On May 2 and 3, the campus celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Linehan Artist Scholars Program with two days of festivities attended by dozens of alumni, current scholars, and incoming students.

Exhibitions and performances featured works by scholars from across the years, including choreography by Ryan Bailey, LAS ’16, a theatrical performance by Grace Marsh, LAS ’28, music performances by Michelle Purdy, LAS ’10 and Christian Hartman, LAS ’20, artwork by Petra Janka, LAS ’25 and Riley Payne, LAS ’29, and creativity by many other alumni and students. Featured speakers included Cameron Slayden, LAS ’99, from the very first LAS cohort and now CEO of Microverse Studios, James Dorsey, LAS ’05, a music teacher in Prince George’s County Public Schools, and Courtney Culp, LAS ’20, a designer with Warner Brothers Discovery.

Left: Brechtel and Haynes are greeted by UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby following their performance, joined by Shaness Kemp, assistant professor of dance. Right: Christian Hartman plays the cello, while Ryan Bailey and Clarisse Lukban dance on stage in Linehan Concert Hall.

“The Linehan Program has strengthened my passions for new music and interdisciplinary collaboration, and I am so grateful to the program for supporting me as an artist and providing me with so many opportunities to create and collaborate,” says Hartman, who played the cello for the event. “I was so thrilled to get the opportunity to perform once again on the stage I called home for four years, and to work with Clarisse and Ryan. I didn’t see their choreography or the projections until the day of the performance, and to see it all come together was such a breathtaking experience.”

Left to right: Darielle and Earl Linehan at the post-celebration luncheon; Jillian Casey, LAS ’27 with her mom at the post-celebration luncheon; Ann Sofie Clemmensen, director of the Linehan Artist Scholars Program, poses with Petra Janka, LAS ’25.

“Earl and Darielle Linehan’s commitment to UMBC and the Linehan Artist Scholars Program has created transformative learning experiences for hundreds of talented undergraduates majoring in the visual and performing arts,” says Ann Sofie Clemmensen, director of the program. “Our focus for the celebration was to highlight the past and the future of the Linehan Artist Scholars program, and what makes our program and community unique and essential to the undergraduate rigor at UMBC.”

Juju Ayoub, LAS ’25, and Sarah McHale perform a dance duet, accompanied by music sung by Jacob Perry, LAS ’14, with visual projections by Jillian Casey, LAS ’28.

With a deeply held belief in the importance of the arts in society, Earl and Darielle Linehan launched the Linehan Artist Scholars Program with a generous gift in the 1990s. (To this day, Earl Linehan loves to recount that he and Darielle met UMBC President Emeritus Freeman Hrabowski on a bus in Israel, and that Hrabowski asked them right then for their support.) In 2015 the Linehans fully endowed the Linehan Artist Scholars Program, ensuring its future ability to continue and grow. Now, its graduates in dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts number almost 400.

Left to right: An audience cheers on dance and music performances in the Theatre atrium; a group of Linehan Artist Scholars pose for a group photo during the post-celebration luncheon; Marlayna Demond, LAS ’11, center, talks with her husband, Adam Rhoads, and Tom Moore, director of arts and culture.

“Artists are the leading edge of creativity in our society,” says Earl Linehan. “They inspire our thinking and enrich our lives. But how can we encourage more young people to turn their talents into a career? Young artists seem to thrive best in an atmosphere that blends critical study with creative expressions—the kind of interdisciplinary environment that UMBC has always fostered.”

See more photos from the two-day celebration. Learn more about the Linehan Artist Scholars Program.

When Chris Peregoy ’81, visual and performing arts, M.F.A. ’99, intermedia and digital arts, received a tin full of Christmas cookies from his sister around the year 2000, he immediately dumped the contents out on the table to eat later. He had a moment of inspiration staring at the empty container—“This tin would make a great camera.”

If you’ve ever looked at an oatmeal container, a hollowed-out book, a mailbox, or an entire room, and thought, “This object would make a great camera,” chances are you are familiar with the concept of a pinhole camera. It’s photography distilled to its most basic elements: a light-proof box, a lens—which is often just a literal hole made from a pin—and some film or photographic paper.

