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Division NewsArtSesnon exhibit featured work of 2006 Irwin Scholars
UCSC Art students took charge of the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery during the annual Irwin Scholarship Award exhibition. The show featured painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, intermedia and performance by recipients of William Hyde and Susan Benteen Irwin Scholarships. The 2006 Irwin Scholars are Samuel Bennett, Darree Diane Hyun, Mimi Klasson, Cady McElravey-Sitkin, Andrew Newcomb, Ian Pines, Anthony Papini, Destiny Riggs, Daniel Scheible, Lelani Solis and Hilary Ferris White. The recent exhibition was on view in the Sesnon Gallery from May 17 through June 17. An opening reception and awards ceremony was held on May 17. Established in 1986, the William Hyde and Susan Benteen Irwin Scholarship Fund generates annual merit scholarships to help further the education of selected UC Santa Cruz art students.
Public Arts class develops murals for local elementary schoolStudents in Dee Hibbert-Jones’ Public Arts II class this spring had an opportunity to leave their mark on a local elementary school while gaining first-hand experience in arts education. The UCSC class, which was selected by San Lorenzo Elementary School in Felton to develop two large murals for a heavily traveled area of the campus, worked with fifth and sixth grade students to produce the murals. The colorful murals, featuring ocean and forest scenes, were based on concepts developed by Hibbert-Jones’ students. The UCSC Art students created seven proposals and presented them to the San Lorenzo students at an assembly. A vote determined the two winning concepts. A highlight of the project was teaching the children the process of mural-making, “while doing tasks with them that include drawing, tracing, painting and having tons of fun,” says UCSC student Madison Bottorff. UCSC students met with the San Lorenzo fifth and sixth graders every school day for more than two months to complete the murals. Members of the UCSC project team included Katherine Ambuhi, Nancy Bonilla, Bottorff, Liz Damron, Ashley Freinberg, Kristen Gentilucci, Matlena Haurula, Darree Diane Hyun, Jaime Jensen, Clayton Kober, Cameron Lacki, Nat Lee, Gail Mackey, Michael Manzi, Tatiana Marshall, Sara Pfeifer, Lilia Ponce, Yano Rivera, Judith Rosenblatt, and Rahshan Williams. The Public Arts II students were given a $5,000 budget by the school’s Parent Teacher Association to execute the project.
Digital Arts & New MediaRamirez receives Lionel Cantú Graduate AwardChristopher Angel Ramirez, Digital Arts and New Media M.F.A. graduate student, is the fourth recipient of The Lionel Cantú Graduate Award for his research, "Mapping the Public Space of (Homo)sexual Latino Men." The Lionel Cantú Memorial Award was established to honor the life and scholarship of Professor Lionel Cantú. Engaged in path-breaking research and analysis on sexuality, masculinity, and migration, Dr. Cantú was a devoted teacher, a remarkable mentor, and a wonderful colleague. Ramirez also received a best prize for "Bearing Witness" at the 2nd Annual UCSC Graduate Symposium, and a best prize for the 1st Annual UCSC Graduate Symposium for “Mapping the Geographical Space of Downtown Los Angeles.” His conceptual art piece "Giorno Sucks Just," produced in Isabel Reichert's DANM 217, will be screened at OutFest 2006 in Los Angeles.
Film & Digital MediaTwo Vargas films will be screened at Outfest 2006Two short films by Chris Vargas, a Film & Digital Media senior, will be screened at Outfest 2006: The 24th Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
“Gay Country Line Dance Aerobics” is a split-screen juxtaposition that combines found footage from a warped line dance instructional video with an observational documentary shot by Vargas in the Los Angeles Gay Rodeo’s line dance tent. His second short “Drive” is about the fantasy life of a boy, who relates the tactile act of driving to a memorable sexual experience on the beach.
Vargas transferred to UCSC from Los Angeles City and Valley Colleges. His first film, “Road Rash,” which was shot and edited in Super 8, has been screened at Outfest in Los Angeles, Tranny Fest in San Francisco, LesGaiCineMad in Madrid, London's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and Toronto's Inside/Out. Vargas says his senior project, a collaboration with History of Consciousness student Eric Stanley, focuses on “love, revolution, and the atrocity of gay marriage.” Outfest 2006 screenings, panels and receptions are scheduled for July 6 to 17. For more information, visit http://www.outfest.org.
UCSC participates in Santa Cruz Film FestThe works of three students and one alum were screened in the Local’s Program at the fifth annual Santa Cruz International Film Fest in May. “Shadow Kiss,” by Giovanni Vaz Del Bello (Merrill College, Film & Digital Media), is a noir short about a man, in danger of assassination after a failed plot to steal money, who does not know who his enemy is. “Promotion,” by Matthew McKenna (College Ten, Film & Digital Media), tells the story of Dan, who is tapped by upper management for the position of “technical supervisor.” Happy with his position in the “outgoing orders” department, Dan attempts to cordially deny the new job offer despite Mr. Johnson's incessant pleas to do otherwise. “The Word of a Salesman,” by Kalen Egan (Porter College, Film & Digital Media) features a middle-aged, recently divorced man who invites a door-to-door knife salesman in for coffee and conversation. Before long, however, the knife salesman reveals a sinister agenda and steers their conversation through surprises and revelations. A short by UCSC alum Aaron Platt (Crown College, Film & Digital Media, 2003) was also shown during the festival. In “Beholden,” a young boy must learn to cope after first being kidnapped by a distraught woman and then by aliens. UCSC’s Film & Digital Media Department also sponsored a screening of “Undeserved,” with director Bradley Coley and actor/screenwriter Paul Sado, in conjunction with the festival. For more information about the Santa Cruz International Film Festival, visit www.santacruzfilmfestival.com.
