Lakeside Jazz

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The popular OSU Jazz Ensemble, directed by Ted McDaniel (Music), performed its final Mirror Lake concert of the quarter last Thursday, May 31. The group also welcomed OSU alum Ladd McIntosh -- well-known jazz composer, conductor and performer -- who guest conducted the musicians in several of his compositions.

Notable News

The Department of Design presents its Annual Student Design Exhibition Tuesday, June 5-Thursday , June 7 in the Physics Research Building, 191 W. Woodruff Ave. The popular annual show will spotlight more than 50 design students' work in industrial, interior and visual communication design. On Wednesday, June 6, the festive Professional/Alumni Night -- complete with a reception and product raffle -- is open to all 6-8 pm.

A number of Department of Dance faculty members and grad students are heading to Paris June 21-24 to present their research at the conference, Rethinking Practice and Theory. The conference is a partnership of the Society of Dance History Scholars, the Congress on Research in Dance and the Centre National de la Danse. Of the 440 proposals, 110 were selected for the event, including those from five faculty members, three graduate students and a dozen or more alumni from Dance, along with a grad student from Theatre. Presenters include Karen Eliot, Candace Feck, Nicole Stanton, Norah Zuniga-Shaw, Hanna Kosstrin, Annie Beserra, Anna Reed, Jenai Cutcher and Karen Mozingo.

A few weeks ago we listed College of the Arts students who participated in the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum. Since then, we've found out that more of our students were involved! Also taking part in the May 16 showcase were James Burke, Joanna Lees, Linda Diec, Nathaniel Ricciuto, Matthew Vrabanac, David Murphy, Alex Walp, Susan Sprague, Angela Pegan, Andrew Cronacher and Ashley Brook.

Vesta Daniel (Art Education) has received the 2007 Faculty Award for Excellence in Community-Based Scholarship at OSU's annual Celebration of Excellence in Community Service and Scholarship. At a May 10 reception, she was recognized for her outstanding work as a bridge-builder between the university and the community for more than 20 years.

At the same event, CAPA was recognized for its work with the College of the Arts and presented with the Award for Excellence in Community Partnership Building. The organization was recognized for its role in the College's downtown initiative, particulary for working with the Department of Theatre for the recent productions of The Rocky Horror Show and Hair.

Art & Technology undergraduate student Bill Shakelford has been reviewed by David Pogue in the NY Times, while the BBC, Boing Boing, Engadget, Gizmodo, Make Magazine and SCI-FI have all written about his electronic sculpture Spamtrap.

Alan Woods (Theatre) just found out that his short play, The Safari, will be produced in Cape Town, South Africa, this summer, while another short play, Limbo, Ohio, will be produced in Phoenix in November.

Art & Technology news: Graduate student Ryan Ross was commissioned to create an electronic light installation called Numeric Identities for the Museum of Neon Art and the Bert Green Fine Arts gallery in Los Angeles. The work can be experienced until Oct. 31. Sonya Lucas had an opening of hand drawn animations June 2 at Elements Gallery, 509 High St. And former graduate student Anthony Castranova has been commissioned to create a site-specific sculpture for the Rubin-Deutch family in Rumson, NJ.

An archive for the African American Playwrights Exchange (AAPEX) has been established at OSU's Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute, according to Alan Woods (Theatre). AAPEX members can deposit scripts, programs, photographs, correspondence, etc. of productions, ensuring that the materials will survive and will be protected.

On May 16, Reinhart Butter and Jim Arnold (Design) presented a summary of a three-year comprehensive research and design project on advanced automotive seating at an SAE/Government conference in Washington, DC. The project was funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and conducted in collaboration with Necip Berme (Mechanical Engineering). Main focus of the research was the improvement of vehicle safety through improvements of current seat restraint systems. There is a chance of the project being continued with emphasis on 4-point integrated belt systems.

Criticizing Photographs, by Terry Barrett (Art Education) has been newly translated into Chinese.

