What do You WISH for this Year?

The Gallery of Central New York, owned and operated by Jennifer Schutzendorf ‘90, will present its Third Annual “WISH” show beginning this Saturday, December 5 through the end of the calendar year.  The show features collectible small works suitable for holiday gift giving.  Ms. Schutzendorf describes her inspiration for the show:  “I’ve had the privilege of experiencing many give & receive artwork through the gallery. Each painting is a treasure in itself, but also a gift that supports the arts, one that increases in value, can be passed from generation to generation and promises to make a personal impact. ” The Gallery of Central New York specializes in realism & impressionism by Central New York’s most collectible contemporary artists & features local scenes and landscapes.

Ms. Schutzendorf graduated from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management in 1990 and worked in marketing and customer relations for more than ten years before returning to school for a Fine Arts degree (The Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C.).  Since moving back to Central New York a few years ago, she took over her Mom’s business – The Gallery of Central New York – and describes the experience as “a dream job to match my two life-long interests.”

“WISH” includes small works by the gallery’s 18 artists, and features the work of Nicole Gangi this year.  Open House: Saturday, December 5 from 10 AM – 6 PM.  On-line sales will begin on Sunday, December 6.

Video Producer Creates New Networking Opportunity

Award-winning video producer and widely-recognized entrepeneur, Saya Hillman ’00, has expanded her digital media company, Mac ‘n’ Cheese Productions, to include a service for linking strangers to strangers, called Mac ‘n Cheese Minglers.  To date, her Minglers have attracted more than 400 people from around the Chicago area; people who want to expand their networks – professional, social, or romantic.  “Just for fun, I started throwing dinner parties out of my home a couple of years ago as a way for people to meet new people, and they’ve since become ridiculously popular, morphed into part of my business, and are now Mac ‘n Cheese Minglers,” states Saya.  “I’ve been approached by people all over, including Seattle, NYC, San Francisco, Boston, and London, about “franchising” the Minglers.”

Each “Mingler” includes 30-60 strangers, music, games, snacks, and drinks, in Saya’s comfortable Roscoe Village home in downtown Chicago.  It’s not an employment service, but people do get jobs out of the experience!  As another avenue to connect people, Saya also created Smatterings, a bi-monthly e-newsletter that ranges from grant opportunities to job openings to service referrals to activity ideas. Check it out!

“First Fridays” Provides Networking Opportunities for Student Artists

On the First Friday of every month, the BC Art Club students head down to the South End for “First Fridays” hosted by the SOWA Artists Guild – a non-profit association of professional studio artists at 450 Harrison Avenue. The Guild’s purpose is to promote the diversity and individuality of the artists working in this flagship space, the center of the SOWA Art District.  The central space is home to 15 galleries and over 50 artist studios, but the guild itself has hundreds of member artists.  They are  an eclectic group from different parts of the world, working in different mediums, each with a unique approach to creative expression.

“First Fridays” give visitors access to the artists in their element – offering a different and more personal way to experience art firsthand. By opening their working space to the public, the artists hope to give people an avenue for viewing quality contemporary art that complements yet goes beyond the gallery experience.

The Art Club started participating as a group in First Fridays a couple of years ago, and it has become an important part of the group’s calendar.  The group meets at the Reservoir Stop of the D-line at 4:30 and heads into town for hors d’oeuvres, art, and a chance to talk with the artists. For more information, contact India Winter at winteri@bc.edu or just come on down this Friday, December 4!

SOWA artists open their studios from 5:00-9:00 PM every First Friday of the month.

“Re-Sewn” Showcases Environmentally-Friendly Clothing

The Undergraduate Government of Boston College, Eco-Pledge and the Art Club sponsored “Re-Sewn” on october 21, a fashion show featuring clothing made with environment-friendly methods.  While some of the student models displayed clothing from professional designers, others presented their own creations – like London Nicole McWilliams ‘11 (pictured left) wearing a flower bracelet by Kathie Chang ‘11 and carrying a purse by Tiffany Pham ‘11.  McWilliams won the “Project Greenway” competition for student designers.  “Re-Sewn” was among a series of events held to promote conservation and sustainability.  View YouTube video about the project posted by the BC Office of Public Affairs.  View excerpts from “Project Greenway” – which provided the opportunity for the designers to develop clothing for the fashion show, “Re-Sewn.”  Photo by Christopher Huang.  Courtesy of the Boston College Chronicle.