Peregoy, the lab manager for the Department of Visual Arts, has worked at UMBC since graduating from the photography program in 1981 and will retire this summer, but he leaves behind a substantial legacy in his 6-foot 8-inch wake. He’s also leaving behind a few dozen handcrafted pinhole cameras from his company Pinhole Blender for students to keep using in their photo classes.

In addition to the helpful labels on each camera describing exposure time in different types of light, Peregoy has some useful hints for the rest of us who might want to dabble in the non-digital world of making photos.

Tools of the Trade:

• A light-proof container—a great second life for the shipping tube your diploma arrives in
• A pin to make the eponymous pinhole
• Small square of black tape to act as a shutter
• Film or photo paper
• Access to a darkroom (but if not, you can still make it work)

Step 1: MAKE YOUR CAMERA (OR BUY ONE FROM PEREGOY’S COMPANY).

Cookie tins aside, Peregoy says he isn’t someone who makes cameras out of odd objects for the most part, although those people are out there. Shipping tubes and oatmeal containers (especially before Quaker changed their lids to transparent plastic) are his go-tos (although he’s making a camera for his retirement party out of an old whiskey barrel the brewery near his house is giving him).

You need an opening large enough to arrange the film in the containers and a way to reseal the box/tube/pumpkin/ etc. When you make the pinhole, Peregoy recommends pushing a pin through a small square of soda-can material and smoothing out any burrs with fine sandpaper. Affix this metal piece to the camera body with black tape. Then you need to attach a shutter— something that ends the light exposure—like a piece of black electrical tape.

Step 2: LOAD YOUR CAMERA.

Load the camera with the film or photo paper in a darkroom (you can improvise with cardboard taped over your bathroom window, in a pinch). Now you need to choose your subject. “One of the aspects of the pinhole camera is that although it might not create a sharp picture like a real lens, it has an incredible range of focus,” says Peregoy. “So things a quarter inch away from the pinhole will be as focused as things that are 30 feet away.” In his own pinhole work, Peregoy often uses miniature dolls or statues as subjects in the photos, using the strength of the camera to play with perspectives.

Most often, when students are released from the classroom to go take photos, for time reasons, they don’t stray far. “I’ve seen a lot of pictures of the Fine Arts building,” laughs Peregoy. But even so, he’s still surprised sometimes. In one image of a rocky scene with a building in the background, Peregoy did a double take; despite his many decades on this campus and specifically in this building, he didn’t recognize the shot. The student revealed they had laid down in a drainage ditch, and yes, indeed, it was still Fine Arts in the background.

Step 3: DEVELOP YOUR FILM.

Next comes film development. For students, that means learning the rules of the darkroom. “I didn’t know what a pinhole camera was,” says Erin Cusick, a sophomore who is taking the class for elective credit. “It’s been so fun to see how exposing the paper to light and then using time to play with the way the image develops,” says Cusick as she leans over a tray of chemicals in the darkroom watching her image appear.

But Peregoy offers two alternatives for a darkroom-free pinhole experience—solargraphy and lumen photography. Solargraphy uses a pinhole camera and exposes the image outside for several months, burning the path of the sun and the stars into the paper. Lumen prints use photo paper overlaid with flowers or other objects, which after exposure to sunlight will create an ethereal image on the paper. It’s a fragile process, says Peregoy, and the paper should be scanned digitally because eventually the image will fade from the paper.

Step 4: KEEP PLAYING AROUND WITH ANALOG.

“Digital has taken most of the cameras away from us,” says Peregoy. “But there are lots of old options and ways to turn old things into film or pinhole.” Cusick, in the photo class, is struck by how simple-seeming the whole process is, “but the simplicity makes it all the more confusing how it works,” she marvels.

Outside Fine Arts, the sun shines brightly on the building and Jamal Jackson, a visual arts major who transferred from Montgomery College, aligns his pinhole camera just so. “The versatility of the camera makes it so fun to play with,” he says. “It’s letting me capture my own voice in photos.”

