Fine Arts and Communication
Artists in Residence Program
Residencies bring professional performing and visual artists, creative writers, and arts exhibitions to the UCA campus for one or more days for the purpose of expanding student learning experiences by offering the general student body performances, lectures, etc. that enlarge awareness and appreciation of the arts, and by providing students studying and participating in the arts with workshops, master classes, critiques, etc. that enhance learning and professionalism.
All appearances are free to the public and do not require tickets unless noted in the artist's information below. If tickets are required Call UCA Ticket Central at (501) 450-3265. Appearances are made possible by the UCA Performing Arts Fee.
For a printable schedule of Artists in Residence events, please click here.
2009-2010 Artists in Residence
Cardinal Pointes/Puntos Cardinales
September 10 - October 29, on view in the Baum Gallery
Cardinal Points/Puntos Cardinales: A Survey of Contemporary Latino and Latin American Art from the Sprint Nextel Art Collection highlights 55 two-dimensional works, including photographs, prints, paintings, and mixed media by Latin American and Latino artists in the United States. The artwork and the bilingual exhibition text in English and Spanish introduce a broad audience to the most dominant themes and creative approaches in art produced over the last two decades in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and the United States.
This exhibition employs the concept of cardinal points to survey some of the key ways that contemporary Latino and Latin American artists have used to “map” or examine their personal and cultural identities, histories, values, and the world around them.
The bilingual exhibition gallery texts and catalog will include a discussion of the evolution of Latin American art over the last few decades, underscoring the fact that the Latino and Latin American worlds comprise myriad ethnic groups, cultures, histories, and intellectual viewpoints.
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Mike Brune
September 16 - 18
Mike Brune is a writer, director and actor from Atlanta, GA. He went to film school at Georgia State University and there co-founded the production company Fake Wood Wallpaper Films. His credits include numerous commercials and the feature film Blood Car, a festival favorite in 2007, and most recently, Van Wilder: Freshman Year. His most recent short film, *The Adventure*, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2008 and went on to play in more than 30 film festivals worldwide, winning several awards. Mike is also an improviser and has performed at the Chicago Improv Festival, The Charleston Comedy Festival, and many other festivals across the US. He currently performs regularly with Jackpie Theater and Dad's Garage Theater in Atlanta.
CORE Performance Company*
October 7 - 8
CORE Performance Company, under the artistic direction of Sue Schroeder, celebrates its 28th season of creating and performing riveting and passionate work. With homes in Atlanta, Georgia and Houston, Texas, CORE is a repertory company made up of individual artists, inviting guest choreographers to work and create new projects. Known for its intimate and original choreography, CORE creates work that evolves through experimentation, improvisation and collaboration with artist from different mediums.
http://www.severaldancerscore.org/cpc/cpc.htm
*This presentation is supported by Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arkansas Arts Council and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Marco Granados and Un Mundo*
October 7 - 9
A native of Venezuela, Marco Granados maintains an active international career as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher. His diverse repertoire spans from classical to folk, with an emphasis on Latin-American music as his specialty; he was named “Best Latin Flute Player of 2008” by Latin Jazz Corner. In recital, he made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 1991. Since then, he has performed recitals in the United States, Canada, South America and the Caribbean. He was the first musician to have appeared as soloist for three consecutive seasons with the New York City Symphony at Alice Tully Hall and Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. Granados has also appeared as soloist with Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York, members of the Cleveland Orchestra, The Julliard Chamber Orchestra, the Haydn Festival Orchestra of Maine and L-Orchestra in the Berkshires, among others. Mr. Granados currently plays with the acclaimed ensemble Un Mundo. Un Mundo is dedicated to bringing the passion and energy of Venezuelan music to the world, instilling in young people the love of music and bridging cultures through classical, folk, and jazzy arrangements.
http://www.sunflute.com/index1.html
*This presentation is supported by Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arkansas Arts Council and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Peter Carey
October 20- 21
Peter Carey is one of two writers in history to have won the Booker Prize twice. His 1985 novel Illywhacker was short listed for the prize. His next, Oscar and Lucinda, (1988) won. And then, in 2001 True History of the Kelly Gang won once more. In 1998 he was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Jack Maggs, and again in 2001 for True History Of The Kelly Gang. In 2007 he received the NSW Premier’s Award and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Theft: A Love Story. His novels have been honored by every major Australian literary award, including the Miles Franklin (3 times) and the National Book Council Award (3 times). His most recent novel is His Illegal Self, published in 2008.
