Studio '15

STUDIO '15

T H E O F F I C I A L M AG A Z I N E O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F U TA H C O L L EG E O F F I N E A R T S

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These four faculty members are raising the bar

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Nathan Royal is changing the world one tune at a time

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The Department of Theatre celebrates its golden anniversary

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Our alumni are shedding the starving artist persona

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Annual report acknowledges donors’ generosity

Cover Photo: Amelia Walchli

”These spaces are sacred because they afford us a safe haven to unravel life’s ambiguities, while celebrating the common experiences that bring great beauty and joy to us all.”

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HE time we, as artists, spend in our studios comprises some of the most profound moments, hours, and days in our lives. It is in the studio that we explore, investigate, problem-solve, and seek to understand. It is through these processes that we become enlightened about how the arts enable us to reflect the world around us, express the complexities of our humanity, and reshape our perceptions about being.

These spaces are sacred because they afford us a safe haven to unravel life’s ambiguities, while celebrating the common experiences that bring great beauty and joy to us all.

Nevertheless, it is the public square where the impact of the arts is often realized and experienced. As a result, the arts are being increasingly woven into the fabric of the greater university environment. Creativity undoubtedly invigorates the thinking and progress of all disciplines, and results in more innovative pedagogies for our entire campus.

For example, you will read in this

publication about a theatre professor whose work extends beyond the stage and into the medical school where she uses “forum theatre” to dramatize medical scenarios as a way of teaching future doctors the exercise of feeling empathy toward their patients. And you will learn about painting and drawing students whose skills transform a video game into a therapeutic source of healing.

The University of Utah College of Fine Arts faculty members’ and students’ skills as artists are impacting creativity and innovation in collaboration with fellow progenitors in the fields of science, health, business, and engineering. You will see that as our studios expand, so does our influence. Because it is not just art we make – we make change and we make the world a healthier, more compassionate, and advanced place.

I hope you enjoy the stories in these pages that illustrate our ongoing contributions to creative and scholarly excellence, both here in our studios and across the globe.

DEAN RAYMOND TYMAS-JONES University of Utah College of Fine Arts

LETTER from the DEAN STUDIO / 2015

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CONTRIBUTORS /

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHTS / The faculty members in the College of Fine Arts are what make it so incredible. Here are four exemplars of creative and academic excellence.

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CORE OF BALLET / Maggie Wright Tesch, former Ballet West principal dancer and Department of Ballet professor, sheds light on the deep and longstanding connection between the professional and academic worlds of ballet in Utah.

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50 YEARS OF THEATRE / Maud May Babcock brought drama to the U in 1892, and this year we celebrate the official establishment of the Department of Theatre during the 1964-1965 academic year.

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ARTSFORCE / Take a look at how the College of Fine Arts is leading the charge in preparing our students to enter the workforce.

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ART FOR SCIENCE'S SAKE / The vitality of arts in education is sometimes threatened, but graduate student Rebecca Penerosa is working to change that.

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PUTTING THE ”ART“ IN SMART / This is the real story on the success of arts graduates at the U and across the country.

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GUEST ARTISTS & SCHOLARS / In addition to the College of Fine Arts incredible faculty, the academic units bring in world-renown, award-winning guest artists to enhance the experience of our students.

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PRACTICING THE ART OF PHILANTHROPY / Read the rich history and legacy of the incredible Mrs. Nancy Peery Marriott.

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ANNUAL REPORT / It is with deep appreciation that we acknowledge those whose generosity fuels our success.

NOURISHING THE MUSIC ECOSYSTEM / This is the story of School of Music student Nathan Royal’s quest to build community around live music.

FUN & GAMES / The top-rated Entertainment Arts & Engineering program is producing award-winning video games and highly sought-after industry professionals.

Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Photo: Michael Schoenfeld

THE PLACE WHERE DILIGENCE AND EXCELLENCE BECOME INFLUENCE

GODFATHERS & SUNDANCE KIDS / Not all film programs across the nation share a history with one of the world’s more renowned international film festivals, but the U’s does.

TABLE of CONTENTS STUDIO / 2015

Contributors

Marina Gomberg, Editor in Chief/Writer Marina Gomberg is a Utah native and the PR/Communications Manager for the University of Utah College of Fine Arts. She graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor of Science in Gender Studies (2006), and has been doing communications work for the better part of decade in the nonprofit, private and public sectors. Gomberg’s passions lie in the arts, activism, writing, and food.

She lives in Salt Lake City with her wife and cats, and is a contributor to The Huffington Post.

Rob Tennant, Writer Rob Tennant has been a freelance writer on the arts since 2006, and an appreciator of the arts for a lot longer than that. He has written locally and nationally on dance, theatre, film, music, literature, and the visual arts for The Salt Shaker, The Salt Lake City Weekly, and TheFanzine.com. He is an active participant in the arts as a writer of fiction and drama, as well. His play, “Booksmart," will be produced by Salt Lake City’s Plan-B Theatre Company in 2015 with the help of a grant from the David Ross Fetzer Foundation for Emerging Artists. When not writing, Tennant enjoys hiking, camping, and white-water rafting in Utah’s wild backcountry with his wife, dogs, and his baby son.

Peg McEntee is a career journalist with decades of experience at The Associated Press, The Salt Lake Tribune and the Reuters wire service. As an AP newswoman, she covered virtually all aspects of Utah news, from the Wilburg Mine disaster, to the Mark Hoffman murders, to the Challenger disaster, as well as crime, politics, and anything else that needed to be reported and written. As an editor at the Tribune, McEntee directed and edited a variety of news teams and events, including the 2002 Olympic Winter games and the abduction of Elizabeth Smart. During her stint as an assistant managing editor, McEntee oversaw coverage of polygamy and the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster, among many other news events. As The Tribune’s metro columnist, McEntee wrote on a wide swath of topics, all from the perspective that everyone has a reason to be heard. McEntee is married, the mother of a daughter and the servant of two cats and one dog that keeps her on the trails she loves to hike.

On the Cover The Department of Theatre’s production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera stirred Babcock Theatre audiences in November 2014. This ambitious production, directed by Denny Berry, Assistant Professor and Head of the Musical Theatre program, included both professional and student performers, and students in key production roles. Berry collaborated closely with Assistant Professor Dan Evans (scenic and projection design) from the Department of Art & Art History and Associate Professor and Head of Theatre Studies Sydney Cheek-O’Donnell (dramaturg) to create an experience that aimed to embody the exuberant spirit of Brecht’s theatrical vision, as well as underscore the play's timely — and comically sharp — reflection of humanity at its worst. This “superb staging” was hailed by Salt Lake Magazine as one of “Utah’s Top Ten Classical Performances” of the year.

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Photo: Marina Gomberg

Peg McEntee, Editor

contri

Students in the Department of Art & Art History's Mural Class taught by professor Kim Martinez work at the Ballet West headquarters to create the backdrop for the Department of Ballet's Spring 2015 production of "Cinderella"

Editorial Board

Special Thanks

Dean Raymond Tymas-Jones Dan Evans, Design Direction Satu Hummasti Paula Lee Amy Oakeson Mike Sammons Wendy Wischer

Josi Dubois Mike Harris Tyler Kunz Liz Leckie Heidi Makowski Jennie Nicholls-Smith Cami Rives Alysha Smith Randall Smith

Design by modern8

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Faculty Spotlights

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VER the course of time, the University of Utah College of Fine Arts has seen thousands of students, tens of thousands of works of art, new buildings, new technology, and even a new millennium. But one thing has remained stalwartly consistent: the quality and dedication of the faculty.

In every area of every department, faculty members in the College are creating new knowledge, new work, and the next generation of artistic and creative leaders. The influence of the faculty is felt not only by the students, but by collaborating departments across the University, and artistic and scholarly communities across the globe.

These four professors, Music’s Barlow Bradford, Theatre’s Sydney Cheek-O’Donnell, Modern Dance’s Eric Handman, and Art & Art History’s Elena Shtromberg illustrate exactly that.

Eric Handman

(clockwise from top) Breanne Saxton, Scotty Hardwig, Madeline Hale, and Eliza Tappan perform Eric Handman’s piece, “Disappearing Days”

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by Rob Tennant

Photo: Chelsea Rowe

Modern Dance

Eric Handman, Associate Professor in the University of Utah Department of Modern Dance and choreographer, thinks of his work as a hybrid of disparate influences.

Students have been known to call him a dance ninja.

The description is hyperbolic, but only a little.

In addition to his many influences from ballet to what he describes as “the downtown experimental New York dance scene” of the 1990s, he also makes it a point to credit Japanese and Chinese martial arts for their role in teaching him to move through space.

Whether it’s in the attack or the flow between bodies, Handman’s work engages the causes, effects, and complications of force. Though not overt, this martial foundation is recognizable in his quartet “Disappearing Days,” recently honored at both regional and national conferences of the American College Dance Association.

The piece opens with a single dancer on stage (Scotty Hardwig, MFA, 2014), and flows into a series of duets.

Dancers pair off and re-form into various combinations,

until the piece ends with all four engaged in a culmination of the beautiful, complex network of action that characterizes “Disappearing Days.”

It was first performed by the Performing Dance Company, the premier performing group of the Department of Modern Dance. It was then selected to represent the University at the Southwest Regional Conference of the ACDA, held at Arizona State University in March. The panel of judges selected the piece to proceed to the National Conference at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. More gratifying to Handman than the advancement, however, was the feedback he and his dancers received from the panel of judges.

The adjudication process at ACDA events is blind. When viewing and rating the individual pieces, the judges do not know which school has submitted which piece, nor do they know whether the choreographer is a student or a faculty member.

Once the pieces are done and the marks are in, however, each cast of dancers and their director have the opportunity to sit down with the adjudication panel and listen to detailed feedback.

What came up repeatedly from the judges was that this piece and the dancers in it were unique — ­ much different from any of the other groups who had participated in the conference. They wanted to parse what made this one program stand out so distinctly. Specifically, they wanted to know more about the training at the University of Utah.

Handman thinks it comes down to the balance between technical, improvisational, and compositional training within the Department, and the amount of time that faculty spend with their dancers creating new work.

“We have more contact time in the rehearsal process than many of my colleagues at other institutions, and that allows us to go deep,” Handman says.

