Past Friends of the Library Events: Present - 2012

Wednesday, April 15, 2015, 6 p.m. : BookNotes

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: A Celebration of Writing and Art: Release of Bartleby 2015

A Celebration of Writing and Art: the Release of Bartleby 2015, UMBC's creative arts journal, marking its 35nd year of publishing the best of UMBC students' prose, poetry, and art. The event features readings by the authors of selected poetry and prose in the new issue, and artistic interpretations of their work by students from Visual Arts.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, will follow the program in the Gallery. This event will be free and open to the public.

For more information on Bartleby, see: the Bartleby home page.

Saturday, March 28, 2015 : Theatre with Dinner

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: These Shining Lives by Malanie Marnich

These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich was presented by the UMBC Department of Theatre and directed by Nyalls Hartman.

The play is based on actual events at a watch factory in which workers were exposed to radium, and their subsequent struggle to first find a doctor willing to diagnose "radium poisoning," and then to bring a lawsuit against the employer, Radium Dial. This play first premiered at Baltimore's Centerstage Theater in 2008.

Scenery was designed by Michelle Bisbee, Visiting Assistant Professor in Scenic Design.

The event began at 5 p.m. on the 7th floor of the Library with a wine and soft drink reception. Dinner commenced at 6 p.m., with remarks by director Nils Hartman after dinner at approximately 7 p.m., and the play was held in the new Performing Arts and Humanities Building, in the Black Box Theatre, at 8 p.m.

Tickets were priced at $35 per person.

Parking for this event will be provided on the top level of the Walker Avenue Parking Garage at hooded meters. For handicapped parking, spaces are normally available at the foot of Walker Avenue. Special needs regarding parking can be accommodated.

Transportation between Library and New Theatre will be provided for those who request it on the registration form.

The Friends of the Library & Gallery sponsors Theatre with Dinner events not to raise money (the costs are barely covered by the ticket price) but to provide an enhanced experience of the Theatre production and a good time for all participants.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015, 4 p.m. : Faculty Concert

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: "Visual Music" UMBC Faculty Concert with Video

This event is in our "ArtsNotes" / "MusicNotes" series. It will feature UMBC flutist Dr. Lisa Cella and UMBC inter-media artist Steve Bradley.

Please join Lisa Cella, flutist, and Stephen Bradley, inter-media artist, for a live concert of contemporary flute repertoire with original video art created specifically for each piece. This experimental flute performance is the culmination of a project begun a year ago. It embraces the work of four composers who Dr. Cella commissioned to write pieces specifically for her interpretive expertise.

In collaboration with Inter-media artist Stephen Bradley, Dr. Cella is creating not only a CD/DVD document, but a concert that can be produced live with the video with the intent to create a more powerful listening experience for both musicians and non-musicians. Pairing aural with visual language will add a deeper dimension to both the musical and visual experience. The music written consists of works for solo flute, bass flute, flute and computer, and alto flute.

Stephen Bradley's time-lapse video work explores a meditative perspective that features quotidian events. By slicing time into precise visual moments, the video presents the listener/viewer with an illuminated focus on the familiar. Interweaving Bradley's visual "curiosity of motion" with the aural compositions performed by Lisa Cella, an expansive work of art is constructed. This collaboration engages our capacity for deep listening and seeing. It opens one door of perception and reveals a pattern language comprised of fractals and synesthesia, leading us to apprehend the ineffable.

Works to be performed:
• 010 machine states (2012) by Christopher Adler (b. 1972)
• Knot Theory (2010) by Christopher Burns (b. 1973)
• Flute Code (2012) by Matthew Burtner
• Light in Each One (2009) score excerpt by Stuart Saunders Smith
• Ripples (2011) by Adam Greene
• Incompatibiles iii-b (2009) by Nicolas Tzortzis (b. 1978)

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, will follow the program.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Library & Gallery through its "ArtsNotes/MusicNotes" series.

