llustration by Maryam Khaleghi Yazdi, MFA ‘19. See page 54 to learn more about Khaleghi Yazdi and her work.
Despite this unprecedented time of uncertainty and loss, I remain in awe of the creativity, compassion, grit, and grace shown by our college’s students, faculty, and staff in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic. I am reminded daily of the profound urgency of our College mission to be a catalyst for positivity and service through the power of the arts, and we are ever grateful to each and every one of you for your continued support of that mission.
I know that, like our students and faculty, many of you are feeling “interrupted,”—incomplete in many aspects of our lives. However, our work as artists continues. Yes, we’ve canceled live events and transitioned to online or virtual performances, exhibitions, classes, lessons, practicums, and so forth. But we, as artists, continue to respond to society’s need for the arts with creative ingenuity;
indeed, in no time in recent history have the arts been more important. From huge releases of online arts content to surges in streaming media, music, and movies, to new telehealth options that include the arts, people are turning to the arts for comfort, distraction, and mental-health support in unprecedented ways. This is just another reminder that the arts have always been important—every crisis in history has been punctuated by spikes in artistic creation and the students, alumni, faculty, and friends of OHIO’s College of Fine Arts are prepared to play a critical role in this artistic moment.
I am grateful to the faculty at the College of Fine Arts for continuing to provide a world-class education for our students and for showing extraordinary support to our communities in the online environment. Here are but a few examples:
• The College of Fine Arts transitioned all classes to online learning, sending out supplies, loaner equipment, media, and other materials to homebound students.
• The College transitioned 148 undergraduate student workers and 219 graduate student workers to online remote work, leading the way in OHIO’s commitment—the first national institution to do so—to keeping student workers fully employed so they can sustain their livelihoods.
• The College joined the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine’s three campuses and The Russ College of Engineering and Technology to provide three Ohio hospitals with hundreds of items of personal protective equipment.
• The School of Theater and the School of Art + Design lent sewing machines to the College’s students so both faculty and students could work together to produce masks for local clinics.
Furthermore, students in all six schools are continuing to not only produce their art but are also finding creative ways to show and share their work online, hosting their thesis exhibitions, performances, and defenses in the virtual environment. I’m proud and humbled to witness this display of resilience and focus in a time of
uncertainty and loss. A few examples of innovative art making include the work of graduate students Belle-Pilar Fleming and Quinn Hunter, who presented their thesis work on Instagram channels; and the Marching 110’s virtual “Stand Up and Cheer” performance, featured by Governor DeWine in his daily pandemic update.
Our professional arts programming also continues in the online space, including Tantrum Theater’s production of the play Objects in the Mirror, written by Distinguished Professor Charles Smith, which will transition into a radio drama production; the Athena Cinema, which has launched virtual screenings of its line-up; and the Kennedy Museum of Art, which now features virtual exhibitions via its website and moved its family-friendly art enrichment program Art Encounters@Home, to the online space.
Experience these powerful art offerings by following our social channels and visiting our website.
Even prior to this tragic turn of events across the globe, we had much to celebrate and share in the College of Fine Arts, which has been experiencing incredible growth and success. It is my honor to share some of the highlights with you, our stalwart alumni and friends:
The College of Fine Arts continues its tradition of wholly supporting the excellence and innovation of its faculty, staff, students, and graduates in our six schools and in our auxiliary units and programs. A recent survey beginning with the class of 1950 reveals that 88 percent of College of Fine Arts alumni say their OHIO education prepared them for success in the 21st century, and nearly 70 percent reported they are employed in the field for which they studied at the College.
A brief listing of the College's recent accolades, earned by its outstanding faculty, staff, and students, follows:
• All six schools collectively claim nine top-35 nationally ranked programs.
• Faculty are exhibiting and performing regularly in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Kuala Lumpur, and Accra.
• Two School of Music faculty were inducted as Yamaha Artists in New York in early March.
• Faculty recently have authored award-winning books in music, theater, and photography.
• Last year alone, two members of the School of Art + Design earned Fulbright Fellowships: faculty member Audrey Shakespear and graduate student Seph Callaway III.
• Art students are earning national recognition: J.P. Snyder and Quinn Hunter were honored with the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement Award.
• Graduate Nanfu Wang, MA ’12, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Feature for her film One Child Nation at the 2019 Sundance Film Fest.
• Two School of Music students competed in the NextGen: Voice of Tomorrow national competition hosted by the American Pops Orchestra, founded and directed by School of Music graduate Luke Fraizer, MM ’09.
• Several School of Dance graduates landed positions in New York City-based dance companies.
• Seven School of Art + Design alumni have earned Guggenheim fellowships.
The work and programming that emerges from the College impacts our campus and our region. A few examples follow:
• We offer more than 300 events annually, and many continue to be shared virtually online.
• Arts for OHIO provides OHIO students with nearly 40,000 free admissions to arts events annually.
• Several of our public-facing units—the Athena Cinema, the Athens International Film + Video Festival, the Athens Community Music School, the Kennedy Museum of Art, the Marching 110, and our professional theater, Tantrum Theater— provide an artistic lens for the University and in our region.
• The College’s new Center for Collaborative Arts leveraged additional opportunities for grant funding and built 101 community and interdisciplinary partnerships. Through the Center, 48 percent of our students participate in meaningful community work that serves 14 counties in the Appalachian region.
• An Americans for the Arts study cited $24.3 million in economic impact of arts/cultural programming from Athens County, much of which is driven by the College of Fine Arts.
As the College prepares students to become creative problem solvers and agents of positive transformation in the world, we’ve focused on growing our program offerings and partnerships across campus and the region. Examples of new programs and partnerships follow:
• We have invested in 12 new academic programs, which has sparked record enrollments for the College of Fine Arts. We are on track to maintain our enrollments this year, despite the nation-wide reduction in higher-education enrollment due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
• Our nationally acclaimed Musical Theater program and our undergraduate BFA degree in the School of Film have been rolled out with a great deal of fanfare, with admissions to these programs remaining highly selective.
• By fall 2020, we will have launched five new one-year master’s degree programs in areas like arts administration, theater education, and community dance, and three new bachelor’s degree programs in art therapy, interior architecture (fully online), and interdisciplinary arts.
• We’ve built robust partnerships with OHIO’s College of Health Sciences and Professions, the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, and others in collaborations that demonstrate the power the arts have in addressing and helping to solve persistent societal problems. Projects include efforts in communication and medicine, fine arts in medicine, interdisciplinary design, and addiction recovery. These new partnerships are creating a national model grounded in the important lens that the arts provide.
The College remains seriously challenged by deferred maintenance costs for our buildings, with nearly 93 percent of undergraduate students studying and creating in spaces that have not seen renovations in at least 40 years. Our significant growth in enrollment due to our new programming is also driving a space shortage. Yet, with a historic $32 million gift from Dr. Violet Patton, BSED ’38, LHD ’11, and a newly created capital and renovations fund, we are building additional partnerships that will financially support the creation of facilities that match the quality of our programming while meeting the needs of tomorrow’s students.
The College of Fine Arts has realized a significant growth in support over the past two years, and for that, and for your support of OHIO’s students through the University’s Bobcats Take Care initiative, I thank you.
Our challenge is this: We lag far behind our peer institutions and other colleges at OHIO in total financial support. Regarding scholarship dollars, the typical OHIO College of Fine Arts
student receives a yearly award between $1,500 and $3,000 to access a College of Fine Arts degree. Your support in scholarship funding truly changes the lives of our students, and your continued support is needed. The College also has a significant need to renew the facilities where our students rehearse, paint, sculpt, print, and develop who they are as artists. We welcome the opportunity to connect with you so that we can share the vision of how reshaped facilities will serve the College’s students, faculty, and staff for generations to come.
In closing, I thank you for being an advocate for the arts and a supporter of the College of Fine Arts in both calm and stormy waters. Together, we are making a transformational OHIO arts education possible for so many people while creating positive impact in and for our communities through the power of the arts.
We all seek to connect, now more than ever. I welcome the opportunity to learn how you’re doing, what art you are creating in the midst of these times, and, so importantly, how you’re sharing your art with our world in this moment, when it’s most needed. Please reach out and share your art, the work you are doing in the communities where you live, and how the power of that art and that work has transformed lives. I welcome an email, a phone call, or a video chat from you until we can meet again—or for the first time!—in person.
Please stay healthy, safe, and creative!
Matthew Shaftel, Dean shaftel@ohio.edu 740.593.1809
Ohio University College of Fine Arts
@ohiofinearts
@OHIOFineArts
Creating something new
FEATURES
24 A Fresh Mark: School of Art + Design grads print with a purpose
36 AIFVF: Athens Film Fest lights the dark
40 50 Years of Dance: Photo essay
Kat Hammond: On revolutionary street art
Jo Andres: Remembering an artist in
Remembering Æthelred Eldridge: Artist,
Lighting the Path: Graduate brings new energy to School of Theater’s lighting design program
54 Maryam Kaleghi Yazdi: Graduate’s designs grace Seigfred Hall
18 Robin Lacy: A life story made for the stage
46 Scott Timm: Honoring the past by giving today
48 Isabel Courtney Hall: Music is for everyone
50 Tony Buba: Life through his lens
Sam Dodd, director of the newly formed Ohio Valley Center for Collaborative Arts (CoArts), started his first day on the job working with maps. His goal? To bring into focus the locations of southeast Ohio’s cultural gems: local arts groups, cultural centers, nonprofit organizations, community hubs, ecological sites, and more. After sifting through these, Dodd created his own map, a bird’s-eye view of the region speckled with markers. Each marker designated a colleague and potential partner for CoArts.
Founded in January 2018, CoArts’ mission is to “marshal the resources of Ohio University to create collaborations through the arts— between the College of Fine Arts and other departments, and between the University and the wider community,” Dodd says. The result is service to the public good via growth in place-based knowledge and action through creative endeavors.
CoArts projects are ambitious yet rooted in the belief that it exists to add to, not replace, what’s already thriving in the region, says Dodd.
