- A very warm welcome to all of you to the 37th Annual Showcase of the Arts. We are so privileged, we
- feel so privileged to welcome you. My name is Ingelore Welch, and I'm co-president with Peggy Bachman,
- and I hope you very much enjoy this show. It's been our privilege to present. I want to add my
- Blessings on all of you who came out of your gardens and came here today. We're so pleased to have you
- see our award winners. And also, you'll have an opportunity to meet the chairs of these competitions,
- people who do all the hard work. Thank you. Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome
- to the 37th annual showcase of the Arts of the Bloomington Chapter
- of the National Society of Arts and Letters. I am Murray McGibbon, and I'll be your Master of Ceremonies
- for the program this afternoon, which will feature the top award winners of our 2003 competitions in
- the arts. After the performances, we will present the awards in these competitions. The program today
- will deviate a bit from the printed program. Daishan Chang's accompanist has to leave to play at a recital
- later this afternoon, so Daishan will appear in the early portion of the program.
- and Elisa Torres will close out the first half of the program. We begin with Sarah Smith. Sarah, from
- Boca Raton in Florida, is at present a freshman in the ballet department of the School of Music at Indiana
- University, and she plans to major in ballet performance with an outside field of nutrition science.
- She began studying ballet at the Boca Ballet Theater when she was 11. By the time that she was a freshman
- in high school,
- She was attending the Harrod Conservatory, and after graduating, she spent a year training at the Joffrey
- Ballet School in New York City. She has had starring roles in productions of La Bayadaire, The Nutcracker,
- and Swan Lake. This next summer, she will spend six weeks training intensively at the American Ballet
- Theater in New York City. For us, she will perform a variation from La Bayadaire. Ladies and gentlemen,
- please welcome Sarah Smith,
- Yeah.
- Sam Wotton comes from Marietta, Georgia, and is completing his first year in the Master of Fine Arts
- program in acting at Indiana University. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of
- Georgia, where he appeared in productions of The Rivals, Buried Child, All Men Are Whores, and The Tempest.
- Since arriving at Indiana University, he has performed in Art and Lysistrata, and this summer he will
- be seen in Picasso at the La Panagile,
- at the Brown County Playhouse. Today, he will present portions of William Shakespeare's Taming of the
- Shrew and Neil LeBout's The Shape of Things. Thus have I politically begun my reign. It is my hope to
- end successfully. My falcon now is sharp and passing empty. And till she's stew, she must not be forgorged.
- For then she never looks upon her lure.
- Another way I have to man my haggard to make her come, know her keeper's call, that is to watch her
- as we watch these kites that bait and beat and will not be
- There the bolster, this way the coverlet, another way the sheets. Aye, and amid this hurley, I intend
- that all is done in reverent care of her. And in conclusion, she shall watch all night. And if she chants
- to nod, I'll rail and brawl, and with the clamor keep her still awake. This is the way to go.
- mad and had strong humor. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, and now let him speak to his charity
- to show. When Picasso took his shit, he didn't call it a sculpture. He knew the difference. That's what
- made him Picasso. And if I'm wrong about that, I mean, if I totally missed the point
- and somehow puking up your own little shitty neuroses all over people's laps is actually art, then you
- ought to realize that there's a price to it all. And somebody pays for people like you. Someone pays
- for your two minutes on CNN. They always pay for people like you. And if you can't get that, if you
- can't see that much, then you're about two inches away from using babies to make lampshades and calling
- it furniture. I know they call it the art scene, but that's not all it should make.
- There should be more than that. Anybody can be shocking or provocative, or stand up in class or the
- mall, take a piss, paint themselves blue, run screaming through the church on the means of people that
- they've slept with. But is it art? Or did somebody just forget to take their Ritalin? For art to exist,
- there has to be a line. There has to be a line out there somewhere. A line between really saying something
- Cheng is from a family of bassists in the city of Harbin in northeast China. He began playing the double
- bass at the age of nine and is admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing when he was
- 10. In 2000, he graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and he now studies with Lawrence Hurst in
- the Artist Diploma Program at Indiana University. Cheng has won a number of prestigious awards.
- These include first prize in the 2001 International Society of Bassists Solo Competition, grand prize
- in the two-year long American String Teachers Association National Solo Competition, first prize in
- the 2002 Young Artists Competition of the Women's Auxiliary of the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, and
- first prize in the 2003 Young Concert Artists Auditions. At the auditions, he also received five special prizes.
- the Clare Toe Prize, which sponsors his New York debut on May the 18th, 2004, the Washington Performing
- Arts Society Prize, a Washington, D.C. debut at the Kennedy Center, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society
- Prize, the Orchestra New England Prize, and the Fergus Prize. Quite exhausted after reading all those.
- For us this afternoon, he will play a number by Pablo de Sarasate. Please put your hands together for
- Daishan Chang.
- Kim McGlynn was born in South Korea, adopted by her parents, and grew up in Lower Marion, Pennsylvania,
- just outside Philadelphia. She attended a Quaker high school, and then Oberlin College, from which she
- graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing, English, and Religion. Currently, she
- is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction, as well as a Master of Arts in Literature at
- Indiana University. Previously, she has received honorable mentions
- in competitions for the Diane Vruels Fiction Award at Oberlin College and the Lois Davis Ellison Award
- at Indiana University. This afternoon, she will read selections from her short story, Grace. Hi. I'm
- going to read two passages from my short story, Grace. But before I do that, I'm going to give a brief
- plot synopsis. The title character and narrator is a woman in her late 30s named Grace who is living
- just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- She's a working artist and she teaches a Wednesday evening class on basic sculpture for some extra income.
- Two characters you need to know for this section are Josh, her ex-husband, who she still talks to on
- the phone and may in fact still be a little bit in love with, and Dean, a man in her sculpture class
- who only has one arm and who she's starting to build a relationship with. Also, Ernest is a character
- who appears very briefly, another man who's taking the sculpture class.
