Posted on Nov 6, 2005

Despite temperature approaching 70°, more than 100 Union College students stayed indoors on Saturday to play Monopoly for charity.

More than $12,000 was raised for Family and Child Services of Schenectady as students battled wits at the Second Annual Capital Region Monopoly Tournament, held inside the Reamer Campus Center.

“Traditional fundraising methods are failing,” said Maria Sunukjian, executive director of Family and Child Services, a community service group. “We wanted to come up with something more creative.”

Parker Brothers, the company that makes the board game, donated about 40 game boards for the contest. An anonymous graduate of the school who works with the Family and Child Services donated the top prize: plane tickets to anywhere in the continental United states.

College of Saint Rose senior Lauren Wheeler, who won last year's title, returned to defend her title. She parlayed her Monopoly skills into a trip to Florida after last year's conquest and hoped to go to California this year.

“I buy everything!” she laughed, explaining her game strategy.

To speed the game up, the tournament was divided into two rounds, lasting 90 and 75 minutes, with one person from each round advancing to the final table.

The top five money winners at the end of the second round earned prizes, including ticket packages to local sporting events and four round-trip rail tickets to New York City. The event was organized  by the Sigma Phi and Delta Epsilon fraternities.

Posted on Nov 6, 2005

Hear one tune from this guy, and it can reveal so much.

Four songs into Ben Folds' super-strong, high-energy show at Union College Friday, the ironic pop pianist broke into “Trusted” off his new album, “Songs For Silverman.” Musically, the tune is filled with lush harmonies and an ultra-catchy chorus that gives it a quality almost akin to a feel-good children's song. But what are those lyrics about? “Trusted” is a chilling tale of two people in relationship that's imploding, being eaten away from within by a lack of faith in each other.

This is Ben Folds for you. His strength lies in the juxtaposition of beautiful melodies and caustic lyrics that intentionally play off each other for a nice, ironic touch. And Friday's sold-out crowd of nearly 1,000 got precisely that – delivered expertly by Folds and the two players backing his piano on bass and drums.

Dressed in a simple T-shirt, with a shaggy mane and black thick-rimmed glasses, the lanky Folds – a geek-rocker, really – was in top form. Clear voiced, he led a tight band that so often produced a sound bigger and more textured than any respectable trio can hope to produce.

Moving back and forth between his solo stuff and the material he created with Ben Folds Five in the late '90s, he was at his best on “Still Fighting It,” “Army,” “Philosophy” and “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces.”

On “Still Fighting It,” he moved seamless from chanting to sweet, emotional, quiet vocals. “Army” was a peppy, charged rocker during which Folds coached the audience to sing along as a choir. And he took the song in a new direction with some ragtime-style piano improvisation that was smart and sassy. “Philosophy” was fun and catchy with a piano solo that included a surprising – albeit brief – foray into yiddish sounds that somehow worked. And on “One Angry Dwarf,” Folds and company brought the tempo to a dizzying spot, speeding up a song that is already notoriously fast.

The whole 110-minute affair was impressive – if only for Folds' charisma and energy. But the Folds brand of irony – while witty and smart – can grow tiresome. He can be almost too cute, too quirky. And irony can rule over sincerity, which makes Folds at times seem like a wise-cracking observer with a shrill voice.

Nevertheless, Folds does what he does better than perhaps anyone. And the makeup of Friday's crowd – mostly college-age men and women – says a lot about the artist. These are fans who were tweens when Folds first emerged into the mainstream. Ten years later – as Folds approaches 40 – he's still hip as ever (in his own way).

Perhaps more admirable, he's made career decisions that have, ironically, both kept him from a mass audience and ensured that he'll be around for another 10 years.

Colorado pop-rock quintet The Fray, meanwhile, opened the show with a solid half-hour set. While the band isn't breaking much new ground, its guitar-rich songs were instantly likable. 

Posted on Nov 6, 2005

Playing games, and raising money for charity. That's what people were doing on Saturday, at Union College at the second annual Monopoly Tournament.

Capital News 9's Megan Baker was there to emcee the tournament, which was sponsored by Family and Child Services in Schenectady. The social work agency has been helping people for 75 years. The agency is encouraging college students to participate in the charity program.

Prizes were given out at the Monopoly Tournament, including the grand prize of airline tickets to anywhere in the country.

Union College student Brian Selchick said, “It's the type of event that we get to see direct results from. Certainly we could give to charities like United Way or the Red Cross, but being from the local community, it's wonderful to be able to contribute to a local cause that helps Schenectady residents.”

