Posted on May 2, 2005

Every Tuesday, artists bring their work to The New Yorker to present to the cartoon editor, with hopes that one of their pieces will join the ranks of an art form made famous by the likes of Saul Steinberg, Charles Adams and Danny Shanahan. And every Tuesday, most of them leave, rejected.

That includes John Donohue, the Night Life editor at The New Yorker, who works on the same floor.

Except for that one time last year when he became one of the chosen few to have his work grace the inside of the magazine in October. Despite being an employee, Donohue still has to compete to have his cartoons purchased by the magazine.

Four of his cartoons are being exhibited at Union College's Nott Memorial as part of an exhibit of work by alumni, students and locals.

“These are the rejects,'' he said, in front of a display case at the Nott Memorial. Not that they are bad. In fact, they're quite funny. Just not quite New Yorker material. But the cartoons (images of whales and SUVs, among them) fit into the context of the exhibit: “Visions and Revisions: Recycled and Environmental Art,'' which runs through May 29. Other selections include a sculpture by Sandra Dovberg made up of all those annoying fake credit cards you get in the mail and a painting by local writer, James Howard Kunstler, the author of  “The Geography of Nowhere.''

“There's this great tradition of struggling, struggling, struggling,'' he said about The New Yorker process. “They want to know two things: That you can come up with original ideas on a regular basis and they also want to see and this is the hard part that you have a specific style.''

Donohue's main business is words, writing blurbs for his section of the magazine, “which are a combination of preview and criticism.''

A funny thing happened a few years ago: He picked up a pencil and started drawing, something he did a little of as a boy in Westchester County.

“I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life,'' Donohue said.

“I was really frustrated with my lack of imagination.'' An English major and economics minor at Union, from where he graduated in 1990, he was always more of a logical, left-brain thinker. So, he picked up the classic, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,'' and something clicked.

“I started drawing three years ago, and I discovered I loved it so deeply that there's little else I like to do,'' he said.

When he's not drawing New Yorker-type cartoons, he sketches on the subway, which led to an inclusion last spring in an exhibition at The Big Cat Gallery, in the East Village.

Donohue uses his commute from Brooklyn's Park Slope to his office in Midtown Manhattan to clandestinely sketch fellow passengers. “The subway's got no shortage of models.'' His cover's been blown a couple of times, when people ask him if he is an art student or a cop.

“I can't draw people if they know I'm drawing them,'' he explained.

The quick pen drawings and the intrinsic bumpiness of a subway car give the sketches an eye-pleasing movement.

“It's the process that appeals to me,'' he said.

Donohue, who has also freelanced for other publications, gave that up to devote his free time to sketching and perfecting his cartoons which now number about 350. “I try to draw 10 every week.''

He also takes in a couple of art classes when he can.

“If I'd gone to art school, I'd have four years of drawing under my belt,'' he said, but added he wouldn't have the common sense as a student to understand the business side of things.

Donohue started working at the magazine in 1993 as a messenger, following a string of jobs that included a stint at a weekly newspaper in Rhode Island and a market research firm. He heard through a friend that The New Yorker was looking for messengers and landed the job.

That was before e-mail. He would carry manuscripts and cartoons around the city after picking them up at writers' homes a privilege he savored.

He then became an editorial assistant and worked his way up to Night Life editor, a role that allows him to check out new music and night clubs.

Donohue is married to the filmmaker Sarah Schenck, who was nominated for a

2004 Independent Spirit Award as the producer of the film Virgin. The couple just had their first child in March, Aurora Jane.

And her birth announcement was drawn by the new artist in the family, her dad.

ART AT UNION “VISIONS AND REVISIONS: RECYCLED AND ENVIRONMENTAL ART'' Where:Wikoff Student Gallery, Nott Memorial, Union College, Schenectady

Hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily Closes: May 29

Info: Mandeville Gallery Offices: 388-6729.

Note: To view work by John Donohue visit http://www.johndonohue.com

Posted on May 2, 2005

Water balloons, rubber bands and gears from an old copier were among the items used Saturday to make complex inventions to perform a simple task at Union College. 

The annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest drew 20 teams of students from 11 schools and a BOCES district to demonstrate their inventions for engineers from General Electric.

Goldberg was an engineer and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist whose name has become eponymous for anything that is unnecessarily complex or convoluted.