To him, getting a dance ready for performance isn’t a matter of conceiving an idea and then having his students execute it. It’s about creating something unique with everybody collaborating. His trip to the National Conference in June of 2014 only confirmed this way of working for him.

“Our dancers looked very original up there. Thoroughly professional, and as virtuosic as any other dancer coming out of any other program,” Handman says.

The panel of judges agreed. Typically, the ACDA National Conference only gives out one award. However, at the 2014 competition, the University of Utah received two unprecedented Honorable Mentions, one for the piece as a whole, and one for the individual performance from Scotty Hardwig.

Handman is philosophical about the accolades. To him, it’s not the recognition itself that matters so much as what it represents. It takes a village to make a dancer and it’s the communal effort that matters at the University of Utah Department of Modern Dance.

Referring to both the student body and his faculty colleagues, he says, “I’m working with artists here.

That’s what’s exciting.” ≠

Barlow Bradford

Photo: Drew Engebretson

by Marina Gomberg

Looking at him, it’s hard to believe Barlow Bradford is old enough to have amassed so many honors. He’s vibrant and youthful, especially when he talks about music. He lights up and describes it like it’s more than just audible, as if it’s something visual, tactile almost. And certainly something all-encompassing. When done right, anyway.

And he would know. Bradford has always been something of a musical prodigy. He essentially personifies the legacy of the University of Utah School of Music. He studied under those whose talent originally engendered the School’s prestige, he became a renowned artist whose successes contribute to that very heritage, and he now teaches the students whose futures will carry on this rich legacy.

As a young boy, Bradford studied under Lennox Larsen, the woman after whom the U’s Piano office suite in David Gardner Hall is named, and took lessons from Gladys Gladstone, former head of the Piano Area. As a teen, Bradford spent his nights listening to the music of Bernell Hales, who conducted the U’s chamber choir, and after whom the rehearsal hall in which Bradford’s current students practice is named.

“That was some of my best training on creating a choir, just watching him,” Barlow remembers.

His focus paid off. At 18, Bradford was admitted to the U in what was then the Department of Music, where he started his first of many choirs. Then at 19, Bradford moved to England for a two-year religious mission and started a youth choir that traveled the country. Even there, it was clear his greatest service was bringing people together to make music.

Upon returning home, Bradford relocated to NYC to attend the Mannes College at The New School for Music, a conservatory known for its intense focus on music theory.

“When I took the auditions, I evidently aced the theory exam,” Bradford recalls. “The professors flocked to me asking who I was and where I was from. I told them proudly I came from the University of Utah.”

There, under the wing of the Russian professor Nina Svetlanova, his piano playing transformed. As he describes it, she taught him how to “extract the color and sound from the instrument.”

Despite Svetlanova’s promise to have him on the stage in two years, the pull toward conducting was too great for Bradford to dismiss. He returned to the U, where he could envision a degree in Piano Performance transferring to conducting. And it did. In fact, the U’s new orchestral conductor, Madeline Schatz, connected Bradford with the renowned Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California. Although Lewis had decided not to take on any new students, he made an exception for Bradford, and that was how he earned his Master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting.

Again, Utah called. He returned and started the Utah Chamber Artists, which was conceived as a choral and orchestral group, and is now a respected institution

Music (the group is presently in its 24th season and includes six singers who are children of original choir members). It was then that Bradford first joined the U’s music faculty as an adjunct professor.

A class or two turned into something more, and Bradford decided to pursue his Doctorate (at USC, while still teaching and conducting in Utah — like one does).

After which, Bradford was asked to join the conducting staff of the Tabernacle Choir, where he started the Orchestra at Temple Square, followed by a two-year stint at BYU Hawaii.

But once again Utah’s magnetism worked its magic on Bradford.

Five years ago, the U got him back when he was given the opportunity to take on the choral directorship here at the U. “At the beginning of last year, my fourth year, I sat in the auditions knowing we had built an incredible choir,” he said. “I mean, a really good choir.”

He was right. After submitting an application to the prestigious Florilège Vocal de Tours choral competition in France, they were accepted. And, true to Barlow Bradford form, they won.

“It was maybe one of the most intense moments of my life,” he said. That’s telling, given his wildly eventful career. “The students were focused, on point, and made some of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard.”

It wasn’t the win, though, that inspired that feeling; it was the coming together of hearts and minds for a single purpose: to create art that transcends the human condition. That, and the notion that his life and career, in that moment, were coming full circle. ≠

Barlow Bradford and his winning Chamber Choir students pose for a photo on an excursion during their trip to France

“The professors flocked to me asking who I was and where I was from. I told them proudly I came from the University of Utah.”

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Elena Shtromberg

by Marina Gomberg

Art & Art History

Even those who got there early were hard-pressed to find a seat. University of Utah Art & Art History Assistant Professor, Elena Shtromberg, had brought the renowned Guatemalan performance artist, Regina José Galindo, to campus to give a public lecture on her powerfully political performance and video art.

Not to be confused with film, video art is something distinctly different.

“It is not meant to be mainstream or to follow typical theatrical cinema conventions,” Shtromberg explains.

“It came to be as an art form with the advent of portable and affordable video equipment, namely the Sony Portapak, in 1965. Although not exclusively, often the intention of early video art, especially in Latin America, was to communicate dissent to repressive regimes where governments controlled the mainstream media.”

Shtromberg has been studying video art in Latin America, among other art forms, since the ‘90s, when she was among the few researchers in the U.S. looking at contemporary Latin American art. She earned her Master's in Latin American Studies from the University of California, San Diego, which led her to live and conduct research in Mexico City.

“While I was there, I found evidence that there was a strong presence of women artists in Brazil during some of its most politically fraught times,” she says. “I hadn’t seen anything written about that while I was in the U.S., and so it really piqued my interest.”

So much so that Shtromberg decided to pursue her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, studying contemporary Latin American art, particularly that of Brazil during the 1970s, which offered commentary on the economic situation and political climate.

“I was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and lived there until I was seven,” she says. “I do wonder if perhaps even my short time there influenced and informed my current interests. I have always found it fascinating how artists find ways to communicate rebellion — even though they’re almost always at great risk.”

She’s referring to artists who worked during the 1970s, a decade when military dictators were in power in several Latin America countries. Artists expressing dissent were often at risk of being apprehended, tortured, or “disappeared.”

“I had originally wanted to work on Tarsila do 6 STUDIO / 2015

Amaral, a Brazilian modernist artist who had passed away, but the experience of meeting and interviewing living artists was so profound that I decided to shift my focus,” Shtromberg says. “Imaging how much is lost of an artist’s story when she or he dies, I had a sense of urgency to preserve their histories.”

What she discovered during her annual trips to Brazil was that a lot of Brazilian art from the 1970s had not been well documented.

“So, finding and contextualizing these works was eyeopening, because up until then, there was a perception that because of the seriousness of the oppression, people were boycotting artistic practice. But that was simply not the case,” she notes.

Artists actually were creating a lot of work. In fact, Shtromberg’s forthcoming book, Art Systems: Brazil in the 1970s (University of Texas Press, 2015) chronicles and contextualizes the ways artists used currency, newspapers, television, and maps to communicate dissent and to subvert authority.

Upon finishing her PhD, Shtromberg joined the faculty of the U Department of Art & Art History in 2008, and in 2011 was granted a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. That gave her the time she needed to both finish her manuscript and to begin a research project funded by the Getty Research Institute that, as she poetically describes it, “excavates the history of Latin American video art.”

Shtromberg and a colleague are undertaking this multiyear project to find and document video art made throughout different Latin American cities, and then to make that information publicly accessible through an online database — essentially creating a new body of knowledge about the histories of that part of the world as experienced through video art.

Once the information is compiled (although it will continue to amass new works), Shtromberg and her colleague will include a selection of artist videos in an exhibition in 2017, as part of the Getty’s “Pacific Standard Time 2: LA/LA” initiative to chronicle the history of art in Los Angeles and Latin America.

“It’s interesting to think that when we started unearthing this history, we were among a very small minority of people researching this material, and now we’re at a time when more and more people are interested in this work,” she says. “I even have a student now studying it, and foresee having more in the future.”

And, based on the attendance at her guest artist’s lecture, she appears to be quite right. ≠

Photo: Brent Rowland

Elena Shtromberg (right) and performance artist Regina José Galindo after Galindo’s riveting and very packed lecture (Fall 2014)

Sydney Cheek-O’Donnell Theatre

Photo: Spencer Sandstrom

by Rob Tennant Shantae Marie Riley plays Dr. Becca Neal and Heather Marie Maughan plays Helen Warren in Love Alone, directed by Sydney Cheek-O’Donnell

What is a dramaturg? That’s a slippery question. The lack of specificity is at least partly intentional, according to Sydney Cheek-O’Donnell, Associate Professor in the University of Utah Department of Theatre and Head of the Theatre Studies program. In her view, it mostly comes down to making connections.

Dramaturgy is about research and context. Where a director’s job on a production is to make decisions, a dramaturg’s role is to ask questions and present the options from which a director can choose. Or an art curator can choose. Or a doctor.

What really interests Cheek-O’Donnell is how dramaturgical tools can be applied in non-theatrical settings. After all, doesn’t most of human endeavor come down to storytelling in one form or another?

It started with an email from her daughter’s pediatrician. He is involved in an organization called the Utah Pediatric Partnership to Improve Healthcare Quality, or UPIQ, a public-private partnership at the University of Utah School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. The doctor invited Cheek-O’Donnell to apply her theatrical tools in a series of UPIQ conferences designed to improve communication skills for medical teams.

These conferences each dealt with specific pediatric practice challenges, such as screening for mental health issues. The doctors use a "medical home" model of care, which is patient-centered and always includes the patient, or members of the patient’s family, on the health care team. Cheek-O’Donnell was intrigued by the idea that this was just another kind of communication — another kind of storytelling.

“The questions in any setting involving communication are: Who is your audience? What is the context? And what is the story you’re trying to tell?” she says.

She decided to use a style of theatre called “forum theatre,” where actors play out a scenario in which a

problem is presented but not resolved. Then, the action is restarted, and the audience is invited to stop the actors and adjust the behavior of the characters to achieve a solution. Again, that audience, made up of doctors, nurses, medical assistants, office support staff, and patients, was enthusiastic.

