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Watson Fellow Adam Grode to study lute in Central Asia

Posted on Mar 16, 2005

Adam Grode '05


Senior Adam Grode plans to study the lute the way he has approached Chinese, Russian and French: through total immersion.


Grode has received a Watson Fellowship to study “Long-necked Lutes from Baku to Bishkek: A Musical Journey in Central Asia.”


He will travel along the Silk Road in the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, a route not just of commerce but of musical styles and instruments developed from centuries of cultural syncretism. He plans to live in cities and learn from local masters to play the instrument indigenous to each. The experience, he says, will help lay a foundation for understanding the region's rich culture and musical heritage.


“When you play music, you embody what is going on,” he said. “It's a different experience. It's internalized.”


Grode, a native of Philadelphia, is the 44th Union student to receive the prestigious travel-study grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation since the program started in 1969. He is one of 50 students nationwide to receive the $22,000 fellowship this year.


Grode is near-fluent in French and Russian (and progressing in Chinese and Arabic) in part through programs in which he takes a pledge to speak no English. He took a similar pledge at Union's radio station, WRUC, and this year is doing weekly shows, featuring one language each term in Russian, Chinese and French. A former co-president of Coffeehouse, he is a regular organizer and performer, often singing songs in something other than English.


Being fluent in other languages allows him to communicate widely. “I always get off on the fact that I could speak to most of the people in the world,” he said.


Grode is quick to admit that he is no musical prodigy but a passionate musician. He grew up playing the bass, just as his late father did, and music consumed most of his free time. As a freshman at Union, he sought to become the “musical godson” of classical guitar genius Andres Segovia. He corresponded with Segovia protégé Eliot Fisk, who would invite him to study for a week in Siena, Italy. His mother intervened, however, pointing out that he did not have enough experience to study with the virtuoso.


He realized he may not have a career as a performance artist, but the experience steered him in a new direction. He combines his language skills and his passion for music to develop connections with other cultures. In trips to China and Russia, his pursuit of traditional music gained him access to aspects of those cultures not available to western tourists.


Grode has a knack for finding a way to study something that interests him, patching together travel and study grants from Union and outside sources. “I've been called resourceful before, but it's more about persistence,” he said. “If it's something I really want, I know how to get things done.” For example, he founded the Arabic Workshop and hired a teacher for 20 Union students interested in studying the language. He also created his own major in Eurasian Studies.


Mostly, he says, getting things done means proving his commitment. “When you put your chips on the table, people have a confidence in you. If you're not all in, no one will take a chance on you.”


Faculty who have worked with Grode note that “if anyone can have a successful year in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, he will.” Of his Watson destinations, Grode says, “They are some of the most landlocked, dilapidated and impoverished places in the world. I can't wait to go.”


The campus Watson committee consists of Joyce Madancy, history; Charles Batson, modern languages; Ann Anderson, mechanical engineering; and Davide Cervone, mathematics (committee chair). Grode also credits his advisor, Nixi Cura, East Asian Studies; Jennifer Matsue, performing arts; and Tom Ross, music, for helping him to refine his proposal.


Other campus finalists were Erin Kane of Southington, Conn., with a proposal titled “Environmentalism Abroad: The Natural World in the Global Community;” and Maximillian Seel of Houghton, Mich., who proposed “A Modern Epic Journey through the Ancient Lands of Classical Myth.”


The College's last Watson Fellow, Nori Lupfer '03, pursued “Circuses and Stunts: Photography of Entertainment in Motion.” The West Lebanon, N.H., native was an accomplished aerial freestyle skier who competed at the international level and performed on three tours with the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus. Her Watson adventure took her to Brazil, Switzerland, France, Slovenia, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic and Russia.

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Seven Dutchwomen Earn ECACHL All-Academic Recognition

Posted on Mar 14, 2005

Seven Union College women's hockey players were cited as members of the 2005
ECACHL All-Academic Team. Sophomore goaltenders Lauren Carlson(Rochelle, IL) and Amanda Hanson (Brainerd, MN) earned the distinction for the first
time, along with fellow classmates Kelly
Lannan
(Winchester, MA), Carli McNeil (Hartford, VT), and Brittany
Stewart
(Ottawa, ONT). Senior captains Jamie
Laubisch
(Apalachin, NY) and Courtney Riepenhoff (Skillman, NJ) were named to the team for the second straight season.

