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STUDIO T H E O F F I C I A L M AG A Z I N E O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F U TA H C O L L EG E O F F I N E A R T S

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The art of resettling

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Alumnus Jon Hale redefines arts education

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Jazz man Kris Johnson plays it cool

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Art all over the world

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Annual Report thanks College of Fine Arts contributors

Photo: Sarah Knight Photography

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UR history, as humans, is an interesting one. It’s one of sophistication and collaboration.

One of progress and innovation.

And compassion and hope.

While much has changed during our relatively short tenure here on Earth, there’s been one thing that has remained consistent from the very start: our deep love of art.

So, even though our differences are often made quite apparent — what we eat, how we dance, where we live, how we worship, the music that moves us, and languages we speak — through the creation and appreciation of art, we have found ways to simultaneously celebrate what makes us unique while also appreciating that which is common among us.

Art has helped us communicate across the barriers of time, language, and geography. Art has helped us pass along our stories of pain and pleasure. Art has helped us understand and celebrate our very humanity.

In the pages of this magazine, you will see exactly that.

You will read about how the arts at the University of Utah are helping heal, unite, connect, and restore. You will read about opportunity, preservation and sustainability, and global impact. And, what I hope you’ll notice as a common theme throughout these stories is our deep commitment to seeking, acknowledging, accommodating, and celebrating our diversity.

Our humanity is beautiful; and we’re here to appreciate it. ≠

Cover Photo: Sarah Knight Photography

JOHN W. SCHEIB Dean, College of Fine Arts

LETTER from the DEAN STUDIO / 2018

'18 THE PLACE WHERE DILIGENCE AND EXCELLENCE BECOME INFLUENCE

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CONTRIBUTORS / Photo: Sarah Knight Photography

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THE ART OF RESETTLING / Utah is home to roughly 65,000 refugees who came seeking sovereignty, safety, and opportunity. See how our artists and scholars are making sure they’re getting more than just what they need.

LEARNING FILM IN THE FUTURE / The U’s Asia Campus in Incheon, South Korea opened its Film & Media Arts program in Fall 2017; find out why it’s already one of the most sought-after programs in the area.

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Photo: Colorado State University

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USING ART TO REUNITE/ Arts educator and alumnus Jon Hale is using art to unite students with disabilities with their typically developing peers.

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GEND-ART / Faculty members across the College of Fine Arts are investigating the places where the arts explore gender.

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IN THE OFFICE OF KRIS / COVER FEATURE From performing with the Count Basie Orchestra to his new online educational web-series, Jazz savant Kris Johnson is busy making waves.

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CAROL SOGARD RE:DESIGN / Find out how Graphic Design Area Head, Carol Sogard, focuses on sustainable design to change how students think.

TAKING THE STAGE / Three Salt Lake City theatre professionals have been cast as professors in the Department of Theatre.

THE ALCHEMIST / Esteemed guest artist Roderick George taught School of Dance students more than just new choreography.

eARTh / These stories of Art & Art History professors Beth Krensky and Edward Bateman reveal how art can transport us to unknown places across the globe.

GUEST ARTISTS & SCHOLARS / In addition to the impact of our renowned faculty, students in the College of Fine Arts benefit from the multitude of guest artists and scholars brought to campus each year.

SKIP DAYNES / Read why the fourth generation owner of Daynes Music has invested so much in the University of Utah School of Music.

ANNUAL REPORT / It is with overwhelming gratitude that we name those who fuel the continued success of the College of Fine Arts with their generosity and philanthropy.

TABLE of CONTENTS STUDIO / 2018

contributors Marina Gomberg, Editor in Chief/Writer Marina Gomberg is a Utah native and the Director of Communications & Marketing for the University of Utah College of Fine Arts. She graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor of Science in Gender Studies (2006), and has been doing communications work for the last decade in the nonprofit, private, and public sectors. Gomberg’s passions lie in the arts, activism, writing, and food. She lives in Salt Lake City with her wife, her son, Harvey, and two cats. She is a lifestyle columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune.

Photo: Pepperfox Photo

Adam Griffiths, Writer Adam Griffiths recently graduated with his MM in Vocal Performance from the University of Utah. He received his Music Education bachelor’s degree from the U in 2013, then taught Choir and AP Music Theory at Alta High School in Sandy, Utah for three years. He has performed with many companies, including the Ohio Light Opera, Desert Star Playhouse, at the U of U Lyric Opera Ensemble. He has traveled the world performing with the U of U Singers and Salt Lake Vocal Artists. Adam has a passion for education and maintains a full teaching studio. In his spare time, he enjoys distance running, playing video games, and taking trips to Disney parks with his wife, Wendi.

Photo: Michael Schoenfeld

Julia Lyon, Writer Julia Lyon is a former reporter with The Salt Lake Tribune where she specialized in refugee and poverty issues. In 2010, she received the United Nations Correspondents Association Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize. A graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism, she worked as a newspaper reporter in Utah and Oregon for 11 years. While in New York City, she was a dance critic for CitySearch.com and studied clarinet at The Juilliard School.

Photo: Enoch Chan

Kate Mattingly has written about dance for the last 20 years. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Dance Research Journal, Dance Magazine, Pointe Magazine, The Washington Post, and many other journals and publications. She received her undergraduate degree in Architecture: History and Theory from Princeton University in 1993 and graduated with high honors. Her Master’s of Fine Arts degree is from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and she completed her doctoral degree in Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. Her dissertation examined the role of dance criticism in shaping the dance canon and our value systems.

Peg McEntee, Editor Peg McEntee is a career journalist in Salt Lake City, with The Associated Press, The Salt Lake Tribune, and the Reuters wire service. She has edited numerous stories for the University of Utah. During her 34 years in the business, she has covered everything from coal mine disasters, the 2002 Winter Olympics, murder trials, as well as polygamist sects in Utah and countless other news events. And, for four years, she was The Tribune’s metro columnist. Her family includes her husband, daughter, two cats and the yellow dog who makes her hike almost daily.

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Photo: Todd Collins

Kate Mattingly, Writer

contri

“Steel Pier,” directed and choreographed by

Department of Theatre’s Denny Berry featuring the full company.

Editorial Board

Special Thanks

Dean John Scheib Josiane Dubois Dan Evans, Design Direction Satu Hummasti Peyden Shelton Sarah Sinwell Wendy Wischer

Devon Barnes Denise Begue Sheri Jardine Sarah Knight Samantha Matsukawa Kelby McIntyre Bridget Miller

Design by modern8

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The Art of Resettling

U TA H IS HOME to roughly 65,000 resettled residents who have come here seeking sovereignty, safety, and opportunity. In this collection of stories, see how the artists and scholars in the College of Fine Arts are making sure these new residents are getting more than just what they need.

Growing New Roots

By Marina Gomberg

Resonating Nexus

Wendy Wischer doesn’t make art just for the sake of beauty and aesthetics. Like many of the most impactful makers, her work aims to change people. And more often than not, the change she is after is a deeper appreciation for the preservation and restoration of our planet and its finite resources.

For one of her more recent projects, “Resonating Nexus,” Wischer was funded by a competitive University of Utah Community Based Research grant, and she partnered with ecologist Eric McCulley from River Restoration, The Jordan River Commission, Roots High School, and the International Rescue Committee to create a site-specific installation that would inspire viewers, restore the natural ecology of the Jordan River, and create community.

In addition to producing stunning sculptures made from willow branches and other materials local to her project’s site that would, in time, foster new growth, she employed the help of Salt Lake’s refugee community in the fabrication and installation of her piece.

By providing these new community members with much needed employment, her goal was to connect them with their new environments – both physical and social.

“My goals include connecting the community with their surroundings while at the same time, directly impacting and participating in the ecological restoration efforts,” she said. “I use the creative elements to speak to our personal connections with our sense of place. It is through our personal connections that we define our beliefs that shape our actions. The community involvement in these restorative efforts encourages personal connections and a sense of pride fostering continued stewardship of the area.”

The project’s overarching goal was to grow new roots among the newly transplanted; arguably, she’s done that in more ways than one. ≠ 4 STUDIO / 2018

film their screen dance

Transition through Dance

Installing at the pond.

By Julia Lyon

Photo: Amelia Walchli

on the Salt Flats.

If you see some teenagers dancing hip hop in the lobby of the Gary & Ann Crocker Science Center on a Thursday afternoon, don’t be surprised.

The middle and high school students are all part of the Refugees Exploring the Foundations of Undergraduate Education in Science (REFUGES) program, which is helping to ensure these bright kids achieve their college dreams.

On a different day of the week, they might be practicing for college entrance exams or getting help with algebra. But on Thursdays, many of them are doing synchronized choreography inspired by African and American dancers.

“It’s a way for me to release any stress on my mind,” said Rayyan Saadelnour, 15, a sophomore at Cottonwood High School. “As I’m dancing, it magically goes away.”

She and her sister came to Utah as infants after their North Sudanese parents sought refugee status in the United States.

Nearly 20 students from refugee backgrounds — hailing from Sierra Leone, Iraq, Somalia, Ethiopia, Bhutan, Sudan, South Sudan, Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda — come to the U three afternoons each week to participate in REFUGES. Their families fled war and came to the United States seeking a new life. For many of these students, they will be the first in their family to attend college. Financial aid forms may be as foreign to their parents as the English language.