All the proceeds from the tournament will go to support the Schenectady agency.

To view footage go to:

http://capitalnews9.com/content/headlines/?SecID=33&ArID=155943

Posted on Nov 6, 2005

The irony of Louisa Matthew's life, she will tell you, is that she always avoided taking a chemistry class. Now she has the periodic table of elements posted in her office.

Matthew is a Union College professor of art history. She started her academic career hoping to learn more about life in Renaissance art workshops – what she calls “the business of art” – answering questions such as how apprentices were treated, and what painters kept on hand in their shops.

But her most recent finding, which netted national publicity, used chemical analysis of Renaissance paint samples to uncover unusual ingredients.

In doing so, Matthew and collaborator Barbara Berrie, a con- servation scientist at the National Gallery of Art, may have solved a long-standing mystery about Venetian paintings of the Renaissance: What is it about the paint that makes the subjects appear to glow?

Glass particles mixed in the paints may be the explanation. So far they have found yellow, blue, green and clear silica. Applied in thin layers, the glass is penetrated by light and shines back from the canvas.

The chemical analysis built off Matthew's work establishing that Venetian painters in the early 1500s were buying their pigments from a “color seller” – a specialty shop previously unknown to exist at the time. In doing so, she had theorized, they were probably meeting other artisans such as glassmakers and potters, and sharing techniques and materials.

The most recent discovery, and the direction of her research, were unexpected but most welcome, Matthew said.

“You go in with a set idea of what you want to know, and if you keep an open mind, you go in all these different directions,” Matthew said. “It's like a detective working in another era. You're going back in time. You get these amazing stories, you find these documents and they speak to you.”

IN THE ARCHIVES

Matthew goes back in time by searching through archives. She found the clues for her findings while on sabbatical in the state archives of Venice.

When she is researching, Matthew said, she will spend days at a time poring through the archives. It's dusty work and she had to learn to decipher the cramped Italian handwriting. Nevertheless, Matthew said she could spend the rest of her life researching in the archives.

“It's a different world,” Matthew said. “You have to be careful not to make assumptions that they're just like us only earlier. And at the same time, you get these vivid stories.”

The story of the mystery ingredients started with Matthew's search through an archive of wills. Each will includes an inventory of the deceased's possessions. An artist's will would include an inventory of his workshop.

She also researched through tax records, which list the properties owned by a holder and often a list of renters, telling her who lived where and what they were paying.

“People who study art history tend to study the big guys,” Matthew said. “Fine. But I wanted to get a more synchronic picture of painting in Venice. That's not easy, it's more fragmented.”

'VENDECOLORI'

The wills were often indexed by profession, and Matthew looked for wills marked “painter.” One day she came across a will marked “vendecolori,” literally translated as “color seller.” She was surprised.

“I'd never seen this before,” Matthew said. The color seller's inventory included large amount of silver and white lead, substances used to make paint pigments. “They were large amounts, so I thought, is this a vocational name – vendecolori?”

Hoping to learn more from a manufacturers of the pigments, she looked for the inventory of a manufacturer. Two weeks later, she came across the will of a manufacturer of white lead and in it, a list of people who owed him money. The list included eight names, all of whom had the designation “vendecolori.”

“I remember sitting there and thinking, did somebody plant this here? This is too good to be true,” Matthew said.

Matthew had uncovered the existence of a profession – a specialist in supplying paint pigments to artists – not known to exist for at least another half-century.

The conventional assumption in art history, Matthew said, is that until the end of the 16 th century, painters found their supplies amid the general merchandise of an apothecary.

COLLABORATION

Berrie, who first met Matthew at a symposium on art and science at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., said Matthew's work in the archives was key to the later discoveries of the chemical analysis.

“She's the one, her work, established the profession of the color sellers in Venice around 1500,” Matthew said. “And that notion is very important because that gives the idea that artists could go to specialists who were providing new materials, more materials and specially refined materials as opposed to going to an apothecary.”

Matthew eventually found an inventory from a vendecolori shop, listing 102 substances and objects. She wrote about the discovery of the profession in a 2002 art academic journal. But she continued to wonder how the existence of color sellers influenced the work of Venetian painters.

Meeting Berrie gave her a chance to find out.

“She gave me her card and told me that she had discovered that inventory from the venetian color sellers shop,” Berrie said. The two applied for and won a fellowship, pairing an art historian with a conservator, to travel for two months and study for two months.