Carlson is a chemistry major. She started
in 15 of the 17 games she played for Union with a 6.03 goals against average
and a .861 save percentage.

Hanson is majoring in mechanical engineering. She started in
14 of the 20 games she played in goal for the Dutchwomen with a 5.60 goals against average and a .861 save percentage.

Lannan appeared in all 33 games with three goals on the season,
two of which came on the power play.

McNeil appeared in every game for Union
as well, picking up one assist as a defender.

Stewart played in every game this season for the Dutchwomen.
She finished tied for first among defenders with four points, all coming on
assists.

Laubisch is a pre-med major at Union, minoring
in Spanish and biology.  She led all
defenders with two goals and finished tied for first with four points this
season in 32 games. She is currently the all-time Division I leader in games
played with 116 and second all-time among Division I defenders in scoring.  She has been on the Dean's List every
academic session since attending Union.

Riepenhoff is a psychology major with a minor
in English. She had six points on four goals and two assists in 33 games this
season. She is second all-time on the Division I list in games played at 115.       

Union
tied with Brown and St. Lawrence with the fourth most players to make the
All-Academic Team. Harvard led the way with 12 selections, followed by Princeton
with 11. Vermont had 10 players named to the list while Yale earned nine
spots. Dartmouth had five players, Colgate was tenth with four, and
first-year ECACHL member Clarkson had three.

To be
eligible players must have completed at least one academic year, have a
cumulative grade point average of at least a 3.00 on a 4.00 scale, and have
competed in at least one-half of the team's games during the current season.
Goaltenders must have played in at least 33 percent of the team's minutes.  

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Jim McLaughlin ’93 started as Athletic Director May 2

Posted on Mar 14, 2005

Jim McLaughlin

Jim McLaughlin, associate director of athletics at Brown University and a 1993 graduate of Union College, has been named director of athletics at Union, it was announced March 14 by President Roger Hull.


McLaughlin, who served as assistant football coach at Union from 1993 to 1996, earned his master's in business administration from the College in 1997.


“I'm delighted to welcome Jim back to his alma mater at such an exciting time for the College and our athletics program,” Hull said. “We had a tremendously strong field of candidates, and the search committee chaired by Prof. Ken DeBono has done a wonderful job. Jim's familiarity with Union coupled with his experience in the Ivy League make him an ideal fit for Union.”


“I'm grateful for the opportunity to be returning to my alma mater as the next director of athletics,” McLaughlin said. “There is a strong, talented administrative and coaching staff in place within the department and the support for the program from the senior administration and faculty was apparent during my visit.


“Union has attained national prominence as an elite academic institution and achieved great success on the playing fields as well,” McLaughlin said. “I'm excited to begin working with and supporting Union students in pursuit of academic and athletic excellence.”


McLaughlin, who will begin in May, will administer a department of 25 varsity programs, 23 at the Division III level, and two – men's and women's ice hockey – at Division I. He will be responsible for long-term planning and development of athletic programs; hiring and supervising coaches and staff; and overseeing departmental budgets, facilities, fundraising and marketing.


McLaughlin succeeds Val Belmonte, who left Union last fall to become executive director of U.S. Figure Skating, the governing body for the sport. Dwight Wolf, associate dean for academic services, has served as acting director of athletics. Richard Sakala, who retired as athletic director in 2000, rejoined the department in January as acting associate director.


At Brown since 2001, McLaughlin was associate director of athletics for finance, responsible for the development and management of the department's $11 million annual budget. He was also responsible for external relations including marketing and corporate partnership, athletic communications and ticket operations. He was a sport administrator for women's lacrosse, women's soccer and men's basketball.


Before joining Brown, he spent four years at Princeton University with an eventual role as assistant director of athletics for business operations. Before that, in 1997, he was interim director of intramurals and physical education at Brown.