Cheek-O’Donnell also used a technique in which a scene is presented, and then the floor is opened to general discussion. She argues that the use of a dramatized scene allows the audience to become emotionally involved with the characters instead of maintaining a dispassionate remove, as when they were simply reading a case study.

Through similar exercises, the theatrical element breaks through the dry academics and elicits a more natural emotional response as one would feel in a real-world medical practice.

Her passion for interdisciplinary study has also inspired Cheek-O’Donnell to create a course, Science on Stage, in collaboration with Dr. Saveez Saffarian in the Department of Physics and Dr. Gretchen Case in the School of Medicine. In the course, students examine plays with scientific subject matter and get perspective from experts to further their understanding of the principles involved and therefore of the work as a whole.

“Dramaturgy is about context and the connections between things that seem disconnected,” CheekO’Donnell says.

She was introduced to Case through a mutual friend.

An Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in the School of Medicine, Case is not a medical doctor; she earned her PhD in Performance Studies and teaches Humanities as well as Medical Ethics through the lens of the arts and humanities.

Case and Cheek-O’Donnell became fast friends through shared professional interests, and Case introduced Cheek-O’Donnell to Love Alone, a play that ended up as part of the Studio 115 2013–2014 season. The play is the story of a medical procedure that goes wrong and the ways that the ensuing malpractice lawsuit affects the family of the patient and the doctor involved.

Through the collaboration with the School of Medicine, facilitated by Cheek-O’Donnell and Case, medical consultants and medical ethicists were brought in to give the actors the information they needed to bring the story to the stage with optimal accuracy and effectiveness.

Members of the medical community also were invited to participate in discussions with the audience after the performances. While remaining an artistic endeavor in its own right, the production also served as an educational experience for the community.

For Case and Cheek-O’Donnell, the next goal is to develop these dramatic tools to improve communications training for medical learners. They are seeking funding from the National Institute of Health to create theatre that meets training requirements while adhering to stageworthy artistic standards. They envision clarity in their work that will educate professionals while also appealing to mainstream audiences. ≠ 7 STUDIO / 2015

Having woven her academic and professional careers between Ballet West and the University of Utah Department of Ballet for 30 years, Maggie Wright Tesch understands the connections between the two better than most.

By Rob Tennant

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Photo: Mark Wagner

Maggie Wright Tesch during her time as a principal dancer for Ballet West

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“It’s really a win-win.

The students get the pre-professional experience, but also keep the benefits of an education at the University.”

Eri Nashihara and Brian Nelson perform Coppelia directed by Maggie Wright Tesch

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RIGHT TESCH, an Associate Professor Lecturer in the Department of Ballet, studied at the U, danced with Ballet West for 18 years, then became an instructor for both.

She’s an exemplar of the shared DNA between the U’s Department of Ballet and Ballet West.

Although, she is not the first.

To best understand the rich shared history of these two entities, this story must start at the beginning, with Mr. Willam Christensen, the man who founded both the U’s Department of Ballet and Utah’s celebrated Ballet West.

Born and raised in Brigham City, Utah, Christensen’s impact and influence is felt throughout the world of Ballet. Mr. “C,” as he is affectionately known, grew up in a musical family and early in their careers, he and two of his brothers, Harold and Lew, toured the vaudeville circuit as dancers.

Eventually, though, they settled in San Francisco and became integral to establishing the San Francisco Ballet, a world-class institution. It was there that Christensen, as artistic director, was the first to stage both the Nutcracker and Swan Lake for American audiences.

In 1948, he returned to Utah, where he taught ballet, and in 1951 founded the U’s Department of Ballet, the first at an accredited American university.

But building a world-class ballet company and a trailblazing university department weren’t enough for Christensen. In 1963, he deepened his influence in the Salt Lake arts community by founding the Utah Civic Ballet, which in 1968 changed its name to Ballet West, as it remains today.

Now, back to Wright Tesch. She began her undergraduate studies in the Ballet Department in 1985, and after two years auditioned for Ballet West and was given an apprentice position. Though she tried to balance her studies with the demands of the company, eventually success with and promotion within Ballet West forced her to leave the University without completing her degree.

It was a difficult decision for Wright Tesch, not least because she had promised her grandmother that she would graduate.

“Where I come from,” she says, “You don’t go back on that kind of promise.”

But after rising through the ranks of Ballet West, from the corps all the way to Principal Artist, Wright Tesch eventually kept that promise, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2003.

She credits her steady advancement at Ballet West, along with her dedication to her college education, for giving her the perspective and understanding that informs her teaching and staging works in a university setting.

It’s a synergistic situation. While many students are drawn in by the Ballet West name, Wright Tesch and other faculty regularly teach as well.

That gives dancers a taste of the quality of training they will receive if they study ballet at the U. They also have access to U facilities such as dance studios and dorms as well as the transit system that connects them.

The Department also partners with Ballet West in conducting a national Audition Tour in which participants are considered for Ballet West positions as well as admission to the University.

Wright Tesch sees the audition tour and Summer Intensive as incredible ways to keep tabs on upcoming talent, while showing what the University has to offer, both for dancing and as a larger institution.

The bottom line is that the opportunities here are plentiful. Many young dancers will go on to get their dream jobs, many will be captivated by the opportunities the University education can offer, and some will come to Utah to do both at once. ≠

(left to right) Eri Nashihara, Molly Cook, Shannon Mostrom, and Lauren Prendergast performing Coppelia

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Photo: Luke Isley

Wright Tesch retired from performing in 2005, started a family, and moved simultaneously to the educational side of Ballet West and teaching part-time in the Department of Ballet. In 2009, she came on as a full-time faculty member.

During this time, she noticed top recruits for the professional ballet companies deferring their education for trainee positions. Most elite companies, wanting to mold the kind of dancers they want, run their own schools, and the best of those in preprofessional training are referred to as trainees.

With this in mind, Wright Tesch approached Ballet West with the idea of formalizing and streamlining the trainee relationship that had existed between the organizations as far back as her own time as a student.

At that time, U students often danced in larger Ballet West productions such as full-length story ballets like Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty.

Those conversations culminated in 2012 with the U’s establishment of a year-round Professional Trainee-Track program in conjunction with Ballet West’s Professional Training Division. This allowed high-level dancers to both train at Ballet West and also begin their college education.

The Trainee-Track program now allows a select group of students to split their time between their studies and their pre-professional training without sacrificing their dedication to either. Time spent training with Ballet West counts for University class credit, and Ballet West Artistic Director Adam Sklute, in addition to other Ballet West faculty, lends his expert eye to grading the dancers.

Joint trainees concentrate their training and performing with the Department through the fall, giving them the opportunity to dance a wide variety of roles with directors from different backgrounds.

In the spring, their focus shifts to Ballet West’s fulllength production and to the Family series, in which the trainees dance a range of roles while working closely with the company’s artistic staff.

“It’s really a win-win. The students get the preprofessional experience, but also keep the benefits of an education at the University,” Wright Tesch says.

The Department of Ballet also collaborates with Ballet West on their combined Summer Intensive Workshop, a six-week session of rigorous training held in July and August for those who aspire to professional careers.

t l's ques a y o R ty Nathan mmuni o c d l i u to b ic. ve mus i l d n u aro

Marina

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by rg G o mb e

a music is oyal, live R n a g th in a al gather senior, N tes centr f Music a o e l r o erstand c o d It h n c u r. s us othe tah S n lp U a e f e h o n y d o n it s a er s, ct to spires u OR Univ to conne ds us, in y for us a in b w t l a a s th r the world rce unive ection to ; it is a fo n s n e v o c li r g u in o . ce is find places in else can experien nothing d t e a v th li lorado s y l’ a w rt, in Co f Roya a o p y t life in a it s r o jo em e and a e ma up, for th . nchorag ic w s A In fact, th e u r g in m t ld u h o s g ,b hands a 13 years im throu m, Utah left their n he was n in Ore around h e r r e h o v b w e s n d a e ts 4, w sic bloom strumen Royal, 2 ve of mu er. The in lo v o is p g. about e H . le a s k and a lot e mornin ars to a r, th a it and Alas it to u u g in g o e ic out mus rought tw to play th . friend b talked ab out how b d a ew place n n a it b a d e le in m tt s li r m e a u th d ho they str l learne ting wit ht, Roya f connec o y a That nig w a sic as er of mu the pow

Photo: Justin Grant Photography

Nathan Royal and his band mates in the Hot Club of Zion

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Photo: Barry Martak

is c i s u m d an e s r e v i d and e r , a s t s e e k r n a e ic sc rs, m s e u n r m o l nd c a u t f k s e c s e r o e t r c s c s Su . “It’ afes, s c e b i — r c e nd s r a e e d h , s e w p h y u r o ” e , r ev l, g ues a n c e i v s l s a a l n c o eds i , t e i f p d t o a a p r t h , t n z o z n y ja stem s y s p y o c g e , s n ct. e bluegras becomes its ow n n o c o ed t It e . n s t r s i u o o l o s s eed f d n a After graduation from high school, e r Royal moved back to Utah, which was when he our cultu

The Hot Club of Zion playing for a massive audience of more than 5,000 people at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival

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He dreamt of performing in rock ‘n roll and heavy metal bands. Playing Black Sabbath, he recalls, was a good release for angstridden teens. And even then, his entrepreneurial spirit shone brightly as he organized bands before he could even drive.

The more he played and learned, the more his musical tastes changed. His palate for acoustic music refined, and at 17, Royal started listening to and experimenting with jazz.

“My friend who played the saxophone described jazz as vibrant, alive, and exciting — a genre with endless possibility,” Royal remembers. “So I started attending jazz jams, where musicians would gather in public places to network and play music together.

Until one time, they told me to go home and not come back until I could actually play.”

So he did. And he became quite good.

decided to pursue the dedicated study of jazz performance.

“That was challenging,” he said. “I was good enough having been self-taught to make it into the program, fortunately, but had to almost completely learn how to read music once I arrived. I feel like that was really when I got my feet wet as more than an amateur.”