- I'm going to read a selection from the beginning of the piece, which relates back story concerning Grace's
- relationship with Josh. And then I'm going to skip to a scene from the middle of the story where Grace
- is getting to know Dean. So if you're following along, the first selection begins on page two and the
- second begins on page 13. After Josh decided he was leaving Arizona, there was no reason for me to stay.
- Back east to the land of snow and ice, Josh said when I told him I was leaving too. He was blowing dust
- off his camera lens before wrapping it in a soft cloth and packing it up. And he pretended to blow it
- in my direction the way a fairy blows magic off her palm. We weren't really speaking so much at the
- time, just asking questions like what went wrong and was this yours or mine? Questions we mostly knew
- the answers to.
- or at least it seemed that way. So I answered him honestly. Away from the land of sun and heat, I said,
- back home, or what feels like it. I grew up just outside of Philadelphia in Lower Marion, right down
- the street from my apartment now. My parents moved to Wisconsin after I graduated from college some
- 17 years ago. But even they still refer to Lower Marion as home. They swear they will never move again.
- They like to be rooted somewhere, and I don't blame them. It's why I moved back here after I got divorced,
- back to the place I grew up. Shortridge Park with the same stream I caught minnows in when I was six.
- The same shopping center, although the food fair changed to a shop right when I was living in Arizona,
- and has changed to an Old Navy in the few years that I've been here. The same loud man who yells at
- his daughters, sweet women with round faces, and who works at the pizza place in Narberth.
- Unlike my parents and me, Josh likes locational change. He's a wildlife photographer and he's moved
- all around the country from Louisiana to North Dakota to Maine taking pictures of animals that interest
- him. He's gone to other countries too. He's got pictures of everything from manatees in South Florida
- to meerkats in the Kalahari Desert. Currently, he's in Minnesota studying a pack of timber wolves who
- he's named the Daniel Seven.
- Why Daniels? I asked him. For David Daniels, he told me, the countertenor from that Scarlatti CD I gave
- you last Christmas. He paused, and I could picture him smiling, his eyes dark and polished like dried
- beans, his beard a content shade of black. When we were together, I begged him to shave his beard because
- it made him look too mysterious. As if he was always scowling or smirking, I couldn't tell which, but
- he hadn't.
- I always told him that was the beginning of the end, though of course I knew better. In the end, he
- was gone for weeks at a time, away on various projects, camping out like a middle-aged boy scout.
- In the end, we drifted apart or maybe just realized that we hadn't been so similar in the first place.
- In the end, he said he had his career and I told him I'd had an affair. In the end, he moved to Minnesota
- and I moved back home.
- Because wolves have beautiful voices, I told him after a minute, because they sing cantatas to the moon.
- I always knew exactly what he meant, even when things were bad between us. Like I knew he was leaving
- when he came in from the desert that night and told me that he'd found a lizard tail lying by the side
- of the road, dropped from the claws of a hawk. Knew it by the way he held it in his hands, a cool and
- scaly piece of broken flesh,
- but precious, the discarding of something necessary in order for a creature to live. This is the second
- selection. Tonight, Dean asked me again if I'd like to go smoke with him. He asks as if he knows I'll
- say no, as if he's asking because it's a ritual now, and he seems to be looking forward to it, his eyes
- sardonic, his shoulders already turning to the door.
- So tonight I say yes, because I hate it when people assume, because I can see him leaving already.
- All right, I tell him, I wouldn't mind. I can feel Ernest gaze upon me, speculative, his eyes inquiring,
- but I don't turn to face him. I think Ernest likes me and I know that he likes Dean. I can see it in
- his eyes when he talks to him, a certain light in his eyes when he jokes with him, the kind of respect
- that men show each other, rough and affectionate,
- The way they jostle shoulders or clap each other on the back to say they love each other. Perhaps Ernest
- approves. I walk in silence behind Dean and we stand in silence together outside. It's starting to get
- dark early and I can see the moon off behind the trees in the parking lot. It's slight and curved like
- a fingernail sliver. I shiver a little bit and Dean starts as if he's just now aware of me. You're cold, he says.
- I shake my head. Someone walked over my grave, I tell him, and he smiles. He doesn't offer me his jacket
- the way most men would do, just nods and smiles, accepting what I've said. Instead, he offers me a smoke,
- flicking his wrist, the cigarette rising perfectly out of the pack toward me, and when I take it from
- him, he lights it for me without asking.
- He's so quick that I hardly notice how he's done it, maneuvering the lighter from the palm of his hand
- and up to his thumb, holding the cigarette pack between his pinky and ring finger as if he's just trying
- to be cool. He takes a cigarette for himself. In the dark, he looks calm and something else too, the
- way boys looked when I was younger, the cigarette glowing red with promise with each inhalation, a breath
- of certainty.
- In the dark, it looks like his left arm is whole, as if he's just resting his hand in his left pants
- pocket. How did it happen? I don't mean to ask him, but I do. I'm immediately sorry, and I take a drag
- of my cigarette, embarrassed that I had to start this way, but he doesn't seem surprised. He doesn't
- seem angry either. Accident when I was 17, he shrugs casually, car that is.
- I nod and then realize he might not have seen me. He is looking to the west across the parking lot which
- glitters with broken glass at the moon behind the trees. I clear my throat, but he doesn't turn toward
- me. I almost died, he continues. He shrugs again. I was lucky to just lose an arm. Lucky, I repeat after
- him, wondering how he can say this. And he smiles as if he knows what I'm thinking. I can see the gleam
- of his teeth in the light.
- Now he turns to me and I can see his eyes in the dark, sparkling like bits of mica. He steps closer
- to me and I let him brush a strand of hair from my eyes. Funny, I think, the way men always know to
- do that. The way they know how it gets you every time, that putting back into place, that small gesture
- done in care of you. Lucky, he says again, and it sounds like a song.