Born in Bacchus Marsh, Australia, Peter Carey now lives in New York where he is the Executive Director of the MFA Creative Writing program at Hunter College.
Jane Cassidy
October 28 - 30
Jane Cassidy is Professor and Chair of Music Education at Louisiana State University where her responsibilities include teaching courses in elementary music education, music in special education, psychology of music, measurement and evaluation and supervising student teachers.
Dr. Cassidy is an active clinician invited to present workshops on current issues in elementary music education including the inclusive music classroom, curriculum development, classroom management strategies, and teacher effectiveness. She is the coordinator of Musical Mondays, a partnership with the public schools, which provides musical experiences in an extended day program for elementary children through field experiences for undergraduate music education students. Her research interests center on musical development of infants and children, music education for children with special needs, and teacher effectiveness. Most notably, her research with critically premature infants is eliciting cross discipline interest from the music therapy and medical communities for its impact on establishing protocol for presentation of music in the NICU.
http://www.music.lsu.edu/faculty/cassidy.html
The King’s Singers
November 2 - 3
Described as possessing an “impeccably manicured vocal blend, enchanting the ear from first to last note” (Gramophone Magazine), The King’s Singers maintain the highest caliber of a cappella performance and continue to be one of the most sought-after and critically acclaimed vocal ensembles in the world. Recognition of that fact was underlined by a prestigious Grammy award in the 2009 ceremony.
Their concert diary includes in excess of 120 performances annually, delighting their widespread and enthusiastic fan-base. Recent highlights include performances in London’s Royal Albert Hall, Windsor Castle, The Sage Gateshead, King’s College Chapel, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Salzburg Mozarteum and Paris Salle Gaveau . In the US, concerts include Cincinnati, Lincoln Center (New York), Dallas, Salt Lake City (with the Utah Symphony), Princeton University, and New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
Roger Aden
November 5
Aden, a professor at Ohio University, is an expert in rhetorical studies, especially in the study of communication and place. He is the author of two books, Huskerville: A Story of Nebraska, Football, Fans, and the Power of Place (2007) and Popular Stories and Promised Lands: Fan Cultures and Symbolic Pilgrimages (1999), and has published more than twenty refereed articles in Western Journal of Communication; Speaker & Gavel; National Forensic Journal; Central States Speech Journal; Southern Communication Journal; Political Communication Review; Forensic Educator; Communication Education; Elysian Fields Quarterly; Argumentation & Advocacy; Communication Quarterly; and Women’s Studies in Communication. In his next project about the communication of place, Aden plans to write a book about the rhetorical implications of a new physical site-the President’s House Memorial at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
http://www.coms.ohiou.edu/roger-adenphd
Ibtisam Barakat
November 10 - 11
Born in Beit Hanina, near Jerusalem, Ibtisam Barakat had her life turned upside down at age three, when Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the 1967 war. "I will never know what my life would have been like without having grown up under Israeli occupation," says writer, poet and educator Barakat. "This influenced me in every way. And it made me sensitive to all the issues of injustice that exist in the world."
Growing up with war and occupation is the focus of Barakat's memoir, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, released in 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In 2007, Booklist named it one of the top ten biographies for youth and it was listed as an American Library Association Notable, and in 2008 it won the International Reading Association's Best Non-Fiction Book Award for Children and Young Adults.
After earning her bachelor's degree from Birzeit University in the West Bank, Barakat moved to New York in 1986, where she interned with The Nation. Later, she earned Masters in Journalism and Human Development and Family Studies, both from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
"I find it especially important to encourage people from under-privileged groups to find their voices and speak up," Barakat explains. "Given the harsh climate of humanity at this time, it is the responsibility and privilege of all of us to contribute our stories toward the composition of a book of life and history that represents all."
Barakat is working on her second book.