Art . . . al fresco

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Jess Glenn (above, right) and Elise Bailey, both undergraduate art students, contemplate how to paint "a million things" outside of Hopkins Hall on a warm, spring morning. The two -- along with Joe Peck (left), a 3rd year art education student -- were experimenting with the concept of painting something that is made up of millions of tiny parts, such as tree leaves, and "condense" it so it is paint-able. They are students in Sarah Weinstock's painting class, and were using oils on canvas.

Notable News

Long-time jazz composer, arranger, educator and big band leader Ladd McIntosh – who has orchestrated music for over 90 major motion pictures – will be at the School of Music Thursday, May 31. McIntosh, who is an alumnus of OSU, will guest conduct the OSU Jazz Ensemble in an outdoor concert that evening at 7:30 pm at Browning Amphitheatre near Mirror Lake. The student musicians will play several of his original compositions, according to Ted McDaniel, director of the Jazz Ensemble. The concert is free; rain site is Weigel Auditorium. As a student at Ohio State in the 1960s, McIntosh gained national attention with his composing and arranging skills. Considered a pioneer in jazz education, he currently teaches improvisation at the prestigious Henry Mancini Institute. Since 1992, McIntosh has orchestrated film scores for more than 90 major motion pictures, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek 2, Shrek, Shark Tale, Something’s Gotta Give, Pearl Harbor, Speed, The Lion King, Home Alone and Gladiator.

Digescape: Art & Technology Exhibition is the showcase for more than 200 Art & Technology artists working in new media, hybrid forms, video, holography, animations, robotics, digital imaging/photo, 3D modeling, rapid prototypeing and web-based artworks. The exhibition is Thursday, May 31, 5-9 pm in Haskett Hall Sound Stage and Gallery. A video program starts at 7 pm in room 211. The exhibition continues the next day, 11:30 am-4 pm.

Charles Massey Jr (Art) has three of his prints and drawings included in Exhibition 280, a six-state regional juried exhibition, at the Huntington Museum of Art in Huntington, WVa. The exhibition continues until July 1.

Music Divided: Bartok's Legacy in Cold War Culture is a new book by Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Music) just published by the University of California Press.

The Music Department at Bowdoin College in Maine presented the American premiere of Margarita Mazo's new edition of Igor Stravinsky's Les Noces for chorus, four soloists, four pianos and percussion on May 7. The solo parts were performed by singers from Russia. Mazo presented a keynote lecture at the forum in conjunction with the performance. The European premiere of Mazo's edition was presented in Berlin in 2006.

Art & Technology grad student Ryan Ross was commissioned to create an electronic light installation called Numeric Identities in association with the Museum of Neon Art and the Bert Green Fine Arts Gallery in Los Angeles. The work can be viewed until Oct. 31.

Helen Chi (Art & Technology) earned an honorable mention in the "Experimental" catagory at the West Virginia Flash Animation Festival for her work Shim Chung.

A unique upcoming performance in Columbus features music by a group called Lacunae -- a group of musicians who have never met but play together via live video and audio feeds -- along with a video art exhibition showcasing OSU faculty Dan Schellenbarger and Scot Kaplan, as well as current and former grad students Sarah Weinstock, Grant Fletcher, Carly Glisson, Erin Vernon, Candie Waterloo and Charlie Roberts. The event takes place Monday, June 4, at 9:30 pm at Skully's Music-Diner, 1151 N. High St. Tickets $5.

Research Showcase

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Eleven undergraduate students in the College of the Arts showcased their research projects in the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum Wednesday, May 16, in French Field House. They were among undergrads from throughout the university presenting their research accomplishments to the campus community in the nationally known forum. The students' research ranged from studies of movement such as b-girling and house dancing to an analysis of birds' song frequency ranges in noisy urban environments. Students included Dina Sherman, Sharon Fox and Jon Keppel (Art); Kerri Seger (Music/Zoology/Ecology); Katherine Thornton, Brittany Futrell, Joel Searls and Katie Kimmel (Theatre); Ali Simon and Sara Wiseman (Dance); and Jessica Daniel (History of Art). Searls (pictured above) created a western play, Antioch, that deals with alcoholism, violence and racism and is set in 1906. Congratulations to Fox, Simon, Sherman and Futrell -- they were named winners in the Denman competition.

