Finding the creative center in
a holy place 'full of wonder'
By Barbara Simcoe
For seven days this past June I
participated in the Yitzhak International Arts Gathering that took place in
Akko, Israel. The project came into being through a consortium of Jewish
Federation chapters called Partnership 2000 of Western Galilee, of which Omaha
is a member.
The purpose of the consortium is to support and foster
professional, cultural, social and economic relationships that establish and
preserve ties with Jewish communities in Israel, the partner cities and around
the globe.
When the idea for an arts gathering began to take form several
years ago, it was decided to adopt the theme of Yitzhak (Hebrew for Isaac) as
the creative center that artists would contemplate and explore in making their
contributions. This was a multi-disciplinary gathering that included visual
art, dance, theater, music, performance art and arts projects of elementary
schools from the consortium cities. In addition to the artist participants,
there also were many Jewish Federation members who came as supporters of the
arts and delegates from their communities. Western Galilee College played a key
role in the Yitzhak Gathering, organizing and hosting the 100-plus
participants, and was the locus for many of the contributions from Israeli
artists.
Artists explored the theme of Yitzhak in very diverse
ways. I decided to take a metaphorical narrative approach and developed five
large digital prints based on the Yitzhak/Isaac stories in Genesis: Sarah
discovering she was pregnant with Isaac, the sacrifice of Isaac, Isaac settling
near the Well of Living Sight, the arrival of Rebecca to be his wife and
Isaac's betrayal by Rebecca and Jacob (pictured).
I used digital photographs I took while on a Fulbright in
Lithuania last year for much of the landscape imagery. The dunes of the
Curonian Spit of coastal Lithuania had an uncanny resemblance to aspects of the
Mediterranean land formations, and the warm colors used on much of the Baroque
architecture of Vilnius worked into my visual ideas very well. Other imagery
from side trips to Poland and Croatia also worked their way into the prints.
Finally, I invited one of my
students to be a model for the Sarah/Rebecca figures I used in four of the five
prints.
Akko was the main Crusader stronghold during the 13th
century. Located about 8 meters below the current
old city level, quite a lot of it has been excavated, but with much more to do.
The coordinators of the Yitzhak Gathering received permission from the city of
Akko to exhibit the visual art works made by the American artist contributors
in what is called the 'prisoners hall,' so called because Jewish prisoners were
held there by the British in 1947.
The opportunity for my participation came about through
one of my colleagues, Gary Day, who had just been to Israel over the Christmas
holiday with his wife, Mary, and several others from the UNO community. That
group traveled to Israel, in part, as an effort to forge a stronger
relationship with Western Galilee College. I wanted to contribute to the
development of that relationship and was inspired by the potential of pictorial
ideas based on the theme of Yitzhak.
Like many
adventures, my travel to Israel for the Yitzhak Gathering and then Jerusalem,
the Galilee and the Dead Sea region was quite different and much richer that I
had even imagined before going. It would take pages and pages to describe, but
it will have to suffice here that what I received in my experience of Israel,
Israeli culture and the incredible encounter with such an ancient and holy
place was literally full of wonder.
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Faculty in First Person
By
Anna Monardo
As I wrote my first novel, "The Courtyard of Dreams"
(Doubleday 1993), the story of an American girl and her Italian father, the
challenge was to transform autobiographical material into fiction. With my
second novel, "Falling In Love With Natassia" (forthcoming with Doubleday, May
2006), the challenge was to do enough research to bring to life characters who
are utterly different from me—a professional modern dancer, a Korean War
survivor, a psychotherapist.
I'm now working on a third
book-length project, a collection of essays that explore the psychological
aftermath of my family's emigration from Calabria, the southernmost region of
Italy's mainland, and I'm facing both challenges at once as I do research on
the lives of my own family members. A recent Faculty Development Leave from my
teaching and administrative duties in the UNO Writer's Workshop gave me the
opportunity to travel to Italy to spend an extended period of time in the land
that my mother and her family left in the 1920s and 1930s, and that my father
left in 1950.
Because of my parents' deep ties to Calabria, I've always
had easy access to basic ancestral information—names, dates of births and
marriages and deaths. Since my father's death in 1994, however, the writing of
these essays has been a way to explore questions of heritage and bi-cultural
identity. What is gained in the process of immigration? What is lost in the
process of assimilation?
During my recent month-long visit with my relatives, in
recorded conversations with my uncles and aunts, I gathered a wealth of
information about the harsh day-to-day realities of life in Southern Italy in
the years before, during and after World War II—the realities that precipitated
my father's immigration to the U.S.
And I also came home with a stash of original documents:
my father's government-issued identification cards, report cards, military
papers and a small book charting his medical-school curriculum and exams. I'm
still reading and translating these documents, but simply holding them—feeling
the quality of the paper, seeing the handwriting, the signatures, the formats
and cover designs—gives me important historical information.
Among these documents were some personal letters, and this
is where it gets tricky, this business of writing about family, using the
familiar world of one's family as a microcosm within which to explore universal
dynamics and themes.