“They are set up for failure,” said Assistant Professor Tino Nyawelo, an immigrant from South Sudan and a physicist, who founded the program in 2013 after seeing resettled teens join gangs and fail out of school.

Newly arrived children are often placed in classes based on their age, though their education may be far below grade level.

The REFUGES program appears to be working. In 2017, all 12 of their seniors were accepted to the University of Utah and other colleges. Many received full scholarships.

Nyawelo decided to partner with ArtsBridge, an arts education outreach program in the College of Fine Arts, in response to students’ strong interest in the arts.

It is literally expanding their world: last year they danced by the Jordan River and filmed themselves dancing on the Bonneville Salt Flats this spring. Many of them had never been there.

At home, they’re watching African hip hop performed by dancers who live around the world.

“They have watched videos and choreographed steps and created their own ideas about what’s cool,” said Liz Ivkovich, their teacher who received her modern dance MFA from the University of Utah. “So really for me it’s about facilitating that and helping them learn how to teach each other.”

Dance “seems like a currency of being a teenager existing in a transnational situation,” said Ivkovich, who is also the Communications and Relationship Manager at the U Sustainability Office. “It’s somewhere in this space that they’re carving out and existing in Salt Lake City.”

Kerri Hopkins, the ArtsBridge Director, hopes the chance to be their own choreographers and filmmakers makes them feel that their voices are being heard.

“They have so much ownership in what they’re putting together,” she said.

The product of that work may soon be on display for everyone to see. ArtsBridge is in the second year of partnering with the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art on an educator-in-residence program, and films created with REFUGES will be part of a show that will open in the education gallery in the summer.

While the films could give museum-goers a window into refugee teenagers in Salt Lake City, learning from each other was one of the reasons Roa Saadelnour, Rayyan’s twin sister, wanted to do REFUGES in the first place.

“Diversity is a really big thing to me: getting to know different people,” she said. “So the program was a big opportunity.” ≠ 5 STUDIO / 2018

Photo: Kerri Hopkins

Providing Refuge Students from REFUGES

By Kate Mattingly

Dancing to Remember

The practice of weaving, like dancing, has become a way to maintain Karen traditions.

As a Karen leader, Garroe Wah, says, “If we don’t Weaving into Tradition know our culture, we don’t know where we are from, and we don’t know what our parents have been through… Knowing the culture, you know the history, On December 30, 2017, hundreds of Karen (pronounced ka-RIN) people, former so you understand how hard the journey that our refugees from Thailand, gathered at a Salt Lake City church to celebrate their New ancestors or our parents went through to help us be Year. Toward the end of the event, a temporary stage was created in one half of the successful today.” meeting hall for their ceremonial Don Dance.

Bromberg and Smith met in Nalini Nadkarni’s As young men and women sang and danced, their arms traced precise shapes in (Department of Biology) Faculty Learning Community, the air and their feet kept time with the musicians’ rhythms. They were dressed in called “A Transdisciplinary Colloquium in Disturbance exquisite costumes of bright cobalt blue and white, and the men had threads of red and Recovery through Relict Structures,” which woven into their tunics. The hand-woven fabric and the dancing complemented one gathered for two hours every month in 2016 to explore another: both are vibrant vessels of their history and culture, and both are vital to the how a variety of disciplines could uniquely apply these preservation of Karen traditions. same concepts to their fields of endeavor and how they University of Utah professors Ellen Bromberg (School of Dance) and Yda Smith, could learn from each other.

PhD (Division of Occupational Therapy) were at the New Year celebration to connect “When Yda presented on Karen dance and weaving with friends and film the dance. They have been working with the Karen in Salt as relict structures that help preserve their culture, I was Lake City and visiting the camps in Thailand where thousands of the Karen live very moved by the importance of dance, not only as a after escaping persecution and genocide in Burma. For more than a decade, Smith, performing art, but as an existential force in their lives,” a professor of Occupational and Recreational Therapies, has worked with groups Bromberg recalled. identified by the U.N. as needing resettlement.

She was inspired by Smith’s research and had Once the Karen were identified as a resettlement group in 2008, Smith traveled to simultaneously been exploring gaps in her own family’s Thailand with a small group from the University of Utah to visit Mae La camp, where resettlement narratives in the United States as Eastern 60,000 people lived at the time.

European Jews. The stories coincided.

“It is one of nine camps along the Burma-Thailand border,” said Smith. “We were “Even though these groups of people could not gathering information on their lives and visited their Cultural Orientation (CO) class, be more different, they also shared the process of which is the course they take before they relocate. It’s five days of information on how repatriation,” said Bromberg. “Offering a way to fill to live in America.” these gaps for the Karen, who are at this moment Since then, she has returned to Thailand three times to educate people in the camps experiencing the gains and losses of resettlement, about physical rehabilitation for stroke victims. In 2017, Bromberg, an award-winning helped to heal the missing links in my own genealogy.” choreographer, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor in the School of Dance, traveled Together Smith and Bromberg applied for funding with Smith to Thailand to film Karen dancers and interview dance-masters. from The Asia Center, and The University Research The Karen have settled throughout the United States, with large communities in Committee has supported production costs to create Salt Lake City, Burlington, Utica, Houston, as well as in other countries, like Australia, a documentary about the Karen, although now the Norway, and Canada. In Salt Lake City, Smith created a “CO” class for Karen refugees professors are not sure of the exact format of the end and has worked extensively to make it possible for the Karen women to continue their product. They have discovered that the information they weaving practices. have learned about the dances is not all known by Karen “I used to weave,” Smith explained. “So, I already had this connection to its living in Salt Lake City. importance and I had a fascination with their back-strap looms, which are so different “Once our project is completed, I want to give all the from what I have used. The thread that they use can’t be bought in the United States, footage to the Karen for their archives,” said Bromberg. so we order it from Thailand. I get emails from Karen all over the country asking how “It is living proof of recovery and survival and dance, as I get this thread.” a relict structure, is at the heart of it.” ≠ 6 STUDIO / 2018

Empowerment through the Arts Students engage in theatre games to develop trust and confidence in their

By Marina Gomberg

problem-solving abilities.

It may not be immediately evident how the arts could help increase students’ participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

But, what are researchers — and especially artists — if not the connectors of never-before aligned ideas?

So, when a group of researchers at the University of Utah, which included Sydney Cheek-O’Donnell, Associate Professor in Theatre and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Fine Arts, were challenged with identifying new solutions to improving participation in STEM education by underserved populations, they got creative. Literally.

The impetus for the research was a grant opportunity funded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) INCLUDES Program, which stands for: Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science. The NSF was seeking less traditional answers to increasing diversity of all kinds in STEM, and in the U’s proposal, they got just that.

Led by Biology Professor Nalini Nadkarni, and including Russ Isabella (Family and Consumer Studies), Diane Pataki (Biology), Jordan Gerton (Physics and Astronomy), and Cheek-O’Donnell, the U’s team sought to identify and minimize barriers for students from refugee backgrounds in accessing STEM education.

“We looked at the idea of self-efficacy, which is a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in a specific situation,” Cheek-O’Donnell said. “Because even if a

Photos: Russ Isabella

Screenshot of film by Ellen Bromberg

Full STEAM Ahead

person has physical or financial access to these fields, if they don’t believe they will succeed, they probably won’t even try.”

They also wanted to reach outside of people already in academia to populations that are extremely “STEMdisenfranchised.” Their rationale is that although many resources exist to support diverse people in science, some populations do not even “see” themselves as scientists, much less know about these resources. They partnered with the Center for Science and Mathematics Education’s after-school program, REFUGES, which addresses “the under-representation of women, minorities, refugees, non-native English speakers, and economically disadvantaged students in STEM disciplines,” and “the academic weaknesses that refugee youth face in the Utah school system due to placement in grade levels that are not suitable to their educational backgrounds.”

Together, the research team devised a three-pronged approach to this challenge, with one intervention being a six-week theatre workshop for students ages 13-18.

Although there is a body of theatre on scientific topics, this project was more focused on how participating in a creative endeavor can affect a person’s sense of self.

“When developing self-efficacy, the ability to make choices and to have control over parts of your environment is extremely important,” said Cheek-O’Donnell. “Art-making and, in particular, certain theatre exercises that build trust and strengthen communication — they can provide opportunities to become more empowered.”

“...the ability to make choices and to have control over parts of your environment is extremely important...”

Some days, that took the form of trust work, such as leading a fellow participant around a space with their eyes closed. Other times, it was sharing a three-minute story on a particular topic with another participant.

No matter the activity, the intent was to use art to build a person’s connection to his or her surroundings in ways that inspire a sense of confidence.

This and the other two interventions have now come to a close, and the researchers are sorting through their respective data with a forthcoming white paper on the horizon. But what is already evident, is that when the siloes of our research are torn down, all disciplines stand to benefit. ≠ 7 STUDIO / 2018

STUDIO / 2018 Photo: Kevin Hanson

FUTURE

FILM IN THE

LEARNING

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B Y J U L I A LY O N

A LOOK AT TH E UTAH ASIA CAMPUS

Songdo from Central Park.

An aspiring filmmaker from Utah, who wants to see the world, now has a chance to jump-start that dream in South Korea. The University of Utah Asia Campus will welcome Film & Media Arts students enrolled on the Salt Lake Campus to study side-by-side with Utah Asia Campus students at the Incheon Global Campus.