The more you know: Discover more pinhole resources.

March in the United States is reserved for college basketball. Fans don their team’s colors as they root for them in the NCAA Division I basketball tournaments. For those without a team close to heart, they cheered as fifteenth seed Oral Roberts University beat powerhouse Ohio State University in the men’s tournament. 

However, Dustin Fisher, ’98, visual and performing arts, was not only preoccupied with underdog basketball wins. While cheering on Villanova, Fisher rooted for The Night Before Christmas to take down Hamilton and for Inside Out to lose to Stand by Me. While watching March Madness, he took to his Movie Madness Facebook page to debate with fellow group members about whether Hamilton should even be considered a movie. Fisher’s March Madness is not about finding this year’s best basketball team; it’s about finding the best movie of all-time. 

The Origin Story

Movie Madness is rooted in the early days of the internet, says Fisher, who founded the group based on an email column from 1998 and a blog he kept in 2003. Fisher would write about two movies he would watch back-to-back, comparing them and determining the best one. This led to his idea of pitting them against one another in an NCAA-style bracket. As former UMBC intramural sports assistant director, Fisher was always involved in athletics and felt it was natural to combine his passions for sports and movies through Movie Madness.

In 2013, 19 of Fisher’s friends filled out his first Movie Madness bracket on Facebook. Today, the Movie Madness community is over 2,000 strong, bringing UMBC and non-Retrievers together over a common passion. 

The NCAA of Movies

Like the NCAA’s different conferences (most college sports fanatics are familiar with the Big Ten, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Twelve, and the Southeastern Conference), Movie Madness uses genres as its different conference tournaments. While genres like action, horror, and romance are staples of Movie Madness, Fisher and other committee members add genres as the film industry becomes more diverse.

“Eight years ago, there were no conferences for LGBTQ and Civil Rights movies. These are things that I’ve seen the need for and have added,” says Fisher. “As the world grows, the group grows with it.”

Movies competing for the conference title are nominated by Movie Madness group members. As with the selection of the 68 teams for the NCAA tournament, the Movie Madness bracket features the winners of the 32 conferences and the next 34 most competitive movies determined by the group’s committee. This year’s tournament features movies like Thor: Ragnarok, Get Out, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, as well as recurring competitors like Jaws and Alien. 

The 2021 Movie Madness VII bracket with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring named this year’s winner. Screenshot provided by Fisher.

To ensure that the bracket and conversation change from year to year, any movies that make it to the Final Four are retired. “Otherwise Empire Strikes Back will play Star Wars: A New Hope in every single tournament, and it would be very boring,” explains Fisher.

While all movies are taken into consideration, Fisher acknowledges the group’s slight bias towards superhero movies, recent movies, and movies from the 80s and 90s.

“Many people seem to vote for movies that they’ve seen in the last couple years. This is why I figure Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, Hamilton, Hidden Figures, and Mad Max: Fury Road were the number one seeds in the tournament this year,” says Fisher. “But there’s also the ‘Oh my God, I remember this from my childhood!’ feeling that gives The Goonies and Field of Dreams probably more popularity than they deserve.”

Building Friendships One Debate at a Time

Conversation is essential to Movie Madness. For Movie Madness committee member Corey Johns ’11, American studies, media and communications, English, talking about movies in the group is a way to destress from his workday.

“It’s a tremendous way to just have fun online and to talk about things we like. We like movies, and this is a great way to just enjoy another aspect of them,” says Johns.

The Movie Madness Board (from left to right and top to bottom) of Brett McKenzie, Fisher, Greg Stryker, Chris Mondichak, Justin West, and Johns wore costumes in one of their filmed meetings. Screenshot provided by Fisher.

Johns explains that Movie Madness, at least the active members of it, created such a tight-knit community that it has inside jokes. Johns stated that The Goonies is a running joke in the group as the most divisive movie. UMBC community and Movie Madness members could not help but use memes from UMBC’s win against the University of Virginia in 2018 after sixteenth seed Clue beat number one seed John Wick in one year’s tournament. 

