SEPTEMBER 13-15

DOWNTOWN TOLEDO (PROMENADE PARK, IMAGINATION STATION OUTDOOR AREAS)

University of Toledo School of Visual and Performing Arts faculty and students are involved in the festival in a BIG way! We are presenting several attractions this year. Look for us on Saturday afternoon at the Mini Maker Faire (Noon-6 p.m.).  The Faire is the Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth—a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker Movement. It’s a place where people show what they are making, and share what they are learning. Makers range from tech enthusiasts to crafters to homesteaders to scientists to garage tinkerers. They are of all ages and backgrounds. The aim of Maker Faire is to entertain, inform, connect and grow this community.

UT ATTRACTIONS AT MOMENTUM

ALL TOGETHER NOW

JULIA LABAY DARRAH + YUSUF LATEEF (ALUMNA AND UT PART-TIME FACULTY)

All Together Now combines aspects of play, sculpture, and installation using interchangeable life-size forms. These lightweight sculptures will feature a conglomerate of images of the human body and will be placed on a stage, inviting participants to interact with the forms to create a “family photo”.

DIALOGUE WITH THE RIVER

BARBARA MINER (UT PROFESSOR OF ART, CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ART)

Dialogue With The River will be a group completed project, enabling hundreds of people to participate in the creation of an aesthetically engaging, temporary work of art. Based on Tibetan Prayer Flags, hand silk-screened flags with environmental information about the Maumee River and Lake Erie printed on the colorful fabric will be created. The flags will be available for individuals to write on and create “dialogues”, “wishes” or “pledges” for the health of the river and the lake. The customized flags will then be strung on the tent like uprights, creating a moving wind-driven sculpture. The idea is that the wind will carry the good wishes and the promises out into the world in hopes that the newly gained awareness of the river’s plight will influence the choices each of us makes. Didactic materials from regional and national groups such as Partners for Clean Streams, The Black Swamp Conservancy, and the Nature Conservancy will be available for visitors.

ECO PARADE

MATT FOSS (ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF THEATRE, UT DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND FILM)

Eco Parade showcases our community water source biodiversity, ecological need, and health with aims at improving our collective relationship and stewardship of the system as a whole. The parade will feature large format puppets and performance, live music, and community created objects; everyone will be invited to participate in the processional.

BUBBLE BUTT

SABA: SAM SHEFFIELD + BARRY WHITTAKER
(SHEFFIELD – BALTIMORE ARTIST, WHITTAKER – ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ART, UT DEPARTMENT OF ART)

Players will work as a team to explore a surreal and humorous landscape as a pair of sentient pants. Players must work together by bouncing on a convoluted, two-person, human-powered interface to control each leg of the pants avatar as it journeys through a series of ridiculous obstacles and distractions. Enjoy this work on Saturday, September 15th at the Toledo Mini Maker Faire.

STEM

MATTHEW DANSACK + SEBASTIEN SCHOHN (UT ART ALUMNI)

Stem is a digital interactive media project using multiple song stems (tracks of one or two instruments used to make a song) to allow participants a chance to create new song compositions. By interacting with an installation of amps, record crates, and digital technology, users can arrange the stems to create and download a song. Special thank you to Vincent Chiaverini for guitar samples.

UT BIODESIGN CHALLENGE PROJECTS AND BIOMATERIAL DEMONSTRATIONS

Professors Brian Carpenter and Eric Zeigler, along with UT students, will present Biodesign Projects by student teams that will engage with the greater public in a dialogue about real-world issues and potential solutions through biotechnology. Students will exhibit their prototypes along with their research.  Many of the prototypes made use of a 3D printer, CNC lasers, and CNC routers.  Additionally, UT faculty Brian Carpenter and Eric Zeigler will be performing simple biomaterial demonstrations. These demonstrations explore low-tech methods and materials that encourage playful interactions, to stimulate creativity, enabling the end user to tinker, design and build their own devices and realize the potential of imagination.

The University of Toledo student artwork to appear on area digital billboards January – February, 2016

In collaboration with Lamar Outdoor Advertising, University of Toledo Department of Art students have been invited to display their work on digital billboards throughout the Toledo area. Many students submitted entries. The works chosen will be on display until the end of February 2016.

Assistant professor of art, Barry Whittaker, who coordinated the project, says this is the fourth year UT art students have been invited to have their work displayed. To see the images in this year’s exhibition, visit the online photos album “UT Art Student Billboards 2016” on Facebook.