Notable News

The Department of Dance's BFA graduating class -- including Allison Molyet (right) -- presents an all-student produced performance, Assorted Impulses, May 23-25 in Sullivant Theatre. The full-length evening of dance includes choreography inspired by multicultural, theatrical and diverse music and text influences. The performance features gifted modern dancers performing original work representing a wide perspective of dance's place and meaning in our culture. Tickets are $5 at the door; call 292-7977 for information.

Doctoral student Jodi Kushins (Art Education) has been invited to give a presentation based on her dissertation this month at a Think Tank in Georgia sponsored by FATE (Foundations in Art, Theory and Education). Her dissertation research focuses on innovations in introductory undergraduate studio art education, and she is completing case studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University.

The "Food for Thought" fundraising dinner originally scheduled for tonight, Monday, May 21, at 6 pm at the Wexner Center, has been canceled. The event is organized by Ann Hamilton and Michael Mercil (Art). An 8 pm screening of the award-winning 2006 documentary Our Daily Bread will be presented as planned.

Karen Hutzel (Art Education) and Flavia Bastos, University of Cincinnati, recieved a $5,000 NAEF grant for their proposed research project, Art in the Market Program's Legacy: Outcomes of a 10-year Community-Based Art Education Initiative. They plan to start the research in June.

Greg Leedy, an alumnus of the Department of Design and now senior product innovator at Nike's 'Innovation Kitchen' in Beaverton, OR, visited Reinhart Butter's graduate class May 10 to talk about "Research as an Integral Aspect of Design and the Crucial Role of Innovation in Industry". And alumna Verena Paepcke, who now teaches at Savannah College of Art and Design, was invited by Butter to lecture May 11 in his junior industrial design studio on the subject of "Sustainability as Related to Design". Both events were partially funded by past and current sponsored projects.

Melanye White Dixon presented "Marion Cuyjet: Cultural Activist and Visionary of Dance Education in Black Philadelphia" for the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity's brownbag speaker series May 16.

The current revival of the play Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, has been nominated for five Tony Awards, including best revival of a play, best actor in a play, best lighting, best scenery and best costuming.

Undergraduate student Jon Keppel (Art), who presented his research at the Denman Forum, will premiere his video assemblage, Mere, at the Columbus Museum of Art on Tuesday, May 29. Based loosely on the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's conception of "the Real," the project consists of five videos that plot a unique relationship between content and form. The screening begins at 4 pm at the museum, and runs about 40 minutes. A repeat screening at Ohio State starts at 7 pm Friday, June 1, in Hagerty Hall room 180. A teaser for the film is here.

Theatre student Jason Bush has learned his paper proposal -- "Scissors Dancing and the Intellectual Gaze" -- to the American Society for Theatre Ressearch has been accepted for the plenary sessions at the society's November conference in Phoenix. Only 12 to 15 papers are selected each year for the full conference plenary sessions, and typically 80-150 proposals are submitted by national and international scholars.

Schiller Thriller Staged

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Mary Stuart -- Friedrich Schiller's thrilling account of the extraordinary relationship between England's Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots -- will be presented by the Department of Theatre May 17-20 in Thurber Theatre, Drake Performance Center. The play features (l-r) Eleni Papaleonardos as Mary, Dwayne Blackaller as the Earl of Leicester and Julie Ann McMillan as Elizabeth. The department is teaming up with Actors' Theatre of Columbus to produce Schiller's masterpiece; the production also will be staged in Schiller Park in German Village, marking the first time Schiller's work has ever been performed in the park bearing his name. For tickets to the shows in Thurber Theatre, call the theatre box office at 292-2295.