Witness: The Undergraduate Research Journal on Social Responsibility

To Challenge.  To Inspire.  To Teach.  To Testify.

Witness: A Journal of Social Responsibility as a 21st century agora, a forum committed to broadening and deepening the conversation about global responsibility, social justice, and citizenship.  By encouraging story telling, artistic expression, reflection and critical dialogue, and by serving as a nexus of resources for meaningful social action, we intend to serve the Boston College community and beyond.  We hope to open eyes and hearts and to foster a spirit of solidarity as citizens of the world walking with our brothers and sisters in need.  Here, all are one.

Submission deadline:  December 1

http://bcwitnessjournal.wordpress.com/

THE RAVEN IN THE FROG POND: Edgar Allan Poe and the City of Boston

An exhibition that will open on December 17th at the Boston Public Library, Copley Square, aims to change the way Bostonians think about their city’s connection to the most influential writer ever born here. Drawing on letters by and to Poe, on first editions of the reviews he wrote and of the books he reviewed, and on records of his time here, it will challenge the view that Boston was of little importance in Poe’s life and work.

While it’s true that Poe engaged in a career-long argument with Boston writers and editors, whose didactic poems and stories sounded to him like the croaking of frogs, it’s also true that he had positive feelings about the area. It was, after all, the place his mother Eliza urged him to “ever love,” where he found his first mentor, and published his first and last works. His decision to move here after dropping out of the University of Virginia in 1827 and his determination to move back to the area in the weeks before his unexpected death in 1849 support the conclusion that Poe thought of Boston as a place of refuge and new beginnings.

The exhibition is curated by Paul Lewis, Professor of English at Boston College, with the assistance of Dan Currie (associate curator), Megan Grandmont, Katherine Kim, Sarah Poulette, & Rob Velella.  The exhibition takes place December 17, 2009-March 31, 2010 at the Boston Public Library, Copley Square, McKim Building, Cheverus Room.

The opening is December 17, 2009, 6p.m. in the Cheverus Room with the “Great Poe Debate”  at 7p.m. in the Rabb Lecture Hall, Johnson Building that same evening.

Exhibition web site

Image credit:  Created by Kerry Burke, Media Technology Services, Boston College

Celebrating 20 Years of Performing at Club Passim

From October newsletter of Ellis Paul ‘87

I look forward to spending yet another New England style weekend (this weekend) as I make my way back to Harvard Square in Cambridge for three shows at my home venue Club Passim. It is true that 20 years ago from this past September I took the stage at Passim for the first time opening for John Gorka, and 20 years ago October 23rd, I stepped on the Passim stage for my first headlining gig (and first paid gig at Passim)  I hope you will join me to celebrate my new CD “The Day After Everything Changed” (and my 20 year anniversary! yikes.)  Also, You can purchase my new CD only from my shows and website until the national release January 12th. If you order the CD by October 29th, (3 more days) I will personally sign the CD! Purchase the CD

New Paintings by Bill Chisholm

So if you can make it down to Rhode Island next week, check out new work by Bill Chisholm ‘87 at the “Picture This” gallery in downtown Providence.  The exhibition extends from October 16 through November 6, and the opening event will take place Thursday, October 15 from 4-9 pm.  You can also meet the artist at this wine and cheese reception.  48 Weybosset Street next to the Downcity Restaurant.

Maria Tecce Peforms Critically-Acclaimed Show “VIVA!” in New York

On Sunday, October 11, BC alumna Maria Tecce will bring her own brand of cabaret to New York’s Metropolitan Room.  Ms. Tecce’s vibrant new show is a blend of Argentinean tango music, Spanish ballads, jazz standards, and bossa nova with the words of Spanish master poet of love, Pablo Neruda.  Her powerful vocals, fiery style, elegance, and keenly intelligent interpretation of lyrics deliver a riveting and sophisticated night of passion that have won her the devotion of audiences and critics alike.

Originally from Boston, Italian-Polish AmericanTecce now makes her home in Dublin, Ireland.  She has steadily garnered acclaim as one of Ireland’s foremost and dynamic vocalists and critics have lavished praise for her live performances, interpretation of material, and original work.  From Dublin’s Sunday Tribune – “Maria Tecce’s singing combines the intelligence of a musician with the beguiling power of a leading actress.”

Ms. Tecce graduated from Boston College in 1990 and her father, Joseph Tecce, is a Professor of Psychology at the University.

Nothing Is Ever the Same

An essay by Joseph F. Newman ‘97 after a visit to Boston College’s McMullen Museum on Thursday, September 24.