“Film is a collaborative art,” said Sterling Van Wagenen, the co-founder of the Sundance Film Festival and Professor (Lecturer) in the Department of Film & Media Arts, who visited the campus last fall. “For both South Korean and American students, this is the chance to develop creative relationships with their peers.”

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When Van Wagenen visited the campus along with Kevin Hanson, the Chair of Department of Film & Media Arts, to introduce the program to students and the public, they also attended the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea with 40 students from the Asia Campus.

Both had previously known very little about the festival and were impressed by the venues and the programming.

“We Americans tend to focus on what’s important to us,” Van Wagenen acknowledged. While the appeal of Hollywood and the Sundance Film Festival — which is well known to South Koreans — may play a role in students’ interest in U Asia, the students aren’t just hoping to move to California after graduation.

“South Korea has a sophisticated, national cinema both commercially and independently,” said Hanson, noting that the film industry seems more open to women than in the U.S. “This is not a backwater enterprise.”

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Photo: Also Sisters

There is even a section of the city center… called Tomorrow City.

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Photo: Alysia Klein

To complete a Film & Media Arts degree, students admitted to the Asia Campus will spend up to three years there, coming to Salt Lake for one year to take specialized and capstone curriculum. Conversely, students from the Salt Lake Campus could spend a year at the Incheon campus working on general education courses as well as film core in Korea. Students on either campus must meet the rigorous admission standards of the University of Utah, and receive the same University of Utah degree.

Students from FILM 3500.

Students from the Salt Lake Campus would continue to pay the tuition they pay in Utah, resident or nonresident. Residential dormitory costs, however, at the Incheon campus are about $250 per month.

Not only would students have a chance to fly easily to points across Asia, the city of Songdo, where the campus is located, is like “living in the future,” said Alysia Klein, an Assistant Professor of Film & Media Arts and the first in the field to teach at U Asia.

“Songdo looks like the movie set of the next big The University of Utah Asia Campus launched in 2014 and moved into its permanent science fiction film,” said Klein, who added that she home in Incheon in 2016. The new, 170,000-square foot facility is within the Incheon can’t wait to begin filming there. “There is even a Global Campus, whose partner institutions include George Mason University, section of the city center that is called Tomorrow City.”

Belgium’s Ghent University, and New York City-based Fashion Institute of Technology.

The diversity of the faculty and the student body Undergraduate degree programs at U Asia include a BA/BS in Communication, a BS means students are being educated by the world while in Psychology, a BA in Film & Media Arts, and a BS in Urban Ecology. having the unique opportunity to hear international About 350 students are enrolled and more than 45 of them were expected to be speakers, attend international film festivals, and access studying Film & Media Arts as of this spring. The major became available in fall 2017. specialty scholarships, the professor said.

The University of Utah was not unknown in South Korea before U Asia opened Klein had longed to live abroad after finishing her its doors. Approximately 1,100 U alumni live in South Korea, many of whom attended MFA at the University of Utah. She was drawn to the graduate school at the University of Utah in Salt Lake before returning home. idea of being “completely immersed in another culture, “The University of Utah in Salt Lake City is a place that fits the South Korean culture to see new landscapes, and to have conversations about very well,” said Todd Kent, the U Asia Dean of Faculty. “It’s conservative, easygoing, and film, media, and the arts with people halfway around can remind you a little bit of living in South Korea.” the world. To open my eyes to their perspectives, their Incoming U Asia students are fluent in English but may need to adjust to a Westernlives, their history, and their ideas about the future.” style learning environment that encourages more student participation. The Global Campus is an English-speaking campus in its entirety.

“Maybe there’s not a right answer, but we talk through it,” Dean Kent said. “We expect the students to challenge the teacher—the students here are not used to that.”

Some South Korean parents seem to put a premium on an American-style education, Van Wagenen observed during his visit last fall. Many Americans feel equally strongly about giving their children the chance to study internationally.

Filmmaking is about creative problem solving. “The most successful filmmakers have figured how to do that and do it well,” he said. “So, to get off your home turf…is really challenging and really healthy.”

Even if American students travel thousands of miles to South Korea, they won’t be leaving Salt Lake City far behind. Administrators have tried to create an environment that is philosophically and operationally similar to the home campus. A University of Utah letter jacket isn’t hard to find.

As Hanson says, “We have the program on the Incheon Global Campus in which everyone wants to be.” ≠

USI NG

Photo: Colorado State University

TO Close-up shot of Hale’s work entitled “Assemblage V” which was part of a five-part series he produced during his graduate studies.

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connecting the disparate

Students from Hale’s mainstream class at Sprucewood Elementary work as peer partners with students with severe disabilities who traveled over from Hale’s other class at Jordan Valley School.

By Mar ina Gomberg

O R EU N I TE

Photo: Sarah Knight Photography

A RT

Jon Hale didn’t know art therapy existed when he was he was earning his BFA in painting and drawing here at the University of Utah and supplementing his art practice with sociology and psychology classes. What he did know was that he was interested in the ways cognitive and cultural ideas shaped the content of his work.

As he pursued his MFA at Colorado State in drawing and body work, he often employed metaphor in his art — using insects, for example, to illustrate our psychological processes of labeling, naming, and compartmentalizing.

“Categorization Box”

It wouldn’t be for some time that he’d realize that the same tool he used to communicate how we view separateness would be the very thing he would later use to explore kinds of desegregation in schools.

Following his MFA, and during his time at Wayne State in Detroit while he was pursuing his Masters of Education with a concentration in Art Therapy (as well as supplementary class work in art education necessary for teaching certification), he really made the connection about how powerfully art could unite and benefit specific populations of students.

Hale put that new understanding to work on his return to Utah in 2012, when he, as an art teacher, worked with students at a private rehabilitation treatment center and school who had been moved from school to school (and in some cases from state to state) because of mental illness or disciplinary exhaustion that left them and their parents and caregivers at the end of their lines.

“Many of the students in my classrooms were quite disjointed or disconnected from their communities,” he said. “And seeing their successes in the hybrid art-integrated art therapy programs I developed made me wonder if there was a place I could work to possibly prevent that displacement before it occurs.”

Much to his delight, he saw that Utah’s Canyons School District was hiring a Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program (BTSALP) specialist. The Endowed BTSALP in the College of Fine Arts works in partnership with local education agencies to produce collaborative research central to the field of arts and education through the study of integrated approaches to teaching, learning, community engagement, and professional development.

One of the available positions involved working for two schools. The first was Sprucewood Elementary in Sandy, which has both mainstream or typically developing students, along with a population of students who have exhausted existing resources in the district and are at their last step before they have to find other outside resources. The second was Jordan Valley School in Midvale, which houses special education students with severe disabilities, many of whom are there

“THIS EXPERIENCE SHOWED THEM THAT THE STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES ARE JUST LIKE THEM. THEY ARE PEOPLE WITH PREFERENCES AND IDEAS.”

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because their cognitive or behavioral abilities are such that it merits having their school services provided in a location away from their typically developing peers. But, some are there because they are medically fragile and require special environments or accommodations.

That’s where Hale wanted to be. So, he applied for the position and got it.

He spent his first year getting his bearings and understanding the new communities and populations of students. And, then he had an idea.

At the end of that year, a fellow BTSALP specialist, Megan Hallett, also a University of Utah alum, presented her work that focused on changing student, staff, and administrators’ perceptions of students in a behavioral unit at Escalante Elementary. The University of Utah’s BTSALP selects top veteran arts specialists annually to work in collaboration with faculty to investigate new knowledge in the field.

“Her presentation, and the others presented that year, opened my eyes to possibilities of doing research

Photos by: Sarah Knight Photography

“Categorization Box” is a series of mixed media painting/drawings Hale produced during his graduate studies representing our use of categorization and labeling as a means of understanding.

Hale working with student during 6-week arts integration project.

in my setting, and specifically, Megan’s work made me want to develop a program that helped to change perceptions of the students in the behavior unit at Sprucewood,” Hale said.

Working with his research team, Dr. John McDonnell, Kelby McIntyre-Martinez, and Kristen Paul, at the University of Utah, he came up with a plan for a project that was specific to both of his populations.

While his research was inspired by Hallett’s work, it is different in that his focuses on mainstream students working as peer partners with students with disabilities in the mainstream art classroom.

So, after thoughtful planning, Hale and his team picked the student participants through thorough screenings and set out for a six-week experiment. The University of Utah’s BTSALP arranged for the proper resources and transportation from Jordan Valley to Sprucewood, and once every other week, brought the students with disabilities to the mainstream classroom for structured art experiences. A student with disabilities would be paired with a grouping of typically developing students for 45 minutes of art-making.

Almost immediately, Hale witnessed changes in both populations of students. The typically developing students, some of whom might have been reticent at first, became more aware and began incorporating and interacting with their new classmates more and more.

“It’s been interesting to hear those students describe their experiences in our post-interviews,” Hale said.

“They reflected on their initial fears, but also talked about how this experience showed them that the students with disabilities are just like them. They are people with preferences and ideas. That feedback is remarkably impactful to hear.”

It was the students with disabilities, though, whose changes were most notable.