In the University of Utah School of Music, students taking lessons have to also play in ensembles, and so in Royal’s first semester he formed a jazz combo. It consisted of a violin, clarinet, mandolin, and two guitars — with Royal the lead guitarist. They named themselves the Hot Club of Zion; they played toe-tapping, driving gypsy jazz, and they would practice together for two hours each week in anticipation

of a concert performance at the end of the semester. culture and feeds our need to connect.”

But something else happened.

Royal likens the benefits of gathering for live Early in the semester, they moved their practice music to those of eating meals with others. Raising sessions to Big Ed’s, a little burger-and-beer joint the consciousness of that notion will act as the fertile across from campus. Not even three weeks into the soil that nourishes the live music ecosystem. semester they were asked to pick up a real, two-hour Even now, he is trying his hand at using music as gig. Which led to another gig. an economic driver to connect And so it went. consumers to brands. While Their burgeoning schedule working to finish his Bachelor of paid performances of Arts in Jazz Performance at demanded regular rehearsals, the University of Utah, Royal so despite not needing the is working with a local startcourse, the students in the up company to formulate a Hot Club of Zion continued marketing strategy based to register for the combo class around the idea of sponsoring semester after semester. live performances all over the Small and sporadic work city to bring awareness to a turned into bigger and more new product. Sure beats filling regular work. In time, the band airtime with commercials. landed a weekly gig at Park “Music drives everything — City’s prestigious ski lodge, the even if and when we don’t fully Stein Ericksen. And now, they realize it,” Royal says. play weekly at one of Salt Lake And, in fact, he is right; his City’s hottest venues, Bar X. life personifies that notion. It It became very evident to is music that has connected Royal that it was happening again. Music was again It became very evident to Royal that it was connecting him, this time happening again. Music was again connecting between his scholastic endeavors and his professional career. him, this time between his scholastic This emerging pattern endeavors and his professional career. solidified in his mind the magnetic power of music. And in that moment of gestalt, a concept called Crescendo him to new places, new people, new work, and new emerged. Crescendo is a nonprofit music-focused experiences. Perhaps that is why from Nathan Royal’s organization Royal will someday start that is vantage point: the healthier the live music ecosystem, designed to weave live music into the greater fabric of the healthier the community. π our community.

“I want to find ways to integrate live music where it might not normally exist, and in front of people who might not normally encounter it,” Royal dreams. His vision is one where music is omnipresent, as in the thriving communities he experienced in his travels to places like Austin, Texas and Athens, Greece.

“Successful music scenes are diverse and music is everywhere — cafes, street corners, markets, and nontraditional venues,” he describes. “It’s rock and bluegrass, gypsy jazz, pop, classical, groups, and soloists. It becomes its own ecosystem that feeds our

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With the perennially ranked University of Utah Entertainment Arts and Engineering program eae

by ROB TENNANT

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WHEN U of U professors Robert Kessler and Roger Altizer met in 2005, the video game industry had been hiring narrowly trained employees through trade schools for years.

There were virtually no University programs in the country dedicated to teaching the breadth and depth of skills necessary to produce content for a business that is, in total revenue, larger than the film industry.

However, many of the expanding video game companies had realized they needed employees who would enter the industry with a more robust set of skills and who could grow along with the company. Seeing this need, Kessler and Altizer, along with Film & Media Arts chair, Kevin Hanson, and professor Jim De St Germain, created the University of Utah’s Entertainment Arts and Engineering program, which enrolled its first undergraduate cohort in fall of 2008. Now, more than 230 students pursue the EAE emphasis as part of their BA in Film & Media Arts within the College of Fine Arts.

“It was very important for us to put both Arts and Engineering in that title… our program is fundamentally interdisciplinary,” Corrinne Lewis, Adjunct Professor and Academic Program Manager for EAE says of the nature of the collaboration between the Department of Film & Media Arts and the School of Computing.

The undergraduate program is made up of two academic emphases, one in each department. So students graduate with a degree in one of those two disciplines, but focus their studies on video game production through both lenses.

On the Film side of the equation, students take classes on animation, storyboarding, and the narrative structure that is the basis of any storytelling. It’s an aspect that is increasingly important to game design.

“A lot of people think that game development is just programming, but that’s just not true,” Lewis says.

There was a time just a few years ago when progress in video games was largely defined by the technology. Faster processors and more memory in computers and dedicated video game systems allowed for flashier graphics, and that pretty much defined the user experience. However, as the technology has improved to the point that games can be nearly indistinguishable from Hollywood films, success is increasingly defined by less tangible components like storytelling, and the tools that make for good visual storytelling are what the Department of Film & Media Arts is all about.

Skills in lighting, sound design, direction, and general project management are all necessary to good game design. Lewis says that when you look at the resources that go into making a game, the aspects of art and project management (production) are just as big in terms of budget and personnel as the actual coding.

That means the art folks and the coding folks have to work together, which they do from day one in EAE. The programmers have to take classes on art and filmmaking, and the Film students have to take basics of coding.

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“They hate it at first,” Lewis says with a laugh. “But they end up having respect for people who do what they don’t do.”

More than just sharing classroom space, the students also work together in teams on gamemaking projects throughout their time in the program, culminating with a yearlong capstone project senior year in which they make an entire game from scratch.

This is vital, Lewis says. Besides a few outliers toiling independently in their proverbial basements, the video game industry is fundamentally a collaborative one. The feedback from those in the industry who have hired graduates of the program is extremely positive on that point in particular. They report that the approach gives EAE students the equivalent of two years in the field at graduation.

This approach has resulted in a program that, though only a few years old, has been consistently ranked as one of the top three game design programs in the country, with the undergraduate program taking the No. 1 spot from Princeton Review in 2012.

The program has produced some specific success stories recently. The release of senior capstone project “Minions!” in the Xbox Live Indie Arcade store resulted in enough sales through digital downloads for the entire team to pay their tuition for the class from the proceeds.

They even had enough left over to give back to the program in the form of a scholarship donation.

Another senior capstone project that took off was “Magnetic by Nature,” a scrolling platform with an art deco design sensibility. It won Best Developed Game and Audience Choice awards at the 2013 Utah Game Wars competition.

With those accolades, the design team went into business together after graduation, creating their own game studio, Team Tripleslash.

As gratifying as top ranking and awards are, the real success, as far as Lewis is concerned, is that nearly all graduates get jobs in the industry if they want them. The demand for talent in the growing industry, coupled with the quality education students receive in EAE, nearly guarantees graduates work in the highly competitive and lucrative field if they choose to pursue it.

Even though Entertainment is in the name of the program, video games aren’t necessarily all about fun and, well, games. New this year for EAE is a collaboration with the Center for Medical Innovation and the School of Medicine creating therapeutic games and apps, pulling in experts from across campus, including Eric Handman in the Department of Modern Dance.

Lewis is tight-lipped on details, but her excitement is palpable. Rest assured, the world is just beginning to hear about the creativity and innovation coming out of EAE. π

Skills in lighting, sound design, direction, and general project management are all necessary to good game design.

Lewis says that when you look at the resources that go into making a game. the aspects of art and project management production are just as big in terms of budget and personnel as the actual coding.

ENHANCE

(top) Screenshot from the EAE game �Vinyl“ (bottom) Students in the Entertainment Arts & Entertainment program work on designing and building video games.

Photos: Courtesy of EAE

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GODFATHERS & Sterling Van Wagenen talks to participants at the 1981 Filmmakers Lab Opening Ceremony

T by Rob Tennant

HE stories of the Dep Sundance Film Festiv realize. It all comes do individuals looking aro and deciding to create

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Tom Sobchack, 1967 Photo: Courtesy of Special Collections Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

partment of Film & Media Arts and the val are more connected than most people own to community; a group of like-minded ound, not seeing what they’re looking for, e it for themselves.

TOM SOBCHACK, semi-retired Professor Emeritus, is the godfather of the Department of Film & Media Arts. It is very likely there would be no Department at all without him.

When Tom Sobchack was a freshly minted PhD and was offered a position teaching English at the University of Utah in 1966, one question he asked before accepting was whether the city had a place to see art films. He was relieved to hear about the Tower Theatre.

His time living in New York City during his doctoral studies had instilled in him a passion for art films, which he describes as being “aimed at an intelligent audience, not just mindless entertainment.” He was inspired by these films, and when given the chance to design a new course in his second year as an Assistant Professor, Sobchack created the first film class at the University of Utah.

It wasn’t strange to him to be teaching film at the university level.

“Ideas and images appeal to me a great deal, and they come together in motion pictures,” he said, adding that applying analysis can elevate any narrative, even a “B” Western or Science Fiction film.

He feels the stories we choose to tell actually tell us about ourselves.

The course was a success, and it led to Sobchack creating a three-quarter sequence in film. Before long, he was engaged almost entirely in the teaching of film for the Department of English, and his work had introduced him to like-minded individuals in the larger community as well. He was a founding member of the Salt Lake Cinema Council, an organization dedicated to the promotion of film in Utah.

In 1976, they found themselves with a new task.

That was the year that Sterling Van Wagenen, currently Producer-in-Residence in the Department of Film & Media Arts, decided to put together a film festival with some support from the Utah Film Commission. Proposed as part of the bicentennial celebrations held across the country, the first incarnation of what would eventually evolve into the Sundance Film Festival was a retrospective festival of American film.

It was held at the now-defunct theater at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, and among other programming, it was the first time Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather I & II had ever been screened together.

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Sterling Van Wagenen with 1984 Filmmakers Lab participants

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Originally intended to be a one-time event for the celebration of the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, the success of the festival prompted Van Wagenen to make it an annual event called the U.S. Film Festival beginning in 1978. At the time, film festivals across the country were generally programmed with foreign “serious” films, or were expositions of American films, either retrospective like the bicentennial event, or new work coming out of the mainstream Hollywood studios.

Van Wagenen wanted to set his festival apart, and settled on the idea of featuring what were then called “regional films,” small budget features and shorts shot outside of the Hollywood system and usually outside of Hollywood altogether. Most were passion projects with no real means of finding an audience.

The term hadn’t been coined yet, but Independent

Cinema had been born, and it had its first real promoter in Van Wagenen and the U.S. Film Festival.

Fortunately for Van Wagenen, the idea of Independent Film had another local champion in Robert Redford, who was already a well-known and respected actor and producer.

“He also happened to be married to my cousin,” Van Wagenen said with a laugh. It was a fact that helped when it came to scheduling meetings.

