James Welling: Open Space An exhibition detailing the photographer’s work in New England from 1970-2010
January 31 - May 5, 2013

Reception for the Artist
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
5:00 - 7:00 PM

In Conversation: James Welling with Lorne Falk
5:30 PM

The University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst is pleased
to announce an exhibition of work by the Los Angeles-based artist
James Welling. This exhibition will focus on the photographer’s work
in New England from 1970 to 2010. Included are Welling’s earliest
experiments in photography, video, and watercolor, all harking back to
his formative years in Connecticut. The exhibition concludes with his
remarkable Glass House series (2006 – 2010). This architectural
landmark by Philip Johnson in New Canaan, CT, became a laboratory for
Welling’s ideas about transparency, reflectivity, and color. His
recent videos, taken at the Glass House at different seasons of the
year, will also be premiered in this exhibition.

James Welling has created beautiful and challenging photographs for
over thirty-five years. His practice has addressed an impressive range
of issues and ideas: the tenets of realism and transparency,
abstraction and representation, optics and description, personal and
cultural memory, and the material and chemical nature of photography.
His photographs are as much about vision, light, negative, and solid
as they are about the depicted image and subject. Using an
experimental approach to the medium of photography, Welling
investigates a variety of formal and theoretical ideas about picture
making. His work has helped transform the history and practice of
contemporary photography.

James Welling is Head of Photography at UCLA and was a Visiting
Professor at Princeton University in fall 2012. His work is held in
major museum collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; Los
Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum
of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The
Museum of Modern Art, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum of Photography; and the Whitney Museum of American
Art, NY.

Lorne Falk has worked in the arts and education for 38 years as a
teacher, dean of faculty, residency program director, gallery
director, curator, writer, and consultant in the arts and education.
He is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at Hampshire College,
where he teaches courses in contemporary art history and culture.

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Exhibit: “Pioneers of Mass Aggie: Founders, Builders, and Innovators”
Exhibition runs through May 13, 2013. “Pioneers” is the first of three exhibits to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the University of Massachusetts and will focus on the early history of the Massachusetts Agricultural College.

Talk and reception Friday, March 1, 2013, at 4pm.

More info: http://bit.ly/exhibitpioneers.

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Exhibition: Midway
The Student Union Art Gallery presents: Rondo Scordatura, a collaboration conceived by four second-year MFA students from the University of Massachusetts Studio Arts Department (Lauren Kohne, Nour Bishouty, Priya Nadkarni, Tom Prutisto). Each artist came independently to bring new materials to the gallery and build upon an installation. Only the next artist in line was able to see the last artist's contribution--creating a situation of a "blind" collaboration similar to an exquisite corpse exercise. The final result of the installation remained unknown to all the participating artists throughout the duration of its formation.


Exhibition runs: 1/23 - 2/1

Times: Mon - Thurs 10 to 5pm
Fri 10 to 3pm

All events are free and open to the public. Made possible by the UMass Arts Council, the GSS, the SGA, and an ECSA (Engage, Connect, Serve, Achieve) Grant, which is funded by the CSD and the Division of Student Affairs & Campus Life.

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Botanical Printing: Artful Collaboration on Paper and Cloth
Works by Leverett artist Leonore Alaniz using nature printing to merge botany and art seamlessly. The technique involves inking specimens and imprinting them onto paper, cloth, and other surfaces. Through February 10. More information at:

http://www.smith.edu/gardens/exhibits/exhibitions.html.

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James Welling: Open Space Photography Exhibition
January 31 - May 5, 2013
Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 30, 5-7pm

In Conversation: James Welling and Lorne Falk* at 5:30pm

The University Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by the Los Angeles-based artist James Welling. This exhibition will focus on the photographer's work in New England from 1970 to 2010. Included are Welling's earliest experiments in photography, video, and watercolor, all harking back to his formative years in Connecticut. The exhibition concludes with his remarkable Glass House series (2006 – 2009). This architectural landmark by Philip Johnson in New Canaan, CT, became a laboratory for Welling's ideas about transparency, reflectivity, and color. His recent videos, taken at the Glass House at different seasons of the year, will also be premiered in this exhibition.