- Jenna Wolf hails from Atlanta, Georgia and is a freshman honors college student at Indiana University
- planning to double major in ballet and business. She commenced her classical ballet studies at the age
- of four and she joined the Ruth Mitchell Dance Theater when she was eight and continued dancing for
- the next 10 years in the company's productions of The Nutcracker and other ballets. She spent her summers
- training at the North Carolina School of the Arts and Pacific Northwest Ballet summer dance programs
- on full scholarship.
- Before arriving at IU, she performed soloist roles at the Southeast Regional Ballet's Gala performances
- and at the Spiletto Arts Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Since coming to IU, she has appeared
- with the Indiana University Ballet Theater in several works, including The Nutcracker and Swan Lake.
- She will dance a variation from Peter Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Please welcome Jenna Wolf.
- Amix will receive his Master of Fine Arts in Acting from Indiana University in May. On the IU stage,
- he has been seen in Moon for the Misbegotten, Skopino, Waiting for Godot, Translations, and Life During
- Wartime. He has also acted with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival Company at Boise State University and
- the Bloomington Playwrights Project. He is producing a play in New York this summer. Today, we will
- hear him in roles from Steven Dietz's 10 November,
- and William Shakespeare's King Lear, Ira Amickx. Hello, everyone. I will be doing Edmund from King Lear
- and John Salem from 10 November. This is the excellent phabery of the world, that when we are sick and
- fortunate, often the surface of our own behavior
- We made guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were felons on necessity,
- fools on heavenly compulsion, naves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance, drunkards,
- liars, and adulterers by some enforced obedience of planetary infamy.
- to lay his goatish dispositions for the charge of a star. My father compounded with my mother under
- the dragon's tail. My nativity is under Ursa Major, so thus it follows I am born.
- Tomorrow I'm a little better.
- Lisa Torres is a native of Puerto Rico and began her harp studies in 1987 at the Conservatory of Puerto
- Rico. After completing her studies at the Conservatory, she went on to earn a bachelor's degree in harp
- at Indiana University under distinguished professor Suzanne MacDonald. And she is at present completing
- her master's degree in harp performance at IU. She has been an active performer in Puerto Rico playing
- with the San Juan Pops and in 1998
- with the Puerto Rican Symphony Orchestra in the renowned Castles Festival. Elisa has also collaborated
- in popular music recordings with various artists. She will play for us pieces by Maria Auguste Durand
- and Bernard Andres. Ladies and gentlemen, Elisa Torres.
- Welcome back. Our second half of the program opens with Chris Nelson, who is completing his third year
- in the MFA program in acting at Indiana University. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, he has performed
- in A Streetcar Named Desire, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Much Ado About Nothing, Parade, God's Country,
- Translations, and Equus for IU. He has also appeared in Murder Among Friends, One for the Pot, and the
- Miss Firecracker Contest
- at the Brown County Playhouse and in the Three Little Kittens and the Queen of Hearts at the Birmingham
- Children's Theatre in Alabama. Chris's hobbies include baseball and other team sports, reading and civil
- war history. His selections for us will be from Italian American Reconciliation by John Patrick Shanley
- and Othello by William Shakespeare.
- You get the Hong Kong flu. You get rid of it. And now you want it back. She killed your dog. The woman
- shot your dog with a zip gun, and now you want it back? Ah, Huey, Huey, why? What are you telling me
- here? Oh, your life doesn't mean anything without a why. I'm not going to argue with you there. I don't
- know whether your life means anything or not. Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Who cares? Why should
- your life mean anything? My life doesn't mean anything. Maybe that's the good news.
- meant something when you were with Janice. Yeah, and then heartache, screaming, bad food, and finally
- a dead dog. Is this something to miss? Listen, Huey, a lot of people have an expression of this problem.
- They had something really horrible for a really long time, then they get away from it, and then they
- miss it. They want the horrible thing back, but only in the very, very blandest, stupidest way. This
- is where friends come in. Friends are those people appointed in your life to blow the whistle when you're insane.
- I didn't hear from you for a while. I call you, no answer. So immediately when I thought about it, I
- figured you were having some kind of mental episode. So I'm your friend. I'm here to do my job.
- Wake up! The Casio loves sir, I do well to believe it. And she loves him.
- albeit that I adore him not, is of a constant, noble, loving nature. And I dare think he'll prove to
- Desimona our most dear husband. Now, I do love her, too. Not out of absolute lust, though, per adventure,
- I stand accountant for his great assent. But partly that die at my revenge, but that I do suspect the
- lusty more have lept into my seat, a thought whereof doth, like a poisonous mingle, gnaw my n-words
- and nothing
- nor shall content my soul till I am even with him, wife for wife, or fail myself, yet that I put the
- moor at least into a jealousy so strong that judgment cannot cure. Which thing to do with this poor
- trash of Venice, my thrash? Stand the poor
- and reward me for making him egregiously an ass and practicing upon his peace and quiet, even to madness.
- It is here, and yet confused, never his plain face is never seen to amuse. Thank you. Robert Bonerski
- is a student in the School of Music.
- at IU majoring in ballet with an outside field in chemistry and biology. And he's currently the Chancellor's
- Scholar for the School of Music. Before coming to IU, he trained at the Chicago Academy for the Arts
- and the San Francisco Ballet School. And he also attended the summer program at the Pacific Northwest
- Ballet School. He has performed in many of these ballets presented by IU's Ballet Department. Most recently,
- Four Temperaments by George Balanchine and Homage to Hamo,
- by NSAL member Violet Verdi. Today he will dance Gopak, a Russian character dance. Please welcome Robert Bonerski.
- Misty Hopper comes from Georgia and is a first year student in the MFA creative writing program at IU.
- She began reading and writing poetry in 1997 through a governor honors program. But when she finished
- high school, she went to Georgia Tech to major in industrial design. After two quarters, however, she
- switched her major to science, technology, and culture, Georgia Tech's equivalent of an English major.
