The Bard: A Reader’s Digest Version
By Amanda Harrison ’12
Shakespearean actor and author Tim Mooney will bring his one-man show Lot ’o Shakespeare to Keuka College Wednesday, April 25.
The next offering in the Spotlight Series, the show begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Red Barn Theater and is free and open to the public.
Mooney will perform a single monologue from each Shakespeare play, with the order determined by chance.
Lot ’o Shakespeare “takes highbrow art and mixes it with lowbrow fun,” said Matthew J. Palm of the Orlando Sentinel. “Mooney is an engaging presence and can switch from indignation in Comedy of Errors, to earnest in a love sonnet, to comical Malvolio in Twelfth Night. He may not be as physically imposing as some actors to play Henry V, but his St. Crispen’s Day speech made me want to take up arms with him.”
Chaim Eliyahu of KCStage.com called Lot o’ Shakespeare “a tour de force comprising no fewer than 19 Shakespeare scenes and sonnets. Mooney’s interpretations were outstanding, and not infrequently cast new light on obscure corners of Shakespeare’s work.”
Mooney has also garnered rave reviews for Moliere Than Thou, another one-man show. He is the author of an acting textbook titled Acting at the Speed of Life; Conquering Theatrical Style.
Tony Award-winning The Heidi Chronicles Opens April 12
The cast of The Heidi Chronicles rehearses a scene in this Wendy Wasserstein drama.
Keuka College’s spring theater production will be Wendy Wasserstein’s drama The Heidi Chronicles.
The play will be staged Thursday-Sunday, April 12-15 in the College’s Red Barn Theatre. Curtain is 8 p.m. for the Thursday, April 12-14 shows, and 7 p.m. Sunday, April 15. The April 12 performance will benefit the cast members’ trip to the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in January. (more…)
A Study in Black and White
Sam and her winning photo entry
She may be concentrating in bio-medical courses, but it’s her photography that caught the eye of judges in the 32nd Annual College & High School Photography contest.
Junior Samantha Swearingen recently learned that her black-and-white image of corn stalks was selected as a finalist in a competition that drew 17,700 entries from students across the U.S. and Canada. The contest, sponsored by camera maker Nikon USA, is a tradition for Photographer’s Forum magazine and winning images will appear in the May/Summer 2012 issue. All photographs ranked in first through fourth place in both the high school and college categories will also appear in the hardcover book, Best of College &High School Photography 2012, which will be published in June.
The Horseheads resident captured her image on a 35mm camera as part of an assignment for the film photography class she took last fall from Melissa Newcomb, assistant professor of art.
Swearingen's winning image
“The photo itself is kind of a freak thing,” Swearingen said, explaining that she was driving home from campus one weekend, trying to come up with ideas for the “texture” assignment for the class. “It was in the afternoon, not a very sunny day. I saw corn stalks leaning against the side of a building, so I just decided to pull over and take a picture.”
As fate would have it, Newcomb mentioned the photo contest and handed out informational flyers at the next class.
“It was pretty close to the deadline, but I figured I might as well try to submit something. So I went back through the [images] I’d done at that point and submitted three photos,” she said. “When I found out I was a finalist, it wasn’t the picture I expected out of the three, but I thought ‘Wow, I’ll take it.’” (more…)
Spotlight Shines on Poet Jay Rogoff
Poet Jay Rogoff, a lecturer with Skidmore College’s English department, will read from his poetry Tuesday, April 3 at Keuka College.
The next offering in Keuka’s Spotlight Series, the reading is free and open to the public and begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room of Lightner Library.
Rogoff’s most recent book, The Code of Terpsichore, a series of poems concerning dance, was published last year. Other poetry collections include The Long Fault, The Art of Gravity, How We Came to Stand on That Shore, and The Cutoff, which earned the Washington Prize for Poetry. Rogoff received a 2010 Spring Garden Press’s Robert Watson Poetry Award for his manuscript Twenty Danses Macabre, and was awarded a letterpress chapbook of the collection. In 2010, he received the Pushcart Prize.
Rogoff’s work appears in several journals and magazines, including Agni, Literary Imagination, Ploughshares, Poetry London, Salmagundi, and The Southern Review, among others. He frequently publishes criticism and reviews in such places as The Georgia Review, Salmagundi, and The Southern Review. An essay about his poetics in relation to Emily Dickinson’s appeared in the fall 2008 Emily Dickinson Journal.
A frequent guest at Yaddo—an artists’ community in Saratoga Springs—he has recently completed a book-length poetic sequence on Paris in 1870, the Franco-Prussian War, and the siege of Paris as viewed through the artistic ferment of the period, especially the ballet Coppélia.
In addition to crafting poetry, Rogoff reviews the New York City Ballet’s annual summer season for The Saratogian, and writes dance criticism for The Hopkins Review, Ballet Review, and The Saratogian.
“Doctoring Up:” Realist painter, sculptor exhibits at Keuka
Final in a series of three paintings.
The faces and forms of the people in his paintings look as though the individuals brushed into living color could step right off the canvas and into conversation.
They look, in a word, real. And that’s exactly how artist Lennie Muscarella of Victor wants it to be.