“We can immediately identify who the UMBC crowd is because we’re all tied together,” says Johns.

While the group is public to all and many active members are not affiliated with UMBC in any way, Johns and Fisher have met many UMBC alumni from different eras of UMBC through the group. The group is how Johns and Fisher met and how the pair met Movie Madness committee member Brett Mckenzie ’04, English.

“[Fisher and I] never knew each other at UMBC, but we throw out a lot of UMBC jokes that bring us together,” explains Johns. “We share the UMBC bond.”

“If I listed off my top 10 friends, Corey’s definitely on the list. We’ve spent so much time together. We’ve gotten to know each other so well,” says Fisher. “The group has definitely fostered some friendships that I would not have otherwise made.”

Beyond a Bracket

Fisher adds that, while the group started as a game, it has grown into a community of movie lovers spanning across generations of UMBC alumni and non-UMBC community members. As more people joined, Fisher, Johns, Mckenzie, and other committee members created ways to discuss movies on the page asides from the bracket to keep the community active.

“It’s very hard finding creative ways to spark a conversation,” said Fisher, but they still managed to create some buzz. Whether it be their spin on the game “You Don’t Know Jack” or videos debating who would win in a fight between characters like Thor from the Marvel series or Jack-Jack from The Incredibles, Fisher and Johns said that people engaged with the new content.

In one video debate, Johns did 15 costume changes in three minutes to argue that the Genie from Disney’s Aladdin would win. In another, Mckenzie wore a Captain Marvel costume to prove that she was the best superhero.

“[Those videos] really exploded our growth this year,” says Johns. “There was so much more activity. Instead of just the poll and voting, which is fun, but now you can have a conversation.”

As with most online groups, Movie Madness experienced growing pains as its membership increased. With more people outside his and his friends’ circles joining the group, Fisher had to assign admins to moderate conversations and prevent discussions from getting out of hand. Despite some struggles, Fisher and Johns said they are excited for the future of Movie Madness. While Fisher does not actively promote it on Facebook, he is happy to see new members.

“If people find this group, awesome,” said Fisher. “We’ll happily welcome you with open arms.” Just be prepared to have strong opinions about The Goonies.

Adam J. Kurtz ’09, visual arts, is an artist and author whose work for brands such as Urban Outfitters, Fishs Eddy, Tumblr, Penguin Random House, and Strand Bookstore (among others) offers emotion, humor, and at times darkness. His books, the most recent entitled Things Are What You Make of Them, contain insightful thoughts about communicating one’s personality and emotions into meaningful work. Here, Kurtz talks about his talents and artistry, and about how UMBC impacted his career after graduation.

– Allison Cruz ’18

Q: You have done so much creative work as an artist and as an author. What inspired you to explore these talents and how did you turn them into a career?

A: It’s tricky to ever explain how personal creative work becomes a sustainable career, and it’s something for which I’m constantly appreciative. I started with small, personal projects for fun –  self-published work and products – and over time, people took notice. Success is about so much more than actual talent once you define what “success” even means to you in your given profession. I feel very lucky.

Q: Talk a little bit about what currently inspires your projects and how you relay this inspiration through your work.

A: A lot of the work I make is just about exploring everyday emotion as a person in the world and a person in their own head. Most recently, I hand-wrote an entire book of essays called Things Are What You Make of Them: Life Advice for Creatives for Penguin Random House. It’s all about the challenges that people who make creative work (professionally or personally) experience, challenges such as self-doubt, fear, tricky collaborations, or even just how to be happy when you feel compelled to put all of yourself into everything you do constantly.

Q: When it comes to the work you have with clients such as Urban Outfitters and Fishs Eddy (along with others), do you create your product and then they take notice or is the product more of a collaboration between you and your client?

A: Every project is different but it usually starts with the end first. It’s important to think not just about the work you are going to make, but also the context and the end result. So a conversation with Urban Outfitters might go like, “We want to work together! Here are the types of products we’re able to produce given our timeline.” And then I work to conceptualize and execute my art and illustration in a way that makes sense for that. It’s always a true collaboration, and if something feels weird or isn’t working, we don’t do it.