Notable News

The Department of Theatre welcomes OSU alumnus Chris Jones, chief theatre critic for the Chicago Tribune, to campus Thursday, May 17, for a lecture -- "Every Night in the Dark: A Critic Debunks the Pervasive Myths Surrounding Contemporary American Theatre." His lecture, which is free and open to all, begins at 4:30 pm in Roy Bowen Theatre, Drake Performance Center. Jones has reviewed theatre, comedy, improv and other forms of live entertainment for the Tribune for more than a decade. A native of Manchester, England, he earned a doctorate in theatre from Ohio State. For information, call 292-5821.

Winner of this year's Ruth Friscoe Prize in Composition is graduate student Matthew Saunders (Music) for his piece, Sevens, a Fanfare for Four Trumpets. He will receive a $1,000 award at this year's Honors Convocation May 30. Honorable mention was given to Young-Mi Lee for her composition, Five Movements for Flute, Clarinet and Piano. The judges also singled out String Quartets Nos 1 & 2 by Jin Myung Kang and Piano Trio #1 by Lee. Ten compositions were submitted by seven composers in the 2007 competition, funded by Ruth Friscoe and open to OSU graduate and undergraduate composition students. Judges for this year's competition were David Gompper, Center for New Music at the University of Iowa; Vera Stanojevic, OSU DMA 2004; and James Croson, OSU DMA 2004

Ann Hamilton and Michael Mercil (Art) are organizing a fundraising event Monday, May 21, to benefit the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, Operation Feed Campaign. The event, "Food for Thought," begins at 6 pm at the Wexner Center, 1871 N. High St. A dinner of bean soup and light spring fare will be catered by Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, which recently opened Cam's on Campus. Charge is $50 per plate; tickets available by calling 292-3535. Following dinner is an 8 pm screening of the award-winning 2006 documentary Our Daily Bread. Dinner-goers and the general public are welcome to attend the screening in the Wexner Film/Video Theater; admission is a donation of non-perishable food. The event is the second project of an OSU partnership between the Living Culture Initiative in the Department of Art; the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; and the Wexner Center. For more information, click here.

Johnny DiLoretto, host of the Fox News program Good Day Columbus visited ACCAD last week . . . and got a chance to experience the motion capture lab first hand! DiLoretto produced seven 2-minute segments with ACCAD students demonstrating their work.

Boing Boing, a "directory of wonderful things" and a popular blog, gives a hefty mention of a work of art by undergraduate art student Bill Shackelford. Click here to read about his "Spamtrap," an interactive installation piece that prints, shreds and blacklists spam email.

Dance alumna Dianne McIntyre of Cleveland was awarded the 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, presented annually to artists, scholars and scientists in all fields. This year, 189 fellows were selected from 2,773 applicants; fellows are appointed on the basis of unusually impressive achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

Klaus Krippendorff , professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, lectured April 20 to graduate and undergraduate students in Design on "Product Semantics 101 - an introduction to the concept of meaning in design". He was invited by Reinhart Butter (Design), who also hosted a group of students from the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee with their professor Hartmut Ginnow-Merkert. The Germans were on a study tour through the United States and stopped in Columbus to visit the Department of Design and the renowned consultancy Design Central. The KH Berlin-Weissensee is one of the universities with which the department regularly exchanges students.

Art & Technology students Charlie Roberts, Bryce Koechlin, Colin James McDonald and Bill Shackelford showed CGI animated shorts, hand drawn animation and short videos in the Wexner Center's Ohio Short Film & Video Showcase May 12.

Daniel Avorgbedor (Music) received a summer library research grant from the Lilly Library in Bloomington, Ind, for his project on "Lusophone Cultures and the African Diaspora." He also presented a paper and led a workshop on “Performance As Site For (Re)Membering Africa In Diasporic Spaces” at the annual meeting of the National Society of Black Engineers March 31 in Columbus.

The Jefferson Academy (Music) has received an agreement from the United Way and Franklin County Commissioners to accept a group of 50 children from low-income families into the academy's programs this summer.