“If you were right next to it, it looks like a hodgepodge, but step back 10 feet and you’ve got a photograph,” he said, explaining that a number of contemporary painters in the same Realist style he aspires to are currently striving to master that technique.
Muscarella had lots of time to become intimately acquainted with the human face and figure. After studying biology at St. Bonaventure University, and a brief stint in the U.S. Navy, he entered dental school at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Self-portrait of Muscarella surrounded by the people and things he loves: a canvas of his wife during her battle with cancer, his Bible, paintbrushes, and clocks representing the passing of time. He calls this painting "The Human Condition."
Though he had given up art school to pursue a “day job” that could support a family, Muscarella found himself rewarded, he said, because dental school turned out to be “a very sophisticated art school.”
“They taught you how to paint porcelain and you have to know your colors inside out to match anteriors [teeth], and they hone your sculpting skills down to a tenth of a millimeter and bless them, they give you the privilege—not the right, but the privilege—to dissect the human body twice,” he said. “As a figure painter, you can’t get any better than that.”
While he may be “Dr. Muscarella” by day, in his free time he is simply “lennie” the artist, and yes, he spells it lowercase, because painting such a long name with a brush involves more work. “It’s much easier, if [I] use the one name,” he said.
In Muscarella’s mind, dental school was also a saving grace because had he instead entered art school in 1977, he would have confronted what he considers “a horrible year, the post-modern movement, [which] we’ve suffered from the last 40 years. They threw away all the technique and all the skill level is gone.
“I’m so sick and tired of people signing toasters or toilets and calling it art. It’s the king and his clothes, and people have got to be told the king is naked,” he said. “America’s got a wonderful crop of world-class figure painters on the East Coast right now making a comeback—they’ve held the fort up quite well.”
Muscarella will also show some of his drawings and sculptures at the Keuka exhibit, which continues through April 13. While he enjoys both sculpting and oil painting, casting sculptures is more expensive, so he tends to lean toward toward painting, he said.
“Painting is like playing the violin and sculpture is like playing the drums — it’s more physical. There’s a hammer involved, welders, tables with clamps on them. It’s very satisfying in its own way. I like both. But [sculpture’s] a lot messier.”
"The Huddle"
Muscarella will meet the public Thursday, March 22 during an artist’s reception, 4:15 – 6 p.m. in Keuka College’s Lightner Gallery, where light refreshments will be served. Prior to the reception, Muscarella will give a demonstration of his oil painting technique, known as the old master’s method, to Keuka drawing and painting students taught by Melissa Newcomb, assistant professor of art. And while it would be impossible to finish a work that typically takes 60 to 90 hours in an hour-and-a-half, Muscarella plans on giving them a significant taste in the science of it.
To that end, he will dissect one of his portraits in progress, creating a four-part cross-section on linen canvas where one quarter of the portrait is simply his drawing, and the next is coated with a sepia-tone wash of diluted oil paints. The final two quarters are in stages he calls “underpainting” and “almost done.” During the demonstration, Muscarella will take each cross-section to the next stage of completion. The canvas-in-progress will be put on display during the reception.
“It’s the process of making art, the doing that’s important,” Muscarella said. “Once one [work] is done, it’s time to move on to the next, like a rainbow in the next field. You never quite get there, and you’re always chasing it.”
Spotlight on Michael Czarnecki
Poet and publisher Michael Czarnecki will read from his works Wednesday, March 14 as part of the College’s Spotlight Series.
Free and open to the public, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room in the Lightner Library.
Czarnecki, founder and editor of FootHills Publishing, began his poetry career nearly 45 years ago. In 1985, he gave his first public reading of a poem he had written about the Vietnam War.
Influenced by such poets as Robert Frost, Gary Snyder, Robinson Jeffers, Lew Welch, T’ao Ch’ien, Basho, Ryokan, and Su Tung-P’o, Czarnecki has given readings throughout the United States.
Czarnecki has read from his poetry at Wells College, University of Wisconsin Baraboo, North Hennepin Community College, Treasure Valley Community College, Wilkes University, Finger Lakes Community College, Kutztown University, St. John Fisher College, Rochester Institute of Technology, Oklahoma City Community College, Western Nebraska Community College, Reading Area Community College, DeSales University, Penn State Berks, SUNY Binghamton, Elmira College, and SUNY Brockport.
In conjunction with readings, Czarnecki has facilitated numerous writing workshops for writers of all ages and has served as a poet-in-residence in elementary, middle and high schools in numerous states around the country.
Czarnecki has published several volumes of poetry including Acadia Cycle; Never Stop Asking for Poems – Selected Works; Twenty Days on Route 20; Sea Smoke and Sand Dollar, Simple Life, Simple Poems; Crisscross; and Zoo Haiku.
Art, Reconfigured
A featured work, "areUaGODDESSofPEACE," which also evokes the tortoise elsewhere in the joint exhibit.
In 1967, theorist Marshall McLuhan published his classic work with its signature theme “the medium is the message.”
Artists Liz Brownell of Victor and Barron Naegel of Rochester see compelling parallels in their own exhibit, which uses a first-generation iPad to introduce viewers to a fusion of old and new technologies and new approaches to art and work.