“The Ohio River Valley has deep historical, cultural, and ecological resonances,” he says. “It includes aspects of Appalachia, the American Heartland, the Rustbelt, and the Midwest. It’s historically linked to Native American mounds, the Underground Railroad, ceramic communities, mining and manufacturing centers … and so much more.”
One of CoArts’ most significant projects is the 30 Mile Studio, a network of regional artists, educators, students, events, and sites that creates community-based art and design projects. The 30 Mile Studio class invites students in to realize the power of engaged citizenship, understand what it means to be citizen-artists committed to strengthening their own communities, and connects them to professionals in the arts network. The student-centered nature of the program garnered CoArts support from OHIO’s 1804 Fund that supports innovative, transdisciplinary learning.
Athens-based Passion Works Studio, a collaborative community arts center in Athens that supports practicing professional artists with developmental differences, is one of the 30 Mile Studio collaborators. Another is the Athens area’s National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Students learned about both the operational realities of community-based projects and how to employ pedagogical flexibility when working with diverse populations, says Angela Sprunger, CoArts’ assistant director and lecturer in the School of Art + Design.
The assignment for the NAMI project tasked students with reimagining and designing the informational display in the lobby of the
Appalachian Behavioral Health Center in Athens, says Sprunger.
“The class combined social practice, graphic design, interior architecture, and more. The question we tried to answer was what is a 30 Mile informational space? How can we effectively create that space for the public?”
Students responded by using their own graphic design, animation, and socially engaged art backgrounds to create new NAMI posters, informational animations, and NAMI social media and sticker campaigns.
Another CoArts project called The Healthy Village is a multimedia learning initiative based on the belief that effective health care requires cross-disciplinary collaboration. Using live theater, film, narrative medicine, visual thinking strategies, and other immersive arts techniques, the Healthy Village simulates real-time problem solving, communication, and social advocacy skills. In March 2019, The Healthy Village project collaborated with graduate students studying dietetics at OHIO’s College of Health Sciences and Professions for a workshop called “Consent and Communication.” For the workshop, students explored radical listening, eco-mapping, and other patient advocacy practices through a series of interactive sessions with health care patients across the region.
Perhaps the most high-profile project for CoArts is with the Appalachian Recovery Project (ARP), which aims to repurpose the former Hocking Correctional Facility in nearby Nelsonville, Ohio, into a place where justiceinvolved women suffering from addiction can get access to addiction treatment and recovery support services. Invited by the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health (OAIPH), Sprunger and Dodd, members of OHIO’s Opioid Task Force, see CoArts contributing arts programming to provide residents with psychological, aesthetic, and creative outlets.
Clearly, CoArts opens up the full range of what the region was, is, and, with a little collaboration, could yet become.
– James Pepper Kelly
“When I say ‘unicorn’ performers, I really mean it,” Kenny says. “We wanted the most interesting people who wouldn’t normally get into cookie cutter, blend-in ensembles. We’re looking for unexpected voices. That’s what the theater business needs.”
After observing more than 1,100 auditions during the 2018-19 academic year, Kenny welcomed just 29 performers into the program’s fall 2019 inaugural cohort.
During the next four years, the cohort will study within the Schools of Theater, Music, and Dance before emerging as Ohio University’s first-ever Musical Theater graduates. Key stakeholders at the college and in the School of Theater collaborated to rethink what musical
theater education could be and how to set OHIO’s program apart.
“We started from scratch and reinvestigated every single aspect of the possible curriculum,” Kenny says. “There are more than 125 programs in America and 14 in the State of Ohio. The first question we had to answer was, why create another one?”
OHIO’s Musical Theater program responded energetically to this question with key innovations that got the attention of major industry sources like American Theater magazine and broadwayworld.com.
“We’re thinking about the future of musical theater rather than musicals written 50 years ago,” says Michael Lincoln, director of the School of Theater, artistic director of Tantrum Theater, and professor of Lighting Design.
For example, OHIO’s program is the first to require courses in hip-hop dance and the University’s long-running and influential History of Rock and Roll course. It’s also one of the first programs in the country to offer an actor/musicianship certificate, owing to a collaboration between the Schools of Theater and Music. Perhaps most notable about the program’s uncommon curriculum is that Musical Theater students are strongly encouraged to choose a specialization in areas like film, choreography, or a specific musical instrument. Why? While these skills could be integrated into musical theater productions in which they will one day be cast, they can also help graduates support themselves in between musical theater gigs.
“This could be the thing that ends up paying off student loans,” said Kenny. “My job is to help them be successful, period. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
The program also established a Theater Performance Advisory Panel, made up of industry-leading alumni, friends of OHIO, and Tony Award winners. It’s set up to lend a hand in curricula review, visit classes as guest artists, and make recommendations based on what’s happening in the field. Their shared knowledge further lifts the unique design of the program, says College of Fine Arts Dean Matthew Shaftel.
“By asking for their key partnership, Professor Kenny has been able to develop a completely new kind of musical theater curriculum that prepares musical theater students with the skills for the creative work of tomorrow. From business skills, to hip-hop dance, these students will emerge as more than the ‘triple threat’ (dance, singing, acting) graduates of most existing programs.”
Kenny agrees. “We’re training people for the Broadway of 2030.”
– James Pepper Kelly
Before fall 2019, Ohio University’s School of Film offered an undergraduate degree in film to a select number of Honors Tutorial College students, all of whom integrated into the School of Film’s master’s degree program. The opportunity for young cinematic voices to emerge from OHIO’s robust film school was limited. No longer.
The new BFA in Film program launched this academic year and allows students to be admitted upon admission: No pre-major courses are required. This structure lets first year- and sophomore-level students jump in and take production courses that develop their technical skills and filmmaking fluency, says Steven Ross, artistic director and an associate professor of Film. Foundational courses during these first two years give students broad exposure, he explains.
These courses “put film in the larger, historical context, and of what is happening today,” says Ross. Then comes the creative work. “As you move into your junior and senior year, [the curriculum] becomes more specialized and more focused on making your own films.”
All BFA Film students choose a concentration in either directing, screenwriting, producing, cinematography, or post-production. And the program keeps a few lessons prior to the digital filmmaking era: Students still take a semester of 16mm filmmaking.
“I think it’s a really important thing,” Ross says. “We have the equipment and we believe in it for pedagogical reasons. It teaches you about light—to appreciate what light is doing. It requires you to work on a budget, forces you to pre-visualize in ways that you don’t necessarily have to do when you have digital video and much more of a shooting budget.”
The inaugural cohort of BFA Film students are engaging in a mix of practice and theory to emerge as well-rounded artists, Ross explains.
“For an undergraduate degree, it’s important to develop the artist and art appreciation in many ways,” he says. “We have such strong programs in Theater, Dance, Music, and Art + Design. The BFA Film students are a great addition to the College’s population, where interdisciplinary experiences are a point of pride.”
– Nicholas Jackson Initial class of BFA School of Film majors captured in fall 2019. School of Film Director Steven Ross and class instructor Shahriar Shafiani are pictured in back row center. Photo by Daniel J. KingSome students learn and create using hybrid forms: New music is encountered with moving images; visual art guides stage and costume design; dancers sometime combine live music into their movement.
Faculty in the College of Fine Arts recognize the value of helping students develop expressive capacities in two or more related fine arts fields. This knowledge launched a new undergraduate degree, available fall 2020, that addresses the interdisciplinary nature of study in fine and performing arts fields.
A joint effort within the schools of the College of Fine Arts, the bachelor’s degree in Interdisci-
plinary Arts will launch with a highly collaborative mission and curriculum that will enable students to develop a unique plan of study by combining two artistic pursuits—art, dance, film, theater, and music—then choosing one primary and one secondary area of study.
“Today’s artists are increasingly creating in multiple disciplines or reaching across disciplinary lines for inspiration,” says College of Fine Arts Dean Matthew Shaftel. “Our goal is to not only curate a number of thoughtful pathways through this interdisciplinary degree, but also to be open to new pathways that a student might create.” What does this mean in practical terms?
“A composer interested in film music could select music as the primary area and film as the secondary area,” says Garrett Field, assistant professor of ethnomusicology/musicology in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and the School of Music. “A dance teacher who needs to perform piano to accompany class could select dance as a primary area, and music as the secondary area.” Field, who will head the effort, says the program will emphasize studio production and artist creation, as well as elements of formal research and scholarship, all hallmarks of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts.
“Every degree program that the College is currently creating is fundamentally interdisci-
plinary and addresses the needs of today’s young artists,” says Shaftel. “For instance, the new BFA in Musical Theater combines the study of theater, dance, and music. The new master’s degree in Arts Administration links skills garnered in the arts with skills more traditionally associated with business. The BFA in Interdisciplinary Arts offers students the opportunity to create other crossdisciplinary connections and to think creatively, not only about their artistic output, but also about their own studies.”
– Daniel J. King
Professor Emeritus of Theater and Head of Production Design Robin Lacy, EMERT ’85, was known as a passionate scholar about theater production design and a legend among Ohio University School of Theater alumni. The Robin Lacy Memorial Fund honors his legacy by supporting OHIO students. The story that follows is about the man who inspired it. But ultimately, it’s about love. And fate.
Some of us are born with a passion for the arts and know exactly what to do with it.
Robin Lacy, born in 1920, was interested in theater design from childhood. Fast forward to young adulthood. When decisions on where to go to college emerged, Robin enrolled in theater at the University of Denver and quickly began studying production design. Summers were spent at a theater in Central City, Colorado,
where he was a scene painter, soaking in the lessons of the professional world that enhance what you learn in the classroom.
It was during this summer when he began spending time with a special woman at the University, another fine arts major named Virginia, who goes by Ginny. Soon, the two were sweethearts.
As gifted artists, they were proud of their own work and each other’s. Yet, Robin was highly ambitious, and with that ambition came ego. When the theater department held a scene painting contest, he felt he should win. Ginny entered the contest too, and the two sweethearts found themselves competing with one another. Ginny won, and his ego took a hit. They bickered and went their separate ways.
