14
Arts & Culture
February 5, 2020 THE OBSERVER
www.fordhamobserver.com
Theater Professor Awarded Prestigious Fellowship Clint Ramos, among many recipients of color, plans to use the fellowship to promote inclusivity in theater By VICKY CARMENATE Staff Writer
Clint Ramos, head of design and production within the Fordham Theatre Program, has broken barriers for people of color in the theater industry. He was the first person of color to win a Tony Award for Best Costume Design in 2016, as well as a two-time Obie award recipient in 2013 and 2019. Now, in 2020, Ramos has been recognized for his artistic achievements by the USA Fellowship award, which comes with a $50,000 grant to expand his creative work. The USA Fellowship award honors artists’ accomplishments within their fields. Fellowship awards are given to the following concentrations: Architecture and Design, Craft, Dance, Film, Media, Music, Theater and Performance, Traditional Arts, Visual Arts, and Writing. Ramos won the Theater and Performance award, supported by The Doris Duke Foundation. The foundation gives out 50 awards each year, and Ramos was especially happy that this year’s were predominantly given to people of color. “It really means that they made an effort to look at that and say yes, we have to look at this and maybe pave this path for other people of color,” he said. Ramos’ goal is to use the money for the grant to explore art in a new way. “I think that what the grant allows me to do for this year is to really look at my craft. I get to take a breath and not feel the pressure to take all of the jobs that come my way,” he said. Ramos still makes an active effort to push inclusivity in his work. “It is a white-dominated
ANDREW BEECHER/THE OBSERVER
The Tony Award-winning theater designer sees education as an essential part of his creative development.
field, like most of the fields in the arts,” he said. “What’s great about it is that I can use it and branch off and really look at my practice and see how I can diversify.” Ramos attributed his absence in the spring semester of 2020 to the opportunity to costume design for the new movie “Respect,” a musical biopic about the life of Aretha Franklin. Working on “Respect” is a different experience for Ramos than his stage work. Going from theater productions to a full-scale
movie meant dressing 1,000 extras and being in charge of a full team of other creatives. Ramos also had the opportunity to set design “Slave Play,” which recently wrapped its Broadway run. Audiences of the theater are typically filled with the upper white class of New York, as ticket prices are a luxury, but audiences at this show proved more diverse. “Slave Play” showcased three interracial couples that look at history through the lens of race, love, sex and sexuality in the 21st
century. Ramos’s opinion on “Slave Play” was that it “opened up a Broadway play to a broader audience. We managed to fill those seats up with young people and women and people of color because we were able to sell the tickets at such a low price.” Though Ramos is doing noteworthy work in his field, he still feels connected to Fordham and his students. “I always say I need to teach because it naturally makes me a better artist and
practicing my art also makes me a better teacher,” he said. “I find it to be a necessity rather than something I just do.” Ramos finds that complete transparency of his work is what enables students to grow and learn within themselves. He told his students that “as an artist of color, this is how I do my work and what I put up with within the industry. Complete transparency is the only way to teach my students — I’m not going to sugarcoat my life because it wasn’t easy.” Being able to teach in New York City aids his own artistic growth and that of his students. “What’s really special about Fordham is that we are in New York City, my home, but it is also the artistic center of the Western world, and to be able to teach in that city is special,” he said. Working in New York gives Ramos the opportunity to show his students what he is doing in his field actively, which includes bringing his students on set of different projects he has participated in. Theater set design student Katie Heaton, Fordham College at Lincoln Center ’23, said that working with Ramos has been a great experience. She expressed her gratitude for the opportunities and guidance he has given her. “He’s provided amazing connections for us. Getting invited to the dress rehearsal of ‘Slave Play’ was a really awesome opportunity.” Ramos gave an ode to his students, “I am missing my students this semester, but I will be back in New York in two weeks from now. I can’t wait to get back in the streets of New York to be shooting this movie.”