According to Van Wagenen, when he and Redford first discussed the idea, Redford admitted that he hated film festivals, but he did like Van Wagenen’s idea of promoting small-budget regional films. He agreed to act as the chairman of the festival’s Board of Directors, and with Redford’s name and list of contacts behind the endeavor, Van Wagenen began to put the event together in earnest.

The Salt Lake Cinema Council found itself with the job of programming. You need films for a film festival,

after all. Sobchack said the system was simple: in the screening room anyone could, at any time, raise their hand to indicate they didn’t like the film. Once three people had voted against it, the projector was turned off and the next film started. Anything that made it to the end was accepted to the festival. Many didn’t run longer than the first few minutes.

Over the years, both the film festival and the film program at the University changed significantly. The festival moved from Salt Lake to Park City in 1983 in hopes of attracting more attention from Hollywood decision makers who wanted to piggyback their festival time with a ski vacation. History has shown that to be a good move. In 1985, management of the festival was taken over by the Sundance Institute, a separate brainstorm of Redford, also headed by Van Wagenen. It was (and continues to be) a program designed to support up-and-coming filmmakers in the process of jump-starting their film projects. At this time, the U.S. Film Festival changed its name to the Sundance Film Festival, as it remains today.

During the same period, Sobchack’s film classes in the Department of English were joined by others across campus, notably courses on Film History by William Siska in the Department of Theatre and Filmmaking by Brian Patrick in the Department of Art & Art History. The University of Utah awarded its first degree in Film Studies in 1983.

“[Robert Redford] also happened to be married to my cousin,” Van Wagenen said with a laugh.

In 1998, Film Studies became its own Division within the College of Fine Arts, and in 2009, Film & Media Arts was established as its own Department, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in both the study and production of films.

Van Wagenen’s recent appointment as Producerin-Residence has strengthened the connection between the Department and the Sundance Institute.

Much as Redford helped him get his festival started by lending his aura, Van Wagenen is helping the Department start a professional internship program this academic year in which students will be selected through a rigorous application process to work directly with local production companies and get a taste of the biz while continuing their studies. π Robert Redford and Sterling Van Wagenen at a 1981 planning session

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Photo: Courtesy of the Special Collections Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

University of Utah production of Of Thee I Sing

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There is a boisterousness and vitality about the Performing Arts Building on the University of Utah campus. It houses the prominent Department of Theatre, and seems to hum at a frequency a bit higher than other parts of campus. To get to Department Chair Gage Williams’ office, visitors pass halls filled with choruses, Shakespeare, lectures, and creativity.

YEARS of THEATRE

by Marina Gomberg

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0

“It is good to be celebrating 50 years knowing the best of our rich legacy is yet to come.”

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ILLIAMS has worked for the Department of Theatre for 20 years. But to talk to him, it seems almost like he’s been part of it since the very beginning, as if their histories have become one. And this year, they celebrate its 50th anniversary as a stand-alone department.

“But we actually start back in 1892, with the famous Maud May Babcock, the first female professor at the U,” he says. “This woman was an institution!”

He’s not exaggerating. During Babcock’s 46-year tenure, she directed more than 800 plays, taught, and founded the nation’s first college dramatic club.

“She’s who brought drama to the U,” Williams says. “And during the 1920s, she chaired the first Speech Department, which housed Theatre.”

In 1930, Theatre at the U got its first home on campus in the newly built and now iconic Kingsbury Hall. Eight years after it opened its doors, and after an incredible career, Babcock retired.

As is written in, “A Brief History of the Department of Theatre” by former Chair Bob Nelson, “At that time, she had the longest career of any faculty member at the University, and the theatre had the longest uninterrupted history of play production of any college in the nation.”

And it was upon that foundation that the U’s theatre heritage would be built.

Babcock would be followed in leadership by Joseph F. Smith, her former technical director. Then in 1943, C. Lowell Lees, the nation’s first theatre PhD, was hired from the University of Minnesota to chair the Department.

Nelson writes, “In 1947, Lees re-instituted Maud May Babcock’s experiment of mixing college actors with professional guest stars — the most notable example being Macbeth directed by and starring Orson Welles.”

“These names and this longevity — this is when our legacy really begins to more fully take shape,” Williams says.

Keith Engar followed Lees as Chair in 1962, the same year the Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre (PMT) was completed, and all productions moved there. This change in leadership and location was also marked by the separation of Theatre from the Speech Department. It was temporarily housed with Ballet, but then became its own stand-alone department during the 1964-65 academic year. It was then, 50 years ago, that what was formerly known as the Little Theatre in the basement of PMT was renamed the Babcock Theatre, after the program's progenitor.

“As the department grew bigger and bigger, we were teaching in every available space in PMT,” Williams says. “We were in the rehearsal rooms, make-up rooms, the lobbies, the staircases. We were a thriving department that was bursting at the seams.”

Finally, in 1972, the University gave the Department its own space nestled between PMT and the Marriott Library. It had previously been the home to Geology; the old laboratory was converted into a flexible black-box Lab Theatre where students and faculty could create new works. It was called the Performing Arts Building and got an even bigger overhaul in 1981, when classrooms and dance studios were created — one of which has evolved into what is now the Department’s performance venue, Studio 115.

“Sometimes I think about how this was when we had the students that ultimately ended up graduating and starting what is now the vibrant theatre culture in our city – from Salt Lake Acting Company to Pygmalion Theatre Company,” says Williams.

Then he catches himself. “Well, I say ‘we’ but in all actuality, at that time I was off earning my BFA in Theatre Set Design at Arizona State University.”

After graduation, Williams went on to Southern Methodist University for his MFA, but continued with his undergraduate tradition of spending his summers working as Resident Assistant Set Designer at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. From there, he went to work for Bruce Ryan Production Design in Los Angeles, where he art directed more than 100 productions, and won the CableACE Award (the Emmy Awards for cable TV at the time).

In 1994, Williams joined the U’s Department of Theatre as a visiting assistant professor, and that is when his and the Department’s stories started their parallel paths.

By then, the Department’s leadership had evolved and the professional portion of the U’s theatre, Pioneer Theatre

Company, had become entirely independent of the academic side. The Department’s rapid growth would slow temporarily before again finding its way to an upward trajectory. All the while, Williams excelled both at the University and with his additional projects like that as the Resident Set Designer for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, a position he still holds today.

In 2000, Williams was awarded the U’s John R. Park Teaching Fellowship for curriculum development, and was named Chair of the Department of Theatre in 2009. His work credits are extensive, including designing for HBO, Showtime, TNT, ESPN, MTV, the inaugural openings of the Idaho Shakespeare Outdoor Fest, and Great Lakes Theatre Festival in Ohio.

But more than talking about his personal achievements, he prefers to focus on the Department’s growth.

He describes how in 2009, there were roughly 160 majors, and this year there are nearly 250, for a more than 56 percent increase in enrollment in the last five years. Williams is also extraordinarily pleased the Department has also restored both its celebrated Musical Theatre Program, which just graduated its first cohort last year, and the BFA degree in Theatre Teaching.

“It is good to be celebrating 50 years,” Williams says, smiling proudly. “Knowing the best of our rich legacy is yet to come.” ≠

University of Utah Department of Theatre students perform Hair

Photo: IceWolf Photography

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ArtsForce 2014 Preparing artists to enter the workforce

Alumni panel speaks to student attendees at ArtsForce 2014

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In fact, it was with this idea that she conceived of ArtsForce, a conference by and for the students in the U’s College of Fine Arts that bridges that very knowledge gap.

From its inception, ArtsForce has been powered

by SNAAP. It was SNAAP data that reinforced the need for workforce preparation and illuminated the realities of the high demand for creativity in the current economy. Leckie also brought out SNAAP’s leadership as the keynote speakers of the inaugural ArtsForce conference held in the fall of 2013 on the University of Utah campus.

“ArtsForce is one of the first college-wide efforts to bring students together to begin to imagine what their futures could look like,” said Steven J. Tepper, SNAAP’s Research Director and Dean of Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. “Through this conference, the College

Photo: Dane Goodwin

When Liz Leckie, Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Affairs, realized University of Utah College of Fine Arts students wanted more resources to help them gracefully transition into the workforce, she listened.

She knew, from research published by Indiana University’s Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) that students’ needs at the U mirrored those of arts alumni across the country in that in addition to finding their voices and mastering their crafts, arts students — and rightfully so — want to be competitive applicants in the job market upon graduation.

“For a long time, our students have dealt with future-career questions that are often tinged with negative connotations or skepticism,” said Leckie.

“The truth is that the skills they’re honing, both related to their art forms and more generally in problem solving, collaboration, focus, and critical thinking, are highly sought after in the workforce.”

Part of what perpetuates the doubt about professionally successful arts alumni is a slowly dissolving notion of the starving artist. In 2013, the U participated in SNAAP’s national survey of arts alumni, which found that 76 percent of the U’s College of Fine Arts alumni either currently work or have worked as professional artists. Furthermore, 75 percent who work outside of the arts find their arts training relevant.

Another factor Leckie recognized was arts students’ ability or lack thereof to understand and articulate how their experiences, research, and skills translate and apply to the modern workforce.

is providing its students with evidence of the broad value of their degrees and helping them reflect on how their creativity and artistic talents can best be deployed throughout their lives and careers.”

Not wanting to miss a single chance to provide students an opportunity to gain critical experience, Leckie hired students to both plan and execute the conference which each year has included panels, workshops, and networking events.

“I have learned what it is to work as part of a team towards a final goal, including meetings and group deadlines, and the importance of clear communication,” said 2014 ArtsForce intern, Chance Clouse.

And, one might argue, he learned how to translate his learned skills to be marketable in the workforce. ≠

by Marina Gomberg

“The U has demonstrated that it is leading the charge to educate its undergraduates about their post-college careers. The student-run ArtsForce conference is unique to my knowledge in terms of its use of national SNAAP alumni data, providing students with a clear view of the creative economy well before they graduate.”

Sally Gaskill

SNAAP Executive Director

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Art for Science’s Sake

“You’ve heard of STEM?” she asks, using the acronym for an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

“Well, we like to include art too, to make it STEAM. Art is just as important.”