As Union's assistant football coach from 1993 to 1996, he coached the offensive line and assisted the offensive coordinator. The football team made the NCAA playoffs in 1993 and 1995. He recruited student athletes from the Northeast region.


He is a member of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and the College Athletic Business Managers Association (CABMA).


McLaughlin earned his bachelor's degree in history from Union. He played offensive line for Union football, and was named Associated Press and Champion second-team All American.


He and his wife, Jeannie, have a one-year-old daughter, Cassidy.


High resolution photo

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Six Dutchmen Named to ECACHL All-Academic Team

Posted on Mar 14, 2005

Six members of the Union College
men's hockey team earned postseason honors as they were named to the 2005 ECACHL
All-Academic Team. Sophomores Olivier Bouchard (Quebec City, QUE), Jason
Ortolano
(Carteret, NJ), and Sean Streich (Kimberley, BC) and seniors Chris DiStefano (Albany, NY), Brian Kerr (Kirkland,
QUE), and Jordan Webb (Nepena, ONT) all earned
the first-time honor. To be selected players must have completed at least one
academic year, have a cumulative grade point average of at least a 3.00 on a
4.00 scale, and have competed in at least one-half of the team's games during
the current season. Union
had the sixth highest number of representatives on the list.

Bouchard majors in biology at Union. He
was one of just three Dutchmen to appear in all 37 games this season, finishing
tied for second on the team with 11 goals, and fourth
in assists (13) and points (24). Bouchard had five multi-point games on the
season, including a two-goal effort in the third ECACHL playoff game against
Clarkson.

Ortolano is majoring in general
studies. The defender made 31 appearances on the year and picked up two
assists.

Streich is a psychology major. He also
played in all 37 games for the Dutchmen, finishing third among defenders with
five points on a goal and four assists.

DiStefano will earn his degree in
history at the end of the semester. He played in 35 games in his final season
as a Dutchmen with two assists. For his career DiStefano
appeared in 116 games.

Kerr will receive his degree in economics. He also made 25 appearances
this season with two goals and one assist. He made 120 appearances for his
career at Union.

Webb will also earn his degree in economics. He led the Dutchmen with 17
goals and 29 points in 36 games. He finished tied for first on the team with
eight power play goals. During the season he became Union's
all-time Divison I leading scorer and is ninth
overall with 114 career points.

Seventy-one student-athletes representing the ECACHL comprised this year's
all-academic team. Of the 12 institutions, Rensselaer
led the way with 11 selections, followed by Dartmouth
with eight. Colgate, St. Lawrence, and Yale all had seven players selected.
Brown, Cornell, and Vermont
each had five selections while Clarkson had three and Harvard finished 12th
with two.  

 

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Union prof finds ancient artists’ inventory

Posted on Mar 12, 2005

While sifting through 15th- and 16th-century documents at the state archives in Venice, Louisa Matthew came across an ancient inventory from a Venetian seller of artist's pigments. The dusty sheet of paper, dated 1534, was buried in a volume of inventories of deceased persons' estates.


As Matthew, an art historian at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., scanned the more-than-100 items on the list, she realized that it was exactly what she had dreamed of finding. “I remember thinking, 'Did someone plant this here?'” she says. “And why hadn't anyone noticed this before?” This inventory of artists' materials could hold the answer to a question that had long vexed conservation scientists: How did Venetian Renaissance painters create the strong, clear, and


bright colors that make objects and figures in their paintings appear to glow?



The diversity of items on the list amazed Matthew. It included not only painters' pigments such as azurite, vermilion, and orpiment, but also raw materials used in a variety of crafts. “So, it wasn't just the painters who were buying from the color seller,” she says.Glassmakers and dye-makers were also frequenting the shop. If the color shop was a nexus for all these different craftspersons, she reasoned, “maybe they were sharing ideas”;and materials too.