“There was one student who vocalized her discomfort the entire first visit,” he said. “And with every subsequent visit, she became more comfortable and more calm. She even began to engage and work intermittently in small bits, which is truly tremendous

growth for her. To see her thriving in that environment and interacting was more progress than I could have ever predicted — especially in such a short amount of time.”

Following the six weeks of visits, Hale and his team began assessment of the video footage and field notes taken by the researchers and para-educators. There is still work to be done to understand all the impacts of this project, but Hale is hopeful that their learnings, which they hope to disseminate locally and nationally, might spark interest in other researchers. They continue investigating the benefits of integrating students with cognitive and developmental disabilities into the least restrictive environment with their typically developing peers in efforts to create an environment in which all students can learn from each other.

“By eliminating risk, I wonder if we have inadvertently eliminated the chance to thrive,” he said.

“So, I’m proud to be part of the movement to explore new spaces where all students can benefit from the diversity of our humanity — and what better way than through the expression of art?” ≠

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Art is so often a reflection or examination of our humanity. And for so many, gender plays a significant

role in how we identify, express ourselves, dress, interact, love, and walk through the worl

GEND-ART Shane Davis and Maddie Andersen dance in dress rehearsal for Gender/Power performance.

BY MARINA GOMBERG

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Photo: Ching-I Chang

provocative and thoughtful art for as long as humans have been around. Many professors in the College of

ld. Our gender affects how society views us, how laws protect us, and has been fodder for

17

Fine Arts are exploring the intersection

of art and gender.

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S

ATU Hummasti grew up bi-culturally, splitting her time between Finland and the United States because of her dad’s work. Going back and forth between the two countries and cultures gave her a sort of outsider’s perspective everywhere she was. She doesn’t describe that as being bad, and, in fact, she credits that experience for becoming more socially observational.

Hummasti is now an Associate Professor in the University of Utah’s School of Dance and has used her unique gaze to inform her work.

“The movement I create, the classroom conversations I facilitate, and the guest artists I bring in all aim to provide new ways of seeing the world for my students,” she said.

So, when she had the opportunity to bring acclaimed New York City film/installation artist, Maya Ciarrocchi, to campus with funding from a Dee Grant, she took it. Ciarrocchi works alongside Kris Grey, a queer performance and mixed media artist, and together the pair have a collaborative working methodology called Gender/Power, where they produce work that addresses social justice issues around power structures and gender.

Their creative process is uniquely collaborative.

When the duo came to campus — their first university visit ever — their engagement began in the classroom with what’s called table work. For the first three days of their visit, they facilitated conversations about expressions of gender, sense of gender, and what affects hierarchies and patriarchy. And they recorded it, transcribed it, and picked the most poignant stories to bring to the stage.

such stories.

Here are two

AIWAN’S gender norms are quite different from those in the United States, and it’s a difference that Lien Fan Shen, Associate Professor in Film & Media Arts at the University of Utah, knows well.

“In Taiwanese culture, women are not encouraged — and sometimes not even allowed — to do things that would make them stand out,” she said. “There, it’s really all about fitting in and being ‘normal.’”

Shen was born and grew up in Taiwan, and even now uses her artistic medium, animation, to examine some unique subsets of the overall gender construct in her home country.

When she started her work creating comic books, there was great pressure to tell stories with strong heterosexual romantic themes. Despite that, she’s been inspired to tell less traditional stories, including one that was probably the Still image of interviewee from Shen’s film first Taiwanese lesbian“Seeing Through the Eyes of Crocodiles”. themed comic book ever.

Her interest in atypical women’s lives grew, and paved the way for her most recent project, an animated film called “Seeing Through the Eyes of Crocodiles” about the lives of Ts, masculine lesbian women who resemble what Americans call tomboys. The film’s name plays off one of the first Taiwanese books to explicitly write about queer characters called “Notes of a Crocodile.”

“I wanted to explore what people would think about women who don’t conform,” she said. “But I wanted to do it from their point of view.”

Shen recorded interviews with six Ts on a trip to Taiwan funded, in part, by the University and the College of Fine Arts.

She took those stories and transformed the likeness of these women into animations.

She wanted to go beyond just representational media to find a sort of imaginary space between her and her subjects.

It allowed her to create ideas of these people and to represent what they imagine is their form of masculinity.

“Animating the interviews gave me the artistic freedom to create more abstract versions of these women. And, while much has changed in Taiwan, and even though I had their permission, I was fearful of the repercussions of outing these women to their families. It can still be remarkably hard on familial relationships to be different — and especially to be queer.”

The film has been screened at festivals all over the world, from Beijing to Seattle, and won multiple awards. She has more footage than would fit into the film and looks forward to where the continuation of this project will take her in the future.

GEND-ART RESEARCH ACROSS THE U

They then began devising the movement for those stories. With unique fluidity and strong collaboration, they created a script and staged material.

The culmination event, which also included a mini table session and intimate audience participation, was unlike anything most attendees had ever experienced.

The impact, even in such a short amount of time, was remarkably transformative.

“It was deeply profound to hear those involved describe the empowering experience of being able to vocalize their truths in a safe space and put into the forefront how limiting and harmful rigid heteronormativity can be,” Hummasti said. “Some, for the very first time ever, had a forum to use their voice — to articulate a pain or injustice. To take ownership. And to reclaim their power.”

If that isn’t ultimately perspective-changing, it’s hard to imagine what could be. ≠

Melonie Buchanan Murray, Dance In her traditional scholarly research, Melonie Buchanan Murray explores how gender is performed in early ballet training, and how traditional ballet training can reinforce cultural norms of gender performance. As a choreographer working in contemporary ballet, Murray is continually exploring ways to incorporate pointe work into timely themes that counter traditional modes of ballet and choreography. For example, she has choreographed for male dancers on pointe (without irony — not trockadero).

Kirstin Chavez, Music Kirstin Chavez’s work as a professional opera singer, and especially her new one-woman adaptation of the opera “Carmen” called “Carmen Inside Out,” dives deep into the function of the strong female spirit both in art and in community. She tries to impart all that her experiences have taught her to her students at the U.

Jane Hatter, Music Jane Hatter’s research investigates how complex music, traditionally associated with all-male ensembles of church musicians, functioned in women’s lives in the Renaissance, from music performed for women’s rituals in the early years of the Reformation to what a manuscript associated with the young Anne Boleyn can tell us about the role of women as singers in domestic devotions.

Beth Krensky, Art & Art History Beth Krensky is a gatherer of things — objects, words, spirit — and a connector of fragments, to make us whole. She often uses women’s stories to inform her work, which consists of sewn-together domestic textiles and children’s clothing.

V. Kim Martinez, Art & Art History While considering the emotional and physical effects women’s experiences have had on their persona and appearance, V. Kim Martinez makes paintings that are created from fragments of her memory of specific women, deconstructing their personalities, gender, and behaviors.

Photo: Ching-I Chang

Kate Mattingly, Dance Kate Mattingly’s research examines the intersections of dance criticism and the criteria audiences use to value specific artists. With a keen eye on systems of exclusion — racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia — that are present but undiscussed in many critics’ writing, she works to dismantle the hierarchies that prevent certain artists from being acknowledged and appreciated.

Jared Rawlings, Music Jared Rawlings investigates two intersections having to do with adolescent school-based music ensemble participation. The first intersection utilizes the frame of how society perceives musical instruments as possessing a particular gender (i.e., gender-based instrument stereotypes). Specifically, he’s interested in knowing if adolescents who are atypical or counter this stereotype are victimized by their peers in school. The second intersection examines homophobic name-calling and mental health.

Sarah Projansky, Film & Media Arts Sarah Projansky’s in-progress book manuscript, “Gender and the Transmedia Blockbuster Film Franchise,” traces shifts in the depiction of gender in major film franchises, from the 1990s to the present. As the franchise has come to dominate Hollywood film production, girls and women have moved from background, to sidekick, to ensemble member, to hero; boys and men have moved from solo hero to reluctant team player; and queer and racialized characters can carry a franchise film. Her book explores the impact these changes have had on both industry structure and the stories these films now tell.

Sarah Sinwell, Film & Media Arts Sarah Sinwell’s work on representations of gender, queer identity, and asexuality in contemporary film and media culture has appeared in “Women’s Studies Quarterly, Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives,” and “Indie Reframed: Women Filmmakers and Contemporary American Cinema.”

(Left to right) Maddie Andersen, Christine Glidden, and Shane Davis in dress rehearsal for Gender/Power.

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K

Photo: Sarah Knight Photography

INSIDE THE OFFICE OF

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A LOOK AT A LIFE DEDICATED TO JAZZ

KRIS The multi-talented musician, Kris Johnson, always has a project to pursue. As the Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Utah School of Music, a professional trumpet player, a composer/ arranger, and an educator, he leads a unique career that most musicians can’t even comprehend. But in his words, “You can’t complain about having too much on your plate when you wanted to eat. I signed up to be busy.”

BY ADAM GRIFFITHS

Photo: Sarah Knight Photography

Johnson is an award-winning jazz trumpeter and has appeared on an impressive list of albums, including four Grammy-nominated releases with the Count Basie Orchestra, Tony Bennett, and Karen Clark Sheard. He has appeared at some of the world’s most prestigious jazz venues, including the Apollo Theater, the Blue Note Jazz Club (U.S. and Japan), Sydney Opera House, Blues Alley, and the Hollywood Bowl.