- Then during the spring semester of her junior year, she took a workshop with visiting poet Thomas Lux,
- who encouraged her to apply to Master of Fine Arts programs, an option she had never considered before.
- While at Georgia Tech, she published poetry in Erato, the school's literary magazine. Misty will be
- representing the Bloomington chapter of the NSAL at the National Competition in Poetry in Lexington,
- Kentucky in May, where the top prize is $10,000.
- She's going to read for us three poems from her entry in that competition. The first poem I'd like to
- read is titled Slips of the Eye. Say it's late afternoon and the sky's got a bloody nose. Say a woman
- on a green bicycle sees a blue warped canvas cresting a trash pile, a crude painting, half sea and shore,
- half sky, three sailboats bubbling the horizon,
- The canvas is cracked and weathered, its signature a year numbed off an old coin. Say she bikes off
- with this sea painting, and as she turns a street corner, the sea breaks on a telephone pole and folds
- inward like a child called stupid. Say it. Or an injured bird wings buckling, and they begin to careen.
- Say all of this, the wobbling,
- The color of the bike, the ruined canvas, brings you two things at once. One, how in some novelist's
- diary, Virginia Woolf, you mistook mother's having the seats painted green as mother's having the seas
- painted green. Say you saw tan sailors floating on yellow inner tubes, paint brushes greening shingled waves.
- A man who used to pedal by your porch, a trash bag of aluminum cans on his shoulders, boom box in a
- basket. How one day he rode by with a handwritten biblical sign, something about evil de-storying us.
- And the second poem is Frank Leaves Missouri for the first time.
- Frank spent the summer on sabbatical from the family abattoir. He went to Italy to sit in gondolas and
- walk through cathedrals and pigeon flocks. He came back with souvenirs and recipes, back to his wife,
- religious and plump, back to his brick butchery, squat as a stump with its cement floors and the bowels
- and beef flanks, the hog teeth and tongues, surplus lungs. He flew back to gravy, the lawnmower,
- TV back to shaped like a boot ain't it Frank say something in Italian and was it pretty Frank Frank
- came back like a boomerang saying yeah it was real pretty real pretty he came back like a tumor purple
- and fisted nobody thought to ask why he returned if they had he might have said because the things here
- they inherit you
- Often as his knife swims silver through the meat and then stumbles through the joints, he sees again
- the statues left incomplete, the stone heads frilled at their neck bottoms, the men's arms cut off at
- the wrist as if sculpting the hand would have been too difficult. What to do with it? Have it waving
- or holding something? Bracing the hip or drooping beside?
- Scientists say homing pigeons have magnetite inside their brains. Like a net, it drags them home. And
- the last poem is Wednesday morning ballet lessons at the nursing home. Three lanky men and seven ladies
- twirl across the parlor floor, heirlooms, china teapots looping near a table's edge.
- A nurse who hoped to be a ballerina gives instruction. Ralph wears a yellow tutu and slacks. Anne's
- bunion-toed. One's frail hipbones, seashells. Lizzie holds a baby doll. Three wear silver slippers.
- Rose drools. Albert's a creaking top that cannot spin for long. And Johnny's humming.
- Mary skipped today because a girl has come from beauty school to style hair free of charge. She's not
- so good yet. Mary needs her hair a sturdy black again. The girl is standing, moving hands through white
- hair thin as Bible pages. She sees hair lately even where there's none. The wisteria against the window,
- for instance, hangs like purple beards.
- she saw the same thing almost yesterday, while Ralph ate holding a bunch of grapes to his mouth.
- Thank you. Michael Namorovsky began his piano studies at the age of seven in his native city of Moscow
- and gave his first recital at the age of nine at the Nesson School of Music. After emigrating to Israel,
- where he studied at the Rubin Conservatory,
- He moved to New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music. He is currently a student of Edward
- Ayer at Indiana University and working towards a master's degree. Michael was twice the recipient of
- the Karen Sharrett Award in Israel, first prize winner in the Cozzi Yusko Foundation Chopin Competition
- in New York, the Misha Slav Muntz Competition, and the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati.
- and second prize winner at the Andorra International Competition. He has been a soloist with the Usdan
- Symphony in New York, the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra in North Carolina, the Bronx Arts Ensemble,
- and the New Britain Symphony. Today, he will play a set of two Mazurkas by Frederick Chopin and a set
- of three Preludes by Sergey Rachmaninoff. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Namorovsky.
- You.
- Sarah Roth has been dancing for 14 years. She began her study at the Frederick School of Classical Ballet
- in Maryland, where she first danced the variation she will be doing today. In the fall of 2000, she
- enrolled in the Indiana University Ballet Department and will graduate in May with a Bachelor of Science
- in Ballet and an outside field in education. Next fall, Sarah will join the Boston Ballet Company for
- its 2003-2004 season. She will perform for us a variation from Peter Tchaikovsky's
- Sleeping Beauty, Sarah Roth.
- Jose Antonio Garcia from Hamden, Connecticut is a third-year student in the Master of Fine Arts acting
- program at IU. Before coming here, he was at the University of Connecticut, where he received a Bachelor
- of Fine Arts. Since arriving at IU, he has had roles in Lysistrata, Art, American Buffalo, Much Ado
- About Nothing, God's Country, True West, and Oedipus. This summer, he'll be playing the name role in
- Picasso at the La Panagio,
- He has also appeared in One for the Pot at the Brown County Playhouse. In 2002, he was named the best
- male performer at the National Stage Combat Workshop in Las Vegas, and he is a recognized actor competent
- by the Society of American Fight Directors. He will present selections from William Shakespeare's The
- Tempest and Miguel Pinero's Short Eyes. Today, my first piece will be Trecula
- and the second one will be met from Shorthat. Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any well at
- all. In another storm brewing, yon same black cloud, yon huge one, looks like a foul bummer that could
- shake his liquor.