Q: Does your work as an author relate to your illustrative work and graphic design work in some ways? Do you have projects that combine all these talents together?

A: My books are all illustrative, using simple line-art and text to guide the reader through interactive journaling and introspective activities. 1 Page at a Time and Pick Me Up are all about looking inwards to figure out who we are and what we have to offer. This sounds cheesy as hell, but when you see the final book in my style and start using it, the response is usually like “Wow, I thought this was going to be b.s. but it wasn’t!”

Q: You got your degree in visual arts here at UMBC. Do you recall why you chose UMBC? And what reflections do you have on how your time at UMBC impacted your career?

A: I chose UMBC because it was in-state and had a graphic design department. A counselor at a local community college mentioned it and I transferred in for my sophomore year. I applied to no other schools. I hate to act like it was a random choice, but it was.

What I learned at UMBC is that education happens as often outside the classroom as it does inside the classroom. I worked at commonvision, the campus print and design center, for several years as well as with the Student Events Board (SEB). I curated Art Week one year, organized an exhibition at The Commons Art Gallery, and had a radio show on WMBC. I was one of those annoying people on campus who was always handing out handbills for something. Ultimately, I got as much out of my three years at UMBC as I possibly could have and I took all of it with me when I graduated.

Q: What kind of advice do you have for current UMBC students and other alumni who are pursuing creative opportunities in visual arts and design?

A: In creative fields, your degree is only as important as your work itself. Make sure that you’re doing coursework that makes you proud as well as taking on extracurricular responsibilities. UMBC is a relatively small community and there’s a real opportunity to make an impact on campus life, or at least your own. Take courses that cover a wide range like coding, printmaking, and film so you leave with as many skills as you can.

What to do when you achieve a dream job before 30? Brigitte Pribnow Moore ’05, theatre, says you should expand the scope and ambition of that dream. Moore is the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Young Playwrights’ Theater (YPT), a group that fosters arts education in area schools via playwriting and allows highschool writers to collaborate with professional theatre makers to see their own work on the stage.

The 2013 recipient of the UMBC Outstanding Alumni of the Year Award in the Visual and Performing Arts has big plans. Over the next three years, Moore aims to expand her organization to an even larger portion of greater Washington and increase its budget to $1 million. And her early successes – including YPT being named as the 2014 winner of The Washington Post Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management – have already earned her the status of a rising arts management leader.

Moore says UMBC gave her a great start. She arrived at UMBC from her small hometown in Connecticut helped by a University Fellow scholarship. “UMBC’s acting program was amazing: It was kind of conservatory-like in its style but also allowed us to explore other liberal arts,” she says.

One area that Moore explored was political science. She volunteered in campaigns during the 2004 election cycle, and wrote and edited a weekly newsletter for Progressive Maryland – a statewide advocacy organization. The academic freedom to push beyond theatre not only allowed Moore to “learn about the world through a different lens,” but it also led her to Annapolis after graduation to work as legislative director for two Maryland state delegates.

Yet despite her passion for social justice and politics, Moore devoted considerable time to exploring the theatre world as a freelance director and the artistic director of The Unmentionable Theatre – a company dedicated to producing new plays with social and political themes.

Then, in 2006, an ad for a job at Young Playwrights Theater caught Moore’s attention. Although she had never heard of the group before answering the ad, YPT seemed a perfect opportunity to fulfill her desire to make a significant social impact through theatre. As YPT’s vision statement notes, it “seeks to create social justice by providing all young people with the opportunity to realize the power and value of their own voices.”

YPT was just over a decade old in 2006. As a small nonprofit, its four-person staff wore many hats. “It was a period of rapid transition and growth for YPT,” says Moore. “On any given day, I would go from producing a play to making copies to writing a grant proposal.” One of the things she valued most was that “everyone who works at YPT is also an artist,” a situation that she says allowed the playwrights and professional actors employed there to “bring their craft to their work.”