Monday, March 9, 2015, 4 p.m. : BookNotes

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: "Visual Ecology: The Unexpected Abilities of Animal Eyes" presentation by Dr. Tom Cronin

Humans are visual creatures. We're also introspective and curious, a combination that makes us all by nature amateur visual ecologists (even if we don't know it, or even what it means!) Since vision dominates how we experience our world, we naturally wonder how other animals see their own worlds. When a cat is entranced by images of fish on a television screen, does it see colors? Does it think they are real fish? What is it experiencing? When a wasp flies up and stares us in the face, just what is it seeing? These questions have probably been asked for as long as our species have been around.

Visual ecology is the field that studies how vision operates to meet the needs of various kinds of animals. It examines how vision has evolved and how it is special in each species, and it asks questions that are some of the oldest in biology, often predating even the earliest science: "How do owls see at night, when humans are essentially blind?" "Does my dog (or horse, or cat) see color?" "Can a dolphin see when it sticks its head out of the water?" Many others readers have probably asked themselves about vision in other animals.

Professor Cronin's studies of vision have included animals ranging from the tiny plankton, through many marine creatures, to whooping cranes and even whales. In his talk, he will focus mainly on his favorite animals of all, the fearsome "mantis shrimps," known for their abilities to break aquarium walls and impale human flesh. Their eyes are some of the strangest in nature, seeing things that humans can only duplicate with high-tech imagery.

Cronin is frequently invited to speak about his work to the general public. His talk is intended for a general audience, so non-biologists and non-scientists should feel welcome to come.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program.

Co-Sponsored by the Friends of the Library & Gallery and the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences

More Information on Dr. Cronin

April 7, 2014, 4 PM : Faculty Concert

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: Concert of Mozard and Contemporary Works by Violinish Airi Yoshioka and violist Maria Lambros

Violinist Airi Yoshioka and violist Maria Lambros presented a concert of Mozart and contemporary works by composers from Central Asia and the Caucasus.

The program included:
• Mozart String Duo No. 1 in G major for violin and viola, k 423
• Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky (Uzbekistan) Solo
• Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (Azerbaijan) "Dastan"
• Akaki Nicoladze (Georgia) Solo

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Library & Gallery through its "ArtsNotes" series.

April 24, 2014, 6 PM : Bartleby

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: A Celebration of Writing and Art: The Release of Bartleby 2014

A Celebration of Writing and Art: the release of Bartleby 2014, UMBC's creative arts journal, marking its 34nd year of publishing the best of UMBC students' prose, poetry, and art. The event featured readings by the authors of selected poetry and prose in the new issue, and artistic interpretations of their work by students from Visual Arts.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program. This event was free and open to the public.

For more information on Bartleby, see: the Bartleby home page.

February 27, 2014: 4 p.m. : Lecture

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: "N. Jay Jaffee Photographs from Public to Personal, 1947-1997" by Christy Ford Chapin and Tom Beck

Christy Ford Chapin and Tom Beck - February 27, 2014: 4 p.m., Library Gallery -- A Discussion of N. Jay Jaffee's Works as represented in the UMBC Library Gallery Exhibition, "N. JAY JAFFEE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM PUBLIC TO PERSONAL, 1947–1997."

Christy Ford Chapin (assistant professor, Department of History) and Tom Beck (chief curator of the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery and affiliate professor of Visual Arts), considered the nature and impact of N. Jay Jaffee's works.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program.

The UMBC Library Gallery's description of the exhibition is as follows:

In distinctive black and white photographs of people and cityscapes N. Jay Jaffee (1921–1999), a one-time student of Sid Grossman of Photo League fame in New York, simultaneously captured the intimate and the abstract, the momentary and timeless, in exquisite expositions of lights and shadow, visual textures and balanced tension. City streets, subways, signs, markets and the people who inhabited them—documenting these very public spheres was actually a form of self-portrait, a means by which Jaffee interpreted both the world and his position in it at various times throughout his life. As such, his photographs are imbued with a subtle wit and humor, and a profound understanding of the ironies in all of our lives. They suggest a reaching out, inviting us to see and to question with a readied camera and an innocent eye.