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Photo: Courtesy of Ryan McGuire of Bells Design

The arts face significant challenges in public education. Nationwide, funding for the arts, particularly in elementary schools, has decreased significantly over the past 30 years.

But that doesn’t deter Rebecca Penerosa, a doctoral student in Music Education at the School of Music.

She’s a professional educator with an undergraduate degree in music education and 10 years experience teaching music privately and in public schools. Now, she is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Utah, knowing she must be more creative in her approach, and that creativity is what the arts are all about.

Outside of her studies and teaching assistantship within the School of Music, Penerosa also has the opportunity to practice her craft with two different arts education programs on campus.

At the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program, she acts as a Professional Development Partner, where she helps educators with lesson plans that incorporate music with other curricula such as math and science. This approach is based on the concept of arts integration. When the resources don’t exist for a stand-alone music class, she finds ways to use music to augment existing lesson plans.

That may mean teaching children to compose a song that describes the building of the Egyptian pyramids or illustrates the water cycle for a child’s science class.

Penerosa also is a mentor for the Reading in Motion program through the College of Fine Arts ArtsBridge initiative. Reading in Motion connects undergraduate education students with local elementary schools in need of arts education.

Using the concept of arts integration, the scholars teach reading to kindergarten and first-grade students through music and drama. Penerosa also uses her experience as a musician and educator to guide the ArtsBridge scholars through the Reading in Motion curriculum.

Studies show that learning this way, through singing or another experiential methods such as drama, increases retention of the information imparted. The more areas of the brain that are utilized when learning, the more neural connections are made and more actual learning occurs.

Penerosa appreciates opportunities afforded by arts integration to teach music where it might not be.

Having grown up with music, she knows firsthand how important early exposure is to a lifelong appreciation for and practice in music.

Her grandfather was a professional musician, playing country guitar live on the radio in Minnesota. Her father then continued the country music tradition by playing in the household, giving Penerosa an early introduction to singing in harmony, which led to her choral singing in high school and her career. She still feels the arts deserve their own place at the table and should be taught for their own sake.

“You’ve heard of STEM?” she asks, using the acronym for an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. “Well, we like to include art too, to make it STEAM. Art is just as important.”

Penerosa’s passion and doctoral research are focused specifically on multicultural music education in schools. As student populations become increasingly diverse in Utah, she feels it is essential that their various backgrounds are represented in musical curricula.

That, she says, is both for the sake of including those students coming from a minority cultural background, but also for the cultural enrichment of all students.

Her research, in which she surveyed music educators to evaluate their preparedness to teach multicultural music in schools, indicated that most do not feel adequately prepared for that task when they earn their undergraduate degrees.

Again, Penerosa is not necessarily discouraged by this, but rather sees an opportunity to improve the situation as her career in education continues. She hopes that as an educator of educators, she can affect the impact and change she hopes to see in the field.

“My dream,” she says, “is to be a college professor.” ≠

by Rob Tennant

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Putting the “Art” in Smart

Cassie Olsen-Taylor teaches piano to students at Backman Elementary School in the School of Music’s Piano Outreach Program

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Sure, there have been those who’ve worried when someone they love pursues a degree in the arts. “Are you sure you’re not interested in medicine? Or law?” This largely stems from a fairly pervasive perception that studying in the arts is easy, self-indulgent, or anything but pragmatic.

Yes, there are fewer professional dancers in the world than nurses, but arts alumni from the University of Utah are shining exemplars of the success, satisfaction, and stability — not starvation, as the antiquated anecdote suggests — that’s the reality for the majority of arts graduates.

How do we know this? The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). Based out of Indiana State University, SNAAP is “an online survey, data management, and institutional improvement system designed to enhance the impact of arts-school education.” SNAAP’s been surveying arts alumni since 2003, with its first national survey in 2011-12.

Since then, it’s surveyed more than 100,000 arts alumni from 286 institutions.

SNAAP’s 2013 survey included the alumni from the U’s College of Fine Arts, and valuable information was uncovered. The data, which includes responses from alumni who graduated as far back as 1983, showed that of the respondents, 90 percent rated their experience in the College of Fine Arts as excellent or good.

This isn’t terribly surprising given that so many of our alumni have gone off to achieve extraordinary things in their fields. For example, the College of Fine Arts has catapulted students to direct art galleries, perform with Ballet West, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Pioneer Theatre Company, Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange, Oklahoma City Ballet, American Symphony Orchestra, and on Broadway. They have gone on to study at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, and have acted in or worked on films like Footloose, Life During Wartime, and Howl starring James Franco, and for National Geographic Films.

Photo: Nicholas Steffens

“ ... 94 percent of hiring managers prefer creative skills to conventional skills by more than five to one. Furthermore, problem solving and creativity – skills that CFA alumni rated among the highest of those they received – have gained the most value in driving salary increases in the last five years.“

The research shows 76 percent of the respondents currently work or have worked as professional artists. But what about the others? The SNAAP data highlights how many are successfully working outside of the arts as well. In fact, of the respondents who work in non-arts fields, 75 percent found their arts training to be relevant to their current employment. So, even those who are not making or studying art as their vocation are still exercising the creativity and problem solving they honed during their studies.

Although some CFA alumni have gone on to law school and medical school, the bulk of alumni who are not practicing artists have gone into education.

Cassie Olsen-Taylor is one of them.

“As one of our promising doctoral graduates, Cassie began her Teaching Assistantship in the U’s Piano Outreach Program in inner-city schools,” said Dr. Susan Duehlmeier, head of the Piano Area. “Having helped design the program’s current

curriculum, she plays a critical role as a new member of our faculty in sustaining it. It’s so rewarding to observe the training and preparation that our students receive in the program. In turn, they contribute back to its success.”

And, not only are arts alumni’s skills being utilized, they’re highly sought after. Adobe’s September 2014 study called “Seeking Creative Candidates: Hiring for the Future” found that 94 percent of hiring managers prefer creative skills to conventional skills by more than five to one.

Furthermore, problem solving and creativity — skills that CFA alumni rated among the highest of those they received — have gained the most value in driving salary increases in the last five years.

So, rest assured. Art students will be just fine. ≠

by Marina Gomberg 33 STUDIO / 2015

Guest Artists & Scholars

At the University of Utah College of Fine Arts, students learn from some of the top faculty in the country. But that is not all; each semester, each department brings to campus worldrenowned artists who offer master classes, give public lectures, screen films, host discussions, and ultimately broaden the breadth and depth of exploration into all areas of study. During the past year alone, these artists were brought to campus to share their knowledge and expertise with the University of Utah College of Fine Arts.

Film & Media Arts

Jan Andrews • Dale Angell • James Benning • Isaac Chung • Dave Cummins Michael Fox • Raul Fuentes • Patrick Galbraith • Davy Giorgi and Samantha Pineda Sebastian Hofmann • Michael McDonough • Susan Napier • Amanda Plummer Ryan Purcell • Manick Sorcar — Lee Isaac Chung is a Korean American film director and screenwriter. His debut feature "Munyurangabo" was an Official Selection at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

American critic Roger Ebert calls it "in every frame a beautiful and powerful film — a masterpiece." For the film, Chung was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and the Breakthrough Director Award at the Gotham Awards.

Music

Inon Barnatan • Matthew Calew • Cypress String Quartet • Doric Quartet Eduardo Browne • Hilary Demske • Isabella Faust & Alexander Malnikov Pamela Gentile • Krill Gliadkovsky • Sue Heineman • Brian Hulse • Gary Karpinski Art Kreiger • Tatjana Mead Chamis • Modigliani Quartet • Frederic Morean Pacifica Quartet • Sergio Palotelli • Pavel Hass Quartet • Matthew Rohde Barbara Scowcroft • Trio con Brio • Lei Weng —

Cypress String Quartet

Known for its elegant performances, the Cypress Quartet (Cecily Ward, violin; Tom Stone, violin; Ethan Filner, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello) was formed in San Francisco in 1996 and maintains a busy national and international tour schedule, making appearances on concert series and in venues including Cal Performances, Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Stanford Lively Arts, Krannert Center, and Ravinia Festival. The group has been praised by Gramaphone for its “artistry of uncommon insight and cohesion,” and its sound has been called “beautifully proportioned and powerful” by the Washington Post. To date, the Cypress Quartet has commissioned and premiered over 30 pieces, four of which were chosen for Chamber Music America’s list of “101 great American Ensemble Works.”

Art & Art History

Juliet Bellow • Jason Briggs • Ondine Chavoya • Lesley Dill • Hal Foster Jesse Lerner • Julie Mehretu • Christine Panushka • J. Morgan Puett Humberto Saenz • Steven Young Lee • Roderick Whitfield • Park Youngsuk — Christine Panushka is an independent filmmaker, freelance animator, artist and teacher. She is a Professor in the John Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Christine Panushka speaks to University of Utah Art & Art History students

34 STUDIO / 2015

Theatre

Matt August • Klea Blackhurst • James Bonas • Bristol Old Vic • Marilyn Caskey Hanna Cheek • David Ivers • Scott Kaiser • Michael Legg • Dr. Lynn Maxfield Michael McCulloch • Monica Raymond • Michael Rohd • Robert Scott Smith Carol Shuberg • Patrick J. Sims • Michael Staringer • Rebecca Watson & T Ryder Smith — Bristol Old Vic is the longest continuously-running theatre in the UK whose mission is to create pioneering twenty-first century theatre in partnership with the people of their energetic city; inspired by the history and magical design of the most beautiful playhouse in the country.

They are led by artists who see the world with distinctive clarity and whose ability to articulate what they see allows them to understand and engage with their world afresh, whether that be through their 350-strong Young Company, their many outreach and education projects or helping ascendant artists by nurturing the spark or seed of an idea into something fully-formed.

Modern Dance

Shaun Boyle • Ann Carlson • Carl Flink • Raja Feather Kelly Andrea Miller & Gallim Dance • Tamara Riewe — Andrea Miller is the founder, artistic director, and choreographer of New Yorkbased company Gallim Dance. Through a plural body of work that explores the relationships of movement with other forms of expression including theater, visual arts, music, and politics, Miller has developed a recognizable artistic language of extreme physicality and unprejudiced emotionality. In 2014, Miller received the honor of being named a Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for demonstrating exceptional creative ability. New York Magazine writes, “Her viscerally physical movement wrings every inch of life from her dancers — and you’ll be holding your breath, too.”