Patterns Converge at Butler Gallery’s ‘Fanfare’ By POLINA UZORNIKOVA Staff Writer
On Jan. 23, the daily Fordham landscape went through a rather eye-catching and colorful change. Positioned across from the escalators that lead to the indoor plaza, Ildiko Butler Gallery now proudly hosts “Fanfare,” a group exhibition curated by Amie Cunat, which will go on through March 13. “Fanfare” focuses on patterns and their relation to art as a means of content manifestation and self-expression. The first piece you notice when you walk in is Elizabeth Corkery’s. Her work doesn’t just hang on the gallery’s walls — it is the gallery’s walls. Her linear reconstruction of a decadent Victorian interior is firmly attached at the top, but hangs loosely at the bottom. The extra material on the floor calls attention to the space’s artificial quality, perhaps commenting on art’s power to create new realities by immersing its audiences, yet at the same time staying outside the borders of the real world. Then, your attention is called to Joiri Minaya’s “Proposal for artistic intervention on the Columbus Statue at Columbus circle, New York, US.” Her art piece has a special ring to Fordham students who pass by the statue almost daily. Minaya refocuses attention on the statue as a controversial piece of art, and she challenges the contemporary depiction of Western colonizers as heroes by wrapping it in tropical-patterned spandex. Students and other visitors are encouraged to respond
ANDREW DRESSNER /THE OBSERVER
Eight different artists’ styles come together in a new exhibit which explores patterns’ ability to make both a social and aesthetic statement.
to Minaya’s artwork on postcards presented on a large stand next to the piece, the responses themselves a branch of her installation. From Minaya, we go on to Mary Lum’s “Monoprix 1.” Lum deconstructed the French chain store’s logo and repainted it in both horizontal and vertical layers. The vertical layers are the less obvious ones, since they are created not by visible lines, but rather by the accents of cadmium red on the Os. The painting is highly dynamic, with the letters being in a peculiar dance with each other, never quite aligning in the way that our eyes are used
to. If you like Jasper Jones’s work, you’ll probably enjoy this one. Next is Rebecca Shore’s “Untitled (17-14).” The painting draws on Medieval visual structure and creates tension through symmetry and the repetition of visual elements. A bright red ribbon twists through white hoops on top of a vaselike structure. The black almondlike shapes are reminiscent of human eyes, and create an almost ominous atmosphere, reemphasized by the ribbon which makes the structure look trapped. In “espacio vertical, tres veces, tres horas,” Beverly Acha plays with rhythm through line and
color gradients. It captivates you with the many juxtapositions it contains: straight diagonals and wave-like separators, the pink’s smooth transition into dark purple and its sharp border with ultramarine. From traditional paint-oncanvas works, you transition to Justine Hill’s abstract composition. It challenges the rectangular convention of the canvas and almost reads like a peculiar still life. Three irregularly painted shapes are positioned in conversation with each other. Two of them share a commonality of colorful geometric shape, and the other
one serves both as a bridge and a point of contrast with its blackand-white scribble-like surface. Gail Fitzgerald’s ovoidal pieces leave a particularly memorable impression. Somewhat reminiscent of Yayoi Kusama’s dotted creations, they are made from an underlying mesh structure and plaster sheets. The dots are imperfect; you can see the places where the paint has leaked. They add to the irregularity and the organic quality of the pieces, almost turning them into an extraterrestrial kind of flora. Last but not least are Karen Tepaz’s sculptures. Installed on thin steel armatures, they look like fragile flowers. Despite their obviously hard exterior, they have a perceived lightness to them, calling to mind fluffy clouds or butterflies mid-flight. Tepaz’s fairytale creations are a satisfying completion to the exhibition, leaving a trace of soft and weightless happiness, and setting you up for the day or evening ahead. Not only are the pieces full of patterns, they themselves create a larger pattern that is the whole exhibition. They demonstrate the endless possibilities that come with using patterns in your art, from making an astute social commentary to creating an atmospheric, out-of-this-world object. More importantly, they serve as an inspiration for us, the artists of Fordham, to find our own ways of incorporating patterns into our works, as well as provide a fresh view of looking at life for anyone who enters the small exhibition space.