When you're holding a loved one's personal letter in your
hand, questions of privacy and loyalty force themselves on you. You never find
the right answer—these questions are inherent to the discipline of creative
writing—but with each new project you face the questions in a more intimate
way, perhaps with a little more courage or more caution.
Returning
to my work with our undergraduates in the Writer's Workshop, as well as with
students in the newly launched UN MFA in Writing, I'm bringing along these
questions, my souvenirs from Italy.
Picture: Anna Monardo, second from left,
and her son Leo (foreground) joined her aunt and cousins on an outing in
Messina, Sicily.
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Communication in Action
Former Graduate
Student Wins Major Prize
Former School of Communication graduate student Huong Nguyen has won a
second prize in a national writing contest in Vietnam.
"This contest is very prestigious, it is like the Pulitzer Prize for
young writers," she writes. "The book received very good reviews; and so a big
Vietnamese publisher will sign a contract to use my literary works in the next
five years."
Huong Nguyen continues to work on a Ph.D. in Social Policy
from the University of Chicago.
Johansen Lectures In Poland
Bruce Johansen, lectured in Lublin, Poland during the
summer 2005. He writes that freedom is in bloom:
"In
Poland, now free of centuries-long oppression from east and west, freedom is in
season."
"The
Poles don't miss a beat these days burying their tortuous history under a
heaping pile of jokes and satire. In some Polish bars, for example, the star
attraction is the political toilet, with Lenin on the lid, Open it up, and you
will enjoy the privilege of expressing your opinion on Stalin's face."
Dean Returns To Campus
Wally
Dean, former news assignment manager for CBS' Washington Bureau and former
associate news director at WOWT, will visit UNO on Wednesday, October 19. Dean,
now senior associate at the Project for Excellence in Journalism and director
of broadcast training for the Committee of Concerned Journalists, has done
studies on such topics as the state of broadcast news today and ethics in
journalism. He will be speaking at 1 p.m. in the MBSC Dodge Room, all faculty
and students are welcome to attend.
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Calendar of Events
Art &
Art History
Shows and events held in the UNO
Art Gallery, 1st Floor, Weber Fine Arts Building. Opening receptions begin at
6:30 p.m.
Aug. 28-Sep 23
Wanda Ewing: Dos and Don'ts
Oct. 2-Nov 20
ART: Keeping the Faith
(Ringgold)!, Opening reception Sept. 30. Faith Ringgold Family Day, Nov. 5,
11-4 pm
Dec. 4-20
Fall 2005 BFA Thesis Exhibition.
Opening Reception Dec. 2
Barbara
Willson Memorial Lecture Series Fall 2005
Lectures held in the UNO Art
Gallery unless otherwise noted. Times/dates subject to change.
Sept. 28
Greg Halpern, Bemis Resident,
Photographer, Noon
Oct. 8
Art: Keep the Faith, Faith
Ringgold, Lecture at Joslyn, Time TBA.
Oct. 13
Zachary Hamilton,
Sculptor/Installation Artist, Bemis Resident 7 p.m.
Nov. 10
Heidi
Hesse, Conceptual/Installation Artist, Bemis Resident, 7 p.m.
Nov. 21
Alisa Fox, Printmaker, UNO
Printmaking Resident, Noon.
Dec. 5, 6, 9
UNO
Studio and Art History Thesis Students, Presentations, Noon.
Communication
Oct. 14
Italian Night Extravaganza
Fundraiser, 7-10 pm, Brookside Café
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Masters
& Music Series
Sunday evenings at 5 p.m. in the
UNO Art Gallery, 1st Floor, Weber Fine Arts Building. Reception with artists
follow lectures/performances. Call 554-2402 for ticket information.
Oct. 2
Faith Ringgold: Social
Conscience in Art
Wanda Ewing,
artist, UNO Department of Art & Art History, Claudette Valentine, piano,
and Nola Jeanpierre, voice.
Music
Performance start at 7:30 p.m.
in the Strauss Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, unless otherwise noted.
Call 554-3427 for event information or to reserve tickets.
Sep. 27
Heartland Philharmonic Orchestra
Mazeltov Concert, 7 p.m., Jewish
Community Cntr.
Oct. 16
Resonate: Teri Heil & James
Johnson, piano
Oct. 20
Ecoutez: Leon Bates, piano
Oct. 31
Hauntcert Heartland Philharmonic
Orchestra Concert
Nov. 29
Ecoutez:
Anton Belov, baritone
Theatre
Performance start at 7:30 p.m.
in the the UNO Theatre, Weber Fine Arts Building, unless otherwise noted. For
ticket information, call the UNO Theatre Box Office, 554-2335.
Sept. 22-25
Homebody/Kabul, WFAB 006 (FREE
admission to season ticket
subscribers)
Oct. 6-8, 12-15
Smash
Nov. 17-19, 30, Dec 3 Mother Courage and her Children
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Alumni
Theatre Scholarship Benefit
Kick
off Homecoming Weekend with a reception and performance of UNO Theatre's witty
romantic comedy Smash to benefit the UNO ALUMNI THEATRE SCHOLARSHIP.
Friday, October 14 at 5:45 PM at the UNO Weber Fine Arts Building. Call
554-2406 for information.
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