Arts & Creative Resilience
Our Creative Community in a Time of Pandemic
Welcome to Arts & Creative Resilience, a virtual space dedicated to keeping us connected through arts and creativity in this time of isolation and confinement.
From videos responding to creative prompts, to a virtual exhibition hosted by the Cantor Art Gallery and a glimpse into 2020 Fenwick Scholar Matthew Pinder's massive work Stations of the Cross, this is where we will continue to share, highlight and gather until it is safe once again to congregate in person. What started as a way to honor campus arts projects interrupted mid-semester is now poised to blossom into a chronicle of our collective search for joy, comfort, community and resilience in a time of global upheaval.
We thank our partners in the departments of Music, Theatre & Dance and Visual arts, as well as the Cantor Art Gallery, CreateLab and the College Honors program in getting this page off the ground.
And now, we'd like to hear from you! Are you exploring any creative outlets? Browse the page, and consider sharing your ideas, projects, responses. Share with us by email at atb@holycross.edu or by tagging us over social media.
#artsatholycross, #creativityisnotcancelled, #HCtogether
FEATURED
"New Tell Us"
Written collaboratively using TimeSlips Creative Storytelling method with residents at Saint Francis Rehabilitation & Nursing Center
"Life in a Box"
Excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Compilation of video finals by students in "Basic Acting", taught by Patrick O'Konis '16.
ARTS TRANSCENDING BORDERS//CREATELAB
Beyond La Bamba:
Music, Storytelling, and Activism in the Time of Corona
Music, Storytelling, and Activism in the Time of Corona
When their three-day campus residency in March is cancelled, socially-driven L.A. band Las Cafeteras joins the campus community in virtual classes and gatherings.
TimeSlips Creative Storytelling
During the early part of the Spring semester, students from Renee Beard's "Aging and Society" seminar joined Ian Bannon, Figures of Speech Theater Director of Education, for regular visits at a pair of skilled nursing facilities in Worcester. They gathered with residents living with dementia at both Saint Francis Rehabilitation & Nursing Center and St. Mary Health Care Center to create stories together until classes moved online.
The original stories were created using TimeSlips Creative Storytelling method as a series of responses to open-ended questions about photos. To continue the creative collaboration in spite of the quarantine, Bannon worked remotely with students to create video adaptations of the stories, which are now shared back with the storytellers at Saint Francis and St. Mary.
"Vaudeville"
Written collaboratively with residents at St. Mary Health Care Center
"New Tell Us"
Written collaboratively with residents at Saint Francis Rehabilitation & Nursing Center
"Culinary"
Written collaboratively with residents at St. Mary Health Care Center
CreateLab: "Originality and its Origins"
Looking Forward/Looking Back
“Who might I become, and how will I look back on it?”
Imagine the kind of life you may be leading in the future--30 years from now, say--and write a six-word memoir (wwwsixwordmemoirs.com/) that tells the (imagined) story of your life, focusing on how you might be "a man or woman for and with others." What kind of life might it be? Alongside your memoir, create a small "something"--a sketch, a mini-sculpture, a tasty dish, a photo-collage, whatever--that provides an image of the life you're imagining.
Wall Art
“the walls became the world all around”
Come up with a project that can transport you beyond your confinement, altering your space by creating a painting or collage upon your wall, rearranging the furniture, building a fort out of chairs and blankets, making a tiny landscape you can daydream your way into, etc.
Visit us at Arts Transcending Borders and CreateLab >>
CANTOR ART GALLERY
Current Exhibition:
Énouement
Énouement
Énouement is a digital exhibition of the work of senior studio art majors from the College of the Holy Cross. Throughout their senior year, the students have participated in a concentration seminar in which they developed their artistic practice through independent work and experimentation. The students have selected their pieces, and have collaborated with faculty and Cantor staff to conceptualize and design this site. Visit the exhibition>>
Previous Exhibition:
Susan Schmidt: Joys, Sorrows, Concerns
Susan Schmidt: Joys, Sorrows, Concerns
Joys, Sorrows, Concerns features the prints, drawings, books of Susan Schmidt, artist and veteran faculty member at the College of the Holy Cross. Created over several decades, this selection of work created over the last forty years serves to represent a profound body of work that spans drawing and print media of varying scales, and that explores many of our most fundamental concerns; primary among them family, and what binds us together and keeps us apart.
