before your father came into the picture. And that man made me feel like the worthless piece of shit that I am! He took life away from me. Every day he would tell me that I was crap and that I was lucky enough to find him, because no other person in their sanity would love me! You’re shit, he would say-- you don’t-don’t do anything right. (to herself) And I believed him.
Hadasa Mercado Cortés is a Puerto Rican writer, who was born and raised and still lives on the beautiful island. Her Bachelor’s degree is a double major in Comparative Literature and French Studies. She received her MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen in June 2017 from NHIA. She hopes to develop her scripts in both Spanish and English, so that her voice is also heard in her native country.
Master of Arts in Art Education The Master of Arts in Art Education program is a graduate degree for practicing educators who want to recommit to their own studio work. Students refine their creative practice while deepening their 21st century knowledge and skill in the field of education. This hybrid program includes online and face-to-face coursework, as well as intensive month-long summer residencies during which students work in on-campus studios and engage with faculty and visiting artists.
Jennifer Chamberlain My paintings are abstracted from manmade objects instead of nature. They’re still lives of disorganized life. They are items or parts of items that others may not even notice or care to see. I sketch from what I see and figure out most of the colors and textures as I work with the painting. Subjects include bound up laundry bottles, clothing wrinkles, and scrap metal. What I choose to paint on is an important part of my process as well. Re-purposed panels and wood that have been in garages for years can be my surface or I will paint over an old painting adding old texture and color to the new work. Just like us, objects have a story, where they came from and where they’re going. It is important to me to see things in different ways and find them a new life or story.
Jennifer Chamberlain is an artist and educator living in Southern Maine. She has a Studio Art degree from the University of New Hampshire and a K-12 Art Teacher Certification from Franklin Pierce College. After taking time off with her children, she returned to obtain her MAAE at NHIA. She is a member of the Seacoast Moderns, an artist group at the Kittery Art Association, and shows locally.
Janet Robbins My artwork references the struggles and changing relationships of motherhood. My sculptures explore ethical and moral principles that are often at odds with each other, and how difficult decisions can bring about conflict and pain. Investigating new materials has allowed me to create metaphors: the rigidity of rock represents the unchangeable nature of genetics, the fluidity of clay is nurture, and the fabric is both strength and vulnerability.
Janet Wachtmann Robbins received her BFA in Ceramics and Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art in 1988. She currently teaches ceramics and other threedimensional arts at Windham High School, in New Hampshire. She lives with her husband and three sons in Sandown, NH. In addition to making art, teaching, and being a wife and mother, she enjoys cycling and travel, both within the country and abroad.
Laura Shambaugh How does the mind obtain its innate desire for stability in an unstable world? This question fuels the content of my work. Linear drawings become the armature on which the paintings hang. Intertwining layers of controlled and uncontrolled forms represents a vulnerable, insecure state of mind. These paintings produce a sense of security and calmness amidst the chaos.
Laura Shambaugh is an artist and educator from south central Pennsylvania. She currently teaches at Big Spring Middle School where she is passionate about inspiring creativity and joy. When not in the classroom, Laura enjoys making art as a reflection of this beautifully raw life we have been gifted.
Jill Vickers When we remember, we make con nections to objects from our past. As an artist, I create images of objects to produce the feelings of remembering the past. I produce this artwork using a mono screenprint process, printing images that display nostalgic objects from memories. This process inspires feelings of sentimentality when rem embering comfortable family times from the past. These themes dominate the artwork as I remember my own nostalgic feelings.
Jill Vickers is a teacher and mother of three creative daughters who spend time in her Hooksett, NH studio creating artwork. She teaches students of all ages the fun artistic processes of visual problem-solving, inspiring them to be creative makers and thinkers. Jill enjoys sketching, drawing, painting, screenprinting, and the process of mixing these different media into interesting images with reminders of life events.