James Welling has created beautiful and challenging pictures for over thirty-five years. His practice has addressed an impressive range of issues and ideas: the tenets of realism and transparency, abstraction and representation, optics and description, personal and cultural memory, and the material and chemical nature of photography. His photographs are as much about vision, light, negative and positive space, as they are about the depicted image and subject. Using an experimental approach to the medium of photography, Welling investigates a variety of formal and theoretical ideas about picture making. His work has helped transform the history and practice of contemporary photography.

James Welling is a seminal figure in the "Pictures Generation," a group of photographers (including Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, and others), who emerged in the U.S. in the 1970s. In 2009, Welling's work was featured in the critically acclaimed historical survey, The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Welling's work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. James Welling is Professor in the Department of Art at UCLA and was a Visiting Professor at Princeton University in fall 2012. His work is held in major museum collections all over the world.


Related event in conjunction with the exhibition:

In Conversation: James Welling with Lorne Falk
Wednesday, January 30, 5:30pm

*Lorne Falk has worked in the arts and education for 38 years as a teacher, dean of faculty, residency program director, gallery director, curator, writer, and consultant in the arts and education. He is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at Hampshire College, where he teaches courses in contemporary art history and culture.

Museum Hours: Tuesday – Friday, 11:00 AM – 4:30 PM, Saturday/Sunday 2 – 5 PM
Closed Mondays, holidays, and spring break (March 16 – 25)

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Ken Burns Presents "The Central Park Five."
Hampshire College will host a screening of "The Central Park Five" and a question-and-answer session with award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns on January 31 from 2:30 to 5 p.m. in Franklin Patterson Hall. The event is free and the public is welcome.

The new documentary from Burns, a 1975 graduate of Hampshire, was directed and produced with his daughter Sarah and David McMahon. Cinematography is by Hampshire College graduate Buddy Squires.

The film chronicles the story of the Central Park Jogger case, told for the first time from the perspective of five teenagers whose lives were upended by a miscarriage of justice.

In 1989 the five African American and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and then convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. They spent between six and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed that he alone had committed the crime, resulting in their convictions being overturned.

Set against the backdrop of a city beset by violence and facing deepening rifts between races and classes, "The Central Park Five" intertwines the stories of the five teenagers, the victim, police officers and prosecutors, and the serial rapist whose confession was corroborated by DNA testing, unraveling the forces behind the wrongful convictions.

Sarah Burns first became fascinated by this story as a Yale college student, when she spent a summer working with a pair of civil rights lawyers who are involved in the ongoing civil suit on behalf of the Central Park Five. She is the author of the book "The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding" (Knopf, 2011).

The film, which is scheduled for national broadcast on PBS in April, has been an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival.

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Frank Warren: Founder of PostSecret
Frank Warren will share some of his extraordinary stories and secrets and listen to ours. Sole curator of the PostSecret project, Warren has appeared on "Good Morning America," "Today," "20/20," CNN, NPR and Fox News talking about the PostSecret blog and the five PostSecret books, collections of secrets that range from serious to hilarious and touch on a number of issues including family dynamics, physical/emotional/sexual abuse, sex, mental health, suicidality, bodily functions and various eccentricities. Warren considers himself an "accidental artist," because he has no artist background or training. PostSecret books will be sold, and a Q&A and book signing will follow the event. TWLOHA (To Write Love on Her Arms) info and merchandise will be available.
Tickets are free and available at the door and in Valentine Atrium in advance. For more info on the Amherst PostSecret Project, visit http://www.amherstpostsecret.tumblr.com/.

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UMass Visiting Writers Series host authors Emily Barton and Melanie Rae Thon
Emily Barton is the author of two novels, Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron, both named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation; she has also been awarded the Bard Fiction Prize and a residency at Yaddo.

Melanie Rae Thon is the author of four novels and three collections of short stories, most recently, The Voice of the River and In This Light: New and Selected Stories. Her work has been included in the Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, and O. Henry Prize anthologies. She is a recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Writer's Residency from the Lannan Foundation.

Contact: Barbara McGlynn
MFA Program for Poets & Writers
(413) 545-0643
mfapoetsandwriters@hfa.umass.edu
http://www.umass.edu/english/MFA_VWS.htm

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UMass Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers presents: Emily Barton & Melanie Rae Thon
Emily Barton is the author of two novels, Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron, both named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation; she has also been awarded the Bard Fiction Prize and a residency at Yaddo. Barton lives in Kingston, NY.