The year was 1942 and WWII was in full swing. One night shortly after graduation, Ginny was at her waitressing job when Robin entered the restaurant. He would be leaving the next day, he said. He had enlisted. He asked Ginny if she would be free later that night, after her shift ended. No, she lied, still feeling bruised. She had a date. Robin turned, exited the restaurant, and entered the war.
Robin joined the United States Army Air Corps, a military arm that evolved into today’s Air Force. He learned how to maintain and repair radio systems. During his training he met a woman named Barbara, and fell in love again. Shortly before he was deployed to India in late 1944, Robin and Barbara married.
After his service in India, Robin transferred to Tinian Island in the Pacific. It was here that Robin witnessed the end of the war when, on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay took off from Tinian Island carrying the atomic bomb that would destroy Hiroshima. Soon after Japan’s surrender on August 15, Robin returned to civilian life.
Robin quickly restarted the career track he had put on hold, completing a master’s degree in theater at Yale in 1949, taking jobs in TV and theater scene production in New York City, then returning to the University of Denver to pursue a doctoral degree in theater. He taught at Yale until joining OHIO in 1967.
Robin taught lighting design and technical direction, helped to establish the graduate theater program that he would eventually head, and worked diligently for many years on A Biographical Dictionary of Scenographers: 500 B.C. to 1900 A.D., released in 1990 through Greenwood Publishing Group.
“He was a very detail-oriented kind of guy,” says Bob St. Lawrence, former director of the School of Theater. “When I came to Ohio University in the ’70s, I thought I knew everything about technical theater and design. The person who taught me that I didn’t was Rob. We would have lunches where we talked about what I had taught that morning. He would challenge me on everything I took for granted,” he reflects. “It was encouragement to me to really support the things I was teaching. He was
my teacher and mentor, as well as the head of my program. To this day, I’m grateful to him. He was a good soul, and he was very supportive of me as a young faculty member and a former fellow theater grunt.”
Associate Professor of Production Design and Technology Daniel Denhart, MFA ’86, credits Robin as the reason he came to OHIO for graduate school.
“One of his former students who was teaching me in Cincinnati, John Gilmore, said, ‘Your assignment today is to drive to Athens and talk to Dr. Robin Lacy about graduate school.’ We met, and hit it off,” Denhart recalls. “I had lots of lighting design experience but wanted to do a whole different area of design. He was okay with that—he took a chance on me—so that’s what I did.”
Robin’s personal life picked up where he had left it. He and Barbara had four children, with Robin teaching and pursuing his passion for railroad history. Between his work at OHIO, his family, and his life, time marched on. Denhart remembers Robin as a serious scholar, yet one with a sense of humor.
“He would always come into the classroom humming operas,” he says about the muchloved professor. “We were expected to know what the operas were, and he would tease us if we didn’t know the answers. We would get together as students and try to see if any of us could guess what they were. That was just one of the games he would work into his teaching.”
Denhart says Robin and Barbara hosted much of the School of Theater’s employees each fall at their home to celebrate the start of the new academic year. “He would always invite everyone to his house: the entire Production and Design faculty, returning students, and incoming students. He was very down to earth and respectful of everybody.”
For 53 years, Ginny kept a drawing Robin made as a gift for her 21 st birthday. It was a keepsake she displayed in every house she lived in throughout her adult life.
Robin retired in 1990, concluding 33 years of academic service. He continued to be a regular at theater productions and took an active role in the Ohio University Emeriti Association, having a hand in establishing the University’s Emeriti Park. A tree he planted at the park stands today in memory of his son, a victim of brain cancer in the late 1990s, and Barbara, who died in 1995 following a long illness.
At 76, the retired widower suddenly learned that Ginny, after two marriages, was herself, well, single, too. For Ginny, that night in 1942 at the restaurant came flooding back when she received a letter from Robin, her long-ago love. Recalling that evening, Ginny laughs.
“I was on my high-horse,” she says.
For 53 years, Ginny kept a drawing Robin made as a gift for her 21 st birthday. It was a keepsake she displayed in every house she lived in throughout her adult life.
“He apologized,” she says, referring to the letter and smiling. “He had been, he said, a ‘callow youth,’ and so he had dropped me for a while.” At Ginny’s invitation, Robin traveled from Athens to San Diego and there, for the first time since 1942, the college sweethearts stood face-to-face. When Robin invited Ginny to visit him back in Athens, she accepted. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes. The reunited lovers would marry twice, in Ohio and at a special cabin in Colorado.
The OHIO Match: Donors like Ginny have contributed $547,758 to the College’s match-eligible accounts, resulting in $273,879 in matching funds from the University. The OHIO Match has totaled $28,847 in scholarship support for College of Fine Arts students.
They spent a decade together until Robin’s death in 2006. Ginny calls their time together in Athens “a wonderful life, a wonderful 10 years together.” They traveled on distant rail lines, enjoyed the OHIO Emeriti community, and returned each summer to the Colorado cabin where they married to enjoy large family reunions.
Robin, says Ginny, “was very special. He had a lot of friends from his former students in the theater and he loved teaching. It was his life; it was all his life.”
St. Lawrence also speaks to Lacy’s legacy as a teacher.
“I don’t think you’d find a student that spoke ill of him,” he says. “I think he trained some really talented people. He was very good with students, very hands-on and engaged with their work. He did a good job enabling student work instead of dominating it.”
Denhart agrees.
“There was nothing to do with spoon-feeding in his teaching,” he says. “If you asked him a question, he would say, ‘That’s a great question; you should go do your research.’ He helped shape questions and direct the research, but he never gave you an answer.”
The Robin Lacy Memorial Fund, established by Ginny, originally supported graduate students studying theater production. In 2018, Ginny worked with University Advancement to broaden the scholarship’s scope to include any undergraduate theater student. The change allowed for the fund to match $.50 on the dollar through the OHIO Match, a matching fund program for eligible scholarship endowments like The Robin Lacy Memorial Fund.
“It’s wonderful when we can honor incredible faculty members like Robin Lacy,” says Matthew Shaftel, dean of the College of Fine Arts. “A scholarship opportunity like this allows the College to sustain the School of Theater in a way that’s both meaningful for students and recognizes our dedicated faculty. We’re grateful to the donors that have helped make this possible.”
A love of theater was a core part of Robin’s identity. Robin’s and Ginny’s reunion, and the love that flourished, is grounded in Robin’s love of theater. Asked what he would think about the scholarship, Ginny happily replies.
“He would like it very much, knowing there’s a scholarship named after him,” she says. “I think he would feel just fine about that.”
– James Pepper KellyVirginia Lacy died at home surrounded by loved ones on February 10, 2020 – Editor
All gifts to the College of Fine Arts make an impact. Contact Kate Albe, director of development for OHIO’s College of Fine Arts, via email at albe@ohio.edu to learn more. Give now at ohio.edu/fine-arts/giving
While growing up in the Midwest, Kat Hammond encountered negative attitudes and stereotypes provoked by the events of 9/11. It propelled her interest in gaining a fuller understanding of the people, cultures, and artists of the non-Western world. As an undergraduate student of art history, she was captivated by lesser known branches of contemporary art and by examples of people responding to their experiences in ways both subtle and complex as well as outside the mainstream history books.
“There was a ripple effect after 9/11, leading to the demonization of certain groups of people,” says Hammond, MA ’10, PHD ’18. “I saw it happening in this region in Ohio, and I was drawn to try to understand more about these people through their art.”
After earning her master’s degree in art history,
she taught courses with titles like Non-Western Art History. Her students were dissatisfied with the historically simplified version of what constitutes the artistic identity of the Middle East, easily recognizing the biases built into the historical framing of art from outside the Western canon.
“When we studied Egyptian art, it was all ancient work, all pyramids and pharaohs, and nothing about this contemporary moment,” Hammond recalls. “My students were asking to see contemporary Egyptian art. My own fascination with this absence led me to begin asking my own questions in a much deeper way.”
In January 2011, a revolution was emerging across Egypt, taking shape on handheld devices and across screens, as documented and covered by citizen activists and journalists on the street.
As Hammond describes it, street art in Egypt became immediately prominent, and she felt drawn to understand. This led to the College of Fine Arts’ Interdisciplinary Arts doctoral program in 2013.
Imagine looking at pieces of street art as visual documents of history, as records of the thoughts and voices of the artists, activists, and communities who contributed to the work. How do murals that reflect a tumultuous moment in time help to write the historical narrative for future generations?
“I think there are assumptions that art history is inherently confining, with strict categories. But I think the field is becoming more and more interdisciplinary. Getting to work with others who come at art history from a range of backgrounds has been really helpful for me,” Hammond says.
In her dissertation, Historiography, the Global Contemporary, and Street Arts of the Egyptian Revolution, Hammond analyzes artworks created in Cairo between 2011 and 2013, including paintings and murals on Mohamed Mahmoud Street by Ammar Abo Bakr and Alaa Awad; films produced by the Mosireen collective; and the documentary film Crop, co-directed by Marouan Omara and Johanna Domke.
These artists and their artworks narrated and documented the unfolding of the revolution’s events, countering those versions published by state-sponsored and international media outlets. The artists claimed the agency and authority, and through the media of paint and film, provided a counternarrative to the official account.
Accessing these works online and reaching out directly to the artists and filmmakers through video and email interviews, as well as using translation services, allowed Hammond to sufficiently overcome inherent language, distance, and access barriers.
“By the time I started researching this topic in earnest, there were no study abroad opportunities that would give me access to the region I was focusing on. Access was prohibited, meaning I would have to find alternative means to reach my subject.”
Hammond’s analysis finds connections between the work of documentary film projects and the street artists working to draw attention to and record changes in Egypt during the revolution’s early moments. Films and videos created by citizen journalists, documentary film collectives, and activists on site were defining history and would come to define this revolution from the street. Guiding Hammond’s work is a belief that exploration and sharing of knowledge can be a tool to counter stereotypical assumptions, a driving force that inspired her scholarship from its inception.