Independent filmmaker presents spring workshopThis spring the Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival, along with the Film & Digital Media department, sponsored a workshop by Paul Espinosa, an award-winning independent filmmaker. During the two-hour class, Espinosa discussed the different aspects of production and how to manage content. Featured topics included interviewing techniques, film production abroad and the use of archival material in documentary. The event was part of the 5th Annual Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival.
History of Art & Visual Culture and Theater ArtsIndian dance troupe holds workshop at Porter
At the beginning of June, the 20-person Ranganiketan Dance troupe from Manipur in India performed at the Porter College Dining Hall. The two-hour event offered students a rich workshop in the arts of Manipur, including drumming, martial arts, and dance. The event was sponsored by UCSC's South Asian Arts Fund as well as Theater Arts and History of Arts and Visual Culture departments.
MusicNew Ph.D. program emphasizes cross-cultural studiesThe Music Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has established a Ph.D. in Music with an emphasis in cross-cultural studies. The department will begin accepting applications in fall 2006 for studies beginning in fall 2007. The program's aim is to provide doctoral students with an integrative framework for music scholarship, emphasizing the ways in which musicology and ethnomusicology interact and complement one another. A series of required courses will encourage students to discover commonalities and distinctions among the world's music cultures through an examination of cross-cutting parameters, including but not limited to: pitch and rhythm systems; the relationship of music to text, dance, religion, gender, and politics; and issues of ethnography. The new program also encourages the integration of scholarly research with musical performance, emphasizing the ways in which performance serves both rhetorical and symbolic ends within various cultural settings. The department’s other graduate programs include the DMA (Doctorate of Musical Arts) in Music Composition and the MA in Music (with emphasis in performance practice [including also conducting], musicology or ethnomusicology, or composition). For more information, visit http://music.ucsc.edu or call (831) 459-3199.
UCSC Bass Ensemble tours Southern CaliforniaUCSC Music lecturer Barry Green and a five-person UCSC Bass Ensemble traveled to Southern California to demonstrate the versatility of the double bass during three days of workshops and performances in May.
The group kicked off its tour, which was sponsored by the UCSC Music Department and D’Addario Strings, with performances for students at Santa Monica High School and middle schools on May 19. The next day the ensemble performed a free program at Lemur Music in San Juan Capistrano. The final stop was a workshop/concert for area bassists organized by David Young, Los Angeles Opera and bass teacher at the Coburn School of Music. Members of the UCSC Bass Ensemble are Megan McDevitt, Sean Stillinger, Lea Ivanovic, Mayim Wiens and Adnan Ibrahim. Green, former Cincinnati Symphony principal bassist, soloist, author, and bass teacher, inspires his students to play all kinds of music—from “Flight of the Bumble Bee” and Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” to selections from Metallica’s “One” and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” on their large versatile instruments.
Ford’s jazz opera to be performed next winterJoel Ford, a graduate student studying music composition, is busy at work on the “Cannabis Cantata,” a 45-minute musical drama that combines Bach, jazz and cannabis culture with elements of the Romantic Period and contemporary classical music. There will be a staged performance of the jazz opera, which is Ford’s master’s thesis project, at the Music Center Recital Hall on February 17, 2007.
The plot of “Cannabis Cantata” is based loosely on Bach’s “Coffee Cantata,” a humorous work focusing on the controversies surrounding coffee in 18th century Germany. According to Ford, many German parents at the time associated coffee, a relatively new phenomenon, with Bohemian culture and prostitution. While Bach’s piece focuses on a grumpy old man lamenting his daughter’s love of coffee, Ford’s work features a slightly different take on generational differences. The “Cannabis Cantata” features a marijuana-smoking artist who relies on his daughter, a corporate lawyer, to manage his failing finances. As tensions rise, the father and daughter make a bet: If he can quit smoking pot for a week, she will try it once. The week turns out to be a major period of reflection for both characters. Ford is still finishing the music as well as some of the words of his jazz opera. As both librettist and composer of the piece, he has the challenging task of mingling music and words. “I usually write with a computer,” Ford says. “First I think of the words, then I speak them rhythmically, and then I listen for the melody that comes along with that. Since I have made certain stylistic choices for this piece, I find myself sometimes sacrificing sounds that I intuit for sounds that provide more continuity.” Ford says that rehearsals for the “Cannabis Cantata” will begin in the fall. Music professor David Evan Jones is his advisor.
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