Spring 2006 Visiting Artists
Anne West, writer, senior lecturer at RISD
West will work with students over the course of the semester, integrating art with the written word in a class titled, "The Artist as Educator: Exploring the Pedagogy of the Imagination." This course will provide the context for studio art majors and minors to explore their work through intensive writing sessions and to gain practical teaching experience by bringing an aspect of their creative investigation to the classroom. As a field component, students will create and teach art workshops for children grades K-5 at the Pinecroft School, adjacent to the Wheaton campus. The semester will culminate in a public exhibition and presentation.
Candice Brown, voice and movement coach
A nationally recognized voice and movement coach, Candice Brown has taught at Wheaton and at Brandeis University, Boston conservatory, and SUNY Fredonia. She will supervise all dialect work for our mainstage production of Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, which is set in the west of Ireland. Brown will meet with cast members at least once a week between late January and the opening of the show in mid-April.
January
William McLaughlin, choreographer
Repertory and master class
February
Eros/Logos: A Visual Conversation among Six Maine Artists:
Joseph Ascrizzi, Ragna Bruno, Alan Crichton, Squidge Liljeblad Davis '65, Monica Kelly and Robert Shetterly
Gallery show: February 1-28, Beard & Weil Galleries
Class visits
Panel discussion
This group of artists has spent two years going from studio to studio—cross-pollinating their understanding and their work, thematically exploring the theme of Eros/Logos. One of the artists asked her collaborators to listen to the six unaccompanied Bach suites. Another gave each collaborator a piece of her work to take back to their studios and create a responsive piece. The result has been a rich collaboration and an in-depth exploration, which the artists share in this Wheaton show and panel discussion.
Take 6, vocal ensemble
Sponsored by the Celeste Gottesman Bartos '35 Fund for the Visual Arts
Concert and master class
Consisting of brothers Mark and Joey Kibble, Cedric Dent, Alvin Chea, David Thomas and Claude McKnight (brother of Brian), Take 6 was formed at Oakwood College in Alabama in the early 1980s. This acclaimed a cappella group blurs the lines between jazz, gospel and soul, performing a range of traditional spirituals and new compositions arranged in a creative and breezy jazz style.
March
Marcella Calabi, soprano
Class visit
March 1 concert of German Lieder
Marcella Calabi, a former student of Luise Vosgerchian, is based in New York, where she performs a diverse repertoire of opera, oratorio, chamber music, early music and contemporary music.
Pablo Zinger, vocal coach
Master class, class visits
A multi-talented conductor, pianist, lecturer and writer, Pablo Zinger was born in Uruguay and came to New York in 1976. Since then he has worked widely in theatre, opera and the concert hall throughout the Americas and in Europe.
Cheryl Keyes, associate professor of ethnomusicology, UCLA
Class visits
March 8 lecture: "In the Mix: A 20-Year Journey of Hip-Hop Music and Culture"
Musicologist Cheryl Keyes views rap music as a forum that addresses the political and economic disfranchisement of black youths and other groups, fosters ethnic pride, and displays cultural values and aesthetics. By blending popular culture with folklore and ethnomusicology, Keyes offers a nuanced portrait of the artists, themes, and varying styles reflective of urban life and street consciousness, gathered from ethnographic research done in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, and London.
Benjamin Bagby's Beowulf
Sponsored by the Celeste Gottesman Bartos '35 Fund for the Visual Arts
Class visits
March 9 performance
Benjamin Bagby performs, from memory, large sections of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, accompanying himself on a harp that is a reconstruction of an instrument excavated from the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon burial site in Suffolk, England. Bagby's performance is a combination of scholarly interpretation and mesmerizing performance. He brings to life the ancient poem, making it a part of a living oral tradition.
Alex Alvear and Mango Blue, musicians
Sponsored by the Caroline C. Edwards '70 Master Class in the Visual and Musical Arts Endowed Fund
Class visits
March 23 dance concert
Based in New York City, the Mango Blue ensemble blends a range of musical styles to create a refreshing new sound in Afro-Latin and World music through songs of celebration and social conscience. Led by Ecuadorian composer, bassist and singer Alex Alvear, this fusion ensemble integrates a wide array of influences, including rhythm and blues, jazz, and Caribbean traditions. The members of Mango Blue come from different parts of the world and are among the best instrumentalists in the region.
Nicole Tadgell, illustrator
Sponsored by the Dale Rogers Marshall Visiting Artists Program Endowed Fund
Class visit
An illustrator of children's books, Tadgell will present a lecture and PowerPoint demonstration profiling her experiences in the field of children's publishing. She will offer a frank and honest discussion about real-world publishing, people, artwork, and money.