St. Lawrence String Quartet
February 16 - 17
Geoff Nuttall, violin; Scott St. John, violin; Lesley Robertson, viola, Christopher Costanza, cello
Having walked on stage together over 2000 times in the past twenty years, the St. Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ) has established itself among the world-class chamber ensembles of its generation. In 1992, they won both the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Young Concert Artists International Auditions, launching them on a performing career that has brought them across North and South America, Europe and Asia.
The SLSQ has been involved in numerous inventive collaborations, including projects with the renowned Pilobolus Dance Theatre, and the Emerson Quartet. In 2007 they joined with soprano Heidi Grant Murphy and pianist Kevin Murphy to premiere Roberto Sierra’s “Songs from the Diaspora” - a commission through the Music Accord consortium. They have also performed R. Murray Shafer's concerto for quartet and orchestra “4-40” with Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony, Emmanuel Villaume and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra, and Yuli Turovsky with I Musici de Montreal.
Having been privileged to study with the Emerson, Tokyo and Juilliard String Quartets, the St. Lawrence are themselves passionate educators.
The SLSQ is deeply committed to bringing music to less traditional venues outside the classroom or concert hall. Whether at Lincoln Center or an elementary school classroom, the St. Lawrence players maintain a strong desire to share the wonders of chamber music with their listeners, a characteristic of the foursome that has led them to a more informal performance style than one might expect from chamber musicians. Alex Ross of The New Yorker Magazine writes, "the St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is, but for the joy they take in the act of connection."
http://slsq.com/home/index.html
Elise Blackwell
March 9 - 10
Elise Blackwell is the author of three critically hailed novels: Hunger, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, and Grub. Her books have been chosen for numerous “best of the year” lists, including the Los Angeles Times, Sydney Morning Herald, and Kirkus. Her short stories and cultural criticism have appeared in Witness, Topic, Seed, Global City Review, Quick Fiction, and elsewhere, and she has given readings at dozens of literary festivals, universities, and bookstores. Her fourth novel, An Unfinished Score, will be published by Unbridled Books in spring 2010.
Elise is from southern Louisiana, though she has lived in many other places. She studied creative writing at Louisiana State and received an MFA from the University of California-Irvine. Before publishing her first novel in 2003, she worked as a bartender, entomology lab grunt, journalist, disc jockey, food critic, grower of exotic fruits, translator, and flap copy writer, among other day jobs. She has taught creative writing at the University of California-Irvine and Boise State, and is currently on the faculty of the University of South Carolina. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina, with her husband, the writer David Bajo, and their daughter, Esme. Her interests include literature, travel, art, music, and running.
Davis Schneiderman
March 31
Davis Schneiderman is a multimedia artist and author of Multifesto: A Henri d'Mescan Reader (Spuyten Duyvil 2006), as well as co-author of the novel Abecedarium (Chiasmus Press, forthcoming) and co-editor of the collections Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization (Pluto 2004) and The Exquisite Corpse: Creativity, Collaboration, and the World's Most Popular Parlor Game (Nebraska, forthcoming). His creative work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and accepted by numerous publications including Fiction International, The Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review Web, Exquisite Corpse, 3rd Bed, Other Voices, The Little Magazine, Gargoyle, and Happy. Dr. Schneiderman is Chair of American Studies and an Assistant Professor of English at Lake Forest College, a board member for &NOW: A Festival of Innovative Writing and Art, and a contributor to NOW WHAT: a collective blog of alternative prose writers and publishers.
Little Rock Film Festival
TBD
http://littlerockfilmfestival.org
Table at Luigi's Film Screening
April 12
Table at Luigi's - Feature Film (90 minutes)
Written and Directed by Joe Dull
David ("Chef" to his friends) can make people's dreams come true through his cooking -- he can make anyone believe, feel, or do anything they want through his creations. But what happens when Emily comes into his restaurant and can taste the magic in the food? Chef falls in love and it unravels his whole life, of course. This romantic fairy tale was shot entirely in Conway by the University of Central Arkansas Digital Filmmaking department.
*All events listed made possible by the UCA Arts Fee. Additional funding for some events has been provided by the UCA Honors College, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Alternate Roots.
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University of Central Arkansas
College of Fine Arts and Communication
201 Donaghey Avenue, Harrin Hall 222
Conway, AR 72035-0001
Phone: (501) 450-3293
Fax: (501) 450-3296