Month: November 2016

While some seniors work on their St. Mary’s Projects locked away in labs or libraries, some are creating their projects in the art studio. Senior Grace Humphries is one of them and, after a long, indecisive college experience, she is excited to be able to share her passion with others in the coming months. Humphries is a four-year member of the varsity cross-country team and an art major. Her love of art began in first grade, when her teacher noticed her artistic ability in her school assignments and encouraged her parents to send her to art camp. Humphries says that she had “a loose-leaf notebook that I would carry everywhere and draw in it whenever I had the chance.” She explains that, from that young age until the present day, her interest and passion for art has wavered. “I found myself becoming disinterested with it when I was in high school,” says Humphries, “because the classes were always focused on technique more than content and although helpful, was less motivating.” Her passion returned, luckily, when she came to St. Mary’s nearly four years ago. She credits this to the art courses and professors here at SMCM, saying that they are “always so engaging and inspire me in ways I never thought possible”. Since her first year of college, she has changed her major three times, but when she finally settled on art, “everything felt right”.

Humphries is currently working on her St. Mary’s project, part of which is to be displayed at the mid-year art show in Boyden Gallery in December, along with other art SMPs. Although as a child, her main subjects were dogs, Grace has altered her focus slightly. Her SMP aims to represent the relationship between women and nature and “the underestimated strength that both maintain”. She feels emotionally connected to her work in her project, explaining that it is “truly apart of me and represents the thoughts and experience that I have”.

Currently, Grace aspires to be a graphic designer or seek out residencies or fellowships in which she is able to learn and share her art. While she says that the specifics are still being worked through, she knows for certain that art will be part of her future.

Yellow Door Art Studios is a community art school located in the Town Square of Leonardtown. SMCM’s Professor Carrie Patterson founded the studio in 2009, when she realized forty-five minutes of art in public school is not enough time for young students to develop their artistic abilities. Patterson wanted more art opportunities for kids, so she established the “art hub” in Leonardtown.

Upon the creation of Yellow Door, Patterson supervised St. Mary’s Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) students in local public schools. She recognized that there were no undergrad art education courses within the MAT program that prepared students for graduate school. Also, Anne Arundel Hall was knocked down, and she did not have a space to have an art studio on campus. Hence, she created Yellow Door Art Studios; downstairs, both children and adults can participate in art classes, and upstairs there is space for artists to have studios.

Patterson continues to work closely with St. Mary’s students to create a bridge between her studio and the college community. Students can do volunteer work at the studio or apply for jobs. There are job opportunities offered during both the school year and the summer, full-time and part-time. Anyone who volunteers or works for the studio is allowed to take one of the studio’s art classes for free, which allows SMCM students to experience an art class not offered at the college.

The studio has had a “huge impact on the community,” Patterson says. “It has been really rewarding seeing young kids getting a lot out of art programs.” In each art-oriented class, learning technique is made fun and enjoyable to students of all ages. The studio benefits the community in more than artistic ways; art is bringing the community together.

“The studio couldn’t exist in any other location,” Patterson says. The small artistic community presents a great opportunity for the studio to thrive; even SMCM faculty sign up for workshops, and various clubs from campus also take advantage of the space, like the Best Buddies Club. Patterson loves to see St. Mary’s community members at the studio. “[The studio] is a good place [for visitors] to spend time with friends,” she says.

Every first Friday of the month, Yellow Door offers an open studio for $10. This space is for anyone to come and enjoy a creative and welcoming environment while expressing themselves through art. From Nov. 4 to Dec. 30, Yellow Door’s “Off the Square Gallery” will be hosting their annual MARKETPLACE, featuring “beautiful, functional, American Made objects from over 20 national and local artists.” Christmas on the Square in Leonardtown is on Nov. 25 from 5-9p.m., which is a special day to shop at the gallery. Patterson says the gallery has perfect gifts for the holidays, so be sure to check out the shop soon.

Yellow Door Art Studios will be entering into the third year at the Leonardtown location in February 2017. Yellow Door is located at 22795 Washington Street, Leonardtown. Patterson can be reached at 240-925-1888 if anyone has any questions. Visit the website www.yellowdoorartstudios.com to learn about upcoming events and studio offerings.

On November 10, Kim Roberts visited St. Mary’s for the VOICES Reading Series. Roberts said she’d do her best to keep politics out of the conversation, but it was obvious that it was still on peoples’ minds—Roberts noted that it was good to be out of D.C. for a little while. Professor Karen Anderson, coordinator of the VOICES Reading Series, commented during her short introduction, “Tonight we are lucky just to have poetry.”