– Daniel J. King
When Elisa and Shawn Smith emerged from Ohio University with the ink still wet on their bachelor’s degrees in fine arts, Elisa’s in photogra phy and Shawn’s in printmaking, they couldn’t possibly have known that one day they would co-found an arts organization and collabo rate with their alma mater. Ten years ago, before they went on to earn their respective graduate degrees, before they were married, and well before they opened the doors of the Columbus Printed Arts Center in the Hungarian Village neighborhood, the future was just a blank sheet of paper, waiting for them to make their mark. After all, they met in a lithography class: Mark making was something of a specialty for them.
Although originally from Columbus, the Smiths tried out different parts of the country before returning to Ohio. The first location was Tucson, Arizona, where Shawn completed his master’s degree in fine arts, with an emphasis on 2D studies. Next up was Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Elisa earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
Life was good in the City of Brotherly Love, with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a plethora of other cultural opportunities to enjoy. Still, they knew Columbus was the place to be.
“In Philly, we were always hustling, and working, and looking for work, and for ways to get back here,” Elisa says. There seemed to be more oppor tunities in Columbus, and they missed being close to their families. Most importantly, the idea of building something new together, an open print lab for print makers, photographers, and the local community, was emerging, and Columbus was a city without anything of the sort.
“It was a couple of months [of] just murmuring the idea,” Elisa says, “and several more [months] of [talking] about it. But before we moved back, we had to physically tear ourselves from all these obligations, to leave our jobs, our friends, our studios…but we took the dive. We wanted to put this where we wished it had been when we were grow ing up,” she continues. “Here, we could help the city retain artists and provide employment experiences for younger people.”
Throughout those months of murmuring and talking, the Smiths had drawn up a mission for their new organization: to foster a supportive printed arts community by providing affordable access to communal workspaces and professional studio facilities, comprehensive educational programming, and critically engaged exhibitions. They also had settled on a name: the Columbus Printed Arts Center (CPAC). They didn’t, however, have a space. They spent 18 months searching for the perfect location before touring The Fort, a large mixed-used warehouse on Columbus’ south side whose managers were wholly enthusiastic about their plans. The Smiths moved in September 2018 and, after building out the space, gathering equipment and supplies, and constructing heavy-duty plywood tables, they opened in December. The response has been strong, Elisa says.
“The community has been so supportive and so accessible. There’s been an amazing snowball effect since we opened,” she says. “It’s exciting to see people come in, get excited, and start working.” The Smiths tell CPAC’s story far and wide. Elisa teaches at the Columbus College of Art & Design and spreads the word directly to her students and fellow faculty members. And the Smiths collaborated with OHIO’s School of Art + Design to host News from Golgonooza; Æthelred Eldridge and Instructions for Imaginative Living at CPAC, a companion exhibit to the University’s fall 2019 celebration of former longtime faculty member Æthelred Eldridge and his work.
OHIO’s welcome has been both a surprise and a blessing, she says.
“I didn’t expect them to be so open,” she says. “It’s easy to feel like you’re indebted in a number of ways right after school. It’s great to be able to go back and reconnect now, to find things in a different form at this later stage of life.”
In turn, School of Art + Design faculty welcome CPAC. Area Chair and Professor of Printmaking
Art Werger, one of Shawn’s former professors, visited CPAC with graduate students for them to see if and where they could plug in. For students who move to Columbus, CPAC will provide affordable access to specialized equipment, letting their work continue in an affordable way.
And those students will be in good hands, says Werger, who says Shawn was “a stand-out student in every way.”
“I taught Shawn for a year of introductory drawing and then in various printmaking courses,” Werger says. “He had amazing observational and dedicative skills, coupled with a level of effort and determination that resulted in his work being a stand-out in class. He took a great interest in other students’ works, their varied perspectives and points of view.”
Area Chair and Professor of Photography + Integrated Media Laura Larson worked closely with Elisa during her undergrad years. She recalls her ability to combine creativity and authenticity.
“Elisa was very bright, very impressive,” Larson says. “Her sensitivity looking at personal history and being able to tie it to other interests was pretty remarkable.”
When Elisa asked for Larson to serve on CPAC’s board, Larson happily accepted.
“I wanted to get involved because I adore her and am very impressed with how she’s thinking about growing the space. Obviously, they want to be a sustainable project, but the fact that they’re also thinking about bringing diverse communities to the space was the hook for me.”
When you become part of a larger community of artists, you realize being an artist can mean a million different things.”
–Elisa Smith, BFA ‘09
CPAC is in the Hungarian Village neighborhood on Columbus’ south side. The Smiths saw that opportunities for any age group to make art as a community were rare. So, they embarked on a survey project to learn how CPAC could integrate art making into the tight-knit community.
“We’re thinking about how we can use print to open up communication between our direct neighbors and ourselves,” she says. “We wanted to gather information about how we can best serve them here in their neighborhood. We’re very interested to see what these types of long-term projects can do.” Plans for exhibitions, family workshops, and print exchanges are in the works.
Taking risks and serving others through art has deeply affected the Smiths.
“When you’re in school, you might look at your professors and think that artists just make work in a studio,” Elisa says. “When you become part of a larger community of artists, you realize being an artist can mean a million different things.”
Larson points to the example Elisa and Shawn set with finding their own way as artists.
“The challenge is to teach students that we don’t have these traditionally set paths on how to find a career and be successful. Not just in making art, but in finding something that’s going to be your career, on finding a sustainable life. What they’ve done really embodies that,” she says. “It’s a real privilege not only to have taught a student like Elisa, but to be able to start a relationship with her working as peers. I’m always excited about opportunities to work with former students, and I’m thrilled to have Elisa and Shawn as part of the Columbus art community.”
– James Pepper Kelly
One night at “legendary uptown Athens bar” Swanky’s in the spring of 1980, as Jo Andres took in the sight of a friend and fellow dance major shifting and sliding over the dance floor in jeans and a T-shirt to Devo’s frenetic cover of (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, she must have felt a measure of satisfaction herself, despite the lyrics: This was her undergraduate thesis dance piece, the culmination of four years of scholarship and practice within the School of Dance, and the other young artists she’d learned so much with were right there with her, watching the solo and bringing it to life. Maybe this was also the night that Andres, BFA, ’80, MFA ’83, realized one field of art simply wasn’t big enough for her. This epiphany would soon lead her to enroll in the School of Film's graduate program. And maybe, even then, she had a premonition of the decades of performances, films, visual art, and experimental work that would fill the decades ahead.
Andres’ passing in January 2019 prompted a celebration of her artistic legacy at the 46th annual Athens International Film + Video Festival (AIFVF). While her projects have screened at the festival in the past, when Director of AIFVF and of the Athens Center for Film and Video David Colagiovanni learned about her passing, he began examining as many of her films as he could.
Photo courtesy of Mimi Goese, BFA ’82
“Everything I saw in her work and read about her, it was amazing,” Colagiovanni says.
“I thought, ‘That’s the type of artist we need to celebrate: a strong woman, a dancer, a filmmaker.’ She did everything.”
Andres belonged to a tight-knit group of mutually supportive artist friends from OHIO who moved to New York City in the early 1980s and continue to support each other today.
“We all agreed that the only place to go with our degrees was New York,” says Mimi Goese, BFA ’82. “It was the most vibrant place for experimental art. In New York, we would all be roommates at different times, we kept track of each other by proximity, and would be included in each other’s performances and films.”
Lucy Sexton (BAA ’82, College of Fine Arts 2003 Outstanding Alumnae Recipient), who danced the solo in Andres’ thesis back in 1980, recalls the busy, early years in New York.
“We all landed and found our way, getting jobs in bars and cafés,” says Sexton. “The East Village had a vibrant scene, a crisscrossing of dance, punk, experimental music, and theater. Annie Iobst (BFA ’82 and also the College’s 2003 Outstanding Alumnae Award) and I worked at
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, and we began having performances there,” Sexton says. Sexton also received the Ohio University Alumni Association’s Medal of Merit in 2012.
Sexton and Iobst collaborated as the performance art duo DANCENOISE. Goese sang and performed with art band Hugo Largo, while Andres created what she described as “film/dance/light performances” that took place in a range of art spaces and nightclubs.
The creative overlaps between the friends meant they supported each other with choreography, performances, makeup, props, film, and video projects, Sexton says.
“We were interested in making statements, in pushing the envelope,” she says. “When we would perform in night clubs, people hadn’t necessarily come to see us. So, we had to get people’s attention, and the work had a certain edge.” Developing that edge brought the artists together even as they developed their own distinct modes of expression.
When Andres began her well-known project, the 1996 film Black Kites, Sexton assisted with the script and Goese played the lead. The film stars Croatian actress Mira Furlan as narrator, actor
Steve Buscemi, who Andres married in 1987, and their son, Lucian. The dreamy, non-linear work draws on the 1992 wartime journals of Bosnian visual artist Alma Hajric, who survived the siege of Sarajevo by taking refuge in a basement shelter. Black Kites aired on PBS and was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. A singular element of Black Kites, and of much of Andres’ work, is the film’s innovative visual effects.
“She created films like a painter or a sculptor,” says Colagiovanni, “using the physicality of material to its fullest potential. There are lots of practical—not digital—effects. When she uses these, they’re seamless, there’s an illusion they create, you don’t notice that they’re built and layered. It requires a really intense understanding of material, being able to look through the camera and see what can be transformed that way.”
Goese confirms Andres’ ways of seeing things differently.
“She had a different way of seeing which was clear in her work. Because of her eye, things had to have a distinctive look, they had to be unique,” Goese says. “Jo created illusion and magic through low-fi, using water and fire. You wouldn’t see her using high-tech equipment for effect. Even when she did have money…it was still a question of how she could make things in an unusual way. She didn’t want to follow the pack.”
Sexton attributes this experimentalism to Andres’ intrinsic creativity.