That last speculation spurred Matthew's colleague Barbara Berrie, a conservation scientist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to reexamine the Venetian paintings that she had been studying for the past few years. Previous analyses of microscopic paint samples taken from a handful of works had revealed many aspects of the artists' techniques, such as their process of layering colors, but art historians had found few recipes detailing how Venetian artists made their colors. “The materials on this inventory list suggested that we needed to look more widely,” says Berrie.



Sure enough, when she re-analyzed her paint samples, she found a variety of types of glass particles mixed with the paint. “It's a very exciting finding,” says Jennifer Mass, who heads the conservation-science lab at Winterthur Museum in Delaware, adding that the optical properties of glass might explain the clarity and translucency of Venetian paints, which capture and reflect light in distinctive ways.



These findings and reports by several other conservation scientists imply that Italian Renaissance artists weren't merely painters. They were also experimental chemists who mixed and matched unconventional ingredients. Says Berrie, “They used new materials to create an art for their time.”



Silica gallery


 


The presence of glass in Venetian paintings makes sense historically. “During the Renaissance, Venice was the glassmaking capital of the world,” says Mass. By the late 15th century, the glassmaking industry was burgeoning, and with it came the creation of high-quality colorless glass, called cristallo, that was prized throughout Europe for its transparency and clarity.



In “The Nativity” (1523), Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto mixed glass particles with his paint. Chemical analyses of a sample taken from Joseph's orange robe reveal yellow glass particles that may have given the color a warmer tone.National Gallery of Art Venetian glassmakers also made a wide variety of brilliantly colored glass objects.



Since Venice was a major port, it received textiles, dyes, ceramics, gems, and other goods from all over the East. These imports inspired the local craftspeople. For instance, to satisfy the Venetians' growing taste for ancient and expensive artifacts, glassmakers figured out how to make fake precious and semiprecious stones out of colored glass. “It was a time of tremendous innovation,” says Matthew.



In an age of new ideas, it's no coincidence that Venetian painters exploited novel materials to expand their art. Before Berrie's discovery of glass particles in paintings at the National Gallery, she had some evidence suggesting that Venetian painters experimented with other unconventional materials.



The artist Lorenzo Lotto kept a painting notebook in which he listed materials that he bought. Among them were mercury and sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride), the latter being a white or colorless crystalline salt found in volcanic regions. Although these substances were common in alchemy, Berrie suspects that Lotto used them to adjust his colors.



Using scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectrometry, and other sophisticated analytical techniques, Berrie began to explore the glass-in-paint idea. She started with Lotto's 1522 painting “Saint Catherine” (see cover).



Berrie's microscopic sample came from the sleeve of Saint Catherine's red dress. Viewed in cross-section, the paint can be seen to contain round silica particles 4 microns to 8 microns in diameter that were mixed with red pigments known as lakes.



Upon closer examination, Berrie saw that the silica represented a high-quality form routinely used by Venetian glassmakers. During the Renaissance, they obtained it from quartzite pebbles along the Ticino River in northern Italy. They would then grind the quartzite into a fine powder, says Berrie, who presented her findings at the Materials Research Society meeting in Boston last December.



“For the Venetians to be able to use this ultrapure source of silica was a real technological innovation,” says Mass. Traditionally, glass was made from sand, which is loaded with impurities such as iron. The iron gives glass a green tint. Using pure silica, helped Venetian glassmakers to create their colorless cristallo.



Perhaps Lotto was trying to achieve the same clarity in his paintings. “He was layering these paints so thinly, he must have been taking advantage of glass' optical properties,” says Berrie.



The glass particles made his paint somewhat transparent, so light shining through one layer would accentuate the color in an underlying layer more so than would paint devoid of such particles.



What's more, varying the amount of glass in each layer created a more-or-less transparent paint. Therefore, instead of a uniform tone, the glass enabled Lotto to create a more vibrant surface, says Berrie.



Splash of glass



Lotto and other Venetian artists may have used glass to do more than just add vibrancy to their paintings. Glass particles literally expanded the artists' palette, creating colors that were not otherwise possible.



A cross-section of a paint sample taken from the sea in Jacopo Rubosti's “Christ at the Sea of Galilee” (1575) shows dark particles (arrows) in the lower layer. These particles are bits of green glass. Under high magnification (inset), each particle comprises a section that's blue from cobalt and another section that's yellow from iron.



