April 2021
In this issue:
- The Entrepreneurs: Making Art on Their Own Terms
- David and Tina Ostergaard Endowed Scholarship in Theatre
- Alumni and Faculty/Staff News & Notes
- April Calendar Highlights
- 2021–2022 UNC Greensboro Concert and Lecture Series
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One of the most rewarding aspects of higher education is following the careers of our alumni. Some excel in established paths, such as becoming arts educators in the public schools or landing staff positions for arts organizations. Others with an entrepreneurial spirit blaze new trails and create opportunities for themselves. In this issue of the e-Newsletter, we profile some of our alumni who have taken their artistic skills and fashioned different career paths.
Entrepreneurship in the arts is not exactly new. In 1785 after chafing under Salzburg’s court musical establishment, Mozart moved to Vienna at age 25 against his father’s wishes. There as a freelance musician, he carved out a musical career in what today we would term a “gig economy”: performing as a virtuoso, giving keyboard lessons, selling his compositions to publishers, and making arrangements of popular melodies.
Like Mozart, CVPA’s arts entrepreneurs have learned to differentiate themselves from others in the market, to budget and fundraise, and to sell what they have created. What they create can vary from a new screenplay for Hollywood to a series of original artworks to choreography for a music video. Arts entrepreneurs learn how to protect their own intellectual property through copyright, trademarks, and digital signatures.
All arts entrepreneurs assume risk in creating these new opportunities for themselves. There is no guarantee that one’s efforts will bear fruit, if an audience will appreciate what has been created, or whether a project will be able to attract patrons or investors. Successful entrepreneurs must learn to develop a fan base of loyal followers and to create a niche or unique artistic voice.
As you read this e-Newsletter, I hope that you will enjoy the profiles of the unusual journeys that some of our alumni have taken. As arts educators, our primary task is to help our students discover their own voice whether as an artist, designer, performer, pedagogue, or scholar. This process of finding one’s voice and choosing a career path is often circuitous, sometimes stressful, but ultimately can be rewarding. As the poet Robert Frost described it:
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
bruce d. mcclung, Dean
College of Visual and Performing Arts
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THE ENTREPRENEURS: MAKING ART ON THEIR OWN TERMS |
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While it is fair to say that artists have always been entrepreneurial, it is only in recent decades that entrepreneurship has been a part of the curriculum.
At CVPA, students in Art, Dance, Music, and Theatre can minor in Business, and the
Arts Administration program is strong in entrepreneurship through its partnership with UNCG's Bryan School of Business and Economics.
Here are the stories of three alumni and a current student who have made their art their business.
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Grace Clark ’21 MFA Studio Art, Creator of Overland Artworks |
Grace Clark had been thinking about how exclusionary artist residencies could be because of the time off from work and the money it takes to travel and live somewhere else, so she created Overland Artworks:
“I wondered what it would be like to have a web-based residency —something that follows more of the psychological aspects of a residency rather than the physical. Overland holds an artist accountable to give themselves the time and space to create, and it affirms that their work is worth that time and space. It also helps with promotion of the work through social media and the website.” Read more here.
Pictured: The teardrop camper that Grace Clark built to live in as she traveled between artist residencies,
photo credit: Grace Clark
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Alexandra Joye Warren ’06 MFA Dance, Founder of JOYEMOVEMENT |
For Alexandra Joye Warren, starting her own dance company was not so much an act of entrepreneurship as it was a calling. It just took her some time to listen to it:
“It dawned on me — I was not pursuing dance because I was a little bit afraid. Dance is such an uncertain field. Security is not a bad thing, but it’s not enough. At the end of the day, I’m an artist no matter how risky that can be.”
Pictured: Alexandra Joye Warren, photo credit: Zoe Litaker photography
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James Keith ’08 MM Vocal Performance, ’13 DMA Choral Conducting
Owner of Double Oaks Bed & Breakfast
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Long before “nimble,” “flexible,” and “pivot” became the buzzwords of the pandemic, one segment of the workforce already had those things down pat. The career path of an artist is full of twists and turns. Just ask School of Music alumnus James Keith:
“There are lots of ways to make the arts a big part of your life. You can make a life in music that can be extremely satisfying. You just need to realize it might not be exactly what you thought it would be when you were seventeen.”