My visit to campus to view the Civil War drawings at the McMullen Museum was my first trip to Boston College in several years. Corcoran Commons (unnamed back in the mid-nineties) now hosts a farmer’s market, at least on Thursdays, and driving past it made me wonder whether students these days spend their early evenings julienning fresh vegetables rather than unscrewing jars of Ragu. Also, the university charges for parking now, a nominal amount, but enough to illustrate that I had become an outsider and had to pay for the privilege of visiting a place I once called home. So already I was in a pensive and melancholy mood when I entered Devlin Hall, strode passed the admissions office dotted with wishful faces, and passed through the heavy glass doors of the museum.

A disclaimer: once, for about two weeks, I worked at the McMullen. What at first seemed like an ideal work-study gig soon lost its appeal as shoebox after shoebox of disorganized slides were slid my way with instructions to alphabetize them. The storage closet I sat in was sunless, hot, and smelled of new carpet. Frustrated by the monotony, I convinced myself that I didn’t even really like art, and in a spectacular display of sophomoric irresponsibility, I quit. A week later, I was hustling pasta upstairs in what is now The Loft. I quit that pretty quickly, too. So ended my career in food service, but art wasn’t done with me yet.

After a six-year tour in the rare book business, I am now the director of a major American art gallery where we specialize in the Hudson River School and American Impressionism. The former was first developed by Thomas Cole in the 1820s and, with some variations, spread quickly in popularity. The style hit its peak in the 1860s. Just as we were tearing ourselves apart with grapeshot, building iron-clad vessels to elevate naval warfare to new levels of terror, and fixing bayonets to march grimly into slaughter, we sought also panoramic scenes of our native landscape, enduring visions of God’s majesty, images to assure us that, despite the war, the country (if not the nation) of manifest destiny endured.

I’ve always wondered at this question—how could these artists, almost always young men from northern states, be spared to paint these scenes to fill our parlors and sorrowful hearts? How, when busy painting the national patrimony, were they not inspired to fight for it, or at least lend their talents to record the horror? The names on the walls of First Hand: Civil War Era Drawings from the Becker Collection are not repeated in the rolls of the National Academy. Or perhaps I’m looking at it the wrong way. Perhaps those artists who stayed north, painting in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks or along the seacoast, or those who went west, who captured the creep of the Platte River, the expanse of the plains, and the glory of California, reminded us that the Union was worth preserving.

So what of Joseph Becker and Henri Lovie and Edwin Forbes and Frank Leslie’s other artist-soldiers who sketched the war? Many excellent reviews of this landmark exhibition have already been written, perhaps none better than Jane Whitehead’s piece in Boston College Magazine. The drawings themselves have been impressively deconstructed and if you go (go), be sure to leave time to read the wall cards. Visitors of museums don’t do this enough. The person behind you could be a curator. If nothing else, you’ll make them feel good.

It was an hour before closing when I walked through the museum. The space was quiet, save for a modern rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic playing softly in the corner. Though at times the arrangement teetered on the bearable side of maudlin, the familiar musical phrases stirred the patriot in me. Lingering over the first group of drawings—epic battle views, an assassination, the hasty graves of Union soldiers with their personal effects scattered about—I thought, here, in these sketches, the grapes of wrath are surely stored. As much as the sprinkling of humorous vignettes of camp life or the self-portraits of the artists mustering out into the field tried to dissipate the effect, it was impossible not to feel that death was everywhere. Unlike Matthew Brady’s Civil War photography, where the starkness of such death is present in the faces and forms of the fallen, these stylized sketches insulate the viewer just enough, enabling one to feel as if the carnage is occurring someplace far away, where sometimes the soldiers are faceless, and are therefore not real, and their deaths are only the deaths of characters in a story.

Everything about America changed afterward. The term “antebellum” came to mean before that war. In the Becker sketches, every shell burst, every pistol shot, every army about to descend upon the field suggests that we were about to destroy the tenuous national foundation that required generations to build. As an art dealer, I am paid to view pictures critically, to view them on the merits of composition and line, or, when the object is of historical importance, to put a value upon its place in history. But the Becker collection overwhelms these critical faculties and I am left with questions about our national identity. I suppose that’s the thing about America—we have dual obsessions to both destroy and venerate the past. And sometimes you pay for what used to be free.

Joseph F. Newman (class of 1997) is the director of the Cooley Gallery in Old Lyme, Connecticut.