Explore the dedicated exhibition website here.
Visit us at the Cantor Art Gallery>>
CREATIVE CAMPUS
Zen Buddhism, Japanese Art & Creativity (Honors Seminar)
Team-taught by Leila Philip and Todd Lewis, this course was designed for students with varying backgrounds to learn about Zen Buddhism and the different art forms it has influenced, including Japanese literature and ceramics, gardens and the tea ceremony. For the final assignment, "The Realms of Possibility," students engaged experientially with Zen practice and thinking by pursuing a particular discipline or art form for a sustained period and composed their own artistic creations, accompanied by a final paper.
Incorporating Zen in Enso: "One Breath"
Maressa Park '22
Maressa is from Whippany, New Jersey. She is enchanted by wildlife, and she discovered new interests this year in Japanese sumi-e ink painting and martial arts. She is also a lover of cats.
Capturing Fleeting Beauty
Megan Weiner '22
For her final project, Megan studied and produced Zen-inspired ink paintings juxtaposed here with photographs taken during her journey away from campus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Megan is a rising junior majoring in psychology and minoring in art. She's from Cumberland, Rhode Island. Her favorite hobby is painting.
MUSIC
VIRTUAL CHOIR
Introduction by Director Dr. Allegra Martin
Holy Cross Virtual Choir: Tallis Canon
SATB choir, unaccompanied
"Dr. Anthony Trecek-King requested a song that aligned with the social justice theme of his concerts with Seraphic Fire. The first and last lines of the [James Weldon] Johnson poem immediately stood out to me. In the midst of discrimination, our heart—the core of our being—must lead us into rightful change. And as we continue doing right, the principles of honesty, love, and justice will give us the power to strive for what is due all of humanity."
Holy Cross Virtual Choir: My Heart Be Brave
Sonnet by James Weldon Johnson
My heart be brave, and do not falter so,
Nor utter more that deep, despairing wail.
Thy way is very dark and drear I know,
But do not let thy strength and courage fail;
For certain as the raven-winged night
Is followed by the bright and blushing morn,
Thy coming morrow will be clear and bright;
’Tis darkest when the night is furthest worn.
Look up, and out, beyond, surrounding clouds,
And do not in thine own gross darkness grope,
Rise up, and casting off thy hind’ring shrouds,
Cling thou to this, and ever inspiring hope:
Tho’ thick the battle and tho’ fierce the fight,
There is a power [in] making for the right.
STATIONS of the CROSS: A Non-Traditional Musical Passion
Matthew Pinder, 2020 Fenwick Scholar
by Matthew Pinder, 2020 Fenwick Scholar
Written for soloists and orchestra, Stations of the Cross by 2020 Fenwick Scholar Matthew Pinder is a massive, hour-long work based on the Stations of the Cross, spanning the narrative progression from the condemnation of Jesus to his burial.
Listen to piano reductions of two key movements below, and learn more about the project in Pinder's Academic Conference presentation.
Station IV. Jesus Meets His Sorrowful Mother
Piano: Matthew Pinder
Station VIII. Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
Piano: Matthew Pinder
"Factory Jam"
by Patrick Jessop '20
Taught by Brian Saia, Lecturer and Audio Engineer in the Music Department, the final project for "Digital Media for Musicians" tasked students with using tools like equalization, compression, reverb, delay, and video effects to manipulate an original music composition and video accompaniment.
Visit us at the Department of Music>>
THEATRE & DANCE
RICHARD II, directed by Edward Isser
Reflecting on Richard II
Faced with a disruption in the midst of rehearsals for the department's Spring 2020 production of Richard II, cast members reflect on finding resilience and community in theatre.
