UT Theatre alumna Maureen Davis of Maureen and the Mercury 5
Photo Credit: Mathew Caine/StudioDigitrope.com

UT Theatre alumna Maureen Davis to perform in Vegas for the Rockabilly Weekend March 28-31! She and her band The Mercury 5 will also be putting out a new CD.
http://www.maureenandthemercury5.com/
http://www.vivalasvegas.net/

Congratulations to Cynthia Stroud of our Theatre faculty! She will be receiving her PhD in Theatre from BGSU in May. She passed her dissertation committee recommendation last week.

Blues artists Betsy Marshall (left) and Mary Martin

 

The annual Spring Festival of New Music, presented by The University of Toledo Department of Music, showcases a range of genres of new works of music. This year’s festival celebrates new music for chamber ensembles and electronic music media. Highlights of this year’s Festival include the announcement of the winners of the 25^th Annual Craig’s Keyboards/UT Young Composers Contest, and will conclude with a performance from guest blues artists, Martin and Marshall.

 

The concert schedule:  (The following concerts are at 7 p.m. in the UT Center for Performing Arts Recital Hall. Each of these events is free.)

• Wednesday, April 3 – Faculty Chamber Music Recital (Winners of the competition for best student and amateur compositions for brass quintet, will be announced)
• Thursday, April 4 – Student Chamber Music Recital
• Friday, April 5 – Concert opens with performance of new electronic music, presented by graduate student Christina Eck, followed by blues artists, Martin and Marshall in concert

“The Ghost Light” a play in 4 parts created by University of Toledo Theatre students

The University of Toledo Department of Theatre & Film will present the student-created play, “The Ghost Light,” April 12-14, and April 17-21, 2013. As part of the project, the students are learning to market their work by writing press releases, developing a poster, creating artwork and a launching a web site. There is a lot of information on the site right now, but the site will continue to be a work-in-progress as the opening night of the play approaches. New photos and content will be added weekly. Keep checking the site for new items!

Vinsect Price will be one of Folck’s works on display at the NCUR

Hard work, a sense of humor and a menagerie of insects have earned one senior art student a spot at the spring National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in La Crosse, Wisconsin this April.

David Folck’s art focuses on insects. He’s already had a number of successes at UT, including receiving Undergraduate Summer Research and Creative Activity Grants in 2011 and 2012 to support his research and art about bugs. He used the resources to study the structure, texture, color ofvarious species. He inspected insects, drew them, and researched their behaviors.

Folck is soft-spoken, humble, detail-oriented, with a killer work ethic honed before college, during his time in the Navy. In other words: not quite the mad scientist that you might expect from viewing his work.

When he began to work with Professor of Art (now Emeritus) Diana Attie, “Professor Attie gave me everything she had,” in terms of physical specimens of bugs and resources for research, in addition to her legendary teaching prowess for drawing. “My goal when entering the BFA program was to see where it takes me,” said Folck. “The only thing I have control over is how hard I work.”

Folck learned in January that his work was chosen to be shown at NCUR. This April, he’ll take “LANG LEBEN DIE INSEKTEN!” to the conference in La Crosse, WI. His work, the title of which translates to”Long Live the Insects!” will be on display during the conference. Folck will be present to answer questions and discuss his work.

“Usually the NCUR features the hard sciences,” said Attie. “It’s nice to see our art students among them because this conference features presenters from across the country.” The three pieces Folck will present at the NCUR are “Vinsect Price,” “Bugged Outlaw,” a portrait of Clint Eastwood created by layering rubber stamp impressions of a housefly, and “Unique Quantification,” a work currently on display in the CVA Gallery.

A key example of Folck’s work, “Vinsect Price” is a drawing made with arrangement of insects scattered about the page to suggest the actor Vincent Price’s facial structure. This drawing brings to mind thefruit- and animal-based portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, but adds a critical creep factor of houseflies, ladybugs, bees, caterpillars, crickets, and butterflies climbing across one’s face.