Large and small museums, galleries, institutions and private collections around the world have collected Jaffee’s work, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the International Museum of Photography and Film (George Eastman House), the Smithsonian Institution, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of American Art, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), among others.

This exhibition presents 70 photographs spanning the career of N. Jay Jaffee, selected from the more than one hundred photographs that comprise the N. Jay Jaffee Collection, acquired by the UMBC Photography Collections in 2013.

February 25, 2014: 4 p.m. : Lecture

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: The Painted Screen of Blatimore: An Urban Folk Art Revealed presented by Folklorist and author Elaine Eff

Elaine Eff, an authority on the subject of painted screens, has thoughtfully examined the roots of painted wire cloth, the ethnic communities where painted screens have been at home for a century, and the future of this art form. She is a curator and filmmaker who formerly served as the director of the cultural conservation program for the Maryland Historical Trust and as co-director of the Maryland Traditions program at the Maryland State Arts Council. She is the 2009 Botkin Prize recipient from the American Folklore Society and the founder of the Painted Screen Society.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program.

The UMBC Library Gallery's press release provides the following context:

Painted screens have long been synonymous in the popular imagination with the Baltimore rowhouse. At once picturesque, practical, and quirky, window and door screens adorned with scenic views simultaneously offer privacy and ventilation. As an urban folk art, painted screens flourished in Baltimore, though they did not originate here - precursors date to early eighteenth-century London. They were a fixture on fine homes and businesses in Europe and America throughout the Victorian era, but became an item for mass consumption in Baltimore where the folk art is still very much alive.

November 25, 2013: 4 P.M. : Lecture

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: "The Problem with Print: publishing born digital scholarship" by Helen J. Burgess

Dr. Burgess discussed some of the difficulties for academics seeking to work and publish outside traditional "print-bound" models of humanities scholarship - including issues of professional evaluation and distribution - and showed some examples of "born digital" works that would benefit from a new model of publishing.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program.

Dr. Burgess is an Associate Professor of English in the Communication and Technology track. She is active in the new media research community as editor of the online journal Hyperrhiz: new Media Cultures, and technical editor of Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge. Dr Burgess is coauthor of Red Planet: Scientific and Cultural Enounters with Mars and Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information, both titles published in the Mariner10 interactive DVD-Rom series at the University of Pennsylvania Press. She has interests in multimedia and web development, open source and open content production, electronic literature, and science fiction.

November 6, 2013: 4 p.m. : Lecture

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: "Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters" presented by Kate Brown

Kate Brown spoke on the great plutonium disasters of the United States and the Soviet Union, drawing on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Plutopias were successful because in their zoned-off isolation they appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, they concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program.

This event was sponsored by the UMBC Social Sciences Forum and co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Friends of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery

Dr. Brown is an Associate Professor of History at UMBC.

Friday, October 25, 2013 : Theatre with Dinner

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: Play "Eurydice" presented by UMBC Department of Theatre, directed by Nyalls Hartman

The UMBC Department of Theatre describes the play as follows:

"A modern retelling of the classic myth of Orpheus who descends into the Underworld to retrieve his young bride, Eurydice, from Death's amorous arms. Told from Eurydice's point-of-view, the story follows her odyssey through the Underworld as she seeks love, meaning, and rebirth. Visually stunning and poetic, the play mirrors the dreamy and sometimes treacherous landscape of Eurydice's inner life where she can’t always remember who she is and can't always recognize the signs along the way. As Eurydice struggles for self-knowledge, we — like the characters — discover the sacrifices that must be made to achieve a deeply meaningful love, and what happens when love is found, but remains illusory and unattainable."

The event began at 5 p.m. on the 7th floor of the Library with a wine and soft drink reception. Dinner commenced at 6 p.m., with remarks by director Nils Hartman after dinner at approximately 7 p.m., and the play was held in the new UMBC Theatre, in the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, at 8 p.m.