Miller is devoted to dance education for dancers and non-dancers and has developed programs for Gallim Dance’s home studio in Brooklyn, as well as commissions for academic institutions such as Harvard University, the Juilliard School, Barnard College at Columbia University, New York University, University of Utah, Montclair State University, The University of Michigan, Mount Holyoke, and Wesleyan University. She is a founding collaborator of Movement Invention Project and resident choreographer at Dancewave.

Ballet

Shayla Bott • René Daveluy • Julia Gleich • Roni Mahler • Pamela Robinson Adam Sklute • Coral Citron, Zarina Kobilova, & RJ Fox • Darryl Yeager — René Daveluy's career was guided with a solid background in dance, infused by mentors such as Ludmilla Chiriaeff, Frank Augustyn, John Hart, Violette Verdy, Andrée Millaire, Daniel Sellier, Vincent Warren, Laurence Haider, and Canadian Painter Christian Thibault. Mr. Daveluy has worked on originality and creative ideology to lead the way. As a choreographer, he won a prize from the Du Maurier Arts for his One Man Show Daveluy Danse Brel, and for Central West Ballet, has created numerous works including Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Peter Pan and The Nutcracker. In 2006, René Daveluy received the California Stanislaus Arts Council Award for Excellence in Dance.

René Daveluy

35 STUDIO / 2015

Photo: Courtesy of Nancy Peery Marriott

Nancy Peery Marriott

The vibrance and excellence of the College of Fine Arts is fueled by the generosity of foundations, individual donors, and corporations. This is the story of one such benefactor.

PRACTICING

ART PHILANTHROPY

THE

OF

by Marina Gomberg

36 STUDIO / 2015

N

ancy Peery Marriott is passionate about many things — advancing medical research, offering disaster relief to those in need, and providing clean water to villages in Africa. And among the areas she is most ardent are education and the arts.

Marriott grew up in Palo Alto, California to parents who very much understood and appreciated the value of arts and cultural enrichment. As a young girl, she took dance lessons, piano lessons, and got to travel across the state and country to experience and appreciate art with her family. It was her singing lessons, though, where she decided to narrow her focus.

In the fifth grade, Marriott won first place in a singing competition, and got to perform live on the radio for her prize.

“I sang Come to the Fair,” she remembers fondly.

“And at a time when TVs were barely just coming out, to sing on the radio was an absolutely incredible experience.”

At that moment, she knew she would sing for the rest of her life. Those performances became the first of many, including some on the stage of Kingsbury Hall’s iconic auditorium, which now bears her name.

Since then, Marriott has performed across the nation and globe including performances in Israel, Argentina, Austria, at Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Even as she raised her four daughters with her husband Richard Edwin Marriott (whom she met as a student at the University of Utah), she continued to study opera, and she laughs as she remembers taking lessons with babies in her arms.

She and her husband have shared the gift of music with their four daughters, and now their 13 grandchildren. Marriott describes the blessing that is music, and the uplifting enrichment it has brought to their family.

She is a celebrated classical singer and a beloved mother, and those are surely parts of what will be her legacy. It will also be made of the stories of countless students whose educational paths were paved by her generosity.

In 2008, then University of Utah President Michael K. Young invited Marriott to walk the halls of the buildings of the College of Fine Arts. Some she was

quite familiar with having studied in the College during her tenure as an undergraduate at the U. It was that day that she met Associate Vice President for the Arts and Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Raymond Tymas-Jones.

“I was immediately impressed by him,” she recounts. “His passion for education coupled by his understanding of the power of the arts is profoundly visionary. So, when he came back to me shortly thereafter and invited me to support the work of the School of Music, I took him up on it.”

As such, in September of that year, the Nancy Peery Marriott Endowed Fund for Scholarship, Performance and Production in Fine Arts came to be.

“The arts in education is as important as the food you eat,” Marriott said. “And I grew up with the philosophy that if you are blessed with good health and the means to cover the basic necessities, then you give back to those who wouldn’t otherwise have similar opportunities.”

The main purpose of the endowment is to provide support for deserving undergraduate and graduate students majoring in the field of performance within the School of Music through scholarships and fellowships. Additionally, it funds opportunities for more students to have the chance to perform on the stage in Kingsbury Hall. Lastly, it supports the “Kingsbury Hall Presents” performance season, which brings diverse and interesting performances to the stage for the benefit of the University and the greater Wasatch Front community.

In recognition of her gift, Kingsbury Hall’s auditorium is forever named the “Nancy Peery Marriott Auditorium.”

“The naming of the auditorium was a beautiful gesture,” she said. “But perhaps what I like most is receiving the letters from the scholarship recipients.

These students work incredibly hard and put in all they can; it is a true honor to help them achieve their academic and artistic dreams.”

Marriott read a saying once that has always stuck with her, “Long after the toys of childhood are gone… the miracle of music remains.”

The same could be said for the legacy of Nancy Peery Marriott’s generosity. ≠ 37 STUDIO / 2015

$5,000–$9,999

Annual Report

Ruth Bischoff Jonathan W. and Julie Anna Bullen Holly A. and Ty G. Burrell Lisa E. Eccles Katharine B. and Robert H. Garff Susan G. Gaskill Mary O. and Donald B. Lloyd James R. and Nanette S. Michie Kim R. Wilson and Gail Miller Jim L. and Bonita Robertson Michael L. and Micki N. Sobieski Roger H. and Colleen K. Thompson Barbara and William Welke

The faculty, staff, and especially the students in the College of Fine Arts thank our generous donors for their contributions to the College and its six academic units from July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014.

Their incredible generosity has enhanced education, empowered many, and inspired us all. // Thank You.

Famed American Sculptor, Tony Feher, created a site-specific installation with painters tape on the windows in the Great Hall of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts during fall 2014.

38 STUDIO / 2015

Photo: Matt Berry

$2,500–$4,999

INDIVIDUALS

$100,000+

Estate of Marian Robertson Wilson, PhD

$25,000–$99,999

Anonymous Melissa Garff and Craig B. Ballard Kem C. and Carolyn B. Gardner Roger Hess Hale Diana Busch and Robert H. Hinckley James S. and Carolyn C. Hinckley Scott and Ann Hinckley Thomas F. and Susan S. Rugh Kristin Hinckley Yeager

$10,000–$24,999

Anonymous Alan C. and Karen Ashton Brent and Bonnie Jean Beesley Robert D. Belnap William R. Bireley Lynn Blodgett Clifford A. Coon, Jr. Robert C. and Lynette N. Gay Nancy P. and Richard E. Marriott Glenn T. and Mary K. Potter Joyce T. Rice Daniel M. and Nicky M. Soulier Julia Simmons Watkins

Jeffrey William Brabender Anne and Dan Buchanan Paulette and Dan Cary Howard S. and Betty B. Clark Daniel Patrick Conner Matthew and Sarah DeVoll Mary Jane Galvin-Wagg Rose and Frank Gay Gordon and Connie Hanks Art and Connie Jo Hepworth-Woolston Kathie K. and Charles H. Horman Jonathan H. and Colleen Horne Craig V. and Linda M. Lee Tom M. and Jamie N. Love A. Davis and Marcy Mullholand Rhonda L. and William Nicoloff Anne Osborn Anne Palmer Zelie D. and Carl A. Pforzheimer Brent C. and Janette P. Sonnenberg Michael H. and Ruth C. Stevens Larry B. and Mari Liane Stillman Stephen L. and Lisa D. Swisher Candace J. and Jack Taylor Raymond Tymas-Jones Henry C. and Lois Wolking

$1,000–$2,499

Anonymous (2) Thomas and Pamela Antista Barbara B. and M. Russell Ballard Mary F. and Don R. Bangerter Sandi Jo Behnken Martin and Mary Anne Berzins Sara S. and H. Roger Boyer Rodney H. and Carolyn H. Brady Kenneth J. and Kristina F. Burton V. Brent and Francine E. Cook Gay Redick Cookson Thomas D. and Joanne A. Coppin Rainer and Patricia C. Dahl Anne M. and David S. Dolowitz Terrell and Paul Dougan Susan H. and F. Douglas Duehlmeier

Geoffrey E. Ellis Thomas and Mylene Fairclough Abby and Jerome Fiat Susan F. Fleming Cecelia H. Foxley Ralph and Rosie Gochnour Lee A. and Audrey M. Hollaar Martha Humphrey and Kent DiFiore Elizabeth S. Hunter Pat and Boyer Jarvis Dave and Kimberly A. Johnson Paul D. and Melanie B. Lyon James P. Macken Loa B. Mangelson-Clawson Paul G. and Alison R. Mayfield Gail J. and Robert P. McComas Thomas F. and Donna McLarty Jacob Mark Millburn Anne Morgan-Jespersen and Roy S. Jespersen Alan C. and Julie L. Olsen Barbara B. and O. Don Ostler Kathy Pope Diana J. and Joel Peterson Douglas K. and Irene K. Pottratz Victoria J. Ream-Baker and Merlin Baker Scott L. and Lesli P. Rice Christopher F. and Rochelle Robinson Greg Rogler and Brent Godfrey Jonathan M. and Tina B. Ruga Bertram H. and Janet M. Schaap J. Christopher Smith Debbie D. and Robert J. Stevens William and Lori Stratton Katie and Ned Stringham Scott W. and Betsy D. Thornton Susan R. Warshaw David B. and Jeralynn T. Winder Alan B. and Jannette J. Yorgason

$500–$999

Anonymous Jack S. and Marie Y. Ashton David W. and Joyce Beer John W. and Elizabeth Bennion Kenneth W. Birrell Ashby S. and Anne Cullimore Decker Maryan Egan-Baker Harden R. and Lois Anne Eyring Suzanne Forsberg J.J. Gerber Janie Gillen Susan S. Goodfellow Stephen and Bonnie P. Gritton Barbara and E. Dean Hamblin Michael David Harrington Nancy F. and Jeffrey Heller John W. and Marilyn Holt Jerry S. and Claudia F. Howells C. Jill Johnson Janet C. Mann and Michael A. Kalm Estate of Lawrence Kenakin Heidi and Ed Makowski