Union College professor James Hedrick oversaw the annual competition and said he was thrilled with the ingenuity displayed by the high school students.

“This is a simple task made complicated and the creativity these students have shown is amazing,” said Hedrick.

Students were invited in January to design and create a machine that could remove the top from a 20-ounce bottle of soda and fill a 16-ounce cup, preferably without spilling.

The team from Niskayuna High School won the competition.

Using outer space as its theme, the team decorated its display with aliens and planets. Team members added ice and a drinking straw to the final product in an effort to impress the judges, according to ninth-grader Michael Fusella.

Strings and rubber bands moved rods that threw switches to electrify a drill. The drill twisted off the bottle top and tipped the bottle toward a funnel as ice was released down a shoot on one side.

The liquid was pumped through a tube into the cup in the middle after the ice landed. Niskayuna technology teacher Jack Gribben said the students met about once a week as a team and often came in smaller groups as time allowed to work on the invention.

Michael Ross of Queensbury said his team, from the BOCES center in Hudson Falls, also had members from South Glens Falls, Argyle and Lake George.

Plastic pirates manned a pair of small boats as adventure on the high seas served as the team's theme for the competition.

Hedrick narrated as toy pirates named Willy, Jack, Phil and Captain Elmer were hanged, thrown into a lifeboat, pushed off a plank and tossed from the crow's nest, causing switches to be thrown, a cannon to be triggered, a motor to twist the bottle cap and a lever to tip the bottle, filling the cup. The grand finale came when a skull and crossbones flag was raised. “We had a lot of fun brainstorming and then making it.”

Posted on May 2, 2005

Michael Ondaatje will face an inquisitive crowd when he appears at Union College this week: A group of students there are devoting a whole term to studying his poetry and prose, including the critically acclaimed novel “The English Patient.”

Thirteen students are in the Ondaatje seminar, offered for the first time at Union this spring.

One of the bonuses for the students in this contemporary author course is the chance to talk to the author about his work and get a different perspective on the literary arts.

“That's a great experience – to be able to meet the author of something you've read,” said Greg McClung, a 21-year-old who is majoring in Latin American studies and minoring in English.

McClung is fascinated by the fact that the people in Ondaatje's work come from a diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, countries and time periods. His central character is as likely to be Billy the Kid out West as it is to be a black cornet player in New Orleans.

“What makes him great is how good he is at going into the human experience and talking about the human experience in a way that's real,” said the junior from Amherst, Mass. “He makes you think about all the contradictions . . . He likes to examine how chaos and order battle and co-exist.”

After meeting with Union students Tuesday, Ondaatje will read from his work in the Nott Memorial on campus. The 7:30 p.m. event is free and open to the public.

Ondaatje, a native of Ceylon, Sri Lanka, who has lived in Canada since 1962, gained fame after his novel “The English Patient” was published. The novel won England's prestigious Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into a movie that won best picture at the 1996 Academy Awards.

Ondaatje (pronounced on-DAH-chee) is best known as a novelist, but he's also a poet. He teaches at York University in Toronto.

HYBRID BOOK

“He started out as a lyric poet,” said Ed Pavlic, who teaches literature at Union College. “Little by little, he moved toward being a novelist . . . His third book, 'Coming Through Slaughter,' is poised daatje poem. In it, a group is watching home movies on a white sheet hanging from a tree outside.

“At some point, this sheet falls from the tree and it lays in the grass,” Pavlic explained. “The film flies through the air and appears on tree branches . . . the pictures land on a dog as it walks by . . . images from the film go from being portrayed against a blank white screen to being portrayed against the world in natural form – fractile branches, a couple walking by . . .” between poetry and novel . . . It's really between a mode of fiction and a poetic mode.”

Pavlic says that “Coming Through Slaughter,” which revolves around the life of a jazz musician in New Orleans in the early 20 th century, is his favorite of Ondaatje's five novels. He even has a favorite page in the book: 92.

“What I appreciate about Ondaatje is the clarity, the well-chosen-ness and cared-for-ness of his sentences, his amazing and troubling level of intimacy,” Pavlic said.

When a reporter asked what is so impressive about page 92 of “Coming Through Slaughter,” Pavlic typed up the passage and e-mailed it so that she might judge for herself. And you, too, dear readers, will have to check that out for yourselves.