“One of the extraordinary things about Jo was that she was a creative artist in so many different forms,” says Sexton. “She started in dance, she used light and film, she combined dance and film, and then she made visual art that showed in galleries. She followed a real internal desire to create in different realms. It felt to me like she was constantly moving and exploring, figuring out how she might create in this context versus that context.”
Goese connects that fertile creativity to the School of Dance, where they first met.
“There was something special about the school and Gladys Bailin,” Goese says, recalling the school’s director emerita and OHIO Distinguished Professor of Dance. “The focus wasn’t on technique but on expression, choreography, and the creation of dance. I think when you get this petri dish of a small group of people spending years, day and night, together, pushing each other, having a healthy competition, then you end up being sure of what you can bring to that group.”
The AIFVF tribute included a screening of four of Andres’ films and a panel discussion. The commemoration brought Andres’ work to a wider audience.
“So many people are talking about her now,” says Colagiovanni. “Different curators and arts centers have gotten in touch saying they didn’t know about her but want to program her work. The festival feature provided us an opportunity to really help get her work out there and give it the platform it deserves. People need to see her work. It’s fantastic, beautiful, and wonderful. It’s sincere.”
Asked what advice Andres might offer students at Ohio University today, after decades of insisting on creative integrity and generously supporting her friends, Goese has a quick, clear answer: “Don’t compromise.”
– James Pepper Kelly
In winter 2018, the Ohio University community gathered to mourn the death and celebrate the life of one of its most legendary faculty members, Professor Emeritus of Painting + Drawing Æthelred Eldridge, who passed away on November 12, 2018. A recounting of his life and his impact on the College of Fine Arts, the University, and the region, follows.
Born James Edward Leonard Eldridge in Monroe, Michigan, in 1930, Eldridge was recognized at a young age and as he grew for not only his artistic talents but also for his athletic prowess. His combined talents earned him a full scholarship to the University of Michigan. A successful member of the Wolverine football team, he was drafted by the Detroit Lions but passed on that opportunity and instead joined the Navy to serve on the USS Hornet.
Eldridge joined the School of Art + Design faculty in 1958 at 28 years old and took the name “Æthelred” in place of his given name. Many remember him as complex, idiosyncratic, and sui generis: a singular artist with boundless creativity.
As an educator, Eldridge inspired and surprised his students with his famous, free-ranging classes. He would hold forth in what Area Chair and Professor of Sculpture + Expanded Practice Duane McDiarmid describes as “the old Oxford or Cambridge style, where you watch a genius in the front.” Students and faculty recall the range of orchestrated creative assignments he would give, including making a person out of bread, drawing eyes on the palms of gloves and placing them in unexpected locations in Athens.
Eldridge’s classes were often considered the easiest on campus—he frequently promised everyone enrolled an “A” grade. Yet, his classes were also noted for their emphasis on critical, original thinking, and for the professor’s fierceness. Eldridge would not hesitate to excoriate students who appeared distracted, arrived late, or didn’t seem properly committed to the lessons.
School of Art + Design Director Julie Dummermuth recalls the way Eldridge would always greet her when their paths crossed in Seigfred Hall: with a sweeping bow.
“I think part of that bow was to you as a person, part was to you as an artist,” Dummermuth says. “He knew what it was to be an artist and that the artist isn’t someone people bow to every day. I think he was saying that if no one else would acknowledge us, we should acknowledge each other.”
Area Chair and Professor of Painting + Drawing David LaPalombara remembers Eldridge as an aesthete.
“Everything he had was monastically spare,” LaPalombara says, “but I never met someone who was so constantly creative. He never wasted a moment of any day. I think everyone
around him learned from the example he set as a singular creative person.”
Æthelred Eldridge’s son and student, Sebastian Eldridge, says teaching was central to the artist’s identity.
“It wasn’t just a passion for him, it was a calling. He couldn’t possibly not be teaching people.”
Eldridge stepped away from the lectern in 2014, ending 56 years of teaching in his enigmatic style.
Besides teaching and his avant-garde artwork, Eldridge achieved fame for his storied personal life.
Artist Alexandra Eldridge, his former wife— Eldridge would ultimately be married four times—and Eldridge founded a site they named Golgonooza, the Church of William Blake, named after Blake’s own fictional City of Imagination. Eldridge became licensed to marry
couples and baptize children at the church. He held special events and gave sermons every Sunday for nearly a decade. Golgonooza, located on Eldridge’s land just north of Athens in Millfield, became a destination for a wide array of counter-cultural types, including celebrities such as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Grateful Dead. Eldridge worked much of the land himself, digging out ponds and constructing buildings by hand. He lived most of his life there without running water or electricity.
Eldridge eschewed self-promotion, often saying, “I am not a promoter, ringmaster, or chronicler of myself.” So, he's remembered through stories from those who worked and studied with him.
As a young faculty member, McDiarmid went to Golgonooza and attempted to document Eldridge in action.
“He threw me off the property,” he laughs.
“He appreciated my attention, but he needed to throw me off so I could go home and do my own work, because that was the work I should be doing.”
Eldridge’s multidisciplinary approach to making art and his lack of interest in self-promotion epitomizes his overall philosophy. Early in his career he turned away from promising relationships with art galleries in New York and Detroit and instead focused on teaching performances, architectural constructions, and community building at Golgonooza. His work is in books, zines, drawings, prints, paintings, murals, and even films, placing him squarely ahead of his time, says McDiarmid.
“This was a guy who got to happenings before there were happenings. He got to zines before there were zines. He got to the idea of a unified art and life balance before people were talking about that,” says McDiarmid. “He got to
regionalism and Appalachian craft early. There are so many places he got to early, with so much integrity.”
Over the past 10 years, Saxon and Sebastian Eldridge have been digitally preserving their father’s booklets, paintings, carvings, and other works. In fall 2019, the University and the College of Fine Arts honored Eldridge’s tenure through events, exhibitions, and participatory happenings. Proceeds from sales of T-shirts featuring his artwork support student research, travel, and other professional development opportunities in the College.
Æthelred Eldridge—artist, maker, father, performer—lives on, and future collaborations between OHIO and the Eldridge family will keep his legacy alive.
– James Pepper Kelly
On a Wednesday evening in early May 2019, David Colagiovanni, director of the Athens Center for Film and Video and the Athens International Film and Video Festival (AIFVF), sits in a corner patio booth at Jackie O’s, a favorite Uptown Athens brew pub. The atmosphere is bright, warm, full of movement, and filled with a din of overlapping voices. The vibe contrasts with the screening room where he and graduate students in film studies spent so much of the past year preparing for the 46th annual AIFVF.
In mid-April their efforts were kicked into overdrive as the festival began, bringing filmmakers from around the world to Athens and hundreds of films and videos to the screens of the Athena Cinema over the course of a saturated seven days. Now, just two and a half weeks after the final credits rolled, the last after-party came to an end, and the final cinephile drifted home to finally close their eyes, the group sits in the sun, slightly worn and just beginning to catch up on sleep but still glowing from the experience.
The vast amount of labor performed by these film studies students is, of course, just a portion of what the AIFVF requires. Ohio University School of Film MFA students also help, and David will celebrate with them separately. And then there are the volunteers, who help ensure the AIFVF’s guests are well fed, rested, and have places and events where they can connect and network with one another and with School of Film students. Colagiovanni, the students, and the volunteers are motivated by nothing if not love of the medium.
Every day of the festival, attendees can choose among hundreds of films and videos, including shorts organized into thematic blocks like “Our Labor,” “Step by Step,” and “Eye in the Sky.”
Yet, the 258 films and videos shown in 2019 reflect a fraction of the total number of entries. Beginning in August and stretching into early December, more than 2,300 were received, including a couple hundred on the first day alone. In 2019, students screened a quarter of these, Colagiovanni estimates, while regular screeners within a specific category might have viewed 30 to 40 percent. Colagiovanni himself watches some 90 percent of all entries, he says.
“When I’m at the height of screening, in December, January, and February,” he says, “when the schedule needs to be finished and programming set up, I’ll do 12 hours a day, including weekends.”
The aftermath of these screenings plays out on an industrial-sized table Colagiovanni keeps in his office. The table starts out void of anything save for pens and a stack of blank index cards. Then, each entry receives its own card with title, category, and a few screening notes. The cards for promising entries are spread out on the table as the screenings progress. As more and more cards populate the tabletop, they are organized into potential screening blocks, which are then named. At the same time, entries are constantly being watched, watched again, then re-watched.
“It’s all very active,” Colagiovanni says. “Once cards are on the table, no one touches or moves
anything casually.” Colagiovanni has organized the festival since the summer of 2015, when he took over from Ruth Bradley, director for the previous 28 years. Since the AIFVF was founded in 1974, it’s achieved an enviable reputation as one that supports cinema from underground and marginalized populations.
“There’s lots of balancing,” Colagiovanni says. “We don’t want to just play one type of film. We’re an international festival and we have lots of ideas [that] come up. We want to let the films themselves dictate what’s shown.” If the festival does have a conceptual grounding, it’s a commitment to experimental, non-industry driven productions, Colagiovanni says. “We’re not anti-corporate,” he adds with a smile. “They just don’t really like us.”
Colagiovanni describes the festival as “one of the best parts of living in Athens.” In practice, the festival seems to reflect much of what distinguishes the city: fierce independence, DIY-organization, commitment to a wide array of cultural perspectives, and an ongoing thread of experimentation. Local restaurants and venues recognize this through sponsoring daily lunches and coffee for the filmmakers and School of Film students, hosting afterparties, and, in the case of Jackie O’s and Little Fish Brewing Company, located on the edge of town, brewing especially made AIFVF beers and serving them up during the fest week.
Back on the patio, Colagiovanni and the students enter into a lively debate about individual selections at this year’s festival for what’s likely the hundredth time. They share stories of meeting directors who traveled thousands of miles—from places as far away as Albania—to attend AIFVF and relive the anxiety of having to fix flat tires and stop cars from being towed. And then, inevitably, the conversation turns to next year. Decisions need to be made, and there are pros and cons of each. As the light fades and the patio quiets down, the group is back at work, bringing the 47th AIFVF into view.