Rae Thon's most recent books are the novel The Voice of the River and In This Light: New and Selected Stories. She is also the author of the novels Sweet Hearts, Meteors in August, Iona Moon, and the story collections First, Body and Girls in the Grass. Thon’s work has been included in the Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, and O. Henry Prize anthologies. She is a recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Writer's Residency from the Lannan Foundation. Thon lives in Salt Lake City.

For nearly fifty years, the Visiting Writers Series has brought outstanding, renowned and emerging poets and writers to the university campus for public readings of new work. Information about past readers can be found at the Visiting Writers Series website: http://www.umass.edu/english/MFA_VWS.htm



The VWS is sponsored by the MFA Program for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative, and made possible with support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of Massachusetts Arts Council, the Vice Provost of Research & Engagement, the College of Humanities & Fine Arts,
and the English Department.

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South Africa's Magnet Theatre presents: Every Year, Every Day, I Am Walking
Only two actresses appear in Magnet Theatre’s play, Every Year, Every Day, I Am Walking, but aided by a moving score and some evocative props, they build an entire world on stage. This performance piece is about a young refugee in an unknown francophone country in Africa who loses her home. Forced to journey to a new place through many dangers and uncertainties, she walks a path towards healing and recovery with her mother.

The South African theater company that created the piece, Magnet Theatre , will make its Massachusetts debut at UMass in January with a Five College Multicultural Residency. Magnet Theatre’s residency includes performances of Every Year, Every Day… from Jan. 30 to Feb. 2, the Rand Lecture and discussion on Jan. 29, and a number of special events, many of them free and open to the public. See a listing of highlights at the side, and visit our website for full residency details.

The company’s trip to the Pioneer Valley is a result of the efforts of Professor Megan Lewis, herself a native of South Africa and a longtime fan of Magnet Theatre and this play. Every Year, Every Day… blends seamlessly into the Department of Theater’s 40th anniversary season focusing on female playmakers.

“This play deals with the theme of our 40th Anniversary, and I think it is important that if you are celebrating women to remember and include the international or global perspectives of women,” Lewis explained. “I wanted to share the work that this company has been doing over the past 25 years, which is physical theater that is socially conscious. They create phenomenal performance events that are aesthetically beautiful, emotionally evocative, and politically relevant.”

The actresses who perform in Every Year, Every Day, I Am Walking, Jennie Reznek and Faniswa Yisa, both had a hand in creating the story they tell onstage. In an interview posted on the company’s website, Yisa, who speaks Xhosa as well as English, said the show’s message transcends language. “The power of physical theatre is that everyone can read the body. We don’t have to rely on a specific language. The show can travel.”

“A lot of people are not used to reading the body. They are used to being told exactly what the story is about verbally. This piece (and physical theatre) asks people to engage imaginatively with the images that they see in the space. It’s a challenge of the style,” added Reznek.

Beyond the performances of the actresses, a key element of the show is the music composed by Neo Muyanga, of Soweto. “The music is also a character on its own that intertwines with the bodies,” said Yisa.

The artists will be sharing their talents not only on stage, but in a variety of workshops and other events open to the public. Please join us for the following FREE PUBLIC events:

Tuesday, January 29 at 4:00PM – The Rand Theater Lecture: “Magnet’s Theatrical Labors in South Africa,” with members of Magnet Theatre and Professor Megan Lewis moderating. There will be a public reception in the Fine Arts Center Atrium immediately following the lecture.

Wednesday, January 30 at 4:00PM –“ ‘Lapsing’ into Democracy: Un(der)speaking Theatre in the Transitional State” at Amherst College’s Stirn College with the artists from Magnet Theatre led by Mark Fleishman.

Also, please join us at the post-show discussions following the performances on Jan. 30 and Feb. 1.

For a full event listing, please visit http://www.umass.edu/theater/magnet.php.

This residency would not be possible without generous funding and support from The College of Humanities and Fine Arts; Five College Multicultural Theatre Committee; Edinburgh After-Festival; UMass Arts Council; Amherst College English Department; Five College Lecture Fund; Interdisciplinary Studies Institute; Hampshire College Department of Theater; and UMass Departments of Theater, History, Afro-American Studies, Music and English. Thank you for your support! Thanks also to the UMass Hotel and Conference Center for providing accommodations.

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