Creci Solo con el Amor de Mi Madre (I Grew Up Only with My Mother's Love)Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya (Strength of the Mayan Women) Theatrical Group Petrona de la Cruz and Isabel Juarez Espinoza
Class visits
March 28 performance
Sponsored by the Dale Rogers Marshall Visiting Artists Program Endowed Fund
A non-profit organization started in 1994, FOMMA is a pioneer in theatre and social justice in Mexico. FOMMA's plays are focused on Mayan and indigenous women's issues, reproductive health, domestic affairs, women's self-determination, as well as women's liberation from violence. The group uses proceeds from their performances to fund a variety of educational opportunities through language training and skill-building for Mayan women and children.
Bob Hicok, poet
Sponsored by the Dale Rogers Marshall Visiting Artists Program Endowed Fund
Reading March 30
Dinner with students
Bob Hicok is the author of four books of poetry. His most recent collection is Insomnia Diary (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004). He has received two Pushcart Prizes, two appearances in The Best American Poetry, the 1995 Felix Pollak Poetry Prize, an NEA fellowship, and a 2002 National book Critic Circle Award nomination.
April
Michael Lazarus, painter
Sponsored by the Dale Rogers Marshall Visiting Artists Program Endowed Fund
Class visit
Michael Lazarus is a contemporary artist from New York.
Celia Malheiros, Brazilian vocalist
Class visits
April 7 concert (with participation of Wheaton faculty and students)
A composer and performer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Celia Malheiros is equally at home on guitar, bass, keyboards, voice, and a huge variety of percussion instruments. In one of her Brazilian concerts, called "the kitchen," she played a succession of kitchen pots, pans and other utensils as percussion instruments. Malheiros now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she conducts residencies on jazz and Latin American music for the public schools under the auspices of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra outreach program.
Stephen Murray, Columbia University
Class visit
Stephen Murray is the director of the Media Center for Art History, Archaeology and Historic Preservation at Columbia. His publications include books on the cathedrals of Amiens, Beauvais and Troyes, and his current work is on medieval sermons, story-telling in Gothic, and the Romanesque architecture of the Bourbonnais. Murray's field of teaching includes Romanesque and Gothic art, particularly involving the integrated understanding of art and architecture within a broader framework of economic and cultural history. He is currently engaged in projecting his cathedral studies through the electronic media using a combination of three-dimensional simulation, digital imaging and video.
Michael Strauss, musician
Master Class
Michael Strauss is a Boston-area performer, accompanist, conductor and vocal coach.
Paul Austerlitz, musician
Sponsored by the Dale Rogers Marshall Visiting Artists Program Endowed Fund
Class visits
Paul Austerlitz is an ethnomusicologist, performer and composer whose work has been highly acclaimed in the areas of jazz and Caribbean music. He has published two major books, Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (Temple Univ. Press, 1996), and Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race and Humanity (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2005). He has toured with Joseito Mateo, the "King of Merengue," Ghanaian drummer and performance artist Martin Obeng, and jazz artists Julius Hemphill, Doc Cheatham, and Roswell Rudd, among others. As a composer, he was recently awarded the Robert and Margaret Johnson Fellowship for Music Composition from the Rhode Island Foundation.
John Ambrosone, lighting designer
Sponsored by the Dale Rogers Marshall Visiting Artists Program Endowed Fund
Visits to theatre classes
Meetings with individual students
John Ambrosone is an internationally recognized lighting designer. He has designed on Broadway and for many of the leading LORT (League of Resident Theatres) organizations in this country. He has collaborated with some of the most influential theatre artists of our time, including Robert Brunstein, David Mamet, Spanding Gray, Judith Ivey, David Rabe, Israel Horovitz, Patti LuPone, William Macy, and Debra Winger. He will talk about the art of collaboration and the process involved in getting a production ready for opening night.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, artists
April 21 lecture:
Work in Progress: Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado.
Sponsored by the Celeste Gottesman Bartos '35 Fund for the Visual Arts
Best known for their large-scale public art installations, environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have displayed their work on four continents. The husband-and-wife pair have collaborated on outdoor art since 1961, when they created Dockside Packages, Cologne Harbor, 1961, by covering stacks of oil barrels and large rolls of industrial paper with tarpaulins. Last year they exhibited The Gates in New York's Central Park. At Wheaton, they will lecture on the development of their latest project, Over the River, conceived in 1992 and still a work in progress.