Pictured: Amanda and James Keith at Double Oaks Bed & Breakfast,
photo credit: Jiyoung Park, University Communications
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ENTREPRENEURS DAVID AND TINA OSTERGAARD
HAVE CREATED A SCHOLARSHIP FOR THE SCHOOL OF THEATRE
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“I opened a theatre company that specializes in bringing history to life for students across the country and around the world. UNCG empowered me to be able to make the moves necessary to launch this business while providing an incredible foundation of skills necessary to put shows together.”
Today, Bright Star Touring Theatre is an international enterprise, and David and his wife, Tina, have started other businesses, including an eBay operation and a consulting firm for entrepreneurs like themselves. Read more here.
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ALUMNI NEWS & NOTES
Candace Bailey (’85 BM Piano Performance and 2016 CVPA Distinguished Alumna) has published the book Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South (University of Illinois Press). Bailey was a National Humanities Center Fellow in
2019–2020 and delivered the American Musicological Society-Library of Congress lecture for Fall 2020. The lecture “Silencing the Guns of War: Women's Binder's Volumes in the Library of Congress” can be heard on May 13th at loc.gov/concerts. Read more about Bailey here.
Doug Risner (’88 BFA, ’91 MFA, and ’01 PhD Dance and CVPA 2017 Distinguished Alumnus) was selected, along with Karen Schupp, as the inaugural winner of the Susan W. Stinson Book Award for Dance Education. The book is Ethical Dilemmas in Dance Education: Case Studies on Humanizing Dance Pedagogy (McFarland). Read more here.
David Byrd (’02 BA Theatre) has been named the first Managing Director of Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut. After UNCG, Byrd went on to earn an MFA at the Yale University School of Drama. He also served on the staff at Greensboro’s Triad Stage for its inaugural season in 2001 and later served as that organization’s first General Manager.
Sean Daniels (’04 DMA Percussion) has been selected as Chair of the Department of
Fine Arts at Alcorn State University. Daniels, who has taught music professionally for over 28 years, previously served as a percussion area leader at Tennessee State University. He was also the Department of Fine Arts chairperson and director of Bands at Benedict College.
Cat Keen Hock (’07 MM and ’12 DMA Performance and Assistant Director of the School of Music) was a panelist for the session “Perspectives on Modernizing College Music Curricula” during the College Music Society Southern Division conference held February 25–27, 2021.
David Miller (’13 BM and ’20 MM Music Education) recently co-authored “The Effect of Wearing Foam and Etymotic Earplugs on Classical Musicians’ Pitch Perception” with
Rebecca MacLeod (Professor of Music Education). This article is now published online by the Journal of Research in Music Education. Miller and MacLeod found that the use of Etymotic earplugs may provide valuable protection against noise-induced hearing loss with negligible effects on pitch perception. Listeners in this study were most accurate when tuning without earplugs, than when using Etymotic earplugs, and least accurate with foam earplugs. Read more here.
Stephanie J. Woods (’15 MFA Studio Art) was accepted as an artist-in-residence at the prestigious Black Rock Artist Residency. Named for the volcanic rocks that blanket its shoreline, Black Rock is a multidisciplinary artist-in-residence program founded by renowned artist Kehinde Wiley in 2019. The residency brings together international artists to live and work in Dakar, Senegal, for one-to-three month stays. Read more here.
Megan Rawlings (’17 Arts Administration) recently accepted a position with the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic in Columbus, Indiana to be the Resource Development Associate.
Nicoletta Moss (’20 MM Orchestral Conducting and Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Music Education) was named as a semi-finalist in the Orchestral Conducting division of The American Prize 2020–2021 Competition in the Performing Arts. Read more here.
Alumni News & Notes are compiled from self-submissions
and from the University’s news clip service.