He is decorated with many awards and honors, including receiving an ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers award, and in 2012 he was selected as one of 25 Detroit performing and literary artists to receive a Kresge Artist Fellowship.

Johnson recently released an album by The Kris Johnson Group & Lulu Fall entitled “The Unpaved Road.” A few months prior to this release, he received attention for his original musical, “Jim Crow’s Tears,” which examines the controversial practice of blackface minstrelsy in the 19th and early 20th century. This work is written for six ensemble members, a jazz ensemble, and a chamber orchestra, and combines a variety of musical genres, including jazz, hip-hop, pop, and R&B. “The Utah Review” said of this work, “’Jim Crow’s Tears’ emerges as a masterful exemplar championing jazz not as a racial but as a cultural phenomenon. Johnson is astonishing in his depth and ease at writing jazz music that echoes virtually every point of its historical development.”

Johnson said, “I wanted to shed light on the painful stereotypes that the media has adopted from minstrel shows and spark dialogue about what we can do to combat the damage it’s done to the world’s perception of African Americans.”

“Jim Crow’s Tears” has gone through many iterations since its first performance in 2007 and was performed in March 2017 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.

Every musical virtuoso begins somewhere, and Johnson says that one of his first significant performance experiences was attending the Detroit Jazz Festival with his brother Kurt during his freshman year of high school. He was inspired watching trumpet player Dwight Adams perform.

“I was blown away by his fearlessness, soul, expression, and his command over his instrument,” Johnson said. “I knew that I HAD to learn how to do that, even though I had no belief that I was capable of it, I knew that I was supposed to figure it out. Kind of like destiny or some other cheesy cliché, but it was very real! This set me on the course of listening, studying, and seeking out how this music worked.”

Shortly before his senior year of high school, he attended a concert tribute to Louis Armstrong led by Roy Hargrove. Also performing that night was trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, who Johnson said became his hero. Following the concert, Johnson approached Gordon, who invited him to attend a set at the Village Vanguard with Eric Reed the following night that was, in his words, “hands down the best concert I’ve ever seen.” He expanded, “I didn’t fully realize at the time how spoiled this performance would make me. How much it would tarnish my perspective of what to expect from a live concert, but it set the bar VERY high and I immediately got to work.”

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Photo: Sarah Knight Photography Johnson, surrounded by instruments and technology, works at his office in the iconic David Gardner Hall on the University of Utah campus.

“

…technical issues block my expression…I believe in streamlining practice, technology, or any other tools used for my art.

”

Johnson finds that the best way to stay motivated as a performer, educator, and composer/arranger is to always work towards a project.

“It’s very rare for me to write something without a specific purpose. The music will be used for something, so it becomes a priority.”

However, he doesn’t necessarily encourage his students to be as busy as he is.

“I’m wired differently than other people because I like to be busy and I’m capable of a big workload.” He believes the key to his success is being thorough and efficient. “I hate getting weighed down with technical issues that block my expression or freedom, so I believe in streamlining practice, technology, or any other tools used for my art.”

Johnson sees his position at the U as a chance to educate the students and community about Black American Music, establish himself as a leader of the local arts scene, and continue to perform, compose, arrange, and educate around the world.

“My teaching philosophy is centered around mentorship, mastery of universal musical principles, and the pursuit of artistic expression through our creative output,” he said. “I want my students to have fruitful careers as performers, educators, composers, arrangers, music producers, or whatever else they find themselves drawn towards. The lessons I focus on prepare them for a wide variety of professional activities; how it’s applied is completely up to them.”

He finds success with his students in being honest and straightforward with them.

“I demand a lot out of them and push them to always challenge themselves and not accept mediocrity or laziness. All that does is block us from our goals.”

Johnson continues to find new and exciting projects to engage in, including a new web-series he’s launched, entitled “Office Hours with Kris Johnson.” He explained, “The concept is simple: provide FREE highquality music lessons to students around the world on concepts ranging from improvisation, business, composition, arranging, technology, and whatever else is on my mind that I want to share with students.”

To any aspiring artist, here are Johnson’s words of advice: “Be passionate about what you do and don’t try to separate your art from your life. You are what you create and what you create is who you are. Enjoy the journey and respect your craft and the legacy that has allowed you to be the artist that you are. Be thorough, expressive, and intentional in all of your pursuits.” ≠

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Carol Sogard

BY JULIA LYON

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Carol Sogard believes the job of a graphic designer isn’t just to create great design, but to ask questions.

About branding and business, of course — but also about life.

“How are we going to live on this earth in a sustainable way that provides for our children and our grandchildren?” she said.

The Associate Professor reshaped what seems most disposable — plastic bags — for a recent exhibit at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. The chairs, stools and tote bags with tightly woven, geometric designs are what she calls functional art. And they echo her fundamental principle.

“You may or may not be able to get people to change their consumption habits, but that waste can be reclaimed, reformatted, and reused,” she noted.

Sogard sees a growing number of graphic designers who are — like her — concerned about the impact that their often disposable products are having on the earth.

Her increasingly popular course on sustainable design in the Department of Art & Art History asks University of Utah students to reflect on the same questions.

“Stop” a 35" x 35" x 4" piece made from woven reclaimed plastic bags.

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The class came to life when the Utah Museum of Fine Arts told Sogard of a planned exhibit on sustainability. Recognizing her interest in the field, the museum asked if she could help create student work for the show.

But the class continued beyond that project, finding new and inventive ways to apply their graphic design skills to community challenges. One year, students collaborated with Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment to design Facebook posts about Utah’s air quality problem. The group of health care professionals used the students’ graphics during bad air days to encourage people to drive less, take the bus more, and stop idling their cars.

Sogard knows the class, now in its fourth year, can make students think differently about their future careers.

“It teaches students that they can use their creative abilities to benefit their community,” said Sogard, who has been teaching design in Utah for almost two decades. “It’s creativity for a cause, rather than for consumerism.”

Assistant Professor Henry Becker has been struck by the provocative questions in Sogard’s sustainable design course — not just about the environment but also about their profession. Designers can make a choice about who they work for and what that reflects.

“If a designer is making $40,000 a year at a cigarette company, but millions of people are buying cigarettes and hundreds of thousands are getting lung cancer — is that $40,000 worth you going to sleep at night?” he said.

(Left) “Petitie Thunderbird Chair” and (right) “Wisdom Chair and Stooble,” both from woven reclaimed plastic bags, plastic mesh, reclaimed billboard vinyl, wood, and plastic bucket.

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“ It’s creativity for a cause, rather than for consumerism. ” With the rise of the smart phone and the explosion of social media, typical students have an increased consciousness of design before they ever set foot on campus.

“Your average Instagram user is being taught how to curate, photograph, crop, and communicate an idea or a brand for themselves,” Sogard said. “That’s at the heart of what design is.”

That shift likely plays a role in the fact that University of Utah’s Graphic Design program — while always popular—is now the largest undergraduate major emphasis area within the Studio BFA program in the Department of Art & Art History.

Sogard, who is currently Head of the area, is also an alumna, having received her MFA from the program.

She understands that the specialty gives students, who are interested in art, a way to have a career that’s commercially viable. The professors keep standards high and provide professional opportunities.

Students have a portfolio interview at the end of the first year of graphic design classes to determine who moves on, based on performance and professionalism.

“Upon graduation, we want our students to obtain quality design positions at agencies that produce awardwinning work.” Sogard said. “That starts with good work habits and being self-critical of your own work.”

The U has a close partnership with multiple businesses in Utah that welcome student interns before graduation. Often, those students are hired into a design position directly after their internship.

About 90 percent of students who graduate from the graphic design program work in the field.

Sydney Bishop is one of those students. A 2016 graduate of the program, she now works at Salt Lake City-based creative agency Jibe Media. Before graduating, she collaborated with Sogard on a zine about food waste titled “Chew This.” The project led Bishop, who worked on photography and illustration for the zine, to make changes to her own life such as better meal planning.

And she thinks it shows the power of graphic design.

“I think it makes people pay more attention,” Bishop said. “Sometimes stats and charts are really boring, but not when they’re hand-drawn on top of pictures of banana peels.”

Sogard’s creative output is built on the style of inquiry that her colleague Associate Professor Dan Evans hopes graduating students take with them.

“That kind of curiosity and engagement… is the kind of thinking we want to instill,” he said. “By really training them to engage their process: how do you get results rather than mimicking other people’s work?”

Sogard’s investigative style carries over to her administrative duties as head of the Graphic Design Emphasis.

“She wants our ideas — she is constantly looking for ways to improve our program,” said Evans, who described Sogard as a “completely generous” academic colleague.

She even manages their internship program and maintains relationships with graphic design firms throughout the city to make it succeed.

In Becker’s two years at the University of Utah, he’s seen Sogard consistently exceed expectations for both colleagues and students.

“Carol has not only been a great mentor to myself, but she’s been an extremely great mentor to every student that’s encountered her,” he said.

Former student Mike Harris, who now works at Contravent, remembers one of her guiding principles: “We should not necessarily marry an idea or become too attached because the next day or after a presentation it could be lying dead on the floor,” said Harris. “For students who end up working in a design or advertising agency, that ability to let go of an idea, iterate, and evolve is an incredible asset.”