Tickets were priced at $35 per person.

Parking for this event was provided on the top level of the Walker Avenue Parking Garage at hooded meters. For handicapped parking, spaces are normally available at the foot of Walker Avenue. Special needs regarding parking can be accommodated. Transportation between Library and New Theatre was provided for those who requested it on the registration form.

The Friends of the Library & Gallery sponsors Theatre with Dinner events not to raise money (the costs are barely covered by the ticket price) but to provide an enhanced experience of the Theatre production and a good time for all participants.

Friday, April 26, 2013 : Theatre with Dinner

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: Play "Two Gentlemen of Verona" presented by UMBC Department of Theatre and directed by Eve Mason

The UMBC Department of Theatre describes the play as follows:

"When the two gents, Valentine and Proteus, leave Verona to seek their fortunes in Milan, their boyhood friendship turns to rivalry when they both fall in love with the Duke's daughter, Sylvia--even though she is promised to a rich suitor and Proteus is already engaged to his hometown sweetheart, Julia. Proteus sets out to betray both friend and fiance, only to find that Julia and Sylvia have a thing or two to teach him about loyalty and love. One quick-witted (and one not-so-quick-witted) servant, some bawdy outlaws, and a faithful canine companion make this one of Shakespeare's most lighthearted romantic comedies."

The event began at 5 p.m. on the 7th floor of the Library with a wine and soft drink reception. Dinner will commence at 6 p.m., with remarks by director Eve Muson after dinner at approximately 7 p.m., and the play was held in the new UMBC Theatre, in the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, at 8 p.m.

Transportation between Library and New Theatre was provided for those who request it on the registration form.

Friday, October 25, 2013 : Bartleby

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Event: A Celebration of Writing and Art: the Release of Bartleby 2013

A Celebration of Writing and Art: the Release of Bartleby 2013, UMBC's creative arts journal, marking its 33rd year of publishing the best of UMBC students' prose, poetry, and art. The event featured readings by the authors of selected poetry and prose in the new issue, and artistic interpretations of their work by students from Visual Arts.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program. This event was free and open to the public.

For more information on Bartleby, see: the Bartleby home page.

Thursday, April 26, 2012, 5:30 - 8 p.m. : Bartleby

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library 7th Floor

Event: A Celebration of Writing and Art: the Release of Bartleby 2012

A Celebration of Writing and Art: the Release of Bartleby 2012, UMBC's creative arts journal, marking its 32nd year of publishing the best of UMBC students' prose, poetry, and art. The event featured readings by the authors of selected poetry and prose in the new issue, and artistic interpretations of their work by students from Visual Arts.

A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, followed the program. This event was free and open to the public.

For more information on Bartleby, see: the Bartleby home page.

Friday, April 20 , 2012 : Theatre with Dinner

Location: Albin O. Kuhn Library

Event: Play "Incorruptible, A Dark Comedy About the Dark Ages" by Michael Hollinger, presented by UMBC Department of Theature, directed by Colette Searls

The UMBC Department of Theatre describes the play as follows:

"Welcome to Priseaux, France, c. 1250 A.D.: The river flooded again last week. The chandler's shop just burned to the ground. Nobody's heard of the wheelbarrow yet. And Ste. Foy, the patron of the local monastery, hasn't worked a miracle in thirteen years. In other words, the Dark Ages still look pretty dark. All eyes turn to the Pope, whose promised visit will surely encourage other pilgrims to make the trek and restore the abbey to its former glory. That is, until a rival church claims to possess the relics of Ste. Foy--and "their" bones are working miracles. All seems lost until the destitute monks take a lesson from a larcenous one-eyed minstral, who teaches them an outrageous new way to pay old debts."

The event began at 5 p.m. on the 7th floor of the Library with a wine and soft drink reception, with Dinner at 6 p.m., and remarks by director Colette Searls after dinner at approximately 7 p.m., and the play was held in the UMBC Theatre at 8 p.m.

Tickets were $35 per person.