The exhibit, Reconfiguring Another Way, runs through March 2 at Lightner Gallery in Lightner Library, with an artists’ reception, open to the public, scheduled Thursday, Feb. 23, from 4:15-6 p.m. The exhibit features many of Naegel’s limited-palette drawings and Brownell’s layered mixed-media designs alongside their signature creation: PORTOISE.
Last year, Naegel and Brownell received a $500 “SOS” grant, or special opportunity stipend, funded through New York State’s Council on the Arts (NYSCA), to purchase a first-generation iPad and other art supplies used in creation of PORTOISE, which is taken from the words “portal” and “tortoise.”
The three-foot wide sculpture, resembling a sea tortoise, houses the iPad, which is programmed with a variety of apps and artistic works conceived by Naegel and Brownell.
“The whole thing is a portal to another dimension of creativity and working,” Naegel explained, “a tongue-in-cheek nod to an old version of silica (clay). New technology is heavily based in ways of working with silica.”
On Fashion, Foreign Travel and Fine Arts
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of features on recipients of the Judith Oliver Brown Memorial Award.
Mia Barnello is eager to follow in her mother’s footsteps. In January, that path will take the junior organizational communication major to the Florence University of the Arts in Italy.
During her spring semester of study, Barnello, a Syracuse resident, will also travel throughout the country to explore the culture in cities such as Sicily, Rome and Venice. She received a $2,200 Judith Oliver Brown Memorial Award to help with expenses. The scholarship assists students pursuing culturally oriented Field Periods and is named for the late Brown, a member of the Class of 1963 who spent her junior year as a Norton Scholar in Switzerland.
“I’m definitely interested in finding the little, not-so-touristy attractions, hidden treasures, the food, the boutiques, and so on,” Barnello said of the tucked-away spots she hopes to discover.
According to Barnello, her mother spent almost a full year in Italy as a college student herself “and almost didn’t come back.
“She studied art in a small town called Urbino. She’s talked about it for my entire life,” Barnello said. “I’m definitely hoping to bring back experiences and memories we can kind of bond over, things we both [experienced] while in Italy.”
The trip will be Barnello’s first trip overseas, indeed, her first time traveling outside the U.S. She is eager to see the work of different artists and architects that she studied in an online art history class taught by Assistant Professor of Art Melissa Newcomb last summer. After visiting museums and churches, seeing sculptures and other famous works, Barnello said she plans to e-mail Newcomb about the experience.
“I want to bring back pictures and things that are exciting to share and encourage more people to [study abroad],” she said.
While Barnello’s mother studied fine arts, Barnello is hoping to focus more on design and the fashion industry, which is a special interest of hers. Last year, Barnello and fellow Keuka communication major Ashley Larimore teamed up on a special class project to create a draft of a fashion magazine for Assistant Professor of Organizational Communication and English Bob Berkman’s media writing class. At Keuka, she is completing classes for a minor in art.
Barnello said she plans to spend at least one day of her overseas trip visiting the headquarters of the Italian edition of Vogue magazine. Ideally, she’d like to get in touch with photographers or writers to get a flavor for the working environment, and see what a “day in the life” is like there.
“In the future, I really want to be involved in fashion. Being in Italy and learning the background, I think will help me decide if I want to focus on fashion through design and publications [or another way],” Barnello said. “Since my hope was to do graphic design and that’s not really offered [in Florence], I’m kind of designing my own [course of study.]’
While in Florence, Barnello will take classes in jewelry design and Italian fashion, as well as a beginner’s course in the Italian language.
“As of right now, I don’t know anything of the language, which is terrifying, but hopefully, that [course] will help. My mom actually didn’t take any language courses when she was there – she just picked it up. I’m a little scared, but … We’ll see what happens. “
Meet New Faculty: Patricia Speers
Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of profiles on new, full-time faculty members.
Patricia Speers can relate to the international students in her classes. English isn’t her native tongue either.
A French-speaking native of Belgium, Speers has taught ESL (English as a Second Language) to international students from China and Vietnam since early July, when Keuka’s first ESL Summer Institute program launched. The Institute was developed to better prepare undergraduate and graduate students entering Keuka’s international business programs to adjust to differences in the language and academic culture of an American classroom.
“I’m a language teacher. I tend to bring everything back to language, because what the international students are challenged with is language. That’s what causes communication problems or challenges in the classroom,” she explained.
How Did Walt Bates Die?
Jessamine Qualman (l) in a scene with Mackenzie Ellis.
Keuka College’s fall theater production will be Lanford Wilson’s mystery Book of Days.
The play will be staged Oct. 27-30 in the College’s Red Barn Theatre. The Oct. 27 performance will benefit the cast members’ trip to the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in January.
“It’s a revisit of small-town mid-America with conservative ethics in a crucial life-threatening situation,” said Mark Wenderlich, professor of theatre and director of the production. “It deals with not only black and white, but a lot of shades of gray of truth and how people see things.”
The story revolves around Dublin, a quiet Missouri town with more churches than bars, and a cheese factory at the center of commerce.
(more…)
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