Please take a few minutes to read about, and join us in celebrating, the numerous accomplishments of College of Charleston School of the Arts’ students, alumni, faculty and more.
::: The Department of Theatre and Dance has been working on an exciting partnership with England’s historic Bristol Old Vic Theatre. On February 19, 2014, you can see firsthand this international relationship at work on stage at a special preview of the 1992 Tony Award-winning play Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel. Save the date – more details to come! [more]
::: The College of Charleston Summer Study Fellowship with Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York City gave Megan Schaeffer ’13 the opportunity to visit more than 50 art galleries, meet people from around the world, and become a more well-rounded arts manager. [more]
::: Former Studio Art Department Chair John Hull, who is currently on sabbatical, presented an exhibition, The Sporting Life, that was on view at the Ucross Foundation Art Gallery in Ucross, Wyoming, June 14 – Sept. 14. (Hull also was an artist in residence at the Whitney Museum of Western Art this summer, during which time he spent two weeks making drawings on site at the Cody Stampede Rodeo.) The exhibition of approximately 25 paintings included images of baseball, horse racing, football and rodeo. Support for the exhibition came from the College of Charleston School of the Arts, the Wyoming Arts Council and the Welch School Galleries at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where the exhibition was on view Oct. 3 – Nov. 15. Hull also conducted a two-day drawing workshop in conjunction with the exhibition when it was in Atlanta. The Whitney Western Art Museum purchased one of the works from the exhibition when it was in Wyoming.
::: The Taylor Festival Choir, in residence at the College and directed by Professor Robert Taylor, spent 11 days touring Ireland last summer with its sister ensemble Na Fidleiri. They presented “From the Lowcountry to the Old Country” in Dublin, Belfast and three other cities. [video]
::: Music Professor and Soprano Deanna McBroom performed in a recital of American songs/duets with, mezzo-soprano Helen Tintes-Schuermann, an American living in Vienna and teaching at the Wien Konservatorium. The recital was on June 20 at the Gesellschaft fuer Musiktheater, and it included songs by Samuel Barber, Charles Ives and John Alden Carpenter. McBroom performed the European premiere of a song cycle entitled “Erotic Spirits” by Stephen Paulus and joined her colleague in the world premiere of “Garden Songs,” a duet that Edward Hart, Chair of the Music Department, composed as a commission for the Vienna concert.
::: The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art garnered four major awards for publications that were produced in conjunction with two 2012 exhibitions. Both works (catalogues) were designed by Gil Shuler Graphic Design. [more]
::: Earlier this month the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival (KC/ACTF) Region IV awarded Theatre student Edward Precht the David Shelton Full Length Playwrighting Award and invited him to present a staged reading of his play, Bread and Circuses, at the 2014 festival in Virginia. The award is unique to the KC/ACTF Region IV, which includes colleges and universities within the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Southern Virginia. (In 2008 alumnus Michael Smallwood won the award for his play The Mind’s I.) In addition (Robert) Anderson Haney’s short play Medium Skewered has been selected to participate in the ten-minute play festival at the Region IV KCACTF, too. This ten-minute play festival offers the chance for him to work with a production team of director, stage manager, and dramaturg to cast, rehearse, and present a stage reading at the festival.
::: This fall the College of Charleston School of the Arts hosted the National Collegiate Choral Organization’s 2013 conference in which the College’s Concert Choir delivered an outstanding performance. [more]
::: In July Varna International Opera Company presented Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro at the Ancient Theatre in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Assistant Professor David Templeton, who directs the Music Department’s opera program, performed the role of Count Almaviva, while Metropolitan Opera soprano Susan Neves performed the role of Countess Almaviva.
::: In November The New York Times reviewed the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s production of Our Town, for which Assistant Professor Charlie Calvert was the set designer. The review referred to the “beautiful production” and dedicated a full paragraph to Calvert’s design. Theatre student Samantha Dahabi worked on the project with Calvert as an assistant set designer. [more]
::: Kitchen Sink Studios created a short film about a project, “Rise and Fall,” by Studio Art Assistant Professor Steve Johnson. Johnson drew a series of birds in flight, nesting, nurturing, and dying; he attempts to capture the commonalities between them and society. [video]
::: In November Assistant Professor Rebekah Compton presented a paper entitled “Clothing Venus: The Art of Adornment in Botticelli’s Mythologies” for the annual conference of the Southeastern College Art Conference. She presented her research during a session entitled What People Wore[?]: Social Art History Through Fashion. For the same conference Professor Tessa Garton co-chaired a session entitled All Things Stone: New Research into Masons and Sculptors during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries and presented “Romanesque Sculptors, Stonemasons, and Contractors in Northern Palencia” as part of that session.
::: Arts Management Associate Professor Karen Chandler was a co-coordinator of the MOJA Festival’s 4th Graders Read Out program. Through this program fourth grade students from Charleston County schools participate in a special reading program and receive a copy of the book that they read. Chandler also is a member of the fall 2013 class of the South Carolina Diversity Leaders Initiative, which is a project of the Riley Institute at Furman University.
::: In August, Blake Stevens, Assistant Professor of Music History, presented a research paper at the ninth conference of the International Association for Word and Music Studies at the University of London. This interdisciplinary conference on the theme “Silence, Absence and Ellipsis in Words and Music” included scholars in music history, art history, literary studies, and philosophy. Stevens’ paper, “Absence Effects and the Spectacular Imagination in the Tragédie en musique,” focused on the uses of theatrical space in French Baroque opera and addressed issues and methodologies from opera studies, comparative literature, and aesthetics. The College of Charleston School of the Arts provided some of the funding to support this important professional development activity, and Blake has stated that he “benefited from both the formal responses to my paper in the session and individual conversations with other scholars.”
::: Professors Barbara Duval and Cliff Peacock were among the 25 artists whose work was in the South Carolina Biennial 2013 at 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia. The jury selected them from among more than 120 artists for the exhibition of work by contemporary South Carolina Artists. The 701 Center for Contemporary Art presented the exhibition in two parts, with openings in September and November.
::: Following the release of The Impact of Social Media on Arts Attendance in Charleston, SC report, Arts Management Adjunct Professor Chris Burgess attended the Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts (STP&A) conference in Seattle, Washington, to present the findings in a panel format. STP&A is an interdisciplinary gathering of researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and students that explores key trends, practices and policy issues affecting the arts around the world. STP&A is the oldest and one of the most influential academic gatherings of researchers and practitioners in the field of arts management and cultural policy.
::: Music alumnus Marco Sartor won an award for his doctoral dissertation at Yale University. He will perform a classical guitar concert for the College’s Monday Night Concert Series on February 17.