– James Pepper Kelly◗◗◗
The 2020 AIFVF is October 12-18. More info at athensfilmfest.org
With more than 50 years of practice in training students’ bodies to express art through movement, what do OHIO’s School of Dance students take with them when they graduate? A developed voice and a knowledge of how to creatively solve problems.
“The creative process here helps students to find their own unique artistic voice,” says School of Dance Director Travis D. Gatling. “Students find out what it is they do that’s going to distinguish them from other dance artists in the field, and they develop skills of creative problem solving that can apply to many other fields as well. I think that’s just so important.”
Last year marked the school’s 50th year of dance, performance, and choreography instruction. Alumni returned to Athens and participated in workshops, performances, and networking. Many were students when Founding Director Shirley Wimmer was at the helm. Some were recent graduates who have gone on to become highachieving dancers and choreographers. But some have gone on to perhaps unexpected professions: doctors and administrators. All are united by one thread: a creative mindset.
“People are trying to find a more creative way to do things in [fields like] business, the sciences, [and] medicine,” says Gatling. “Our program helps them build that skill set.” Wimmer was an influential force in the field when the school of founded in 1969. Her focus was in modern dance performance and choreography, says Gatling, and in supporting the creative spirit within students. These foundational elements remain today.
“Wimmer was really interested in the creative process and in the voices of students. That’s still what we do today: Emphasize individual creative voices. For a very long time, we were one of the only schools in the state, and probably
“ This year we benefited from the tremendous generosity of our alumni. So many of them came to campus to share with us the work they have been doing.”
–John Bohuslawsky, School of Dance technical director and lighting designer, about 2019’s “An Evening of John B” alumni event.
in the nation, that offered a bachelor’s degree in fine arts with an emphasis on modern dance choreography,” said Gatling. “That’s what distinguished [us]— and still distinguishes us—from most other programs. The success of our students as choreographers is a clear marker of the strength of their training.”
Today, School of Dance majors can add on an arts administration certificate, which offers a focus on six different degree areas, including dance. Students can also continue their education by enrolling in the College of Fine Arts’ Master of Arts Administration program, which also offers a dance focus. This skill set allows graduates to direct community dance initiatives, like Athens’ Factory Street Studio, a non-competitive dance studio founded by School of Dance graduates where faculty often teach and students often intern.
The 50th year celebration inspired Gatling to consider hosting a School of Dance alumni event annually.
“It could be as big as a performance event, or as simple as a visit to engage with students however they choose,” he says. “The energy…has been really high. It’s important to continue that.”
–.James Pepper Kelly
An examination of alumna and School of Theater faculty member Molly Tiede-Schroer’s professional accolades and success points to a mix of reasons: an excellent graduate school training program, an intense personal work ethic, and support along the way from Ohio University alumni. Our story about her OHIO experience and career path follows.
As an undergraduate at McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois, Tiede-Schroer became intrigued with the lighting equipment at the school’s new performance arts theater. Wasting no time, she absorbed what she could from others, from reading, and from experimenting, coming out on the other side as a self-taught lighting designer. Soon, she found herself in charge of much of the school’s lighting needs. The next step? Entering the OHIO School of Theater graduate lighting design program.
“When I arrived at Ohio University…I didn’t know how to draft a light plot or create any lighting paperwork. I had never taken a lighting class,” she explains. Tiede-Schroer worried that because her cohort members had more experience in the field, she would fall behind. But Michael Lincoln, director of the School of Theater, artistic director of Tantrum Theater, and professor of Lighting Design, was there to support her.
“[I] went to Michael Lincoln’s office all the time. Michael constantly challenged
me with new concepts and worked with me to be sure I was ready to enter the professional world,” she says. “I soaked up everything he taught me, and my career wouldn’t be what it is today without him.”
Summer stock internships during grad school took Tiede-Schroer to Monomoy Theater in Chatham, Massachusetts, to the Berkshire Theater Festival in Western Massachusetts, to Broadway and off-Broadway shows, to a new musical in San Diego, California, and to a one-woman show in New Jersey.
“My third year of grad school set up my entire career,” she says of the hands-on internship experiences. “If you could meet me walking into Kantner [Hall] the first day, and out three years later, [it] was a difference of day and night. I had a passion for lighting, so I took it and ran with it.”
With her MFA in hand, Tiede-Schroer joined Boston’s Lyric Opera for a partial season and then took positions in New York City. She credits New York’s OHIO alumni network for opening to her a number of professional doors.
“The School has a lot of successful alumni out there,” she says. “There’s even an OHIO alumni Facebook group in New York City that I was
a part of for get-togethers or job opportunities. If someone isn’t able do a job, they offer it to the Ohio University family to see if anyone can take it before they offer it to someone else.”
Tiede-Schroer also began freelance lighting design work early in her career in cities like St. Louis, Denver, and Salt Lake City. These experiences and a teaching position at Utah Valley University culminated in a circling back to Athens. In fall 2018, Tiede-Schroer began another chapter at OHIO, this time as assistant professor of Lighting Design. Now, it’s her turn to train new cohorts of lighting design student-artists.
Tiede-Schroer divides her time between classes, meetings, and shop hours, during which students work on hanging lights, focusing, and work notes. She also makes a point of making herself an open resource.
“I go to student production meetings and I go to design presentations. When students are in the theater to do focus, I’m there,” she says. “I’m there from the beginning of the process to the end. I mentor students as much or as little as they want. And if they’re doing great, I’m just there in their corner if they need something.”
Lincoln says having Tiede-Schroer on faculty couldn’t have come at a better time.
“Molly’s energy, enthusiasm, numerous professional relationships, and close mentorship of our students have reinvigorated the lighting design program in a single year,” he says. “We are fortunate to have her join us in this time of growth.”
Tiede-Schroer leverages her faculty position and her freelance work to serve her students in their careers.
“All of the faculty still work professionally,” she explains. “We…bring our students as assistants on our shows, and that allows them to gain professional credits before they leave school. With the connections we have gained in our own professional careers, we are able to help our students obtain internships with Broadway professionals and at many reputable theater companies across the country.”
Teide-Schroer personifies what it means to be a Bobcat in the College of Fine Arts: a graduate artist who comes back to teach, and support tomorrow’s alumni-artists.
– James Pepper Kelly
Ohio University I met people
Scott Timm grew up in tiny Troy, Ohio, 20 miles north of Dayton. When he landed in Athens to begin his tenure as a student at Ohio University, becoming a dance major was furthest from his mind. “I was a small-town farm kid from Ohio,” says Timm, “and I had no concept of dance as a career.” Yet because of OHIO’s gift for helping students realize talents they didn’t know they had, combined with receiving a well-timed scholarship plus Timm’s own grit, he graduated in 1983 with a degree from OHIO’s School of Dance and went on to enjoy a varied career in the arts and beyond. More than three decades later, Timm honors his experience at the College of Fine Arts by giving monthly to a School of Dance student scholarship fund and by establishing a bequest that will support both the School of Dance and the College. His story about this career and why he supports the College of Fine Arts follows.
Scott Timm began his Ohio University undergraduate career in journalism. Eventually, he took a dance class despite having no background in the art form. As his interest grew, he began spending more time in School of Dance studios, even more time than the dance majors. The universe was telling him something…
As his devotion to dance grew, he knew he had a difficult decision to make: switch his major to dance and start his four-year college career track from the beginning or stay the course in journalism? Because of Timm’s tenacity for securing scholarship support in dance, the answer was yes. He made the switch. Today, he honors that gift by providing scholarship support for students in the School of Dance.
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from all over the world, with different political leanings and predilections. It shaped me into the person I am today.”
“[The] scholarship…meant so much to me that I wanted to pay it forward. [Maybe] there’s some other boy from small-town Ohio who wants to dance. I want to make sure he’s able to, and that there’s a program and a scholarship for him.”
After almost six years in college, you’d think Timm would have resolutely attended his commencement ceremony. Yet, an opportunity to audition for a dance company emerged.
“I decided that a commencement means a beginning,” Timm recalls. “Although I wanted the ceremony of accepting a diploma, as a dancer there’s no better thing than auditioning for a professional job. By the time I left school I had a professional job in a dance group in Columbus. The School of Dance gave me an incredible base on which to succeed. It’s an excellent place for young people to grow and flourish.”
Timm has excelled in many career arcs, including dancer, dance teacher, leading arts organization
leader, in municipal business development, and in corporate banking.
Timm says today’s OHIO dance education provides students with the same range of skills he enjoys, including a strong curriculum in choreography and composition. Multifaceted training like this helps School of Dance graduates pursue careers wholly within the dance world and beyond.
“What dancers learn are skills that make them successful no matter what they do. Dancers internalize millions of specific details and are able to reproduce a task over and over with total precision,” he says. “They are experts at working together collaboratively…they are accustomed to managing their energy to adapt to long hours and difficult environments. They are creative, adaptable, and curious, and spend a great part of their working life in improving their skills. I think any employer would love to have an employee with those characteristics…”
– James Pepper Kelly“ Don’t be afraid to chart your own course in the world. Think about what you really want to do and pursue that. You’ll find your training will give you an incredible base to succeed.”
For nearly seven decades, Isabel Courtney Hall’s passion was educating students about music. A gifted teacher, Hall inspired countless students to perform, study, and pursue a career in music education. When Hall passed away in 2015, her family established a scholarship for first-year undergraduates in the School of Music, The Isabel Courtney Hall Music Education Scholarship, to support these budding music educators and to honor her legacy.
Born in 1923 in Chauncey, just north of Athens, Ohio, Isabel Courtney Hall was the second of Helen and Gilbert Courtney’s five children. Hall’s father served as pastor for five churches in the area, so faith and community were guiding principles for the Courtney family. Music was understood to be a powerful, creative force that could bring people together, says Corinne Shaffer, Hall’s niece.
“ Finally getting the guts to go in and audition for the School of Music was the best decision I have ever made. This scholarship definitely makes a difference. It would be a lot harder, and a lot more stressful for me and my mom, to make my monthly payments without this help.”
