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T h u r s d a y, M a r c h 3 1 , 2 0 1 6 | U s i s h i e l d . c o m | v o l . 4 6 i s s u e 2 7
Annual show to highlight FRUSTRATION student work
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MOTIVATION
Photo by alyssa smith | The Shield
Sporting a shirt that reads “mud-slinging pyromaniac,” senior art major Denise “Mickie” Streets uses the pottery wheel as she works on a ceramic mug Monday in the Dowhie Ceramics Studio. Streets will have two of her ceramic sculptures shown in the Juried Student Art Exhibition April 3-May 1 in the McCutchan Art Center/Pace Galleries.
by abigail suddarth acsuddarth@eagles.usi.edu Denise “Mickie” Streets will graduate this April with one of her sons. Streets came from a family of painters, but failed art as a child because she wasn’t good at drawing. A few years ago, she decided to go to college, where she discovered 3D art and her potential. She participated in the student art exhibition all four years. The McCutchan Art Center/Pace Galleries will hold its annual Juried Student Art Exhibition April 3–May 1 to showcase student artwork ranging from paintings to sculptures. The university hires a non-university affiliated juror to select about 150 pieces of artwork from the 450-500 pieces submitted each year. Streets submitted two ceramic sculptures into the gallery, both of which
were accepted. “It’s extremely stressful because you don’t know what (the juror’s) aesthetic is, you don’t know what their favorite medium is. You don’t know (if) they are going to prefer large over small pieces or paintings over ceramics,” the senior art major said. Her first piece, “A Sin Against Nature,” depicts a sea turtle swimming through rusted pipes that were discarded in the ocean. “I really love the environment, and I’m especially fond of sea creatures,” she said. “I made this piece in the hopes that maybe somebody will pay attention and someday our society will stop polluting the oceans and the only planet that we have.” She made her second piece “Mocha Diffusion Mug” because of its challenging process.
After forming the mug on the pottery wheel, Streets used an acid-based slip called mocha diffusion tea, which ate through parts of the mug to form designs that look like trees. “It’s a pretty difficult process in the ceramic world,” she said. “I was lucky that finally, after a few weeks of testing, I actually managed to find a method that works.” Streets said her passion lies with sculpture, although she loves nature photography as well. “I capture and document nature in our world because we’re destroying it at a very quick rate,” she said. “Some of these things that I like to photograph might not be around in my grandchildren’s generation for them to enjoy.” One of the two pieces junior Triston Modlin-Filippi submitted made it into the exhibit.
Student ‘recognized the good in people’ by abigail suddarth acsuddarth@eagles.usi
T h e Hopple family was trapped inside their home with no electricity for a week during an Hopple ice storm seven years ago. To entertain themselves, the youngest son, Tyler, and the oldest daughter, Alyce, invented a rhyming game so fun they couldn’t stop rhyming three days after the family’s power came back on. Tyler Hopple, a junior computer information systems major, died March 17. As a child, Tyler loved “Power Rangers” comic books and “Spider-Man,” Alyce, a USI alumna said. “He would usually just listen to what (his three older siblings) wanted to do and support us in that, but he didn’t really identify a career path in his own life,” she said. Tyler jokingly picked out jobs such as being a sumo wrestler to make his family laugh, Alyce said. “He was really good at quickly getting to know a person or in our situation getting to know us very in depth,” she said. Alyce said the most important thing to Tyler was forming and maintaining strong relationships with the people he cared about. “I think he recognized the good in people and wanted to demonstrate that he was at their level and a good person too,” she said. When Madison Eaton first met Tyler, she noticed how kind and genuine he was, she said. This impression only grew stronger the longer she knew him. “He was purposeful to always smile and talk with me, even if it was simply in passing on campus,” the junior nursing major said. The two often played volleyball together and took an art class together their sophomore year.
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Wi-Fi failure prevents Assessment Day by Gabi wy news@usishield.com @ShieldsterGabi Kylah Hollins showed up to her speech class Monday only to find out it had been canceled. Hollins, a freshman education major, should have received an email from her professor about the cancellation, but the lack of campus Wi-Fi prevented her from getting the news. “It also kept me from uploading an essay to Blackboard,” she said. “When it finally started to work, it was past the time it should have been submitted.” Information Technology sent an advisory at 9 a.m. Monday stating that as of Friday morning, the department increased the university’s Internet capacity. The advisory stated when students returned to campus Sunday, the capacity was consumed. “We need to get better WiFi,” Hollins said. “They say
SpringFest to feature varying performances by Megan Thorne, Nick leighty
Photo illustration by Alyssa Smith| The Shield
they’re working more on it, but they must not be working on it enough.” IT considered the possibility that the university’s network was under attack “either from outside the campus or from a hacked device on campus.” Such at-
2016 - 2017 EDITION OF
tacks are known as “denial of service attacks,” and IT Director Richard Toeniskoetter said they’ve been reported by other universities recently. Because of the unreliability of the network, the university canceled Assessment
Day. According to the university website, Assessment Day results are used to qualify the university for accreditation. The results are also available to faculty members to adjust curriculum.
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When country singer Emily Earle thinks of music, she thinks of a painting. “My definition of music would look like a pretty abstract painting,” Earle said. “The canvas is music, the texture of the paint is the rhythm, the colors are the melodies and the overall concept of the painting is the words.” Earle attended Berklee College of Music for three years before moving to New York when she was spotted by NBC’s “The Voice” and appeared on season three. The country singer is one of several acts performing at SpringFest 2016, including comedian Drew Lynch and mystifier Mike Super. From ‘The Voice’ to SpringFest Earle said she has been
Earle
surrounded by music all of her life and has been playing guitar and singing from a young age. She started writing poems in middle school, she said, and found people would listen to them if she sang them instead of read them.
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