Student artists participating in this year’s exhibition:

Nikka Geiermann

Katelyn Greenhill

Crystal Hand

Isabel Isaza

Kayla Kirk

Mike Miller

Joseph Okoyomo

Emily Rose

Abbey Ruppel

Brandy Save

Chelsea Thompson

Michelle Trivisonno

Mark Yappueying

Visit the UT Department of Art at http://www.utoledo.edu/comm-arts/art/index.html

The billboards can be found at: Reynolds Road/Corner of Glendale, The Anthony Wayne Trail at City Park, The corner of Alexis and Lewis, Monroe Street/Corner of Laskey, Byrne Road/Airport Highway, Monroe Street/West corner of Douglas, and Erie at Monroe

Source: UT Department of Art – Facebook

University of Toledo to present Sartre’s NO EXIT

The University of Toledo Department of Theatre & Film, will present its production of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play, NO EXIT, in February. The play will be directed by UT Theatre student, Andrés Medina.

Performances are Friday, February 19 through Sunday, February 21, and Friday, February 26 through Sunday, February 28. All performances will start at 7:30 p.m., except for Sundays which are at 2 p.m.

NO EXIT written by Jean-Paul Sartre, takes place in hell where three souls are mysteriously placed in the same room. There they are trapped together for eternity, where they begin to realize the binding force keeping them there, is one from within. During the course of the play the characters reflect on their past, and share all of the unforgivable things they have done throughout their lives. The classic theme, “Hell is other people,” is presented as the story begins to unfold.

Medina says he is excited to explore the play’s theme of life after death and intrigued by Sartre’s philosophy. “Everybody wonders about death and the meaning of life. I was also interested in Sartre’s philosophy that human beings supply meaning to the big questions of life and death out of their own experience of each.”

The set will be minimalist says, Medina. “Especially with this kind of play, I prefer to rely on movement, on the actors and their characters, to captivate the audience and hold their interest.”

Medina is a UT senior majoring in Theatre. While NO EXIT is his directorial debut, he assistant directed the UT productions of “Cabaret” and “The Adding Machine.” “The Adding Machine” was invited to be performed at the 2015 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Region 2. He was also the Assistant Stage Manager for UT’s production of “Orpheus.” Professionally, he served as the Stage manager for the Glacity Theatre Collective’s production of  “House of Vinyl.”

On stage, Medina has played roles in various UT-produced plays such as “Twelfth Night,” “Miss Julie,” “Cabaret,” “Out to Lunch,” “Ghost Light,” “Three Sisters,” “Metamorphoses,” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” His professional acting credits include a role in Glacity Theatre Collective’s “Nightmares Come in Threes.”

Prices for performances of NO EXIT are: $8 – Students, Children; $10 – Seniors (60+), Military, UT Faculty/Staff/Alumni; $15 General Public. To purchase tickets or for more information on this event, visit www.utoledo.tix.com or call 419.530.ARTS (2787)

Cast

·       “Garcin”  Davion T. Brown (double-majoring in Theatre and Communication at UT, senior)

·       “Inez” Olivia M. Pierce (majoring in Theatre and minoring in Art at UT, junior)

·       “Estelle” Christina M. Pinciotti (majoring in Theatre and minoring in Communication at UT, junior)

·       “Valet” Reshi Phillips (double majoring in Theatre & Film at UT, sophomore)

For more information about other events presented by the UT College of Communication and the Arts and its programs, visit www.utoledo.edu/cocaevents.

Twelfth Night – Center for Performing Arts Center Theatre

Our CrossCurrents UT Faculty.

Midsummer Borrowings events on campus

The College of Communication and the Arts (CoCA) celebrated its annual Arts and Humanities Festival with a series of events in collaboration with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and its production of “Midsummer Night Mysteries,” March 27-28. UT students and faculty took part in the Symphony production at the Peristyle. Leading up to the performances, CoCA presented related lectures, a concert and a film screening on campus.

Friday film screening
On Friday, March 20 in the Haigh Auditorium of the Center for Visual Arts, a screening of the 1935 Max Reinhardt film A Midsummer Night’s Dream was introduced by Dr. Matt Yockey, Assistant Professor of Film in the UT Department of Theatre & Film.

Nominated for Best Picture, this film adaptation of Reinhardt’s successful Hollywood Bowl production of the Shakespeare play includes extensive use of Felix Mendelssohn’s music as re-orchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and ballet sequences choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska. The cast includes Mickey Rooney, Olivia DeHavilland and James Cagney, among many other familiar names and faces.

