Chester College Students nominated for Acting award

Cynthia Hollis and Rebecca MacDonald have been nominated for the Irene Ryan Excellence in College Acting award through the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Rockie Hunter was named as an alternate. Cynthia and Rebecca have been invited to compete for the award at the upcoming regional festival, taking place January 26-31 at UNH in Durham, where theater students from Maine to New York will come together to compete, network, perform, and take workshops with industry professionals. In the event that either Cynthia or Rebecca cannot attend, Rockie would go in their place. The nominations were made by Jim Murphy, the region one co-chair for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Mr. Murphy also chose to recognize the work of Matthew Williams, whose work on Chester’s production of “Night of the Living Dead” is being entered into the dramaturgy (theatrical scholarship) category at the festival.

 

Final Week of Senior Shows

Between November 15 and November 23, the final four of Chester College of New England’s graduating seniors will be show their work from the past two semesters. The opening reception will be held at 7 p.m., November 18, 2009 in the Wadleigh Library Gallery. The show is free and open to the public.

The event will feature gallery a combination of fantasy, erotica, role playing, video documentaries, TV show and other forms of propaganda from the 1940s, and life before, during and after World War I.

The visual artists are Kelsey McCarthy with “Children of Asgard,” Amanda Kovs with “A Surreal Twilight,” Brittany Barnes with “Silent Majority” and Brittany Tumelaire with “Perception.”. As part of the opening three senior writers will read portions of their work. Rachel Lieberman will read from her work of fiction “Coming and Going,” Lisa Pike will read poems from her collection “Stripped” and Kelsey McCarthy will read from her fiction piece “Children of Asgard.”

Postcard

George Saunders visits Chester College

Nationally acclaimed author George Saunders will visit Chester College on Monday November 16, as part of the Visiting Writers Series. He will participate in a question and answer session for students from 1-2:30 p.m. and will give a reading from 6-8 p.m, that the public is invited to attend. Both events will be held in Room 29 of the Powers Building.

Saunders, a creative writing professor at Syracuse University, has work appearing regularly in The New Yorker, GQ, and Harpers Magazine. His work has also appeared in the anthologies Best American Short Story, Best Non-Required Reading, and Best American Travel Writing. Saunders also is the author of two non-fiction books and five books of fiction.

Saunders has been a recipient of the National Magazine Award four times and has won second prize in the O. Henry Awards. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, his first collection of short stories, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. In 2006 Saunders Received a MacArthur Fellowship.

Ashley John Pigford comes to Chester College

Ashley John Pigford will be coming to Chester College of New England on Tuesday November 17, 2009. She will be giving a lecture at 2:30 pm in the Wadleigh Library Conference Room. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Ashley John Pigford is an artist, designer, musician and educator who works across a wide range of art and design media including video, sound, installation, performance, sculpture, micro-electronics and letterpress. His current employment as Assistant Professor of Visual Communications in the Department of Art at the University of Delaware is paired with an active art/design studio practice. Ashley received his MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006 after a successful career as a proprietor of graphic design in Los Angeles, CA.

Rachelle Beaudoin featured on ArtFem.tv

Chester College of New England’s instructor of photography and media arts Rachelle Beaudoin has recently seen some of her video work featured on ArtFem.tv.

ArtFem.TV is online television programming presenting Art and Feminism. The aim of ArtFem.TV is to foster women in the arts, their art works and projects, to create an online international television screen for the creativity, images and voices of women. ArtFem.TV is a non-profit, artist run ITV and media portal about Art and Feminism. Artists featured on the site include: Pipilotti Rist, Martha Rosler, Marina Abramovic, and Valie Export.

Bryon Petrakis Published

“The Arrows of Apollo,” a short story by Chester College of New England’s  Dean of Students and professor of writing and literature Byron Petrakis, is scheduled to appear in Issue 360 (November 9) of “Bewildering Stories,” an on-line publication of speculative writing in all genres.

Eric Crapo Published

“Snippets from Acadia National Park,” a poem by Chester College of New England’s Library Director and instructor of writing and literature Eric Crapo, will appear in the first issue of Moonshot magazine.

Eric Pinder Published

Chester College of New England’s instructor of writing and literature Eric Pinder’s essay “Snow Days” will appear in the January/February 2010 issue of New Hampshire Home magazine. The essay describes the joys and perils of living in a cold climate.

Second week of Senior Shows in Wadleigh Gallery

Work by Chester College of New England Zach Huntress, Emily McCoomb, Emma Haskins and Alexa Patrick is featured in the Wadleigh Gallery this week. An opening reception for the shows will be held at 7 p.m., Wednesday, November 11.

Huntress’s show is a collection of photographs called “Mental Scars and Boxcars,” McCoomb’s a collection of drawings, Haskins’s a collection of drawings, paintings, and collages called “Ancestors” and Patrick’s a collection of oil paintings called “Snapshots.”

“Mental Scars and Boxcars” is Huntress’s interpretation of the History of Railroads and Hobo culture, two things he said he is passionate about learning. Haskins’s work is based on antique photographs that belonged to her mother–her attempt to make past relatives and friends remembered in a new light. Patrick said her work captures the emotion and stories of certain events with each piece representing a different family memory.

The shows continue through Saturday, November 14.

An Interview with Fred Lynch

For more than twenty years, Fred Lynch has been an educator freelance illustrator, creating magazine covers, book jackets and website designs with his distinctive and humorous style, blending realism with imagination. But hearing him describe what he does, you wouldn’t think it was work. Lynch recently spoke about his work and experience in the field at Chester College of New England. According to Fred Lynch, the illustrator’s job isn’t to simply draw but rather to communicate an idea. This has two requirements: creating an image that represents the idea and making it coherent and understandable. It’s not enough to meet the goal of the commissioned image; if the audience doesn’t understand the message, the illustration doesn’t serve a purpose. In this sense it would seem that these commissioned pieces are impersonal to the artist, and in some cases he would agree. However, a keen-eye can detect a clue of Lynch’s own charm and humor, whether that be a stray floating nose in a bed of flowers or the oddly-curled toes of a fallen elf. He cites the old adage that you have to love your work, even if it isn’t necessarily yours. Though layout guidelines and strict time constraints may limit what can be done, Lynch says that if you love what you do, you’ll be driven to find ways around it. Lynch’s commercial work and personal work are often at ends with one another. He openly admits that he bends rules of perspective and realism in his illustrations but when observing his Coffee Cup series of paintings it becomes obvious that, nor only are these paintings are overtly abstract but that being abstract is the point. Coffee Cup presents a passion for reinventing, changing the mundane by twisting and pulling at the physical constraints, sometimes to the point where any resemblance is gone. Lynch cites imagination as a driving force behind illustration, in both the need to express it and capture it in the viewer.