English Professor Jeffrey Coleman gave the introduction for acclaimed poet and historian Kim Roberts. After she received her BFA from Emerson College, and her MFA from the University of Arizona, Roberts has published reams of poetry and edited several anthologies, in addition to serving as Editor for the magazine she founded in 2000, “Beltway Poetry Quarterly.” Today, she serves as the writer-in-residence for the Science Museum of Minnesota; the influence of her interest in science and history could be seen in her reading for VOICES.

Roberts had an eccentric idea on how to pick the order of her poems—she produced a black hat, and asked a student at random to take the hat around and ask audience members to pull out the next poem she would read. The first audience member to pick a poem was actually English Professor Robin Bates, who pulled out a slip of paper reading, “The Fiji Merman.”

Each of the poems that Roberts chose for the evening had to do with marine life, or experiences on the water. She said she thought it was fitting, with the gorgeous view of the river to be found on St. Mary’s campus. Many poems dealt heavily with location—“The Fiji Merman” was set in Lewes, Delaware, at a museum where you can find the eponymous mummified creation of a fisherman; another was set in Montauk, New York; another set during the ocean voyage of a doomed expedition to Antarctica. Another called “Flu With a View of the Puget Sound” was set, well, you can guess where.

Many other poems dealt with eccentricities of the maritime world—like the Fiji merman himself, or a poem in memoriam for “Ming the Clam,” a 507-year-old ocean quahog clam, which died when it was brought up from the ocean floor by scientists wishing to examine it.

Roberts’ poetry was clear and extremely tactile—her opening sentences, as well as her descriptive titles, place the listener immediately and completely, which was useful for hearing the work of a writer who likes to delve into the depths of so many curious subject matters. Her prose-like imagery anthropomorphizes the whimsical subjects of her attention: the merman, with his grimacing monkey-head attached to his ribbed fish-body, looked “amazed that he’s lasted this long.” One poem about the yearly reproduction cycle of oysters, all of which become female as they age, described the eggs as “sway[ing] like belly dancers,” in the water that looked “like milk.”

Roberts ended the night, by random pulling from a hat, with a poem from her very first book, The Wishbone Galaxy (1994). The poem was called “Mother,” and focused in on the nature of horseshoe crabs and motherhood. Roberts’ reading, with its descriptive renderings of out-of-the-ordinary subjects, and her way of transporting you to the locations so present in her work, was a welcome escape for many that were present.

The next and final VOICES reading of the semester, which will be co-sponsored by the ENST Department, the Arts Alliance, and the Lecture and Fine Arts Committee, will bring poet and essayist Elizabeth Bradfield to St. Mary’s, and will take place on December 1 at 8:15 in DPC.

On November 10th, the Center for the Study of Democracy hosted a viewing of Inequality for All. This documentary was yet another installment of the film series hosted in Cole Cinema.

Inequality for All is hosted by American Economist and Nobel laureate, Robert Reich. The film was debuted in 2013 at the Sundance Film Festival. In the documentary, Reich tells the complex story of income inequality between socioeconomic classes. Reich shows that the effects of inequality of income have major effects on the US economy and democracy in hidden ways.

Today, Reich is a Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. In the past, Reich has contributed to many outlets of journalism to include The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times. From 1993 to 1997, Reich was the Secretary of Labor for President Bill Clinton. In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century.

According to the documentary, over the last thirty years the US economy has doubled in size. But, these gains went to a very few: the top one percent of earners now take in more than twenty percent of all income. This is three times what they received in 1970. The top one percent are seen by the public as CEOs of large companies that make jobs for people. People who are seen as “job creators” are just wealthy people that want to make money for themselves. They are rich not because they spent their time making jobs, but for spending their time making money. Income inequality is even more extreme at the very top. According to Reich, the top 400 richest Americans are wealthier than that of the bottom 150 million.

The film was organized well and centered around a lecture that Reich was giving at the University of California, Berkeley. As Reich explains a new point of information in the lecture, the film cuts to an example of people in the real world. The statistics were shown through a number of models and graphs that made the information easy to recognize.

This documentary points out to the public that there is an injustice in the world that is hidden to the public eye. Seen as just numbers and figures, the facts about income inequality are hard to recognize but they are real.