–Mietta Smith, BFA ’22, 2018 Isabel Courtney Hall Music Education Scholarship recipient
The Courtney household was “a home where there was always singing around the piano,” says Shaffer. Hall earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, music, in 1946 and bachelor’s degree in education in 1947. As a student she was a member of the Women’s Glee Club, the Kappa Beta Sorority, and the Disciples of Christ Foundation. She later married Charles Hall and the two moved to the City of Norwood, Ohio, an enclave of Cincinnati. There, Hall began to teach music with her characteristic energy, first at Norwood View and Williams Avenue Elementary Schools and later at Cincinnati’s Deer Park Junior/Senior High School. Chris Siegfried, another of Hall’s nieces, says Hall taught her and Shaffer a few musical tricks. “Isabel loved to play the piano and sing,” she says. “I can remember many years when Aunt Izzie taught me and my sister how to sing in harmony and blend our voices.”
Shaffer recalls one time in particular. Shaffer and her sisters stayed with Hall while their parents went on vacation. “It was extremely hot but she sat at the piano determined to teach us musical harmonies to perform for my parents when they returned. She even bought us outfits to look alike…matching dresses. When we picked my parents up, we were singing in the car all the new songs we’d learned—in harmony.”
Besides teaching, Hall sang in the Chancel Choir at Zion United Church of Christ in Cincinnati. She also directed the Zion Youth Choir for more than 50 years. In the late 1960s Hall took the
Zion Youth Choir on a cross-country tour and in the 1970s she established the Cherub Choir for younger children.
“She put a tremendous amount of time into all her programs,” says Shaffer. “Her husband, Charles, was very supportive. He was always there, too. Sometimes when they needed props, he would make them himself.”
Judy White, a former student and the Zion United Church of Christ’s current choir director and minister of music, says Hall was an inspiration.
“I was one of the lucky ones, because I was only 10 years old when Isabel entered my life. She encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone and sing my first solo during a Sunday service,” White says. “Her friendship and influence helped me find a way to become a high school music teacher and eventually the director of the Zion Chancel Choir for the last 20 years.”
With Hall’s support, White formed the adult Norwood Community Chorus (NCC) in 2006. The popular group has performed many times, eventually reaching a peak membership of more than 50 singers. In 2012, Hall helped the NCC get to the World Choir Games, where they were awarded a silver medal.
When Hall’s family decided to establish The Isabel Courtney Hall Music Education Scholarship, they enjoyed the benefit of the OHIO Match, a tool that takes donors’ gifts and makes them stronger.
Private funds provide the lion’s share of scholarship dollars for OHIO students. Providing access and opportunity to any student seeking an education is core to OHIO’s mission. So, the OHIO Match provides $0.50 in matching funds for every dollar committed to eligible scholarship endowments. The program is now in its sixth year and concludes in June 2020. As of December 31, 2019, the OHIO Match program has garnered $12,652,104.81 from donors, with the University providing matching funds totaling $6,326,053.64, netting $1,072,633.66 in support of enrolled students in colleges across the University.
“We are so thankful to be able to honor Isabel Courtney Hall in this way,” says College of Fine Arts Dean Matthew Shaftel. “She exemplified the spirit of the School of Music by using the power of music education to bring positive transformation to her family, friends, and community. With the foresight of her family and the added power of the OHIO Match, Isabel Courtney Hall’s legacy will continue to bring that positive transformation that music can have through the work of future students studying to become music educators.”
Corinne Shaffer recognizes the Isabel Courtney Hall Music Education Scholarship for what it is: an important tool in supporting students who, like Hall, believed music was for everyone.
“She was very encouraging of other people interested in music and she helped her nieces and nephews go to college. It’s a natural fit, enabling people who have a genuine interest in furthering their music education.”
–James Pepper Kelly“ As I practiced more and learned more I realized how much music had helped me. Music is truly a language we can all speak. I just want to be there to guide student musicians into learning it.”
–Heather Aycock, BFA ’22, 2018 Isabel Courtney Hall Music Education Scholarship recipient
Fall 2019 saw the launch of the much-anticipated undergraduate degree in Film program in the College of Fine Arts’ School of Film, a program once open only to students in Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College. Enter alumnus Tony Buba, MFA ’76, and his wife, Jan. They established the Tony and Jan Buba Film Scholarship to support burgeoning filmmakers at OHIO to allow more voices into the art form.
In his mind, how does Tony Buba, a 1976 graduate of the School of Film’s master’s degree, believe scholarships help students?
“This is something to ease the pressure, to let students concentrate on their work,” Buba says. “Too many are working 40 hours a week at outside jobs, and when you do that you don’t get the joy or experience you need.”
Buba speaks from experience. When he entered Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, he worked for a plumbing supply company during the day and took classes at night, mirroring in part his father–a mill worker for 40 years. To finish his degree before he turned 30, he decided to quit working and devote himself to full-time study, leaning on his savings to make the payments.
“The job I had back then made $35,000 or $40,000 in today’s dollars. I saved enough by
working and having a summer job so that I didn’t have to take out big loans. It’s different now,” Buba says.
“[My MFA in Film is] a cultural insurance policy, in that no matter what would happen, I would be able to do adjunct teaching anywhere. That would cover rent, at least in those days.
“I know what’s pushed for working class kids: You don’t have to go to college, you can do the trades. Well you can do college and you can do the trades!” He also recognizes what one might miss through a night-class-only education in film, a factor that informed his and Jan’s decision to establish the scholarship. “…if you’re not around, you don’t get in arguments about who’s the better comedian, Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. You don’t argue about whether Tarantino’s work is derivative. It’s those informal moments of discussion that go on and on, and the insights that people might have there, that really help you learn.”
Buba’s love of film emerged in college while on a work-study job at a local TV station. With his eyes focused on a career in film, he reviewed graduate schools based on one simple factor: the cost of the application.
“In 1971, Ohio University’s application fee was five dollars,” he says with a laugh. Happily, OHIO turned out to be an excellent fit.
“I didn’t know much about film, the history or anything. But everyone in the department was a little older and from different backgrounds,” says Buba, whose documentary work is renowned and includes The Braddock Chronicles, a series of documentary portraits of people in Buba’s declining, industrial hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. “The pace was perfect for me. There was no pressure to get into narrative or documentary work. You could do all experimental work; you were able to find your own voice.”
Buba briefly stepped away from pursuing his degree to work for his brother, another filmmaker. Buba assisted on a series of sports documentaries that was co-produced by Night of the Living Dead director George A. Romero. Buba later returned to Athens, completed his degree, and continued working with Romero on a number of projects, including a small part as a motorcycledriving raider eaten by zombies in the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. “Over the years, I’ve probably made a lot more money signing autographs for that part than I did for the entire film,” he jokes.
Buba went on to work for Romero and other filmmakers while also pursuing his own work. In
addition to The Braddock Chronicles, he’s made more than 20 films exploring working-class issues in this hometown region. His work has led to receiving fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others, and countless high-profile screenings. His 1996 film Struggles In Steel: A Story of African-American Steelworkers, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is an exploration of these workers’
daily lives. It was broadcast nationally on PBS. In 2012, Anthology Film Archives hosted a retrospective of his work, declaring Buba “one of the most singular, and egregiously overlooked, filmmakers in the U.S., a national treasure, the prime representative of the blue-collar, populist, politically committed yet outrageously entertaining American filmmaking movement that’s largely missing-in-action.”
School of Film Director Steven Ross says Buba represents the best of the School of Film.
“Working in the documentary mode, as an activist and artist, he has made films that deal with local, American, and international issues,” Ross says. “The worldwide recognition that he has received has been a source of great pride for Ohio University and the School of Film. Beyond that, his humanity, grace, wit, and joie de vivre are a constant.”
“He’s an awesome, kind, phenomenal filmmaker who continues to make great work about the community he lives in,” says Director of the Athens Center for Film and Video and the Athens International Film and Video Festival (AIFVF) David Colagiovanni. “Tony’s always maintained a wonderful connection to Ohio University and the film school here. He comes to the AIFVF every year, stays the entire time, and makes a point of walking around and meeting the filmmakers. ”
Buba says the accolades give him “positive reinforcement to do more and more.” The Tony and Jan Buba Film Scholarship and the Buba’s support of the art of film at OHIO brings more and more film to the screen.
– James Pepper KellyJanis Crystal Lipzin
BFA ’67, Art + Design
Lipzin, a filmmaker, curator, and teacher, screened films presented by Canyon Cinema at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in February 2019, and a selection of her films in Super 8 Films by Women Artists at the Microscope Gallery, in New York City, in September 2019.
Peter L. Goss
PHD ’73, Interdisciplinary Arts
An architectural historian and documentary photographer, Professor Emeritus Peter L. Goss earned his doctoral degree in Comparative Arts at OHIO in 1973 with a focus on Art & Architectural History. He taught architectural history at the College of Architecture + Planning at the University of Utah for 39 years and retired in 2009. Since retirement, Goss has been working on a biography of Taylor Woolley, a Salt Lake architect who worked for Frank Lloyd Wright. He
recently was commissioned to document the events of the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Point, Utah.
Herbert Gottfried
PHD ’74, Interdisciplinary Arts
In 2018, Gottfried published, Erie Railway Tourist, 1854-1886, Transporting Visual Culture (Lehigh University Press). The book explores how the Erie Railway, in developing a series of sophisticated travel guides, made significant contributions to 19 th century visual culture and shaped the social life of Americans.
Meadow (Carolyn) Muska
BFA ’74, Art + Design
Muska’s first solo exhibition was presented at The Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2019. Strong Women, Full of Joy, featured her photographs of the everyday lives of American lesbians during a time of extreme prejudice against the LGBTQ+ community in the 1970s and 80’s.
Cita Strauss
BFA ’77, MA ’04 and Marina Walchli
BFA ’77, MS ’81 Strauss and Walchli started Court Street Studio 40 years ago, now called Factory Street Studio, bringing their dream of noncompetitive dance to the Athens, Ohio, community.