Her sustainability course didn’t exist when he was at the U, but it was her focus on fundamentals in the foundational classes that he carries with him now — and other students do too.

“From a professional design point of view, she’s laid the groundwork for what became some great designers in Utah,” he said. ≠

“Wisdom Eyes” a 15.5" x 49" piece made from woven reclaimed plastic bags.

“ [The sustainable design course] teaches students that they can use their creative abilities to benefit their community. ”

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Theatre Spotlight Salt Lake Theatre Greats Cast as Professors

TAKING THE STAGE

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of paying it forward…”

BY JULIA LYON

“ There’s a culture

HE bright lights of Utah theatre shone on the University of Utah Department of Theatre this school year, giving students an unprecedented opportunity to learn from multiple local experts.

“It never hurts to study with the master,” said Gage Williams, the Department Chair. “And these are people who are not only very advanced in directing and leadership, but they’re also very conscious of what’s going on in the theatre today and the skills the students need.”

Cynthia Fleming, the Executive Artistic Director of Salt Lake Acting Company, Karen Azenberg, the Artistic Director of Pioneer Theatre Company, and Jerry Rapier, the Artistic Director of Plan-B Theatre Company, taught acting, discussed playwriting, mentored, and inspired students in a variety of courses from fall to spring.

Although the U regularly brings in theatre experts to work with students, it’s unique to have these three local leaders at the same time.

Studying with them may be the first step toward a career in Salt Lake City and beyond.

“When you have a professional come into your classroom, it makes the stakes greater,” Williams said.

Fleming, who performed in “A Chorus Line” on Broadway, worked with students to create their own version of the hit musical, using material from their own lives. The Musical Theatre senior class project is a student-driven show: some students write while others perform. Some make costumes or design scenery.

“It’s like this room is one theatre company putting on a show,” said Fleming, who attended the University of Utah, which “completely changed my life.”

“Saying ‘yes’ to teaching these students was a gift I gave myself,” Fleming said. “I am really too busy to be doing this, but I absolutely love to mentor and to see people reach their goals or even potential beyond what they thought they had.”

As a student, Fleming worked at Pioneer Theatre, which is an independent institution housed on campus but affiliated with the university. The experience was so powerful that she helped create a program at SLAC, where students can act and work behind the scenes.

Pioneer continues to hire students to assist with its productions. In addition, three seniors from the U Actor Training Program participate each semester in an internship program created by Azenberg and Associate Professor Chris DuVal. Those students are either an actor or understudy in a production and help the crew with everything from wardrobe to the business office.

The connections the students make can be life changing.

“The people coming here who are working professionals are great contacts,” explained Azenberg, who is the former Executive Board President of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. “These students have a little bit of a lifeline in a very big city and someone they can call up and say, ‘Let’s have a cup of coffee, because I have a few questions.’”

This spring, Pioneer Theatre’s Artistic Director taught a class at the U on professional practices. Azenberg, who came to Pioneer after a New York-based career as a director and choreographer, taught students about the realities of auditions and resumes while introducing them to professional actors, directors, and playwrights who came from across the country to work at Pioneer. She hopes they learned that being successful means appreciating the diverse cast that makes a show go on from the set painter to the wardrobe designer.

“There’s a culture of paying it forward in the theatre community,” Azenberg said.

Photo: Sarah Knight Photography

(Left to right) Jerry Rapier, Karen Azenberg, Cynthia Fleming

“There’s a sense that somebody offered me a hand at one point and that we need to keep doing that,” she said.

“Why not let it be these students who get that help?”

Jerry Rapier, who has been Plan B’s artistic leader for 17 seasons, last taught at the U more than a decade ago. The Artistic Director’s teaching focus is on Queer Theatre. In light of the shift surrounding LGBTQ issues, he described the return after 10 years as “eye-opening.”

“The world has quite literally changed,” he said.

“The canon of queer theatre has proportionately expanded and is far more gender-balanced, far more inclusive of the experiences of transgender persons and people of color.”

He exposed students to that canon this spring through the work of two-dozen playwrights. The class was able to interact with many of those artists: three via Skype and four in person.

“I would have lost my mind to be able to do something like that as an undergrad,” Rapier said. ≠

On Campus this Year Laurie Langdon As part of the Department of Theatre’s ongoing commitment to exposing performing arts students to high caliber professionals, Laurie Langdon, a former Houston Ballet soloist and dance captain of “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, taught core dance and theatre-style classes in the Musical Theatre Program. She also helped Assistant Professor Denny Berry with the choreography for the fall production of the show “Steel Pier.”

Berry, now the Head of the Musical Theater Program at the U, was the original Broadway Dance Captain of “Phantom.”

Langdon hopes her varied career inspires students.

“You can make it in the real world,” she said. “You can see your name in a Playbill program. They can see Denny’s name on the title page.”

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Roderick George

The Alche Turning obstacles into opportunities

by Kate Mattingly

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Many artists have come across the adage, “Turn obstacles into opportunities.” Whether it’s tackling a difficult piano sonata or working with a new brush and palette, challenging experiences can open ways of discovering untapped potential or more creative approaches.

In the world of dance, however, where an artist’s medium is their own body, grappling with physical limitations can be daunting.

As choreographer Roderick George explains, “My career led me to be extremely creative. Being very small and being of color, I knew my career would not go far in the States. That’s why I moved to Europe and was celebrated for being me, not for being ‘different.’

It crushed me when I auditioned for Juilliard and I was demonstrating exercises and everyone loved me. I thought I was definitely going to get in, but I didn’t.”

This moment of disappointment was followed by years of achievements. George danced with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet before joining European companies, such as Theater Basel and The Forsythe Company.

“As I kept going, I realized my body is my weapon,” says George. “I had a great career as a dancer, and because of my own experiences, I can sense when

someone feels defeated. Ballet in the States is still haunted by old ideas of what dance is ‘supposed’ to look like. We have to break this habit. Especially in 2018.”

In September of 2017, George returned to the U.S. for five weeks to work with ballet dancers at the University of Utah’s School of Dance. He taught classes and created a new work for six women called “F.E.M. Queen” that was performed in November.

His own experiences as a professional shape the ways he teaches and creates today. The students in “F.E.M. Queen” say the project changed their perspectives on what’s possible.

As dancer Savanna Hunter recalls, “I learned a lot about fear while working with Roderick. If you are afraid of a step or an emotion, then you’re never going to be able to make it happen. I was terrified walking into the studio for my first rehearsal, and I was terrified of the type of dancing he wanted to see, but I learned to look at that fear as a challenge. Working with Roderick and putting myself in a situation where I could reframe fear as a challenge enabled me to try something drastically different.”

George began his creation of “F.E.M. Queen” by asking questions like: What does it mean to be a feminist? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a dancer in a university?

em st.

Photo: Dat Nguyen

“Every piece I did with Bill [Forsythe] started with the dancers sitting down and talking about certain things,” he said. “Or Bill would give us books or poems to read to get engaged. The work was mentally involving, not just something you did physically on stage with your brain shut down.”

In “F.E.M. Queen,” George’s choreography merges ballet with styles seen in clubs and contemporary movement.

“I have heard it said that it takes two hours to learn one minute of choreography,” said Hunter. “Roderick had no problem ignoring that rule. I remember one rehearsal where we learned about seven minutes of choreography in roughly three hours.

He spits out material faster than anyone else I have ever worked with, and he always demonstrated full-out, which was helpful. His movement quality is very fluid and detailed, so it took us a day or so in the beginning to pick up exactly what he wanted, but once we started to get it, we had a lot of fun trying all of the crazy, impossible-looking things he wanted us to do.”

During the Utah Ballet shows, students performed a range of pieces. The show opened with August

“I realized my body is my weapon.”

Bournonville’s “Konservatoriat” (choreographed in 1849) and closed with “F.E.M. Queen.”

George’s choreography was set to music created by J’Kerian Morgan, a.k.a. LOTIC. “He’s a resident of Berlin and also a Houstonian like me,” says George. “I discovered him as an opening act to Björk. He was a producer as well for her latest album.”

The lighting design for “F.E.M. Queen” by Cole Adams created a riveting landscape of shadows and columns of illumination. In many ways the arc of the evening’s choreography — from Bournonville to George — mirrored the evolution of ballet, from refined and delicate to scintillating and evocative.

In “F.E.M. Queen,” the women’s sense of assurance and camaraderie was palpable, and during the shows, audiences were cheering and clapping throughout George’s piece. Unfortunately, he could not be there to witness its impact: he’s so in demand as a choreographer, he had to fly back to Europe where his own company performed another creation one week later.

A career that may have been curtailed by a rejection from Juilliard ended up being a wealth of opportunities for a brilliant and distinct artist. ≠

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Art Around the World

E [ AR

Art, by its very nature,

BY MARINA GOMBERG

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transcends the confines of space and time. It can cross borders, often isn’t limited by language, can outlast its creators, and be understood across cultures.

In many cases, art can transport its audiences to unknown places, and for the most fortunate artists and scholars, the creation and study of art can be that which takes them to foreign territories.

The faculty members in the University of Utah’s Department of Art & Art History have been inspired by, exhibited, or done research in cities, landscapes, villages, and towns on every continent (even Antarctica!) on Earth.