- If it's a thunder now as it did before, I don't have where to hide my head. John St. Cloud cannot choose
- but fall by pale falls. What have we here? A man or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish. Smells like a fish.
- A very ancient and fish-like smell, a kind of fat of the newest poor John.
- Now, as I once was, it happened this fish painted. Not a holiday fool there would give a piece of silver.
- There with this monster make a man. Any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a do
- it to relieve a lame beggar, they'll lay out ten to see a dead Indian.
- Under his guarantee. There is no other shelter here about. Misery acquints a man with strange bedfellows.
- I will hear shrouds of the dreads of the storm be passed.
- Davis, Claude Davis. On the gate. Come here.
- I'm only going to say this one time and one time only. This is a nice floor, a quiet floor. There has
- never been too much trouble on this floor. Now, with you, I smell trouble. Now, I'm not one to question
- the captain's or the warden's motives, but just this once, I'm going to ask why they put a sick-fucking
- degenerate like you on life.
- You mispronounce my name once. If you take more food than you can eat, if you call me for something
- I feel is unnecessary, if you oversleep, undersleep, you just give me one good reason, and I will tear
- your face apart so bad your own mother will not know who you are. Shut up! I am talking to this bitch.
- I have an eight-year-old daughter who was molested by one of these sick bastards, and I just as well
- pretend he was you, Davis.
- who you understand. Sit down, Murphy!
- and I will ram it so far off your ass. So help me God. I hope they take you off this floor. Send you
- up to sing-sing. The men up there know what to do with degenerates like you. That's it, I'm done.
- My game. My game for the count. Hey Davis.
- Christopher Burchette has sung not only with the Indiana University Opera Theatre and the University
- of Louisville Opera Theatre, but also with a number of opera companies. Among them, the Santa Fe Opera,
- the Palm Beach Opera, the Kentucky Opera, the Utah Festival Opera, and the Opera Theater of St. Louis.
- His extensive concert experience includes work with the Indiana University Orchestra and Chorus, the
- University of Louisville Orchestra, the Boulder Bach Festival, and the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra, the
- Indianapolis Symphonic Choir, and the Louisville Orchestra.
- Among his numerous awards are first place in the American Bach Society Bach Choir of Bethlehem Competition,
- the Virginia Adams Vocal Fellowship, the Palm Beach Opera Vocal Competition Priscilla and Dennis Rocco
- Award, and third place in the Orpheus Vocal Competition. He has also been a Metropolitan Opera Regional
- Finalist and a winner of an Encouragement Award. A former student of Giorgio Totti, Christopher is currently
- studying with the Metropolitan Opera Baritone Timothy Noble.
- Today he will sing for us arias by Eric Korngold and Jacques Offenbach.
- brings us to the end of this afternoon's performances, and it gives me pleasure now to introduce Peggy
- Bachmann and Ingallor Welsh, co-presidents of the Bloomington chapter of the NSAL, who will preside
- over the remainder of today's activities. I've enjoyed being with you this afternoon and wish you all
- a very good afternoon. It's definitely a wonderful privilege to be part of this organization and it's
- all done by volunteers and friends of the art. And what we're doing now is we're going to introduce
- the chairs that are responsible for each and every one of those disciplines. It's impossible or it would
- be impossible to do this show and this showcase without
- the chairs. And the first one is Helga Keller. She represents visual arts and I want you to know it's
- a lot of work that goes into these programs before they come for you to see and also for the competition
- to come along. So Helga Keller is visual arts. Are you going to come up Helga? I can't see.
- This blinds me something fierce. And doesn't she hand hers out now? Yeah. 100 artworks were submitted
- to our competition by young people from southern Indiana who have sometimes their roots in other areas
- of our country.
- And what I find so special about the visual arts competition is that the artists give us a little glimpse
- into their private lives. Sometimes their inspiration comes from their birthplaces, maybe in Utah, or
- they have lived in Philadelphia, the cradle of fine arts, or they just have spent a leisure afternoon
- doodling away on their coffee table.
- Many of them have also been inspired by the sometimes interesting moods over Bloomington and over Southern
- Indiana. And I want to thank everyone who entered the competition and who shared their creativity with
- us. And it's not possible to give awards to everyone, but
- we enjoyed looking at all the artworks. And I wanted to share with you a quote from Michael Kimmelman,
- the chief art critic for the New York Times, who said, one can only speak properly about painting in
- front of paintings. And I would like to see
- One can only speak properly about the creativity and fine craftsmanship of young artists in southern
- Indiana in front of the works exhibited today at the John Baldwin Art Center. I hope all of you had
- a chance to peruse the artwork and to think a little bit about the time and effort and inspiration presented
- to us. Sugar?
- Okay, I would like to present awards to 12 artists who are exhibited with their artwork in the Baldwin
- Art Center. And I would like Carrie Lynn Smith,
- to come here, who shares with us her heritage in Utah with a beautiful, small sculpture of clay and
- wood-fired laterite. She won the Prygmalion's Merit Award, and thank you very much, Cari. Congratulations.
- William Hunter Stamps won the Prygmalion gift certificate
- for his ceramic sculpture, Dunking Booth, and there's also his second sculpture on exhibition, very
- inspirational during land times. Please make sure you see it. Ryan Coburn was inspired by
- the surroundings of Bloomington, which can be, at many seasons, beautiful. He had entered a painting
- about a winter scene of Lake Monroe, which I found beautiful. It was very moody. The judge awarded the
- Encore Married Award
- to Ryan Coburn for his oil painting Winter Field, a beautiful, smaller study, and yet also very moody.
- Is Ryan here? Oh. Grayson Cox, who is not quite unknown to the NSAL, once again submitted beautiful
- prints, and this year he won the Klein Merit Award
- for his sandblasted Mesotint Dungeon. Grayson, congratulations. And it's nice to see you back there
- in Germany. Good luck. David Staninonas won the Maxi Schnicker Award for his oil on pine painting Swipe.