Bartholomew Kwan Hoi Law
MM ’94, Music
Currently the president of the Hong Kong Metropolitan Conservatory, Hoi Law was recently appointed as the
professional music consultant of Hong Kong Cultural Association of Leaf-whistling (HKCAL).
Sharran F. Parkinson
PHD ’94, Interdisciplinary Arts
Parkinson is currently professor and chair in the Department of Design at Texas Tech University. Previously she was chair of Interior Design at Virginia Commonwealth University from 2004 to 2014. In 2018 she published “Design for Sight: A Typology System for LowVision Design Factors” in the Journal of Interior Design, which defined the primary design problems in the low vision user’s environment.
Mohammad Ali Bhatti
PHD ’98, Interdisciplinary Arts
A full-time painter currently living in Houston, Texas, Bhatti teaches part-time with the Watercolor Society of Houston. In 2011 he retired from his position as professor and director of the Institute of Art and Design Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan. Today he enjoys participating in art shows, conducting art workshops, and spending time with artist fellows. Explore his work at artistmohammadali.com.
Dave Malloy
BM ’98, Music
Malloy’s musical, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 , was included in the Hollywood Reporter’s list of “The Best New York Theater of the Decade” and in 2017 won two Tony Awards for Best Scenic Design of a Musical and Best Lighting Design of a Musical.
Qui Nguyen
MFA ’02, Theater
Nguyen premiered his play Revenge Song, a Vampire Cowboys Creation at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, California, in February. He also premiered his latest work, Poor Yella Rednecks, the second play in a trilogy that began with Vietgone, on April 2019 at the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California.
Maya Lynne Robinson
BFA ’02, Theater
Robinson played the lead roles in two television series: The Connors (Gina Williams-Connor) and in The Unicorn in 2019.
Chelsea Stardust
BFA ’07, Film
Stardust directed 2019’s Satanic Panic , an American comedy horror film produced with Fangoria and Cinestate, now streaming on Amazon Prime. Stardust returned to Athens in September 2019 to screen the film at the Athena Cinema.
Carissa Massey
PHD ’09, Interdisciplinary Arts
Massey is the dean of Graduate Studies at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan, where she also is a professor of Art History. Massey’s doctoral research focused on Art History, Aesthetics, and Gender Theory.
Nathan Ramos-Park
BFA ’09, Theater
Award-winning writer, actor, and musician Ramos-Park has worked as the writer/songwriter, music director, and a creative producer for Disney’s Club Mickey Mouse. Ramos-Park’s song Gay Asian Country Love Song went viral in January 2019.
Jennifer Goodlander
PHD ’10, Interdisciplinary Arts
Goodlander was given tenure and promoted to associate professor at Indiana University. She moved from theatre to the comparative literature department and now instructs in comparative arts. She is the director of the Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies Program. Her second book, Puppets and Cities: Articulating Identities in Southeast Asia, was published by Methuen Drama in December 2018.
Jason Hartz
PHD ’10, Interdisciplinary Arts
Hartz is an assistant professor of Art History and chair of the Department of Art & Design at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan. Hartz previously served as director of Institutional Research at Siena Heights University, also in Adrian.
Michael Korte
BFA ’10, Theater Korte is a Broadway producer and YouTuber who recently launched #YouWillBeFoundChallenge in the musical theater community to spread positivity amid the coronavirus crisis. Korte is the
creator of cityoftenants.com, a curated music and culture content portal and point of reference for creatives that emphasizes social engagement and artist development.
John Kilgore
BM ’12, Music
Kilgore joined the faculty at the Kansas State University School of Music, Theatre, and Dance as instructor of Trumpet in fall 2019. As an orchestral musician, Kilgore serves as principal trumpet of the Boise Philharmonic, a position he has held since 2017.
Jacob Koestler
MFA ’14, Art + Design
Koestler’s book, Everybody Wants Somewhere, made the Humble Arts Best Photobooks of 2018 list, and the accompanying exhibition opened at The Print Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
Nathaniel Wallace
PHD ’14, Interdisciplinary Arts
Wallace’s essay, “The ‘Inside’ of Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in the Visual Arts,” was published in Lovecraftian Proceedings No. 2 in 2017 by Hippocampus Press.
Michael Lorsung
MFA ’17, Art + Design Lorsung recently was appointed as assistant professor of Art (Sculpture) at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Lorsung previously served as the sculpture coordinator at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado.
The exquisite drawings in this issue are by graphic designer Maryam Khaleghi Yazdi, MFA ’19, from the School of Art + Design. Her work, God of Seigfred Hall , has adorned the walls of the school’s home since 2018. The building’s wheat paste signage, murals, and elevator art create a mythic structure with a different, medium-specific god overseeing and tormenting students on each floor.
“I wanted to add a sense of excitement to the School. The story is a little bit creepy and frightening,” Khaleghi Yazdi says.“The majority of young people are attracted to that.”
Many of the school’s graduate and undergraduate students helped her bring it to completion. Other students worked with her to document the project, which was exhibited at the 2019 Association of Illustrators exhibition in London and was published in American
Illustration 38, a premier, juried annual publication that showcases unpublished and student work created by established, emerging, and student illustrators and photographers.
Khaleghi Yazdi is assistant professor in Graphic Design at University of Minnesota-Duluth.
School of Art + Design Director Julie Dummermuth praises Khaleghi Yazdi for “the language of drawing” she incorporates into her designs. The momentum from God of Seigfred Hall has led to a mural project in Seigfred by students for the College’s CREATE_space interdisciplinary resource, Dummermuth says.
“The goal is to continue this,” she says. “Exterior beautification for the building is the next step.”
– James Pepper Kellymagazine for alumni and friends
Matthew Shaftel, Dean, College of Fine Arts
Jody Lamb, Associate Dean
Maureen Wagner, Assistant Dean of Student Services
Julie Dummermuth, Director, School of Art + Design
Andrea Frohne, Director, School of Interdisciplinary Arts
Travis D. Gatling, Director, School of Dance
Christopher Hayes, Director, School of Music
Michael Lincoln, Director, School of Theater
Steven Ross, Director, School of Fil m
Kelee Garrison Riesbeck, Director of External Relations (current)
Rachel Cornish, Director of External Relations (through September 2019)
Daniel J. King, Writer & Editor, Interim Director of External Relations (through December 2019)
Marilyn Krupa, Graphic Designer
Todd Jacops, Graphic Designer
James P. Kelly, Contract Writer
Photographers :
Cassidy Brauner MFA ’18
Melissa Cordy, BS ’18
Matthew Forsythe, MA ’14
Sydny Honaker, BA ’19
Daniel J. King, MFA ’15
Lauren Meltzer, BA ’19
Riley Perone, BS ’20
Daniel Rader, BS ’15
Illustrations throughout this issue by Maryam Khaleghi Yazdi, MFA ’19. Cover photo courtesy of CoArts
The College of Fine Arts welcomes comments from readers. We reserve the right to edit for grammar, space and clarity. Send letters by email to fine.arts@ohio.edu or by mail to:
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Copyright© 2020 by Ohio University. Ohio University is an equal access, equal opportunity, and affirmative action institution.
Music suffuses the history of modern and contemporary painting. “The idea that music could be translated into something for the eye,” as Georgia O’Keefe put it, captured the interest of countless painters. Wassily Kandinsky rendered Wagner’s notes and rhythm as colors and shapes. Paul Klee used the process of music composition to guide the composition of his canvases. James McNeill Whistler went so far as to title different series of his paintings as harmonies, nocturnes, and symphonies. And Piet Mondrian drew inspiration from boogiewoogie and jazz to execute his abstract geometrics.
Professor Emeritus of Painting and Drawing
Robert Peppers follows in this rich tradition of artist audiophiles. From outside his nondescript studio building in Chauncey, one might pick up a few stray jazz notes in the air without realizing the hotbed of creativity within. But here, amidst Peppers’ Sirens of Jazz sculptural, a steady stream of syncopation and experimentation fills the air.
“When I step through that door,” Peppers says, “I’m in a New York studio in my mind. The music is part of that mirage.”
Peppers’ playlist for making art, driving down the road, and transporting yourself to wherever you need to be follows.
– James Pepper Kelly1. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
If I’m mellowing out, I start the day with Kind of Blue. I use it to kind of ease into the day.
2. The Path , Ralph Macdonald
That one you have to experience yourself.
3. Another Shade of Browne , Tom Browne
I’ve had a chance to see Tom Browne. He came to Cleveland and a friend of mine bought tickets about three years ago. He’s my favorite horn player, a contemporary horn player. Check out Funkin’ for Jamaica and anything on the Hip Bop label.
4. The Survivor, Donald Harrison
That’s the record I play over and over again. It’s an excellent jazz recording. He’s a constant.
5. Jazz in Silhouette, Sun Ra and His Arkestra
Sun Ra is one you really have to take time to digest. I listen to Jazz in Silhouette, one of his best orchestrated jazz pieces. It goes from straight up big band jazz to straight up free form jazz. Just a beautiful album. At Stuart’s Opera House [in nearby Nelsonville] they asked me what to pull up when I was hanging work recently. I asked for this.
6. Edge, Lenny White
This one you should play back to back with Donald Harrison’s The Survivor Just let one slide into the other.
7. A Love Supreme, John Coltrane
He and Miles Davis are my idols. I might play him on Sundays, when I put on more mellow types of jazz.
8. Life on Planet Groove, Maceo Parker
Sometimes I get funky with Maceo Parker. I would recommend Planet Maceo to anyone if you want to boogie.
9. The Two Sides of Fela: Jazz & Dance, Fela Kuti
That’s for on the road. If you’re going to Cleveland or somewhere, he’ll get you there.
10. No Room For Argument , Wallace Roney
I had a chance to see him up at Nighttown in Cleveland. He’s really fresh, he does more experimentation with rhythm and blues. He’s basically a protege of Miles Davis. He does really experimental things with rap, hip hop, and jazz.
Listen to this playlist on Spotify: bit.ly/robert-peppers-playlist
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