When art is the vehicle, anywhere can be the destination.

“Tashlich” 2014, solo performance, Great Salt Lake , Tooele, Utah.

Photo: Josh Blumental

RT ] H

Image: Ed Bateman

Still image from the video entitled “Cinématographe, 1907” by Edward Bateman, which was recently screened in Florence, Italy.

BETH KRENSKY

EDWARD BATEMAN

For Art & Art History Professor Beth Krensky, global ventures aren’t a matter of happenstance — it’s often the underlying driver of her work.

Krensky, alongside George Rivera, Garrison Roots, Dennis Dalton, and Luis Valdevino founded an artist collective in 1996 called Artnauts that “uses the visual arts as a tool for addressing global issues while connecting with artists from around the world.” The collective, which is still thriving today, works at “the intersection of critical consciousness and contemporary artistic practice to impact change.”

For Krensky, Artnauts wasn’t just a channel through which to exhibit work; it helped her understand her role as a human being.

The interactions she had with people all over the world — artists and non-artists alike — made her realize that art and life are about finding ways to connect on a human level.

“When I was in Chile for an exhibition in 1998 just after Pinochet had been overthrown, we got an unexpected and serendipitous chance to visit with the Mothers of the Disappeared,” she said. “For hours, we got to speak with these brave women who had all lost children during the country’s recent military dictatorship, and the experience changed my life.”

These “fierce warriors,” as Krensky described them, had lost that which meant the most to them, and were still so driven by love. Driven to connect. To support. And to challenge their own fears to fight for justice.

Justice, it turns out, is a key theme in much of Krensky’s work.

And, when the entire world is your proverbial canvas, the fodder and market for subversive art is plentiful. Perhaps that’s why, in addition to her travels and exhibitions through the collective, Krensky, has been invited to show her work across the globe — from here in Salt Lake City’s Utah Museum of Fine Arts to Israel, Greece, Columbia, Venice, South Africa, and more. ≠

One way to get from a particular destination to another is to build a bridge. And that, metaphorically speaking, is how Art & Art History Associate Professor Edward Bateman has made his way around the globe.

Bateman earned his MFA from the University of Utah in 2003 and joined the faculty five years later. He now leads the Photography and Digital Imaging area in the Department of Art & Art History.

Up to that point, though, he hadn’t been a big traveler and what he did do was largely domestic.

Fast-forward to now, and he’s now exhibited his work in 25 countries, including the United States, and received numerous international awards, including being short-listed twice for the prestigious Lumen Prize in 2014 and 2016, and was a juror the year between.

Becoming world-renowned wasn’t Bateman’s objective, but it has most certainly become his reality.

Of course, his art has been chosen for exhibition worldwide by its own merit, but he credits the relationships he’s cultivated for much of his international visibility.

It all started when he Googled himself one day, and to his surprise found that a publication in Lithuania had written about his work.

He emailed the author, Greta Grendait, to thank her, and that one expression of gratitude sparked a relationship that he says is the first of many that have granted him opportunities from Poland to China and from New Zealand to Budapest.

Bateman’s curiosity and warmth through his travels has turned strangers into acquaintances, acquaintances into friends, and friendships into art opportunities — all over the world.

“I love what MacArthur Genius Teresita Fernández said in her commencement address at Virginia Commonwealth University back in 2013,” he said and quoted her. “‘You don’t need a lot of friends or curators or patrons or a huge following, just a few that really believe in you.’ I truly believe that. My bridges are friendships that have taught me that our world is a smaller, more caring place.” ≠

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Artists & Guest Artist Scholars

At the University of Utah College of Fine Arts, students learn from some of the top faculty in the country. But that is not all; each semester, each academic unit brings to campus world-renowned artists who offer master classes, give public lectures, screen films, host discussions, and ultimately broaden the breadth and depth of exploration into all areas of study. During the past year alone, these artists were brought to campus to share their knowledge and expertise with us.

Art & Art History Photo: Antimodular Research

Mark Anderson • Aaron Coleman • Flinching Eye Collective • Adela Goldbard Gavin Kroeber • Rafael Lozano-Hemmer • Wade MacDonald • Eva and Franco Mattes Lori Nelson • Lance Wyman • Yan Xing — Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, born in Mexico in 1967, is an electronic artist who develops interactive installations at the intersection of architecture and performance art. He creates platforms for the public that, as he puts it, perverts technologies such as robotics and computerized surveillance. Lozano-Hemmer also is inspired by phantasmagoria, dusted with light and shadow works. His works have swept the world, from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to the Borusand Contemporary in Instanbul.

Dance Bene Arnold • Anna Azrieli • Michelle Boulé • Debra Clydesdale • Thierry De Mey Mads Eriksen • Katie Faulkner • Roderick George • Gino Grenek • Calvin Kitten Shinichi and Dana lova Koga • Joanna Kotze • Anthony Krurtzkamp • Susan Jaffe Bill T. Jones • Gabrielle Lamb • Victoria Morgan • Matthew Neenan • Jerry Opdenaker Stephanie Marie Powell • Jeff Rogers • Ihsan Rustem • Penny Saunders • Katie Scherman Idan Shirabi • Kevin Thomas • Michele Wiles • Jesse Zaritt — Ever the dancer, Roderick George undertook classic training at the Houston Ballet Academy, studied modern techniques at The Alvin Ailey School and performed for President George W. Bush at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. George has performed across continents, and along the way, found a passion for choreography at institutions from Canada to Germany, Mexico City, Tel-Aviv and Zurich, among others.

Film & Media Arts Peter Baxter • Emron Grover • Katrina McPherson — Peter Baxter is a filmmaker, president, and co-founder of Slamdance, a film festival that is simultaneous with the annual Sundance Film Festival, both in Park City, Utah. Baxter has developed Slamdance’s showcase for “emerging artists organized by filmmakers for filmmakers.” Its main feature competition includes drama, comedy, romance, zombie, all “films with an original vision.” Baxter is known for his “Wild in the Streets,” “I Want to Be an American” and “Spirit Game.”

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Music Photo: Decca Andrew Eccles

Apollon Musagete Quartet • Dustin Barr • Rob Brandt • Ronald Brautigam James Brinkmann • Leone Buyse • Vera Calabria • Meredith Campbell • Yu-Hui Chang Caleb Curtis • Timothy Deighton • Buddy Deshler • Doric String Quartet • Dover Quartet Faure Piano Quartet • Wen Flatt • Renée Fleming • Glenda Goodman Maxine Gordon • Jamie Rose Guarrine • Eric Hanson • Leslie Harlow • Russell Harlow Melissa Heath • Jake Heggie • Leslie Henrie • Michael Hersch • Horszowski Trio Kevin Kenner • Karl Knapp • Luan Jian • Doug Lawrence • Scott Lewis Alex Marshall • Crista Miller • Moby-Dick creators • Carla Moore Navy Band Northwest Chamber Ensembles • Pacifica String Quartet • Sergio Pallotteli Hugh Palmer • Keith Robinson • Roomful of Teeth • Joel Rosenberg • Christopher Scheer Shanghai Quartet • Sichuan University Art Troupe • Logan Skelton • Nadine Stark James Thompson • Robert Tueller • Frank Weinstock • Artem Yasynaskyy • John Bruce Yeh — The globally admired soprano and multi-talented Renée Fleming has performed across the world, using her sumptuous voice, consummate artistry, and compelling state presence. In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded her with the National Medal of Arts, and in 2014, Fleming was the first classical artist to ever sing “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl. This year, Fleming will make her Broadway musical debut in a revival of Rodger and Hammerstein’s “Carousel.” Among her multiple endeavors, she also has advocated for literacy and, in 2008, debuted her “La Voce,” a perfume whose proceeds benefit the Metropolitan Opera.

Kevin Asselin • Karen Azenberg • Klea Blackhurst • Stephen Boxer • Amanda Bowen Ty Burrell • Ken Cerniglia • Clayborn Elder • Frantic Assembly • Tom Glynn-Carney • Frank Hont Geena Jeffries • Amy Jensen • Scott Kaiser • Michael Legg • Dan Lupowitz • Kamella Tate Eugene O’Neill • Tim Orr • Elbert Peck Justin Peck • Andrew Rawle • Jamie Rocha Pomeroy-Allan • Louise Poulton • Tara Rubin • Aoise Stratford — Frantic Assembly, co-founded by Artistic Director Scott Graham, is an internationally renowned theatre company, inspiring innovative practice and unlocking creative potential.

The company has toured extensively across Great Britain, and worked in more that 40 countries. One such production is “Fatherland,” a bold show about contemporary fatherhood in all its complexities and contradictions. Inspired by conversations with fathers and sons, the show explores identity and masculinity in a world weighed down by the expectation of others.

Photo: Dat Nguyen

Photo: Frantic Assembly and Manuel Harlan

Theatre

School of Dance students Brooklyn Draper and Bayley Smallwood perform Associate Professor Pamela Geber Handman’s “before she sleeps in the sand” from the 2017 Performing Dance Company.

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Skip Daynes

A PIANO PIONEER

by Marina Gomberg

D

aynes Music Company, the largest Steinway piano dealer west of New York, is legendary in Utah. As it should be. Since 1862, and sometimes with more grit and stress than others, the Daynes family has worked to keep alive the business that has supported and elevated the entire region’s creative and cultural landscape.