- And I was very intrigued by the colors he employed
- And I thought it's wonderful to be able to honor you here, David. Congratulations and good luck for
- your home. Is Lauren Janee Allen here? Wonderful. Lauren comes to us from Vincennes University. There
- were various competitors from Vincennes University and also from Green Castle.
- and of course, Bloomington, and it's nice that an award went to Vincennes. But not only one award, please
- do keep in mind that the judge actually only sees the artwork and the title. And Lorenz and Ney won
- two awards for the two entries,
- in black and white photography and in color photography. Her color photography is called Complementary
- Light, and her black and white photography, Comfortable Memories. Welcome to Bloomington, and thank
- you for participating in our exhibition. Congratulations.
- These are the Eleanor Kahn Memorial Award and the Ledford Carter Married Award for Photography. The
- Grace Dyer Memorial Award, which has been given to the NSAL by Viva Scheiner, went to Gabriel Meldahl
- for his diptych paper, Assemblage, Kirkwood Events, posting one and two. Unfortunate, Gabriel had to
- leave because he has to work and his
- boss did not give him off from work to accept his award. This is a beautiful, inspiring work of art
- because it connects us to the now in Bloomington and to the now in Kirkwood and I thought it was just
- a tremendous
- idea to collect paper announcements from posts along Kirkwood and put them together into an assemblage.
- Please do enjoy it and mention it to Gabriel when you see him. The Christ Merit Award donated by Nelda
- Christ Khan
- goes to Micah Benjamin Bornstein for his monoprint Venice Number Four. Thank you very much
- and congratulations. We are also honoring one of our great professors at Indiana University in metalsmithing
- and today's students in the School of Fine Arts
- who work under the guidance of Professor Long, might often hear Alma Eickermann's name. Rita Grunwald,
- a long time art supporter in this town, keeps awake the memory of Alma Eickermann by every year underwriting
- an award. And on Dean Vivian 11, won this year's award, no blame.
- Congratulations. And it's a wonderful tribute to a very famous professor. Noah Primo at one point was
- an NSAL winner. And ever since he forged out into the real world, the working world, has not failed
- to underwrite the Noah Primo Merit Award.
- very happy that this year's award goes to Jonathan Dana Sperry for his light installations, the shifting
- typography of my coffee table. Now, I know that Dana has a very responsible job and a beautiful job,
- and I'm surprised you had time to create these, darlings. Congratulations, and good luck with your continued work.
- Wayne Craig, who was here earlier but needed to leave for another event in town, underwrites the Rosemary
- Frazier Married Award. We are very thankful to Wayne Craig. And this award went this year to Laura Bregmanes
- for her oil painting, Baby in Window. Congratulations and good luck.
- The NSEL Bloomington Chapter Career Award goes to a young artist who came to Philadelphia, from Philadelphia
- to Bloomington. Bloomington attracts not only outstanding students to Indiana University, but also young
- musicians and young artists who give a lot to the community who participate in the art world of Bloomington.
- Christine Kunz is very much part of this art scene here in Bloomington, and we are very happy to welcome
- her to Bloomington with a wonderful award for her All Pain Still Life with Teapot. Christine, we congratulate
- you for this award, and we hope that Christine Kunz will be able to join us for many years here in Bloomington.
- Thank you very much. Thank you, Helga. I would say perhaps that the art discipline is the most time
- consuming to be chair of the art because you have to get the word out, you have to be there to receive
- the paintings, you have to be there to give out the paintings. It's really a job. But I think we can
- all tell that Helga enjoys it.
- I would like to introduce you to another hard-working chair, Joanne Athanas, who's chair of the dance
- discipline. You may think that Joanne looks like one of the little ballet dancers. I always think she
- does, but you know what she really is in real life? She's a CPA.
- And this is, what, April 13th? So she really took time away from her work. Thanks, Joanne. I'll be brief.
- I'd like to thank all 17 of the dancers who participated in the competition for making it so challenging.
- meaningful and enjoyable for those of us who are there to see it. I'd also like to thank our three judges
- and especially our member, Violet Verde, who generously gave her time to coach and encourage all the
- competitors. I'll start with the first award is the Welch Merit Award, contributed by Engelor Welch,
- and it goes to Robert Bernischke.
- The next award is the Shiner Merit Award and the Jingles Merit Award, contributed by Reva Shiner, Marianne
- and Bruce Jingles, and it goes to Sarah Smith. Our second place award is the Violet Verde Tribute Award
- and the Marina Svetlova Tribute Awards, and they are contributed by Peggy Bachman, Lili Hughes,
- myself, Lou and Leonard Newman, and David and Ruth Albright. And this goes to Jenna Wolf. Finally, our
- first place award, contributed by all the members, goes to Sarah Roth.
- Thank you very much, Joanne Athanas. I know it's a lot of work that you put in, and we thank you all
- very much. Next comes up, Drama Awards. And we are calling on Marilyn Norris, our very, very good and
- helpful drama teacher. Thank you.
- an actor is an act of courage. Not only is one joining a profession in which 96% of its professional
- membership of Actless Equity is unemployed at any time, but if one does get the role and the job, it
- lasts only as long as the run of the show. And then you have to start job hunting, role hunting again.
- And to get that role in the first place,
- to get that job. There is no one hour interview or 30 minute interview or even 15 minutes to sell yourself
- to the director or the casting director or both. You have one to two minutes to convince that director
- and or that casting director that you are the actor for the role. So it is because of the excellence
- of the auditions by these people that we are honoring them as drama winners today.
- because a panel of very distinguished three judges determined that theirs were the best of the best
- auditions. So congratulations to, beginning with the Penny Merritt Award donated by our own member,
- George Penny, Alia Maria Tawil.