ACCAD Hosts Open House

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OSU’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) is hosting its annual open house on Friday, May 11, from 4 to 7 pm at the ACCAD Building, 1224 Kinnear Rd on west campus. Open parking will be available in front of the building 4 -7 pm. The free event will showcase recent student and staff computer animation, motion capture and visualization research, and will feature on-site demos of current student, staff and faculty research and thesis work. The image above is a collage of recent work at ACCAD. For information, call 292-1053.

Notable News

One of the three artists chosen to be part of the Wexner Center’s exhibition -- State Fare: Three Ohio Artists – is OSU Department of Art graduate student Rain Harris, ceramics. Harris is a first-year MFA student. Judges chose 3 artists from nearly 500 applicants for the Wexner Center’s first juried visual arts exhibition, which focuses on artists from this region. Bittersweet, one of Harris's pieces, is at left. She will present a site-specific installation of porcelain sculpture at the exhibition, which opens May 12 and runs through Aug 12. The other artists chosen for the exhibition are Tracy Featherstone of Hamilton, Ohio, and Mark Harris of Cincinnati.

Several design graduate students who study at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) will be summer interns in the US movie industry. Matthew Bain will be an intern with Electronic Arts in California. Sucheta Bhatawadekar will be a technical artist in lighting in an internship at Dreamworks/PDI. And Fran Kalal was selected for a six-month internship starting this summer at PIXAR. Also, Bryan Cline, doctoral student in computer science and engineering, has a six-month internship with PIXAR.

David Murphy (Art) is one of 10 graduating seniors across the country presented with a 2007 Wingate Fellowship Award of $15,000 from the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design. The award was established to help encourage and advance the develpment of serious, innovative artists in the US whose work is in some way related to, or informed by, the process, material or idea of "craft". Murphy, who is from Columbus, is a glass artist.

The OSU Percussion Ensemble presents a concert Monday, May 14, featuring one of the most pivotal works of the late 20th century, Steve Reich’s Drumming. The concert is in honor of Reich’s 70th birthday and will include non-Western selections of African traditions along with a mallet ensemble transcription of Reich’s work New York Counterpoint. For this concert, the OSU Percussion Ensemble welcomes guest artist Russell Hartenberger, a founding and current member of Steve Reich and Musicians, and the percussion group Nexus. The ensemble is directed by Susan Powell and Joe Krygier (Music).

Calori & Vanden-Eynden Design Consultants of New York City has announced that Chris Calori and David Vanden-Eynden have been elected fellows of the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGC). The SEGC board annually conveys the title of fellow to distinguished indivduals who have made extraordinary contributions to the society and who have achieved excellence in the profession. They join 24 distinguished designers who have been named fellows since 1987. Both Calori and Vanden-Eynden are alumni from the Department of Design. Their firm, founded in 1982, is an internationally recognized, award-winning design firm specializing in the planning and design of signage, wayfinding and identity programs for a wide variety of building types.

Five OSU voice students from the School of Music will travel to Novafeltria, Italy, this summer with Karen Peeler (Music). They will participate in a June 16-July 22 program called La Musica Lirica, spending mornings in intensive study of the Italian language and afternoons studying voice, acting and rehearsing for performances of 4 operas to be presented during the last week of the program. Students include graduate students Patrick Anderson, Paula Kehr, Michael Hamilton and Sarah Rhorer, and undergraduate student Malcolm Cooper.

Robert Ladislas Derr (Art) will is exhibiting work in Digital Subjects: A Digital Show, May 5 - July 15 at Quarteirão das Artes / Block of the Arts, Montemor-o-Velho - Coimbra, Portugal.

Amy Youngs (Art) has artwork in an exhibition called Bios 4 - biotech and environmental art, whichi opened at the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art on May 3. Click here for more about the exhibition. Youngs is showing Digestive Table. Ken Rinaldo (Art) also is showing work in the exhibition, which continues until Sept 2.

A selection of high quality and affordable prints of artwork by Charles Csuri (ACCAD) is now available online. To see the prints, click here.