PULLMAN– Washington State University’s Campus Involvement, Museum of Art and the English Department present five new programs in the Art a la Carte series for spring semester 2007 beginning Feb. 1. “All lectures will take place at 12:10 p.m. in the Bundy Reading Room, Avery Hall.”
The first program of the semester is “A Conductor’s Guide to Shostakovich’s Symphony #1” on Feb. 1. Conductor Nicholas Wallin will provide an inside-out analysis of Dmitri Shostakovich’s earliest symphony. His Symphony #1 was a graduation project written when he was 19 (1924-1925) and was the first of 15 works in the genre. The Washington Idaho Symphony will be performing this Young Artists Concert on Feb. 3 at 8:00 p.m. in the Gladish Auditorium, Pullman.
The second program is Louis Nowra’s “The Golden Age” on Feb. 8. Dramaturge Laurilyn Harris and Director Terry Converse will discuss Nowra’s upcoming production and the cast will perform selected scenes. This haunting play was inspired by the true story of a clan of lost left-overs from the Australian gold rush (1850’s). The group was discovered in the wilds of Tasmania in 1939, frozen in time and steeped in self-made traditions, and was faced with challenges of modern societal expectations, biases and constraints.
The next program is “Writing Your First Book of Fiction” on Feb. 22. Aimee Phan will discuss the inspiration and process of writing her first collection of short stories, “We Should Never Meet.” The stories surround the events of Operation Babylift, the 1975 emergency evacuation of 2,000 Vietnamese and Amerasian orphans from Vietnam just weeks before the fall of Saigon.
The fourth program is “Light, Texture, and Space” on March 1. Artist George Wray will discuss light (natural and man-made), the focus of his drawing, painting, sculpture and installation work. Wray says, “Drawing taught me about learning to see…Painting taught me how color could be used to heighten illusion…The desire for more intense colors…led (me) to the use of light.”
The last program is “High School Portraits, 1968, Good Girls, Sharon, Pennsylvania” on March 8. Artist Marilyn Lysohir remembers the girls she graduated high school with, in a grouping of ceramic portraits to be displayed at the Museum of Art this summer. Lysohir will talk about how she creates her work and will show portions of a new documentary film on the project.
Admission to all programs is free and open to the public. For more information call (509) 335.2313 or e-mail gsiegel@wsu.edu.
