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(08/26/13 4:10am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Shaded from the bright sun, the Dark Side Tribal dancers lined up for a performance at the Flavors of Fourth Street Festival Saturday evening.The festival itself extended from 3 to 9 p.m., and attendees could get food and beverages for around $1 per sample from various Fourth Street restaurants including Amol India, Dats, Anatolia and more. Guests of the festival enjoyed various forms of entertainment including a balloon artist,an accordianist and calligraphers from the Chinese Calligraphy Club.In a flash of colored skirts and twinkling hand chimes, the dancers entertained the students and families attending the festival. While the audience ate, the dancers engaged them with seemingly impossible body movements performed with ease and smiles on their faces. But the women of Dark Side Tribal aren’t just traditional belly dancers. Alice Dobie, a member of the company since 2002, said their style of dance is specifically called American Tribal Style Belly Dancing. “It’s a fusion,” Dobie said. “It’s a group improv dance. There is a leader, and everyone else is following.”Newer member Sarah Akemon said the improv component of their dancing is one of many details that sets their style of dance apart.“It strings a vocabulary of dance together,” Akemon said. “When the music is playing we watch for clues and keep going.”The dance itself is a fusion of cultures and styles, Akemon said. “The movements are borrowed,” Akemon said. “It’s a fusion of belly dancing, flamenco and a variation of folkloric dancing.”But it’s not only their style of dance that is different. Their costumes are also different from traditional belly dancing garb. “It’s not a costume true of any culture or true of a dance specifically,” Dobie said. “It’s true to fusion.”The dancers consider their dance to be a fusion of different cultures, so their costumes reflect that fusion, Akemon said.“It’s not so much that our costume is borrowed, but it’s romanticized,” Akemon said. “Everybody’s costume is different. Everybody’s costume is unique, but some of it is based on what people expect us to be wearing.”But a key difference between what the Dark Side Tribal dancers wear and what traditional belly dancers wear is unexpected, Dobie said. “We never go without pants,” Dobie said. “We would be considered naked.”Though the style is very different, Dobie said anyone can take a class if interested. The group rehearses at Panache Dance on E. Winslow Road.“We’re always looking for new students,” Dobie said. Follow reporter Janica Kaneshiro on Twitter @janicakaneshiro.
(08/20/13 1:57am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Throughout the years, Bloomington art galleries have offered local and regional artists venues to display their portfolio of work. These galleries provide Bloomington residents and students another outlet to consume the art and culture the area has to offer. Chelsea Sanders, who works at Blueline Gallery, said the gallery makes it a point to satisfy all of Bloomington’s residents with the artwork it displays.“Half of our artists are either grad students or students, and then we also go for the older, eclectic artists,” she said. “We try to mix it between students but also established artists.”Local galleries offer a variety of artwork on display, from paintings and illustrations to sculptures. Support from the community is part of what keeps these galleries going, Sanders said. “We’ve been doing this for about three years, and the past couple of shows have been 500-plus people for an opening night,” she said.Tova Lesko, manager of By Hand Gallery, said the gallery receives loyal support from the community. She said it’s important to continue to promote the arts in Bloomington.“I feel like a lot of people want to support the arts,” Lesko said. “Us just being here gives them an outlet to do it.”