- Collins, in honor of her husband, who was a great supporter of all of the arts and especially theater,
- Lindsay Morgan Anderson. The Laserwitz Merit Award is donated by NSAL members Catherine and James Laserwitz,
- and it goes to Eliza Fland Hart.
- is donated by Marion, long-time NSAO member Marion Battenhouse and her daughter Anna. It is the Roy
- Battenhouse Award in honor of her husband, who was a great drama scholar, and particularly in writing
- about Shakespeare and the Bible. Unfortunately, our award winner is the spot operator for Sweeney Todd,
- and she is head over heels in her tech rehearsal this afternoon, for which, of course, she could not
- be excused.
- So Christina Parmoviziega, we would like to applaud in. You'll see her spot work beginning Friday. Our
- next award is donated by NSAO members, Becky and Frank Somalis. Her Somalis Merit Award goes to Joshua
- Goboe. Congratulations.
- donated by NSAL members and former national president Helen Caldwell and Linton Caldwell. And this year's
- Caldwell-Veras Award goes to Sam Woodton. The next award is presented by Marion Bankhart-Michael and
- R. Keith-Michael. This award honors three
- of our deceased members, all of whom loved theater and were active in theater, and who've now gone on
- to play on other, better stages. The Leonard Brockett, Carol Booty, and Fran Sneak Memorial Award goes
- this year to Ira Ames. Another former national president, Reba Shiner,
- is the donor of the Laura Scheiner Memorial Award, which honors her daughter, who though she achieved
- fame in computer and technical fields, was a theater major here at IU and loved theater all of her life.
- The Laura Scheiner Memorial Award this year goes to Chris Nelson. And our top award this year from all of you
- after career award goes to Jose Antonio Garcia. Thank you Marilyn for the way you do this. You always
- do it with a dramatic flair. It's wonderful.
- Chair I would like to introduce is Ruth Albright. Ruth Albright is our last year's president of NSAO.
- A lot of our chairs have full-time jobs, and Ruth does too, doing volunteer work mostly for the arts.
- And she is also the wife of David Albright, who is the chair of the showcase.
- It was a fun year to be literature chair this year because the national focus is on poetry. So we decided
- that we would have two competitions, one in poetry, and that winner will go to the national convention
- to compete against 19 other poets from other chapters of NSAL. And we also had a general
- literature competition, which we always have, and we thought that there was no reason to do away with
- that and have just poetry, so we had to. I know two of my judges are in the audience today. With these
- lights in your eyes, you can't see anything, but Alice Freiman from Indianapolis was a long-time professor
- at the University of Indianapolis is here. She was one of our national, one of the judges for the National
- Poetry Competition.
- And also I know that Roger Finxton, one of our members and a judge of the general literature competition
- is here. So you young winners may want to talk to them. Are there any more judges here? Okay. Our first winner
- is Craig Neal Owens, who's a playwright and has actually had a play produced here in Bloomington at
- the Bloomington Playwright Project. He is not able to be with us today because he had an out of town
- engagement. He is the winner of the Marjorie K. Borkenstein Memorial Award, which was donated by the
- Borkenstein Endowment. Most of the, I think all of these winners in the general category are
- No, that's not true, because Craig Neal Owens is a PhD student in playwriting. But the rest of these
- are all in the creative writing department at Indiana University. We did have several applicants from
- other universities, but these all are IU winners. Michelle Ross. Is she here?
- Okay, I didn't know she wouldn't be here. Michelle wins the Hannah Bennis Wilson Merit Award, which
- was donated by Hannah Bennis Wilson, one of our long-time members. Laura Ann Otto. Sorry, gotta get
- the right one out.
- Laura wins, for her novel, Laura wins the Josephine K. Piercy Writing Award and the John McCluskey Merit
- Award, donated by the Piercy Endowment and John McCluskey, one of our members and also a writer himself.
- Thank you and congratulations, Laura. Our next winner, whose short story
- wins the Patrick O'Mara Merit Award and the Will H. Hayes Jr. Memorial Award. I knew could not be here
- from the very beginning. She had a family wedding this weekend and could not get out of those plans.
- These awards were donated by our member, Patrick O'Mara, who's the Dean of International Programs at IU.
- and Bill Hayes, who donated his award, and he's also a member of our chapter, and donated the award
- in memory of his father. Our chapter career award winner is Kim McGlynn, who you heard read from her
- story, Grace. Kim, are you here? These chapter career awards are our top awards and are donated by members
- of our chapter. Thank you very much, Kim.
- Now to the poetry competition. We had three winners in the poetry competition. The first is Micah Ling,
- who unfortunately was not able to be here today. She is a senior at DePauw, and she had a four o'clock
- class this afternoon, if you can imagine that, which seems totally unfair to me. She wins the Georgia
- P. Albright Memorial Award, which was given by David and Ruth Albright in honor of David's mother.
- who died a couple of years ago. Our second place winner in poetry is Chris Millian. Chris has won also
- a Roy Battenhouse Memorial Award given by Marion and Anna Battenhouse, his wife and daughter. And this
- is a very special award because Roy was a long time professor in the English department
- Chris is in the creative writing department, so I know this means a lot to him. Thank you and
- congratulations. And our top winner in poetry who will represent us in Lexington in just a month's time
- is Misty Harper, whom you met when she read from her poetry. She wins a very special award, the Mrs.
- Granville Wells Memorial Award.
- which is donated by the Herman B. Wells Endowment. Mrs. Granville Wells, who was Herman's mother, was
- an early member of our chapter, and Chancellor Wells was a big supporter of our chapter, and left this
- endowment in order to let us give an award in his mother's name each year, and that is our top award.
- And we congratulate Misty for doing that.