Sunday Great Gallery concert by Bezonian Trio
On Sunday, March 22, the Bezonian Trio featuring Antonina Chekhovskaya, soprano, performed in the Toledo Museum of Art’s Great Gallery. The concert featured pieces that recall two of Shakespeare’s most famous plays – Macbeth (Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D major, Op.70 #1 “Ghost”) and Hamlet (Ophelia’s Song by Dimitri Shostakovich). The Bezonian Trio is comprised of Merwin Siu (violin) and Damon Coleman (cello) of the Toledo Symphony, and Dr. Michael Boyd (piano), professor of piano at The University of Toledo.

Mendelssohn’s Music, Reinhardt’s Diaphanous Damsels, Shakespeare’s Fairies
On Wednesday March 25, Matthew Wikander, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of the UT Department of English, presented a lecture about fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“We are spirits of another sort,” the fairy king Oberon reminds Puck as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dreamers awaken into morning. Puck has just been describing the dawn as a time when “damned spirits” return to their “wormy beds”—a kind of reverse zombie apocalypse. Oberon’s and Puck’s disagreements do not begin or end here, but this interchange raises the question of what kind of fairies the fairies in Shakespeare’s plays are, and, by extension, the further question of how to represent them. This talk focused on the problem of representing fairies musically, in Mendelssohn’s incidental score, cinematically, in Max Reinhardt’s film version of his famous stage production, and poetically, as the fairies appear in Shakespeare’s text.

The College of Communication and the Arts (CoCA) celebrated its annual Arts & Humanities Festival with a series of events in collaboration with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and its production of “Midsummer Night Mysteries,” March 27-28. UT students and faculty took part in the Symphony production at the Peristyle. Leading up to the performances, CoCA presented related lectures, a concert and a film screening on campus. More on those in another post.

Midsummer Night Mysteries with TSO

Mendelssohn’s ethereal Overture, effervescent Scherzo, and iconic Wedding March highlight the first half of “Midsummer Night Mysteries.” The North American premiere of Volker David Kirchner’s Labyrinthos presented the Bard’s fairies, lovers and comic sidekicks, alongside music inspired by the Italian Baroque master Claudio Monteverdi. Stephan Sanderling conducted and Cornel Gabara, associate professor of Theatre and Head of Acting at UT, directed and portrayed the dual character Egeus/Bottom.

A number of UT students and faculty participated in the performance. UT faculty who acted in the show included Irene Alby, Lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Film, who played Hippolyta/Titania and as mentioned above, Gabara played Egeus/Bottom.

UT Theatre students involved in the production included Ian Davis as Demetrius; Jeffrey Burden as Oberon/Theseus; Nolan Thomaswick as Lysander; Victoria Zajac as Hermia; Keely-Rain Battle as Puck; and Elif Ertürk as Helena. Students also doubled up and played other roles, such as the mechanicals and fairies.

Set design was done by Gabara; costume design was done by Daniel Thobias, Assistant Professor of Theatre and Head of Design in the Department of Theatre and Film; and lighting was handled by James S. Hill, retired chair of UT Department of Theatre & Film.

Image of space by Xueling Zhao

The University of Toledo Department of Art will be among the stars this spring, beginning Tuesday, April 14 in Ritter Planetarium. As part of the Planetarium program “Stars: Powerhouses of the Universe,” photographs made by students will be on display in the lobby gallery and on the dome as well.

The exhibition, titled “Faux Space,” is the third such photo show at the planetarium. The image on display were made in the Department of Art’s Fall 2014 introductory photo course, ART 2030: Photography, taught by Professor Deborah Orloff. Students were challenged to create photos that evoke a sense of space – in the extraterrestrial sense. They used a diverse range of materials to create their images including food, toys, pots, glitter, fire, lasers, smoke, and oils. All images were made with a DSLR camera; they are not computer-generated or taken from space.

The gallery images will be on display throughout the summer whenever Ritter Planetarium is open to the public.

Student artists featured in the exhibition include:
Shalissa Bailey, Jamie Campbell, Andrea Fackelman, Emily Frank, June Galvin and Danielle Hedger; Qiong Jia, Leanne Jones, Chariti Lockhard, Nicelle McCuchen, Kathlynn Meyer and Kayla Perez; Alexandra Ray, Daniel Rivera, Madison Roy, Jamie Snyder, Drew Tansel, Chelsea Thompson, Xueling Zhao and Yue Zhao.