(05/19/13 10:31pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Strangers exchanged “v-cards” while couples stared at the fixtures on the walls and tried to identify which crevice of the body had been photographed and enlarged beyond recognition.Anne Kinsey Call, Alfred Kinsey’s 89-year-old daughter, sat in the middle of the gallery, talking with the artists.“Sex was always complicated by principles and morals, but for most it is an individual relationship,” Kinsey Call said. “Sex is a lot healthier today, and you can see it in the art.”Alfred Kinsey’s research about sex and gender at Indiana University pushed the envelope more than 60 years ago, and his reputation for exposing the taboo lives on today through forums such as the Kinsey Juried Art Show.Large crowds visited the Grunwald Gallery of Art to view more than 90 artworks that aim to expose issues with gender, identity, sexuality and reproduction at the opening reception of the eighth annual Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show Friday evening. Three jurors had selected 94 artworks to be displayed in the Kinsey art show out of 924 submissions by artists from six countries. “The quality of the work has gone up every year,” Grunwald Gallery director Jeremy Sweets said. “More and more entries are coming internationally, which shows that the art show is getting recognition and is becoming more prestigious.”The Kinsey art show attracted a diverse audience of IU students, graduates, professors, Bloomington locals and people who had traveled specifically for the event, as well as at least 20 of the featured artists in the show, said Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Curator of Art, Artifacts and Photographs at The Kinsey Institute.“It’s crowded, it’s great,” Sweets said. “People are engaged and networking. There are a lot of people here from the community and outside the area because the show has that kind of a pull. This show is very unique.”The Kinsey Art Show helps artists display artwork that may not always be welcomed in galleries due to sexual content.The curators added a movable wall at the front of the gallery space to create a “peep show effect,” Sweets said. The exhibit included photography, video, paintings, sculptures, interactive gadgets and computer programs, drawings, fiber art and jewelry. As viewers took in the various artworks, their facial expressions showed reactions of confusion, entertainment, curiosity and disgust.“It’s definitely something to look at for a while,” Sue Riegsecker, a first-time Kinsey art show visitor, said. “But something I really like about the show is that there are so many different experiences coming together in this one place.”Call believed the juried art show represented Kinsey well.“The show is infinitely superior to last year,” she said. “The quality gets better every year.”The recognized artworks were “Together: Animator, Animated” by Robin Carlson of Evanston, Ill., a stop-action video installation that received the Best in Show award. “The Position,” a photograph by Erin Randle of Chicago, Ill., received the Gallery Visitors’ Choice award. The sculpture “Labor Intensive,” created by Michael Brohman of Denver won the Curators’ Choice Award. No two pieces were alike. Carlson’s stop-action animation video dealt with the relationship between real and artificial bodies, while Brohman’s cast bronze sculpture illustrated surrogate pregnancy. “I thought the sculpture was the most provoking and shocking piece of all,” attendee Afua Kwaaning, said. “How the baby’s face was wrapped up within the two outstretched arms, maybe reaching for help, was really outside of the box.”Artists identified by nametags mingled with the visitors in the gallery for a personal and unique art-viewing experience. Returning Kinsey art show artists and new artists alike were given the chance to display and engage in dialogue about their work.Therese Shechter of Brooklyn, N.Y., passed out “v-cards” to visitors when discussing her digital interactive web project and documentary “The V-Card Diaries.” Her interactive project of different peoples’ stories and ideas about sex delves into “the myth and meaning of virginity in America,” Shechter said.“There isn’t this big before and after moment of losing virginity that society sells to us in teen movies and pornography and so on,” Shechter said. “It is a long process of self-discovery.”
(05/19/13 10:24pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For the first time, the IU Art Museum participated in Art Museum Day.From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, the museum featured a special installation and activity as well as a one-day sale at Angles Café & Gift Shop.The event was part of the fourth annual Association of Art Museum Directors Art Museum Day, an initiative in cooperation with International Museum Day.Students enrolled in “On Exhibit: The Pacific Islands” last semester curated the special installation “Tapa: Unwrapping Polynesian Barkcloth.” Jennifer Wagelie, the museum’s senior academic officer, taught the course.“The idea was born out of a response to students wanting more in-depth museum experience and our goal in offering courses that provide students with the experience of working with original works of art,” Wagelie said in an email. “The course was offered in tandem with Diane Pelrine’s ‘Art of the South Pacific’ course that was offered the previous semester through the History of Art department.”“On Exhibit” students split into departments to coordinate the event, including an education department, a department to create a website about tapa and an events and marketing department.Emma Kessler, a master’s student in art history, said the class researched and wrote about the objects on display with the installation. The installation will be displayed through September 1 in the Raymond and Laura Wielgus Gallery of the Arts of Africa, the South Pacific and the Americas.In addition to viewing the installations and galleries, Art Museum Day guests had the opportunity to participate in a tapa pattern workshop from 2 to 4 p.m.Polynesians harvest the inner bark of trees, soften it with water and dry out the bark to make authentic tapa, according to the class website. After the pieces of bark are combined and felted, the barkcloth is dyed and painted.Kessler, Justina Yee and their classmates in the education department created the tapa pattern workshop for Slow Art Day on April 27.“We wanted an activity to do for families of all ages, where it was fun for little kids but also educational,” she said. “They can learn about what tapa is and how to make it.”Attendees emulated the process of making tapa with paper mulberry a student in the class purchased in Japan.Rubbing and painting stations were set up to decorate tapa. Colors common to Polynesian art, such as orange, yellow, red and brown were available in ink and paint form.Rubbing or stamping tapa follows the Samoa tradition while painting is more common in Hawaiian tapa, Kessler said. Community member and fabric artist RJ Trubitt said she purchased a tapa in Hawaii “many years ago.”While she did not participate in the tapa workshop, Trubitt said she enjoys the patterns and designs in tapa.“I think it’s always fun when the museum has interactive activities,” she said. The International Council of Museums created International Museum Day in 1977 to help educate the public about the role museums play in society, according to their website.Katherine Paschal, manager of communications at the museum, said the IU Art Museum also works to increase public interest in the museum with its programming. “It’s another opportunity to raise awareness about the museum,” Paschal said. “It makes that museum visit a little more special.”