At the helm for the last 50 years as the company’s fourth generation owner is Skip Daynes, who also has played a pivotal role in the stability and growth of Salt Lake City’s arts scene. It’s in his blood.

His grandfather co-founded the Utah Symphony, his father lent space to what is now Ballet West during the 1960s (when it was called the Utah Civic Ballet), and Daynes did the same for Utah Opera, lending one of his stores as their home for 10 years.

“My great granduncle was the first organist for the Mormon Tabernacle choir,” Daynes said. “And our family’s deep appreciation for music has lived on ever since.”

In fact, it was preserving that legacy that inspired Daynes to envision new ways of contributing to the vibrancy of the state’s love of music. Utah, after all, has more pianos per capita of any state, and it’s hard to imagine the Daynes family not having a significant impact regarding that statistic.

In 1980, Daynes was a bishop for a Mormon congregation on the campus of the University of Utah.

It was his strong connection to the university, especially having attending before taking over the family business

36 STUDIO / 2018

from his father, that sparked the idea of making the U’s School of Music an All-Steinway School.

It would be no easy feat, but Daynes isn’t afraid of a challenge.

“When I was eight years old, my dad sent me up to work on Jeremy Ranch,” he said laughing. “He thought if I could grow up to run a farm, it would be easier than sustaining the piano business. But there is nothing easy about throwing hay and tending to hundreds of animals.

It’s where I learned to work hard, and I’m so glad for it.”

For nearly 40 years now, Daynes has generously given to the U’s School of Music his time, resources, and talents.

His contributions started with donated piano completion prizes and delivering pianos with his own two hands for master classes and concerts.

It grew to include funding for piano graduate assistantships for many years, donated pianos (many donated pianos!), and the fundraising support to secure the $1.5 million gift that led to the School of Music being the first university in the country to receive the prestigious All-Steinway School designation, and a second gift of $2.1 million to maintain that status.

Like a business person who’s weathered the winds of time, he’s keenly aware of technology’s influence on music making. As such, he’s also helped secure a major gift from the Sorenson Legacy Foundation to build a technology lab in the School of Music’s home, David P. Gardner Hall.

“I’m so proud of my family’s contributions to the arts community here. And for as long as I’m around and capable, we’ll continue to give.” ≠

“I’m so proud of my family’s contributions to the arts community here. And for as long as I’m around and capable, we’ll continue to give.”

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Thank You

T

HE faculty, staff, and especially the students in the College of Fine Arts thank our generous donors for their contributions of $1,000 or more

to the College and its five academic units from July 1, 2016 enhanced education, empowered many, and inspired us all.

INDIVIDUALS

Connoisseur ($25,000 +)

If you’re interested in supporting the work of the College of Fine Arts and its academic units, visit finearts.utah.edu

Fred M. and Linda M. Babcock L. Frank and Jean J. Bentley

Gordon L. and Connie R. Hanks

Peter and Margaret Billings

Anne Osborn Poelman

William R. Bireley

Dorothy M. Ware

Danne L. and Anne Buchanan

Jack R. Wheatley

Lisa Marie Chaufty and Miguel Chuaqui Howard S. and Betty B. Clark

Aficionado ($10,000–$24,999) Anonymous Lee A. Hollaar and Audrey Mack Hollaar Andrea Dumke and Mike Manship

Benefactor ($5,000–$9,999)

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Anonymous

Kem C. and Carolyn B. Gardner

Richard I. and Judy Winwood

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Patron ($2,500–$4,999)

Marian A. Connelly-Jones Sarah M. and Matthew M. DeVoll Kent C. and Martha H. DiFiore Ezekiel R. and Analecia A. Dumke Sue J. Ellis Lisa L. and Eric Evans Ira N. and Lili Field Kevin Grimmett

Susan G. Gaskill

J. Chris and Sandra L. Hemmersmeier

Deborah and Gregory A. Magness

Leo & Harriet Hopf

Darin L. and Rachelle M. Parker

David R. Markland

David E. and Shari H. Quinney

Colin and Katherine Potter

Harris H. and Amanda P. Simmons

J. Steven Price

Michael L. and Micki N. Sobieski

Jim L. and Bonita Robertson

Roger H. and Colleen K. Thompson

Bruce and Sara Robinson

William R. and Barbara Y. Welke

W. Gary and Darcy E. Sandberg

Photo: Brittany Palmer

through June 30, 2017. Their incredible generosity has

School of Music Harpist Melody Cribbs.

Danny and Nicky Soulier

Jonathan H. and Colleen Horne

Raymond Tymas-Jones

Lisa B. and Thomas A. Johnson

Anthony R. Wallin and Jennifer Price-Wallin

Karl E. and Susan Lind

Von H. and Virginia M. Whitby

Donald B. and Mary O. Lloyd

Paul L. and Marilyn D. Whitehead

Doralee Durham Madsen J. Michael and Mary A. Mattsson

Advocate ($1,000–$2,499)

Paul G. and Alison R. Mayfield Sarah Projansky and Kent A. Ono

Anonymous

Diana J. and Joel C. Peterson

Michael J. and Diane M. Anderson

Leon and Karen F. Peterson

Bene C. Arnold

Zelie D. Pforzheimer

Sandi Jo Behnken

Douglas K. and Wyn Pottratz

Martin and Mary Anne Berzins

Joyce T. Rice

Kenneth J. and Kristina F. Burton

Scott L. and Lesli P. Rice

Thomas D. and Joanne A. Coppin

Anne W. and Michael Riffey

Ezekiel R. Dumke, Jr.

John M. and Martha M. Veranth

Spencer P. and Kristine L. Eccles

David S. Richardson and Amy C. Wadsworth

George B. and Debra G. Felt

Susan R. Warshaw

Jerome C.and Abby L. Fiat

Art Woolston and Connie Jo Hepworth-Woolston

Susan Faye Flemming

Jon Paul Yerby

David P. and Sheila S. Gardner Ralph and Rosie Gochnour Kathie K. and Charles H. Horman

“My mother, Marion Stiebel Siciliano, an abstract painter, understood first-hand how important funding is to artists. She and my father, University of Utah alumnus Rocco Siciliano, provided an endowment for artists at the U. to provide much-needed support to students pursuing their dreams in the fine arts.”

Maria Siciliano 39 STUDIO / 2018

Photo: Luke Isley

tha School of Dance Ballet Student

Madeleine Scott.

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ORGANIZATIONS AND FOUNDATIONS

Connoisseur ($25,000 +)

Patron ($2,500–$4,999)

Kenneth P. and Sally R. Burbidge Foundation I

Emma Eccles Jones Foundation

James R. and Nanette S. Michie Foundation

Galleries West, Inc.

Sorenseon Legacy Foundation

Love Communications/ Studio Love

ank you Magicspace Entertainment

Aficionado ($10,000–$24,999) ArtWorks For Kids

Brent and Bonnie Jean Beesley Foundation

Kenneth P. and Sally Rich Burbidge Foundation II Dick and Timmy Burton Foundation

Kent C. & Martha H. DiFiore Family Foundation Nancy Peery Marriott Foundation

Robert & Barbara Patterson Family

Memorial Foundation

The Presser Foundation

Salt Lake City Arts Council

State Farm Companies Foundation

Advocate ($1,000–$2,499)

McCarthey Family Foundation

The Rodney Brady Family Foundation

W. Mack and Julia S. Watkins Foundation Trust

Arthur J. Gallagher Foundation Elizabeth S. Hunter Trust

Benefactor ($5,000–$9,999)

Lennox A. Larson Trust

Janet Q. Lawson Foundation

Anonymous

Prescott Muir Architects, P.C.

The B.W. Bastian Foundation

Sentry Financial Corporation

M. Lynn Bennion Foundation

Craig &Connie Thatcher Foundation

E.J. Bird Foundation

Verizon Foundation

Edward L. Burton Foundation

Wells Fargo Foundation

Lawrence T. and Janet T. Dee Foundation

George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation General Federation of Women's Clubs of Utah S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney Foundation

The Bertram H. and Janet M. Schaap Trust O. C. Tanner Company

“My husband and I find

ourselves on the University campus several nights a week attending student performances. The exceptional quality of the work from the students here is remarkable. Not only does it make us incredibly proud of our University, but it invariably brings us gratifying pleasure. The Arts are a major contributor to human cognition. The student artists, as well as we, the audience, discover our own individual responses in what we see, hear, and feel, often in an unexpected capacity and unlike any other experience. It frequently brings us enlightenment and a momentary relief and renewed comfort from the anxiety in today's world. Any support we can provide to the students and their departments gives us enormous pleasure. We are reimbursed tenfold by their artistic endeavors.”

Anne Cullimore Decker

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Non Profit Org U.S. Postage

This is a scene from graduate student Walter Mirkšs’ film, “Endure,”

PAID

Salt Lake City, UT Permit #1529

S

THE PLACE WHERE DILIGENCE AND E XC ELL ENC E B ECOM E INFLUENC E

Photo: Walter Mirkšs

University of Utah College of Fine Arts 375 S. 1530 E. Room 250 Salt Lake City, UT 84112 — finearts.utah.edu

which he produced for his Advanced Film Production class. It tells the story of a young man trying to find peace and resolution after losing his mother.

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