As YPT grew in size and ambition, Moore found it necessary to cultivate and increase her own knowledge and skill set. As YPT’s development director, she enrolled in Georgetown University’s Nonprofit Management Certificate program in 2008, and then continued her studies there from 2010 to 2012, eventually earning a master’s degree in public relations and corporate communications at Georgetown.

That advanced training and the hard work she’d already put into the theatre paid off when the executive director position at YPT opened up in 2012. And Moore has pursued a number of partnerships across the country, helped along in late 2012 by the publication of a book that sums up the theatre’s work and mission: Write to Dream: A Collection of Plays by the Students of Young Playwrights’ Theater And the Tools to Turn Anyone into a Young Playwright.

Moore may have found her dream job, but she did so by being true to her desire to use art for social change. “Am I being true to that?” is a question that Moore says she continues to ask herself as YPT expands to reach a greater number of students locally and nationally.

— Sara Barker

Read the full issue of the Summer 2014 UMBC Magazine.

Every so often, we’ll chat with an alum about what they do and how they got there. Today we’re talking with editor Richard Byrne ‘86, English, about his career and work with the UMBC Magazine.

Name: Richard Byrne
Job Title: Editor, UMBC Magazine and Special Projects

Q: Why did you choose to come to UMBC?
Transferring to UMBC in 1984 was one of the best decisions I made in my young life. I found terrific professors who helped to shape my intellectual and creative life. I met alumni who mentored me in my desire to become a writer, and I found comrades who helped me to put UMBC’s literary magazine (Bartleby) back on a positive trajectory that continues to this day.

So after making a career in journalism, the opportunity to come back to my alma mater and help create a new university magazine that would build and expand UMBC’s relationship with its alumni and other constituencies was a very attractive proposition indeed. UMBC has a terrific story that just keeps getting better and better and I enjoy helping to tell it.

Q: What would you consider your greatest success to be in your career?
I am extraordinarily proud that less than five years after the launch of UMBC Magazine, we were awarded a Bronze Medal for General Excellence by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in 2013. In essence, this meant that we were one of the top 10 university magazines in the country as voted on by a committee of our peers.

That didn’t happen, of course, without the vision of my fellow alumnus Jim Lord ‘99, visual and performing arts, and the team that he leads in UMBC’s Creative Services. There is a wall in the Alumni House that is now full of the awards that Jim and his team have won for design. My associate editor Jenny O’Grady has also played a key role in making UMBC Magazine a success so speedily.

Our success also did not happen without the vision of my colleagues in the Office of Institutional Advancement – especially associate vice president of marketing and communications Lisa Akchin and assistant vice president of marketing and creative services Miriam Tillman. They decided UMBC needed a first-rate university magazine and were the engines to make it happen.

It is also important to remember that UMBC alumni – through focus groups and surveys conducted before the magazine was created – helped to shape the vision for the magazine as a smart and readable guide to what is happening at our university. UMBC Magazine reflects the experiences and interests of our alumni because they helped tell us what sort of publication they wanted.

Q: Do you have a favorite memory from your student years at UMBC?
So many. I was privileged enough to have classes with some of the great professors in their field, including Thomas Vargish – an expert in Victorian literature who also encouraged me to apply for a Rhodes scholarship – and the late Robert K. Webb – one of the great historians of religion in the 19th century. I also was lucky enough to study poetry with Anthony McGurrin – who is still on the English department faculty. His guidance helped me get a full fellowship to graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis.

I also remember the strong influence that meeting alumni who were writers in Baltimore – including John Strausbaugh ’74 and James Taylor ’73 – had on me. Strausbaugh was the person who helped persuade Baltimore City Paper to hire me as a rock music reviewer, thus launching my journalism career. And Taylor gave me my first internship at his Dolphin-Moon Press, and helped educate me in the realities (and possibilities) of the publishing industry.

The friendships I made while editing Bartleby and obtaining my degree in English are also terrific memories.

Read more of the UMBC Magazine!