Dylan Michael McCullough Jeff T. Miller Eric R. and Emilee Morgan Prescott M. and Sharon D. Muir Carolyn R. Nebeker Marilyn H. Neilson Evelyn D. Pedersen Brent and Shauna W. Sloan Donald G. and Sidnee Spencer David T. and Merle Strong John and Martha Veranth Donna M. White Clayton R. and Elaine Williams

$250-$499

William C. and Shirley C. Bailey LaMar C. and Carol Barrus Barry D. and Elizabeth M. Bergquist Kathryn C. and Roger A. Carter Lisa Marie Chaufty and Miguel Chuaqui Rhondalon Crawford and Al Rathman David and Mary Driggs Shellie M. and Eric N. Eide Theresa A. Felt Melissa Front Michael Garber James E. Gebhardt and Lucille R. Hesse Ashley and Phillip T. Gieschen Michele and Lawrence Holzman Kerri A. Hopkins Karineh Hovsepian Robert and Patty Kwun Charles R. and Annick Loving J. Michael and Mary A. Mattsson Monique Mead D. Kent and Barbara E. Michie Michael S. Noetzel Adam Overacker William R. and Donna H. Pizza Douglas C. and Wendy W. Preston Jack B. and Itha W. Rampton Jaryl L. and Julie W. Rencher Michael P. Riordan Brent Lee Schneider Jonathan Scoville Howard C. and Marjorie Sharp Glenda Shrader Evgeny and Maria Shustorovich Linda Faye Smith Shirley F. Tanner Beatrice B. Winkler

$100–$249

“Raised in a family of 11 children on an Idaho farm in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the opportunity to receive musical training was not available to me.

Nevertheless, I have always loved and appreciated those blessed with musical talent and artistry.

I believe that music touches the soul in all of us and that is why I support the School of Music.”

Joyce T. Rice

Anonymous Linda H. and Thomas Alder Ronald C. and Delia Ann Allen Heidi J. and Lynn D. Alley Patricia Jo Angood Carla Tamburelli Ardell Bene C. Arnold Robert L. Baldwin 39 STUDIO / 2015

“Betty and I are grateful for the opportunity to provide an art scholarship to two students at the University of Utah College of Fine Arts. In a very important way, this gives the students an opportunity to grow and develop their talents in the arts.�

Howard S. Clark

40 STUDIO / 2015

Karen L. Miller and John W. Ballard Margaret K. Batson Wallace and Marie Nelson Bennett Cohleen J. Bischoff Aaron J. and Laura W. Blattner Kay Patten Bradford Richard B. and Brenda R. Brown Nathan M. Buchanan Deborah D. Buck Gary and Susan Buehner Kim and Steve E. Butler Mary Ellen B. and Thomas H. Caine Priscilla Campbell Andre and Elenaj Cherkaev Juan Carlos Claudio Aland L. and Kristine M. Colledge C. Floyd and Mary Anne Cooper Kirk Cotterall Janet C. Cox Donna G. and David J. Dalton Siobhan G. and Richard Dunham Alexei L. and Irina A. Efros Dick Evans and Susan Stamm Evans William J. and Jean Evans Jenifer G. Ewoniuk Barbara and Millard S. Firebaugh Cynthia and Jeff Fleming Susan Margaret Gabriel Jay and Lynda Gamble Faith Gartrell Daniel and Wendy Gibbons April Goddard Emily Park Grady Erich L. Graf Richard N. and Carolyn Greene Pamela T. and David A. Greenwood Linda A. Grimm-Kovach Carolee L. and Robert H. Harmon Anthony Esteban Herrern Paul W. and Leora R. Hewitt Richard L. and Darlene Hirschi Stephen and Christine Holding Gerald L. and Lynda Homer Dianne Howe and Terrence Bills Keely Huey Michael and Susan S. Huff Carol F. and John E. Huffman Satu Hummasti Gary M. Huntsman Larry and Bette Jackstien Douglas and Claudia Jensen Greg Johnson Elaine S. Kaufman Rosanne H. and Martin A. Kaufmann William Keig Kimberly L. and Harold S. Kelly William M. Kelly Marilyn N. Kelso Richard Ian and Suzanne M. Kimball Calvin Wayne Kitten Brandon R. Kitterman Stephen Koester Rachel D. and Robert M. Kral Peter and Kristin Kraus

Barbara A. and Justin A. Kreek Eric Kruman and Susan Jane Gillis-Kruman Thomas R. and Patrice Kutz Sharee Jo Lane Paul Larsen Susan Rosetta and Douglas J. Larson Lennox A. Larson-Deem Jan Levy William C. Ligety and Cyndi Sharp Mary J. and Darron P. Lillian Joyce P. and Larry D. Lowder James R. and Laura Macbeth Alan D. Magnuson Daniel and Noemi Mattis Maureen McGill Jaten L. McGriff Lorita S. and Don E. McLeod H. Janet and Drew Millerberg Teresa L. Mooney Mary Ann and Tony Morgan Kim N. Morris and Rheba Vetter Mary M. Muir Ernest H. and Eleanor L. Muth Stephen B. and June W. Nebeker Michael J. and Trudy E. Nelson Lori and David Nuffer David C. and Erin Oehler Scott and Karen Ogden Jerold D. and Jo Ann S. Ottley Joseph J. and Dorothy Ann Palmer Brian F. Patrick Jill V. and Steve Pecchia-Bekkum Jane H. Perry Thomas G. Pike Sarah Projansky Robert W. and Nancy H. Raybould Barry M. and Margo-Lynn Richards Joseph and Raye Ringholz J. Kyle Robertson Barbara and John Robeson Jean Ann Sabatine Manoli S. and Robyn Sargetakis Mark N. Schneider John E. Schwiebert and Ann Jefferds Shirley J. Scruggs Ruth and Robert E. Seegmiller Sterling D. Sessions Janet L. and Gregory H. Shaw Jennifer Ann Timpson Shiba Sarah A. Shippobotham Rocco C. Siciliano Millicent S. Simmons William C. Siska Bernard Slack Linda C. Smith and Ivan G.K. Weber Nathan Smith Brian Snapp Russell L. and Rosemary Sorensen Elizabeth Southwell Andrew and Alice Bassler Sullivan Stephen D. and Sonnie Swindle Margaret W. Tesch Marge Tucker Emily Utt

tha

Shannon N. Vance Richard Wacko M. Walker and Sue R. Wallace David N. Warne and Heather J. Mihalek-Warne Darren Charles and Cheryl Warnick Dana E. and Carolyn Wilson Harry C. and Jean A. Wong Joan J. and Charles E. Woodbury ORGANIZATIONS AND FOUNDATIONS

$100,000+

Robert H. Hinckley Jr. 2005 Trust Zions First National Bank

State Farm Companies Foundation Struck, Inc. Swisher Architecture, LLC VanCott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy Verizon Foundation Wells Fargo

$1,000–$2,499

Antista Fairclough M. Russell Ballard Trust Rodney H. and Carolyn Hansen Brady Foundation C & L Investments, Inc. Paul M. & Terrell Dougan Family Foundation, Inc. Forever Young Foundation Arthur J. Gallagher Foundation Microsoft Matching Gifts Program Myriad Genetics, Inc. Princeton Area Community Foundation Rotary Club of Salt Lake Bertram H. & Janet M. Schaap Trust The Scott W. and Betsy Thornton Family Foundation

ank you $25,000–$99,999

Kenneth P. and Sally R. Burbidge Foundation #1 Kenneth P. and Sally R. Burbidge Foundation #2 The Sorenson Legacy Foundation Wheeler Foundation

$10,000–$24,999

$500–$999

$5,000–$9,999

$100–$499

Ashton Family Foundation Brent and Bonnie Jean Beesley Foundation The Bireley Foundation Boston Foundation, Inc. Dick and Timmy Burton Foundation Chevron Humankind Matching Gift Program Dizzy Feet Foundation George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation Nancy Peery Marriott Foundation, Inc. W. Mack and Julia S. Watkins Foundation Trust Zions Bancorporation Foundation

E. J. Bird Foundation Edward L. Burton Foundation Lawrence T. and Janet T. Dee Foundation Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund Hanson Family Foundation Legacy Music Alliance Larry H. and Gail Miller Family Foundation S. J. & Jessie E. Quinney Foundation Roger H. and Colleen K. Thompson Foundation Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program

$2,500–$4,999

M. Lynn Bennion Foundation CCI Mechanical, Inc. CENGAGE Learning Emma Eccles Jones Foundation James R. and Nanette S. Michie Foundation Magicworks West, Inc. Robert and Barbara Patterson Memorial Foundation The Presser Foundation Sentinel Systems

“As art professionals, we highly value freedom of expression.

Supporting the Dean's List helps to encourage expansive thought in local academia and openness in our community.”

Dee R. Bangerter Support Foundation ECS Publishing Corp.

Hillcrest Investment Co. Hotel Monaco J. T. Miller Enterprises Inc. Nebeker Family Foundation Robert K. and Evelyn D. Pedersen Family Foundation, Inc. Peter Prier & Sons Violins Prescott Muir Architects, P.C. Brent Godfrey and Salt Lake Franchise Group No. 3, LLC Greg Rogler

Anonymous Alderwood Fine Art American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers John W. Bennion Family Living Trust California Pizza Kitchen, Inc. Chi Epsilon Alpha Chapter General Federation of Women's Clubs of Utah Grant's Plumbing and Heating Company IBM International Foundation Jackman Music Corporation Lennox A. Larson Trust M.C.M.L.A. Paragon Builders, Inc. Santa Pasta Corporation Select Equity Group Foundation Simmons Living Trust Sounds of Zion, Inc. Harry C. Wong Trust

41

STUDIO / 2015

Non Profit Org U.S. Postage

PAID

Salt Lake City, UT Permit #1529

New Narratives: Recent Work by University of Utah Art Faculty at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts presented a diverse body of artwork produced by the nationally and internationally recognized University of Utah Department of Art & Art History faculty

S

THE PLACE WHERE DILIGENCE AND E XC ELL ENC E BECOM E INFLUENC E

Photo: Amelia Walchli

University of Utah College of Fine Arts 375 S. 1530 E. Room 250 Salt Lake City, UT 84112 — finearts.utah.edu

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