“Unique Quantification,” is a drawing currently on display in the Juried Student Exhibition (JSE) at the CVA Gallery. This wry, loosely academic study of the Carolina Ground Cricket was awarded First Place in the JSE. Folck applied his irreverent approach to entomology, incorporating pop culture, physics, equations, spectrograms of cricket chirps, and candy. PEZ candies echo the appearance of a spectrogram, while one cricket’s neck is extended to expose candies inside.

Folck’s work can also be seen in the first 2013 BFA Exhibition, which will run from March 22 to April 14. A reception will be held on Friday, March 29, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Folck will receive a BFA in 2D studies as a drawing major with a print minor. He will share the CVA Gallery during that exhibition with other graduating BFA students Lisa Franko, Morgan Hayward, Kevin Leiter, and Austin Tuttle.

The University of Toledo arts community was among the participants in the internationally recognized “You Are Here Toledo” placemaking project. In spring of 2012, one hundred dots were placed around Toledo in locations of historical significance. The design of each dot was created as a celebration of its location and a meditation on its relationship with the city.

HOW Magazine is one of the leading publications covering graphic design. Its March 2013 issue, the International Design Awards Annual, celebrates 242 of the best design projects of the year. Of those, 20 were selected to be featured as Outstanding examples of websites and mobile applications. You Are Here Toledo is one of the recipients of an Outstanding Award, and receives a full page of coverage in the magazine. More than 26,000 issues of HOW will be printed and distributed.

In addition to this international honor from HOW magazine, You Are Here Toledo was also selected as 1 of 8 projects to be presented at a national AIGA gathering in Salt Lake City last year.

Of approximately 200 artists who entered the You Are Here Toledo competition, 100 were selected to design a dot. Twenty-nine of the artists selected were UT students, faculty, and alumni.

“Each of us made an original work of art in response to our assigned location which was later printed on an industrial material (3 feet in diameter) that was attached to the ground at each of the assigned locations. Each round image contained the “you are here” logo and a QR code. When people scanned it, they could read about the location, the artist’s statement about the artwork, a bio, and get more info about the project,” explained Deborah Orloff, Professor of Art.

“This is a great example of one of the many collaborative projects our students and faculty have been involved with in the greater community.”

You Are Here Toledo was created and implemented by the Toledo Chapter of the AIGA and the 1% for Art program administered by The Arts Commission. Other partners in the project included Hanson, Inc., which created the website and mobile application enabling user participation, and printers Homewood Press and CGS Imaging. The program ran from May through October of2012. The dots have now been removed from their sites around the city.

UT Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Art Dan Hernandez was one of the coordinators of this project last year, when he worked as Coordinator of the Art in Public Places program of The Arts Commission.

An archive of the project can be seen at its website, youareheretoledo.com.

Installation view of First Contact at Gallery Project in Ann Arbor

First Contact refers to the moment when humans and extraterrestrial life first meet. The subject raises many issues including communication, the future, religious belief, and humanities preparedness for such an event. “First Contact” is an exhibition in which artists explore these issues. It opened Friday, February 22 at Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, and it runs through March 24.

Curated by Seder Burns, Lecturer of New Media Studies at the University of Toledo, “First Contact” features a roster of local, regional, and internationally renowned artists. The show includes art by UT alumni Clifton Harvey and Jacob Tebbe and UT faculty members Seder Burns, Dan Hernandez, Barry Whittaker and Debra Davis, Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. It also features work from HR Giger, well known for his design of the title creature in the “Alien” film series and Charles Lindsay, a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow and current Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute.

Gallery Project is located at 215 South Fourth Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48103. The gallery is closed Monday through Wednesday. Hours of operation are: Thursday-Saturday, noon-9; Sunday, noon-6.

Art students Emily Pohlman and Kyle Tate have been chosen to exhibit in art shows in New York and Toronto. Pohlman’s Holga photography was selected for the internationally juried “Krappy Kamera” exhibition at Soho Photo Gallery in New York City. Several images from Tate’s “Modern Times” series were selected to appear in a group exhibition called Building Global Giants at the Norman Felix Gallery. The show is part of the Toronto Urban Photography Festival.