(05/03/13 3:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>From IDS ReportsDuring the past few weeks, the Indiana Memorial Union’s decorations have changed.Students can now enjoy the “Women of IU” exhibit in the East Lounge of the IMU.After many years in the IMU, the portraits of IU’s 17 former presidents have been removed. They were moved to Franklin Hall to the newly created ‘Hall of Presidents.’To replace the portraits, Linda Hunt, assistant vice president of capital planning and facilities, proposed the creation of the exhibit.“The exhibit is an assortment of women who were crucial and did important, active things at IU during the early years,” Sherry Rouse, curator of campus art, said. “I think this is one of the most important exhibits in the history of IU.”Rouse took control of the project and found the 13 portraits for the exhibit.“It is very important to represent in one place, which has over 12,000 students, faculty, staff, alumni and visitors every day, the fact that women have played and continue to play a major role in the life and history of Indiana University,” Bruce Jacobs, executive director of the IMU and IU Auditorium, said.Each portrait includes a description of the woman’s impact.One portrait is of Anna Bernice Hartin Wells, mother of Herman B Wells. Serving as IU’s first lady for 25 years, Wells became known as “Mother Wells” because of her affectionate demeanor.Another portrait is of Kate Milner Rabb. She is best known for her column that ran in the Indianapolis Star’s editorial page, “A Hoosier Listening Post.” Rabb also has a part of Teter Residence Hall named after her. Rouse said she hopes to keep the exhibit long enough for incoming students to see the exhibit.The “Women of IU” exhibit will be a rotating exhibit along with other exhibits not decided at this time.— Catherine Huynh
(02/26/13 10:19pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in fine arts publicly show off their creativity and graphic talents once a year at the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts BFA Group Show.The art pieces of the selected students, which go on display today, will remain in the Grunwald Gallery of Art until March 7. A total of 90 pieces have been selected for this year’s show. “The group show is to give students the experience of being in the gallery,” said Amanda Fong, public relations assistant for the Grunwald Gallery. “It’s a very informative experience for the students.”The group show’s application is open to any IU BFA student willing to submit their work who is not graduating this spring or summer. The final pieces on display are chosen by the arts school faculty in the student’s specific artistic field.“Sometimes it’s the student’s first time they’ll be exhibiting in a gallery setting, so they’re kind of involved in the installation process, and they get to see the way things get set up,” Fong said.These pieces will exhibit both traditional and non-traditional styles, ranging from painting, graphic design, ceramics to metalsmithing. “Everything’s very colorful.” Fong said. “There’s a lot of life in the show. There’s a lot of movement. It’s pretty different. There’s a lot of variety, honestly.”Junior Trevor Day’s pieces will be shown this year. Day has one piece, a ceramic sculpture called “Christ’s Final Act of Digestion.” Day is working toward a BFA in ceramics. This is his first year in the group show.Day said he spent a total of 16 hours on his project and used a combination of atmospheric firing techniques along with baking soda, which resulted in a burnt glaze effect.“I think it’s a great opportunity,” Day said. “It just helps everyone get their work out there.”Day said he is excited for people to see his fellow students’ works as well as his own.“Everyone worked their asses off,” Day said.On Friday, three pieces will be selected for awards. These awards are the Dean’s Award, selected and given by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, The Friends of Art Award, selected by two representatives of the Friends of Art Organization, and the Grunwald Award, selected by the representative of the Grunwald Gallery.