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APRIL EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
Student Showcase Concert / April 6th / 7:30 PM / Livestreamed at music.uncg.edu
MFA Group Thesis Exhibition /April 17th–May 22nd / Weatherspoon Art Museum
Spartan New Musicals / April 22nd–24th / Streaming on-demand
from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, Monday–Friday
About Place: Art Truck Video Screening with Animation Professor Dan Hale’s
Time-Based Media Class / April 28th / 8:00 PM /Art Truck will be parked across the street from the Maud Gatewood Studio Arts Building
Conversations in Music Education Lecture Series: Damien Crutcher, “Music Educators Are Life Changers” / April 29th / 6:00 PM / Livestreamed at go.uncg.edu/findingourwayforward
Polaroid Stories / April 29th–May 1st / Streaming on-demand
from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, Monday–Friday
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FACULTY/STAFF NEWS & NOTES
Guy Capuzzo (Professor of Music Theory) presented a paper on improvisation in the music of composer/performer Henry Threadgill at the 2021 meeting of Music Theory Southeast.
Gavin Douglas (Professor of Ethnomusicology) was a sound and music consultant for the new Disney film Raya and the Last Dragon, which was released on March 5th. Raya and the Last Dragon is set in an imaginary land inspired by the cultures of Southeast Asia.
Andy Hudson (Assistant Professor of Clarinet) had his article “Your New Favorite Composer: Cassie Wieland” published in the March 2021 issue of The Clarinet Journal. Hudson also recently gave the world premiere of five new clarinet solo works by Viet Cuong, Steven Banks, Chelsea Loew, Anthony Cheung, and Shar Joyner (’19 BM Performance) as part of Latitude 49’s “The Bagatelles Project,” a benefit event for the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA). “The Bagatelles Project” album was released on March 19th and is available here with all proceeds going directly to support CAAPA.
Jennifer Reis (Assistant Professor of Arts Administration) presented “Making the Art Work: An Overview of Professional Practices in the Field of Creative Entrepreneurship for Adult Learners in the US” at the SouthArts Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit. Her presentation proposal “From the Board Room to the Classroom: Translating Strategic Planning Professional Practice into Project-Based Learning” has been accepted for the 2021 Association of Art Administration Educators Conference in May.
Kailan Rubinoff (Associate Professor of Musicology) was interviewed for the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra’s “Tempesta Talks” series about her research on the historical performance movement in the Netherlands. The presentation was titled “Early Music Goes Dutch.”
Joan Titus (Associate Professor of Musicology) presented her paper “Sounding the Soviet Mainstream: Musical Excess in Dmitry Shostakovich’s score for Fall of Berlin” at the national conference for The Society for Cinema and Media Studies. The paper was part
of a panel that Titus chaired titled “Sonic Relationships: Music and Sound in
Cinema and Radio.”
Kevin Vanek (Academic Professional Instructor and Foundry Director) was selected to be a Demo Artist for the 2021 National Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art & Practices (NCCCIAP), held virtually March 31st–April 3rd. Vanek demonstrated a process for small scale bronze casting that he developed (modified existing process) for the School of Art’s Fall 2020 Foundry Arts class. Vanek also participated during the NCCCIAP on the panels “Traditional Mold Making & Contemporary Iron Casting” and “Harder Barter Market: The Fire & The Fury,” and his sculptures were exhibited. Read more about NCCCIAP here. Vanek also won third place in the “Down East Sculpture” exhibition at Emerge Gallery & Art Center in Greenville, North Carolina for his work “Rumination.” Read more about “Rumination” here.
Faculty/Staff News & Notes are compiled from self-submissions
and from the University’s news clip service.
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SEASON TICKETS ON SALE NOW |
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The College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) e-Newsletter is published eight times a year in September, October, November, December, February, March, April, and May.
The Newsletter is emailed to CVPA alumni, faculty, staff, students, patrons, and donors.
Please feel free to forward your copy, and anyone who would like their name to be added to our distribution list can contact us via uncgarts@uncg.edu.
The e-Newsletter is edited by Terri Relos, Director of Marketing and Alumni Outreach. Archived issues can be found in the “News” section of the CVPA website. To submit Alumni News & Notes, please use this form. For Faculty/Staff News & Notes, use this form.
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100 McIver St, Greensboro, NC 27412-5010
PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
Tel: 336-334-5789
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