Dress Rehearsal: Act II, Scene I
Dress Rehearsal: Act II, Scene III
RICHARD II, The Second: A Senior Capstone Project
Emily Arancio '20 introduces the project, a retelling of the department's Spring production Richard II over Zoom
RICHARD II, The Second
Body Stories: Props/Objects by Philomena Fitzgerald '20
Body Stories
Lecturer: Jimena Bermejo
Props/Objects
This final project for the course asks students to use objects and props to build movement using them in an abstract way, or to tell a story.
Body Stories: Props/Objects by Carmen Tarodo Abril
Body Stories: Props/Objects by Nakia Robinson '20
Modern Dance 1-2
This is the final project for the Spring 2020 Modern Dance 1-2 course. We connected through movement, making the end the beginning of the next. This was inspired by the video "Exquisite Corps" by Mitchell Ross. The music was created by student Osarume "Ozzy" Idahor '20, and the words are by Rachel Checo '20 and Austin Butler '21.
Edited by Jimena Bermejo
THE GREEN POEM
An original play by Emily Arancio '20
Based on and inspired by the work of Lucretius
Based on and inspired by the work of Lucretius
CAST:
Atom #1/E: Anne Borzner '21
L/Whole Body: Larry Arancio
Atom #2/#3/#4: Daniel Desmond '22
Ataraxia/Soul/Mirror #1/Mother: Ann Dowd '78
Aponia/Body/Mirror #2/Doctor: Liza Goodman '21
The Green Poem, Act I
The Green Poem, Act II
Basic Acting Final Projects
Lecturer: Patrick O'Konis '16
Students in "Basic Acting" individually filmed themselves performing a piece. Student videos were then edited together into one work. Congratulations to all the performers!
Edited by Patrick O'Konis
3:16 and One Half by Charles Bukowski
Featuring:
Bailey Bennett '21, Ana Bitar '20, Maggie Connolly '21, Peter Dobbs '21, Corinne Heffernan '22, Josh Hicks '21, Feleicia Jeter '20, Conor Joslin '23, Trent Kamke '23, Nathan Kramer '21, Pat O’Connor '22, Clara Smith '20, John Smith '22
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (Excerpt)
Featuring:
Juani Andres Ercoli (FLA), Sasha Bogan '23, Darwin Contreras '21, Alice Galvinhill '20, Prabhdeep Gill '20, Kai Huggins-Daniel '20, Natalia Luna '21, Michael Pichay '21, Brendan Ryan '23, Luke Wardour '20
Visit us at the Department of Theatre and Dance>>
VISUAL ARTS
Take the Getty Art Museum Challenge
Michael Beatty - Visual Arts: 3D Fundamentals and Visual Arts: Sculpture I
Amanda Luyster - Introduction to Visual Arts
Much of modern and contemporary art works by turning our expectations upside down so the viewer has a new experience.
Artists from Marcel Duchamp to Robert Rauschenberg to Doris Salcedo have used real objects in their sculptures to transform the ordinary into the poetic and to blur the traditional division between art and life. For this project, students are tasked with using the Getty Art Museum challenge to recreate a historical work of art using household objects. View the full gallery>>
Shelter/Sanctuary: A Concept Model
Professor Michael Beatty - Visual Arts: 3D Fundamentals
Research, design and build a small "concept model" for an imagined architectural space. Design a space that fosters concepts of shelter, sanctuary, contemplation, or even safety. Think of something the size of a cabin, a pavilion or gazebo, a tree house or secret hideaway, not a massive building. Consider the lines, planes, angles, and projections of your model. Does the structure suggest strength, fragility, privacy, celebration or mystery?
Visual Arts - Studio
Cristi Rinklin - Painting 1
Explore home-studio workspaces and in-progress photos of the final project for Cristi Rinklin's Painting 1 course, "Updating the Masters." Students choose a work from an historical painter, and create a contemporary interpretation of this work.
Visit us at the Department of Visual Arts>>