Pavlic, a 38-year-old poet who earned his bachelor's in economics, master's in Afro-American studies and his Ph.D. in folklore, conceived of the Ondaatje seminar and titled it: “Pictures Fly Without Target: The Prose-Poetics of Michael Ondaatje's Writing.”

POEMS DISCUSSED

One afternoon last week, the serious young readers in the Ondaatje seminar sat around a large conference table and for two solid hours discussed poems, including “Pig Glass” and “Sweet like a Crow,” and the poetic novel “Coming Through Slaughter.”

They discussed the theme of fragmentation in 20 th century art and literature in general and Ondaatje's work in particular.

“I don't know about anyone else, but I can relate,” said Ben Heaslip, after someone read the poem “Late Movies with Skyler” aloud to the group.

The central figure of the poem The phrase “pictures fly with- – a restless 21-year-old who lacks out target” comes from an On- direction – stays up late watching bad movies, playing guitar and consuming “hot coffee, bananas and cheese.” The last four lines of the poem: “In the movies of my childhood the heroes after skilled swordplay and moral victories leave with absolutely nothing to do with the rest of their lives.” The Union students expressed some disappointment in book reviews they'd read on Ondaatje's work because they felt the reviewers had failed to fully grasp the author's ouevre in the way they are coming to understand it. They look forward to meeting the author in the flesh, and they've got a few questions for him. “I've been writing questions down across the top of my notes,” said Heaslip , a 22-year-old who is majoring in both art history and English.

Heaslip, who had never read Ondaatje's writing before taking the seminar, is curious about how much of the author's own experiences inform his writing. For example, does the farm imagery in his work come straight from his own experience of living on farmland near Toronto?

“I'm interested in his overall influences,” Heaslip said.

Posted on May 1, 2005

Meet the president: Ainlay to visit campus Nov. 16

Stephen C. Ainlay, Union's president-elect, will come to campus for a daylong visit on Wednesday, Nov. 16. All faculty, staff and students are invited to a welcoming address at 10:30 a.m. in Memorial Chapel.

“This is a terrific opportunity for all of us to meet the College's next president, and Stephen's first real opportunity to share his thoughts about his upcoming tenure,” said Jim Underwood, interim College president. “We look forward to the first day of what promises to be an exciting new era for the College.”

Ainlay, vice president for academic affairs and professor of sociology and anthropology at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., was named the 18th president of Union College on Oct. 25 after an extensive national search. He will assume the presidency in June 2006.

A campus-wide email, with more details about the visit, will be issued shortly.

Posted on May 1, 2005

Friday, Sept. 9 / Library Field / Club Expo

Friday, Sept. 9, through Monday, Sept. 12, 8 and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Movie: The Interpreter
Saturday, Sept. 10, noon / Various Schenectady locations / Welcome Back Day

Saturday, Sept. 10 / Garis Field / Men’s soccer hosts Union Classic / Noon — Union vs. New Paltz / 2:30 p.m. – Rensselaer vs. Mount St. Mary

Saturday, Sept. 10, 7 p.m. / Frank Bailey Field / Football vs. Springfield

Sunday, Sept. 11 / Garis Field / Men’s soccer hosts Union Classic / Noon — Union vs. Mount St. Mary / 2:30 p.m. – Rensselaer vs. New Paltz

Sunday, Sept. 11, noon / Tennis courts / Women’s tennis vs. Wheaton

Monday, Sept. 12, 3:30 p.m. / Social Sciences 103 / Jeremy Peat, recently retired chief economist of the Royal Bank of Scotland, shares his views on the world economy. Sponsored by the Economics Club.

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 5:30 p.m. / Frank Bailey Field / Field hockey vs. Williams

Wednesday, Sept. 14, 4 p.m. / Garis Field / Women’s soccer vs. Utica

Thursday, Sept. 15, 4:30 p.m. / Phi Beta Kappa Room, Schaffer Library / Philosophy Speaker Series presents Daniel Wikler, Harvard University, on “Rethinking the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.”

Friday, Sept. 16, 6 p.m. / Frank Bailey Field / Field hockey vs. Skidmore

Friday, Sept. 16, through Monday, Sept. 19, 8 and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Movie: The Longest Yard

Friday, Sept. 16, through Saturday, Sept. 17 / Memorial Fieldhouse / Volleyball hosts Union Invitational

Saturday, Sept. 17, noon / Garis Field / Women’s soccer vs. Rochester