- She will be competing for a $10,000 top award, and there probably will be at least five or six sizable
- awards. Last year, our piano competitor won that top $10,000 award, so we all have our fingers crossed
- and hope that this will happen for Misty, too. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ruth, for all your
- work that you did and I'm just so pleased that we have again a big winner here to go to Lexington, Kentucky
- and I want to invite all of you in the membership to go to Lexington, Kentucky if you can. We would
- love to have several people there. The next chair is Ginny and Doug Jewell and Keith and Doris Johnson
- and they chaired the music
- competition. The Johnsons can't be here. They're on a trip to Europe, and I think they're going along
- the Rhine River on a lovely boat. I hope they're going to have a good time. But Ginny and Doug, Jewel,
- please. So it's very difficult for someone, for instance, in high school to compete against people of
- your talent and training and maturity. But that happens from time to time, and we wanted to recognize
- a student this year that we felt was outstanding yet
- a young person. He is 17 years old. He's a Bloomington High School South saxophonist who studies under
- Professor Otis Murphy, and his name is Thomas Glassy, and he's 17 years old. That will be a sometimes
- award in our
- competition in the future as is indicated or is merited. The Jacobi Merit Award is probably a name that's
- familiar to most of you if you read the paper. Peter Jacobi is an NSAL member. He is an IU professor
- emeritus in journalism, and he's a well-known reviewer of classical music for the Herald Times. The
- winner of the Jacobi Award is an IU student of Constanza Cucaroe pursuing a master's in voice, and her
- name is Allison Bates.
- The Suzanne McDonald merit award donated by Susan McDonald who is a harpist and a professor of harp
- at IU and an NSAL member herself goes to Megan Stout who is a professor's choice because she is also
- a harpist and she's pursuing a bachelor's degree in music in harp. Congratulations Megan.
- Virginia Ziani is a name that may be familiar to those of you in music, or in vocal music especially.
- She's an NSAL member and a professor of voice at IU. Her former husband, she's a widow now, was an opera
- star in Europe. His name is Nicola Rossi Lamini, and so we have a Rossi Lamini Memorial Award given
- to Kelly Holtz, please, who is pursuing a master's degree in voice. Congratulations.
- The reason we're spending so much time sharing the donors' names with you is because if it weren't for
- the donors every year, we would have nothing to give you. So you'll bear with us while we honor these
- generous people, I hope. Sometimes there's a memorial award, a very special one, and this one is one.
- Kenda Webb was the wife of the Dean Emeritus, Charles Webb, of the School of Music. And in her honor,
- this award has been dedicated by NSAL members Helga
- Keller, who you just saw a little bit ago, and her husband Howard, Roberta Somak, as well as Wayne Craig,
- in memory of Kenda, who was a longtime member of NSAL, a musician in her own right, and the beloved
- wife of Dean Charles Webb. Goes to Michelle Auslander, an IU student of Constanza Cucarro, getting a
- performance degree in music. I can't seem to get that out.
- We heard mentioned a bit ago a little bit about the staging that's going on today for Sweeney Todd and
- unfortunately we have a vocal person.
- Fortunately for her, she has a major role in Sweeney Todd coming up. That's Catherine Lindsay. And Catherine
- was to have received today the Donald Felton Memorial Award, which was donated by NSAL member Mary Ann
- Felton in memory of her husband, Colonel Donald Felton, who was a much loved music lover and longtime
- supporter of the arts. That was to go to Catherine Lindsay, who is a voice student of Patricia Wise, who is
- pursuing a bachelor's degree of music in voice, so let's give her our hand. The next four awards are
- equal in amount. I won't be so crass as to go into the amount of all these, but they are second only
- to our chapter career award, and I wanted you to be aware of that. We had a lot of talent this year.
- We had 35 competitors, about 20 of them were in
- voice, and about 15 in instrumental. And if you all remember, we were putting you through there at a
- pretty good clip all day long. We had a lot of people to choose from. And they were excellent. They
- really were. This was an exceptional year. And I'd like to thank, while we're at it, the six judges
- that judged for us, three for instrumental and three for vocal music. Anyway, the first of this second
- prize award goes to Daxun Zhang, who you heard earlier. He's a double bassist, and he's an IU student
- of Larry Hearst.
- pursuing an artist diploma. He has received the Elizabeth Burnham Merit Award given for instrumentalists
- and I think you can agree he's absolutely outstanding. The next award goes to Eliza Torres who is an
- IU harpist who's studying with Suzanne McDonald and pursuing a master's in music.
- Eliza has just received the Margaret Bueller White Memorial Award for Instrumental Music. Ms. White
- was a member of the NSAL and she was also a harpist. The Rolston Merit Award was donated by Ilkner P.
- Rolston, who was a longtime member of NSAL and a supporter of the arts, including music. This award
- goes to Jimmy Briere, who is an IU student working towards his performance diploma under the guidance
- of Menachem Pressler.
- The Caldwell Merit Award was donated by Helen and Keith Caldwell, the longtime members of the NSAL and
- generous supporters of the arts. It goes to Christopher Breschette, I'm sorry Chris, I'm glad you're
- not messing up like that, a Barrett home who studies with Timothy Noble.
- And finally, the highest award given at the local level, the Chapter Career Award, which is,
- as they said, is donated by all the Bloomington Chapter NSAL members, goes to an IU student of Edward
- Auer, pursuing a Masters of Music degree in piano, Michael Namorowski. Thank you very much.
- Thank you very much, Doug and Jenny. You did an outstanding job. I had the privilege to be
- at this competition and it was really wonderful to be part of that and see how it works. It's a lot
- of work. It's a lot of preparatory work and it's just pretty involved. So we really, really thank all
- our chairs.
- from the bottom of our hearts because they put in many hours and it's all volunteer work and it's done
- with a lot of love. Also, we would like to thank David Albright and Mary Carol Rillerton, his assistant
- for the showcase program, which I thought was wonderful. He did a wonderful job.
- I would also like to invite all the contestants for a picture here afterwards and then we would very
- much like for you to come downstairs where we are having a reception for all of you and we'd like to
- chat with you and thank you again and I am certainly privileged and thankful that you all came and we
- hope we do this again next year.