They traveled to London and to Germany and Austria to review pigment analysis.

“What was kind of wild, when we went off on this trip we'd probably spent two hours together,” Berrie said. “You walk into the hotel in London thinking, 'I'm going to live with this person for 12 days.' But we had a wonderful time together.”

Matthew and Berrie looked at samples from painters working in Venice in the early 1500s. When the paint analysis turned up ingredients used by glassblowers, potters and dye-makers, it confirmed Matthew's hypothesis. The artists were meeting at the color seller and trading techniques and materials.

For Matthew, it is a fascinating side journey. For the art world, it is exposing a story of a far more vibrant artistic community than had been known to exist.

In a roundabout way, Matthew said she has learned something about life in a Renaissance art workshop.

“I was pursuing the business of art, and I learned to start thinking of it as the business of color, a business that connects all of the artisan trades, dyers and glass blowers,” Matthew said. “The inter-connections between the trades is fascinating.”

Posted on Nov 6, 2005

A Union College football fan couldn't ask for a better Indian summer day to watch the Dutchmen beat key rival Hobart College Saturday. But weather isn't a factor for retired math professor Ted Bick and a loyal group of fellow Union alumni.

“Ted's a legend here,” said Dr. Don Bentrovato, a Schenectady physician and Class of '69 graduate.

Bentrovato is among about 15 or 20 alumni from the 1940s, '50s and '60s who cluster in the stands every home game to sing the Union fight song on every touchdown.

Leading the musical charge is the trumpet playing of Bick and Ed Craig, a retired electrical engineering professor.

“We got lawyers, we got doctors, we got all kinds of people,” Bick, 74, said between trumpet blasts. “We don't have many singers,” he said in a good-natured jab about the group's tune-carrying abilities.

“It's an unusual event if we're not here,” Bick said. His wife, Joan, nodded firmly.

Snow or rain doesn't stop Ted and most others, she said. “I don't go on the rainy days anymore,” she admitted. “I think it's absolutely amazing that the guys stay together. They're a band of brothers.”

Union ties span several generations. Many of the alumni also have children who are Union graduates. And some, like Bentrovato's wife Stacey, even have parents who attended the Schenectady college.

Stacey's 82-year-old father, Briggs Dunn, graduated in 1951 and lives down South, but he keeps up on Union via the Internet.

“He calls after the games to talk about it,” she said.

The fan tradition actually goes back to the late Fred Bronner, a 1946 graduate who got groups singing on good plays back in the 1980s, Craig recalled.

The trumpeting was added over the years to jazz up the sometimes erratic singing, group members agreed.

Singing the fight song, and a few less polite tunes, was important back when Union was still an allmale school with no cheerleaders, said Paul Wintrich.

“In those days we all had to learn the songs,” Bentrovato said.

With women cheerleaders now psyching up the crowd from the field, fewer students are singing the traditional songs.

“It's a losing art,” Bentrovato acknowledged.

Queensbury resident John Bulova, another 1969 grad, looked through the game program but couldn't find the fight song's words listed.

Several students questioned Saturday didn't know about Bick or the alumni group. Asking someone with gray hair turned up a different story.

Wintrich, a 1960 grad now living in Stamford, Conn., was standing below the packed bleachers but perked right up when asked about Bick, who graduated from Union in 1958, two years ahead of him.

“There he is, right there,” Wintrich said, as a tall, lanky figure stood up, trumpet at his lips, as the Dutchmen made the first score of the game.

As a dozen or so alumni began singing in the stands, Wintrich joined in from below, stomping his feet and urging other fans on.

Bick and Craig's trumpets blared and the fight song lived again as younger fans cheered the teams on the field.

A Union math teacher for 32 years, Bick also taught at Hobart for five years before coming to Schenectady.

“I enjoyed my years there,” he said of the Geneva, N.Y., school, but he said his sympathies were strictly with his Union alma mater.

Both an athlete and a sports fan, Bick played basketball in his student days, coached Union's cross country runners and regularly ran himself until recent years.

A dedicated football fan, Bick admitted basketball is his favorite sport. A knee problem ended his running, but Bick still plays some alumni hoops, friends said.

Campus activities are still important to the Bick family and his fellow band of alumni brothers.

“We grew up on campus,” said Lisa Zadoorian, one of the Bicks' five children. Though Lisa and her husband, Jan, attended other area colleges, “we went to the hockey games and the football games. We lived all of it,” she said as she cheered the Union team.