Press for Isidro Blasco’s visit:
Category: Blog Entry (Page 3 of 3)
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Lafayette College is fortunate to have award-winning artist, Mary Magsamen visiting April 4-5, 2011 as part of the newly established the Third Street Artist-In-Residence Program. Magsamen is most noted for her innovative work with husband, Stephen Hillerbrand. The duo has been working together for many years, collaborating on video art projects that often include collaborative performance. Their films have been screened and exhibited internationally including at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Boston Underground Film Festival, LA Freewaves New Media Art Festival, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, the Aurora Picture Show, Chicago Underground Film Festival and the Dallas Video Festival, the Hudson River Museum, Boston Center for the Arts Mills Gallery, Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film and the Dallas Contemporary.
Many of Magsamen’s projects often address issues related to language, identity, media and family in the context of a distinctly American cultural system. Her conceptual and metaphoric work is beautifully detailed and profoundly executed although at times, unexpected and shocking. She is often the subject of her work (as is her husband, Stephen Hillerbrand) as seen in the short film, “Cheese Puffs.” The couple takes turns submerging their faces in a tank full of water and cheese puffs until the water turned opaque with oil and it is filmed in such a way that they appear to be having some kind of conversation with each other. Their goal was to highlight middle class suburbia’s relationships with food, fast foods and chain food restaurants that most Americans are acutely familiar with. Magsamen is intrigued by anthropogenic and political relationships and enjoys exploring man’s relationship with his surrounding culture and the challenges humans face everyday. During her visit to Lafayette, Mary will be visiting classes, lecturing and even critiquing upper level students work. There will be a brown bag lecture open to the public at 12:15 pm on Tuesday April 5 in Williams 108.
Lafayette College announces that there will be a new and improved, expanded arts campus on North Third street in Easton, PA. The campus will join the existing Williams Visual Arts Building also located on North Third Street. “The arts campus will serve as a vibrant gateway to Lafayette and the city and provide exciting new academic and cultural opportunities for students and the community,” Lafayette President Daniel H. Weiss announces. The Williams family who also graciously donated the funding for the Williams Visual Arts building and the Williams Center for the Arts building is funding this $10 million dollar project. The new center’s plans include a state of the art film theater, a sound stage, a black box theater, and a media and teaching lab. Most of the courses taught will be part of the new Film and Media Studies Major. Lafayette recently added this major due to the popular demand by the Lafayette College Students. It will help strengthen the creative arts program and making the arts “an essential feature of the College ” This new campus will be located downtown in the city of Easton, which will serve to increase the arts community and also to welcome visitors to the Lafayette Campus and hope to attract more visitors to the historic city of Easton.
The new space will allow students to put on productions and gain better experience working in a theater space. Students will also be able to “put theory into practice by making films, media, performance, and visual art, and will become a “destination” for students, faculty, staff, community members, and artists… creating a matrix of different energies and opportunities,” Says Andy Smith, English professor and chair of the new Film and Media studies department, “If we do it right, we’ll draw people in and eventually what they see will make their heads turn.” The new vibrant arts campus should take about 18 months to complete. The new campus hopes to strengthen the relationship between the city of Easton with the Lafayette College community and will certainly benefit both. “It’s only a matter of time before this arts campus becomes a hub of creative interaction, where students and local residents can take classes, view films, visit exhibits, and attend shows,” Weiss said. “It’s incredibly exciting.”
In hopes to achieve the best facility installed, there have been recent discussions and brainstorming sessions regarding the Williams Arts Campus that invite faculty and students to give their feedback regarding suggestions or concerns. It is a great feeling to think the community of Lafayette and Easton is able to give their input and really be heard. Some of the issues raised by both faculty and students were the issues of transportation and lighting. If students do not have cars, they have trouble getting to and from North Third Street, especially when it’s dark out. This poses a problem for many art students, and the idea of a bus transporting students to and from the building could easily resolve the problem. Another suggestion was to install additional lighting on North Third Street to assure a safer community, and also cars would then be more aware of the students crossing the street. These are just a few of the suggestions that the Project Committee promised to take into consideration. This phenomenal campus will really change the whole dynamic of the campus and be a wonderful addition and attraction to Lafayette College and its community.
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Three Lafayette College photography students were invited to participate in Art Quest’s, “InVision Juried College Photography Competition.” The Show is part of the InVision Photo Festival taking place November 5-7 at the Banana Factory in Bethlehem, PA. The show opening will take place at the Banana Factory’s Banko Gallery on November 5th at 6 P.M. The public show will be highlighting the work of a dynamic group of student photographers from around the country. Internationally known photographer, Larry Fink and Executive Director of Lehigh University Art Galleries, Ricardo Viera, judged the competition. The InVision Photo Festival is an annual festival focused exclusively on photography. The Festival will include workshops and lectures by world-renowned photographers. Larry Fink will be the InVision Artist In Residence and will be giving a presentation the night of the opening. In addition to the College Photography Exhibition there will also be a show called “InVision MUSE” highlighting emerging artists and the masters who inspired them as well as the “Photo Design Project Exhibit” focusing on how the art of photography is changing the lives of disadvantaged young adults.
The three talented Lafayette College students were selected to have their work exhibited are; Hannah S. Rhadigan (class of 2011), John Fedak (2013), and Benjamin Herchenroether (2012). These three students have taken multiple photography courses at Lafayette College taught by Ms. Greta Brubaker and Ms. Karina Skvirsky. Herchenroether’s photographs were taken at a “My Morning Jacket” concert at the end of August 2010. He appreciates music and photography and wanted to explore his interest by documenting one of his favorite bands. Herchenroether explains, “Finding good shots was challenging because I couldn’t really move around much, but I enjoyed getting to experiment a bit with different approaches. The lighting was great throughout the set, which gave me a lot of opportunities and ended up being a key part of the successful photos I took that night.” His photographs that are being shown were taken in a low-light setting, and show dynamic movement through the use of a slow shutter speed. He was thrilled to be announced as a winner in the InVision Festival. His colleague, Jack Fedak also has a passion for photography. He “…enjoys photography because it makes you think twice about what you are looking at.” Fedak’s photograph is a reflection of the sky in a whirlpool of water. “I was fascinated by it [the whirlpool] and had to take a bunch of pictures and flipped some off them upside-down and loved the effect that the sky was falling.” Fedak explains, “With my photography, I don’t really try to express myself, but prefer to show the moments around us that quickly flash by. We are constantly doing so many things, that it can be hard to slow down and live in the moment.” His classmate, senior, Hannah Rhadigan also abides by this motto. She has been studying photography since her freshman year and fell in love with the medium. Rhadigan’s black and white portraits were taken in Honduras in July 2010 while accompanying a Lafayette based economic project. She “set out to capture humanity behind economic empowerment.” She strove to show her subjects in their natural surroundings. She believes in capturing the essence of time, living in the moment and feeling the power of a second in time. She described her trip as “being able to see something without living there, and capturing the moment that says so much.”