Before Berrie's investigation, researchers knew of only two types of colored glasses used by Italian Renaissance painters. One was a yellow glass called lead-tin yellow, and the other was blue smalt, a potassium silicate that derived its color from small amounts of


cobalt. Artists frequently used blue smalt as an alternative to the more exotic and expensive blue pigment lapis lazuli which was imported from the Middle East.



Now, it appears that painters used glass to expand their choice of colors. For example, in Lotto's 1523 “The Nativity,” Berrie found yellow glass particles in a sample taken from Joseph's orange robe. Unlike lead-tin yellow, the particles included antimony and potassium, as well as lead. The antimony gave the glass a hint of orange that would have enabled Lotto to achieve a warm tone, says Berrie.



In the 1575 painting “Christ at the Sea of Galilee” by Jacopo Rubosti, known also as Tintoretto, Berrie found a green-colored glass. Under high magnification with a scanning electron microscope, Tintoretto's green particles are seen to contain areas of blue from


cobalt and areas of yellow from iron. The mix of colors summed into a


green hue.



Because iron made up a relatively large proportion of the glass, Berrie reasoned that it could not have been a natural impurity. She says that the green smalt is “definitely something that would have been manufactured specially.” Glassmakers probably made green smalt and then peddled it to color sellers.



A second sample taken from the same Tintoretto painting contains a mysterious yellow glass particle. This pigment appears in an intense yellow layer under the green paint illustrating parts of the stormy sea. Initially, the material appeared to be ordinary lead-tin yellow. Upon closer examination, however, Berrie discovered that it has a slightly different chemical composition, suggesting that artists such as Tintoretto used a range of yellow glass pigments, each variant perhaps created by glassmakers who tweaked its chemical makeup.



Power paint



Mixing glass with paint may have served a non-aesthetic purpose as well. Marika Spring, a conservation scientist at the National Gallery of London, has found glass in several works by two other Italian Renaissance painters; Perugino and Raphael-who mixed powdered colorless glass with red lake pigments and many others.



Rather than enhancing the colors, the glass likely functioned as a desiccant, or drying agent, Spring says. Before the 15th century, Italian painters mixed their pigments with tempera, an egg yolk solution that dries quickly on wood or canvas. However, when painters switched to oil-based paints, they encountered a problem: Oil dries very slowly. Because artists applied several layers of paint to their panels to create certain effects, “having a way of making the paint dry quickly was fundamental,” says Spring.



The transparency of the glass may also have been important, she notes. The red-lake pigments were already quite transparent. It would have made sense for painters to choose a transparent drying agent, such as colorless glass, to preserve the transparent quality of the paint, says Spring.



In Perugia, Italy, at a workshop in 2003 on Perugino's painting technique, Spring ran into several other conservation scientists who have found powdered colorless glass in 15th- and 16th-century Italian paintings.



Claudio Seccaroni of the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and the Environment (ENEA) in Rome analyzed dozens of Perugino's works using a technique called X-ray fluorescence analysis. With this method, which does not require the removal of paint samples, Seccaroni and his colleagues detected significant amounts of manganese associated with layers of red lake.



Normally, lake pigments do not include manganese, but that element was a standard ingredient in common colorless glass formulations.



Coincidentally, manganese is a drying agent. Spring suspects that painters chose colorless glass to mix with their paint because of its quick drying effects. These studies, combined with Berrie's findings, suggest that different artists may have used glass for different reasons.



Now researchers plan to re-create glass paints in the lab. “This would be an opportunity to understand better how these artists worked, to reproduce the effects they were creating,” says Mass.



As the story unfolds, Berrie says, she appreciates more than ever the ingenuity of Venetian artists and the beauty of their work. “Part of their greatness was to step beyond the established practice and adopt materials from other crafts and trades,” she says. Not only did the artists use glass to fill gaps in their palettes, but the materials' optical effects; intentionally or not-also brought their paintings to life in unprecedented ways.




 

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