Lee Boot, Imaging Resource Center, will present as the keynote speaker at the 2014 Cultural Arts for Education (CAFE) Conference Thursday, May 29. The conference, presented by Arts Education in Maryland Schools (AEMS) Alliance, invites arts educators and advocates from around the state to share, learn and discuss themes of “education, creativity and innovation” in their fields. The title of this year’s CAFE Conference is “Fresh Food for Thought: Come Nurture Your Creativity.”

Learn more about the CAFE Conference at the AEMS website.

Emily Eaglin ’17, visual arts, discussed her short film Future Children on NBC this week. The video of the segment, available at NBC’s website, features an interview with Eaglin and students Hannah Korangkool and Nicole Taylor, who also appear in the film. The comedic documentary was awarded Golden Tripod Awards by Campus Movie Fest for Best Actress (Eaglin) and Best Director.

Watch “I Am Not a Pie Chart” at NBCWashington.com.

Watch the film Future Children at the Campus Movie Fest Website.

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in the NYT, Maurice Berger, CADVC, speaks on the impact of a series of photos that document the 1964 Freedom Summer. According to Dr. Berger, the photos — now being published in a book by photojournalist Matt Herron entitled, Mississippi Eyes: The Story and Photography of the Southern Documentary Project — told a different story than many images of the time that highlighted anger and shock. He says, “Concentrating on educational and artistic activities, [the series] reminds us that the civil rights movement was as much cultural as sociological.”

Read “A Cultural History of Civil Rights” and view the photographs at the New York Times Lens blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column has featured several essays centered upon race and photography including, Malcolm X as image maker, Ken Gonzales-Day, images of emancipation, the photographs of Deborah Will, the civil rights work of James Karales, and the woman in a civil rights photo, fifty seven years later.

Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher, visiting artist at UMBC, has been named recipient of the 2014 Thomas Nast Award. The Overseas Press Club of America presents this prestigious award for excellence in cartoons about international affairs.

Click here to read the judges’ citation and view KAL’s cartoons.

Ruby Artist Project Grants, awarded by the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, are presented to Baltimore area artists in support of projects “that reflect a diversity of talent and creativity in immersive theatre, interactive media experiences, documentary film and musical composition.” This is the first year the GBCA has awarded Ruby Artist Project Grants.

Lynn Cazabon, visual arts, was awarded a prize for Portrait Garden, a project centered upon work with long-term inmates at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women that will be presented throughout Baltimore-area commercial display spaces.

Eric Dyer, visual arts, was awarded a prize for The Zoetrope Tunnel, a 9-foot tall by 20-foot long working walk-through sculpture whose interior animation will describe the evolution of the bicycle, both in mechanical development as well as in social impact.

These project descriptions, as well as further information about the Ruby Grants, can be found at the GBCA website.

Catalyst, the interdisciplinary lecture series, presented by CIRCA (UMBC’s Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts), continues with Steve Bradley and Nicole King, Monday, April 28, beginning at 12 Noon in the Dresher Center Conference Room (PAHB 216).

UMBC associate professor Steve Bradley of Visual Arts and assistant professor Nicole King of American Studies will present their collaborative research Mapping Baybrook, an interdisciplinary exploration of place that uses digital mapping to illustrate research on the history and culture of an industrial community in Baltimore, Maryland referred to as Baybrook—a merging of the names of two neighborhoods, Brooklyn and Curtis Bay. The story of Greater Baybrook reflects the tenacity of a community striving for sustainability in the boom and bust of U. S. industrial development.

A catered lunch will be provided by CIRCA.

Learn more about this event and Mapping Baybrook at our Arts and Culture Calendar. Additional Catalyst events can be found at CIRCA’s website.

Visual arts faculty Tom Beck, Tim Nohe and Steve Silberg, and IMDA candidate, Charlotte Keniston were featured in the first edition of Socially Engaged Art Journal (SEAJ).

“Engaging Community: Art and Food In Baltimore City” written by Charlotte Keniston discusses the artists’ work and UMBC thesis project centered upon food deserts in Baltimore; “My Station North” focuses on a collaborative exhibition by Keniston and Nohe, in which they work with children at Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School to document the Station North neighborhood of Baltimore through sound and photography; and “The Hughes Remix Project” written by Beck and Silberg details the development of the new Project archive containing “175 remixed, reinvented, reinterpreted, and reimagined images of Baltimore street scenes, promotional and advertising work, businesses, churches, schools, monuments, factories, machinery, and portraits.”

SEAJ is an online publication that showcases the work of artists whose practice, community art or social design is socially engaged. The first issue is titled “Baltimore.”

A. Moon ’99 MFA, Imaging and Digital Arts, multimedia artist and staff member of the Academic Outreach and Engagement Division at Morgan State University, has received a Fulbright Research Award to examine the intersections between contemporary film production in Turkey and practices in the Asian American filmmaking community.

“My research will have two identifiable outcomes, motivated by a need for more open dialogue and cultural exchange, specifically within the area of film, between the U.S. and Turkey: (1) I will organize a screening of work by contemporary Asian American media artists to present in Turkey; and (2) I will curate a program of work by Turkish media artists to screen at venues in the United States.

A cross‐cultural study of Turkish and Asian American film presents the opportunity to examine many topical issues in the field of media studies including global/national identities, cultural memory, and hybridity. Just as Turkey is often described as occupying a peculiar geographic and cultural space that is “neither Eastern, nor Western but both and neither simultaneously” (Arslan, 2011), Asian Americans occupy a similarly interstitial position culturally and racially in contemporary America.”

The MFA Thesis Exhibition, now on display in the CADVC, was mentioned in an article by City Paper‘s Baynard Woods last week. The article highlighted UMBC’s well connected Visual Arts faculty, staff and MFA candidates in relation to the Baltimore arts community. Woods also mentions IMDA candidate Lexie Mountain’s performance piece exhibited at the opening, Fred Worden Cuts A Couch In Half With A Chainsaw.

Read “Art Seen” at City Paper‘s website.

Project Mah Jongg, a collaborative, traveling exhibition that includes sound design by Tim Nohe, visual arts, along with original works by other nationally acclaimed artists, was featured in the Baltimore Jewish Times and the Baltimore Sun this week. Centered upon Project Mah Jongg’s display at the Jewish Museum of Maryland this month, the articles discuss the exhibition’s success in highlighting the tradition, memory and history of Mah Jongg in American Jewish communities.

“Mah-jongg exhibit runs at Jewish Museum”, Baltimore Sun
“America’s Other Pastime”, Baltimore Jewish Times

In the exhibition, Nohe completed sound design for three “Muji” players, documenting games in New York City’s Chinatown and Upper East Side. The exhibition, designed by Abbott Miller of Pentagram, features artwork by Christoph Niemann, Isaac Mizrahi, Maira Kalman and Bruce McCall, and was curated by Melissa Martens. The exhibition’s companion publication “Mah Jongg: Crak, Bam, Dot” was edited by Abbott Miller and Patsy Tarr.

The exhibition, which originated at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in New York has garnered notice in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the LA Times, and is on view at the Jewish Museum of Maryland through June 29, 2014. The show has travelled to Portland, Cleveland, LA, Miami Beach, Atlanta and will continue on to San Francisco this summer. Learn more at Project Mah Jongg’s website.