Index of Works Photography Emily Belz
Yellow House Archival Inkjet Print 14” x 21” 2016 emilybelzphotography.com
Julia Fisher
View from the Pond (left) Family Cemetery (right) Oak Framed Gelatin Silver Prints: 20” x 16” inches Oak Shelf with LaserJet Vellum Prints Mounted on Sintra PVC: 8” x 36” inches Summer Hill Collection 2016
Lori Pedrick
Self Portrait Archival Pigment Ink Print, New Hampshire, April 2016 To see more of this work, go to; growingupgirl.website. For inquiries email: info@growingupgirl.website. loripedrick.com. info@loripedrick.com 215-880-8484
Michael Seamans
from the trail; shul #1 archival inkjet print, 2016 www.michaelseamans.com
Cheryl Zibisky
Maya Lumen print on expired photo paper in vintage frame with velvet curtain approx. 11”x 14” oval cherylzibisky.com
Michele Johnsen
Installation Wood, Acrylic and Misc. Objects Variable Dimensions
James O’Brien
NHIA MFA Exhibit Site Roger Williams Studio, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester New Hampshire, January 2017
Brett Parenteau Psyche Rose 82” x 40”
Debbie Roy
Waterfall Mixed media Installation with wood & textiles. 2017 creativenotion.com
Christine Ryan
Rust and Recovery Community Art Refocus (RR – CAR Sculpture) Detail photo
Writing for Stage and Screen William Benjamin Tootles Screenplay Excerpt
Hilary Bluestein-Lyons If I Knew the Way Screenplay Excerpt
Amanda Burdine
INT. Underwater Room-Night Screenplay Excerpt
Hadasa Mercado
The Roots of our Ceiba Screenplay Excerpt
Creative Writing
Master of Arts in Art Education
Maxine Marshall
Jennifer Chamberlain
Looking for Home Among the Redwoods Writing Excerpt
Alexandra Woodford Heart Baby
Writing Excerpt
Visual Arts Kaylan Buteyn
Big Mama 3 Acrylic and pastel on unstretched canvas 4’ x 5’ kaylancreates.com
Andrea Heimer
It Was 1991 And... Mixed Media www.andrea-joyce.com
Organized Plastic Mixed Media 20” x 20”
Janet Robbins
He is Born and I Am Undone Clay and Mixed Media 11” x 13” x 14” 2017
Laura Shambaugh
Unknown Place III [Progressed] laurashambaugh.com
Jill Vickers
Blue Eyed Stare Digital photograph and Mono Screen print 10” x 13” 2015
Board of Trustees Officers Joe Reilly Chair New Hampshire Regional President Eastern Bank
John Mercier Treasurer EVP, Senior Loan Officer Lake Sunapee Bank
Tom Stevens Vice Chair Chief Administrative Officer KeyCorp (Retired)
George Foote, Jr. Secretary Former President, Advantec
Trustees Elias (Skip) Ashoo Independent Consultant Maurice Beliveau Lifetime Trustee Nick Bentley Chairman, CEO & President, RiverStone Resources, LLC Barbara Bickford Trustee Emeritus Howard Brodsky Chairman and Co-CEO, CCA Global Partners Suzanne Canali Faculty Trustee Ellie Cochran Director of Philanthropy New Hampshire Charitable Foundation (Retired) Ellen Davis Professional Artist Theresa Dolloff Former Marketing Director Cityside Tom Dougherty Former VP Fidelity Investments
Benjamin F. Gayman Attorney at Law Devine, Millimet & Branch P.A. Terry Heinzmann Professional Artist Elizabeth Hitchcock Partner 10X Venture Partners Karen Mayeu Faculty Trustee Maureen Mills Faculty Trustee David J. Murray Principal Clear Eye Photo Ella Putney Carlson Alumni Trustee Bill Stevens President Harvey Construction Phyllis Stibler Founder Stibler Associates LLC
Acknowledgments Designed by Tess Cheney (BFA Design, anticipated graduation 2018) with creative contributions from GYK Antler and Karen Mayeu as project advisor. Lucinda Bliss, Emily Bradley, Erin Sweeney, and Monica Bilson for collection and contribution of content. Printed by Puritan Capital. Special thanks to: NHIA students, alumni, and faculty for the creative inspiration they provide our arts community.
Manchester Campus | 148 Concord Street, Manchester, NH 03104 Sharon Arts Center Campus | 457 NH Route 123, Sharon, NH 03458 603.836.2588 | gradadmissions@nhia.edu | nhia.edu The New Hampshire Institute of Art is a non-profit and NASAD and NEASC accredited