Posted on Sep 28, 2007

Friday, Sept. 28, 5 p.m. / Sitar Restaurant / Shakti welcome back dinner

Friday, Sept. 28, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink / Women's Hockey vs. Wisconsin

Friday, Sept. 28 – Monday, Oct. 1, 8 and 10 p.m. /Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Film: “Chuck and Larry”

Saturday, Sept. 29, 1 p.m. / Garis Field / Women’s soccer vs. Utica

Saturday, Sept. 29, 1 p.m. / Rugby Field / Men’s rugby vs. Siena College

Saturday, Sept. 29, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink / Women's hockey vs. Wisconsin

Saturday, Sept. 29, 10 p.m. / Old Chapel / UProgram presents: Comedian Owen Smith

Tuesday, Oct. 2, 7 p.m. / Garis Field / Women’s soccer vs. Williams

Wednesday, Oct. 3, 4 p.m. / Tennis Courts / Men’s tennis vs. LeMoyne

Wednesday, Oct. 3, 4:30 p.m. / Phi Beta Kappa Room, Schaffer Library / Philosophy Speaker Series presents “The Nature of Evil”

Thursday, Oct. 4, 4:30 p.m. / Fred L. Emerson Foundation Auditorium in the Taylor Music Hall / Drop by Emerson Concert Series presents pianist Max Lifchitz

Thursday, Oct. 4, 5 p.m. / Mandeville Gallery / Artists reception and gallery talk

Friday, Oct. 5, 4 p.m. / The Turf at College Park / Men’s soccer vs. St. Lawrence

Friday, Oct. 5, 4:30 p.m. / Social Sciences Building basement / Cocktail reception hosted by President Stephen C. Ainlay celebrating basement renovations

Friday, Oct. 5, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink / Women’s hockey vs. Hamilton Junior Hawks (EXH) 

Friday, Oct. 5 – Monday, Oct. 8, 8 and 10 p.m. /Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Film: “Bourne Ultimatum”

Saturday, Oct. 6, 11 a.m. / Rugby Field / Women’s rugby vs. RPI

Saturday, Oct. 6, 11 a.m. / Messa Rink / Men’s Hockey vs. Garnet and White Game

Saturday, Oct. 6, 1 p.m. / Frank Bailey Field / Football vs. WPI

Saturday, Oct. 6, 2 p.m. / The Turf at College Park / Men’s soccer vs. Clarkson

Saturday, Oct. 6, 4:30 p.m. / Memorial Chapel / “Step Toward Education” the 3^rd annual Step/Stroll show, hosted by Lambda Pi Chi Sorority and Iota Phi Theta Fraternity

Posted on Sep 27, 2007

The Mandeville Gallery celebrates its first general exhibit of works by graduates, “ReView: Five Union Alumni,” with an artists’ reception and gallery tour Thursday, Oct. 4 at 5 p.m. One of the participating artists, Alfred J. Nadel ’56, will give a lecture to the campus community at 11 a.m. in the Nott Memorial.

Both events are free and open to the public.

“There was no art or art history department at Union in the 1950s,” said Nadel, a pre-med student who didn’t start creating art until nearly 30 years after he left Union. “I took some art history courses while I was a resident and practicing surgeon and started painting in 1982. The explosion came in the 1990s when I got my own studio and began to exhibit.”

Nadel’s drawings and mixed media pieces explore the relationship between the human body and the world around it. He is particularly interested in modern culture and the complex fragmenting of our daily lives, which is reflected in the layered, fractured and textured manipulation of the figures in his works.

“It’s important to respect creativity,” said Nadel, whose lecture will focus on paying attention to the creative impulse. The retinal surgeon-turned-artist will also discuss the importance of pursuing creative endeavors and opportunities outside one’s chosen professional field.

In addition to Nadel, “ReView” includes paintings by Stephen Pentak ’73 and Linda Fisher ’87; sculpture and drawings by Chester Urban ’93; and photographs and prints by Nori Lupfer ’03.

Lupfer believes that art is one of the hardest majors to turn into a career.

“I remember being motivated by the work of visiting alumni while at Union,” said Lupfer, who was awarded a Watson Fellowship in 2003 to study “Circuses and Stunts: Photography of Entertainment in Motion.” “These visits helped me gain perspective and direction for working in the art field after graduation.”

The invitation to exhibit in “ReView” also inspired Lupfer, who says she removed prints from storage, set up a studio and took a printmaking internship. She has been showing work ever since.

“It’s easy as an artist to get caught up in the creative process without ever feeling satisfied that a project is completed and ready to display,” Lupfer said. “Rachel Seligman [director and curator of the Mandeville Gallery] helped me put a precedent on ‘finishing’ rather than creating with no end result.”

This renewed focus on “finishing” – taking creative ideas, generating a coherent body of images and working out the logistics of getting art onto the wall, then finding a venue, printing, framing and marketing – spawned opportunities for Lupfer to get her work displayed in other venues. She has a solo show Oct. 5-31 at the Two Rivers Printmaking Studio in White River Junction, Vt.

“ReView” runs through Oct. 14. For more information, visit http://www.union.edu/gallery  

Posted on Sep 27, 2007

Looking for a quick snapshot about Union? Now you can easily find it without a trip to a bookstore for a traditional guide to the nation's colleges and universities.

Colleges have taken matters involving their academic offerings, tuition, demographics and other information into their own hands with the launching of a new Web-based project designed to give consumers a broader picture of who they are and what they have to offer.

The University and College Accountability Network, or U-CAN, debuted this week, with Union among the nearly 600 private colleges and universities participating.

“We understand the importance of supporting families’ need for information as they consider colleges," said President Stephen C. Ainlay. "We are committed to providing them with useful and accurate data, and the U-CAN initiative is one way of accomplishing this.”

The U-Can site was created by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, of which Union is a member. It is considered the first such national consumer database created by the schools themselves.

Each participating college has created a two-page profile that displays in a common format important information on admissions, the student body, cost and tuition, student aid, graduation rates and campus life. There are also links to relevant areas on each college’s own Web site.

Forty-nine private colleges and universities in New York state are taking part in U-CAN. In addition to Union and Union Graduate College, they include the College of St. Rose, Excelsior College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Instiutute and Skidmore.

To view Union’s profile, click here.   

Posted on Sep 27, 2007

Among Union’s diverse study abroad programs is one that’s gaining in popularity, the winter mini-term at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. This year, 20 students will study public history at the university, where they will be hosted by the Centre for Open Learning.

In preparation for their Nov. 24-Dec. 15 trip, John Skotnes, one of South Africa’s leading goldsmiths, a noted sculptor and an active participant in the struggle that ended apartheid in 1994, will visit campus next week for a series of lectures and discussions.

On Monday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m., Skotnes will visit Breazzano House as the guest speaker for the Entrepreneurship Club of the Economics Department. He will discuss “The New Entrepreneurs: Designing and Marketing Precious Metals and Jewelry in South Africa Today,” including his experience in creating his own company.

“In the years since apartheid’s end, South Africa has entered an intense debate and program to empower the majority black population and to draw them into economic decisions,” said Teresa Meade, the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of History and Culture and History Department chair who traveled with students on the first Cape Town mini-term last year.

"Skotnes has helped forge positive relations between manufacturers and educational institutions with the goal of training newly enfranchised blacks in jewelry design,” she noted. 

Skotnes will meet with art and history students in two classes.

On Tuesday, Oct. 2, he will speak in Sandy Wimer’s Design Fundamentals class, 9:15 a.m.-12:20 p.m., in Visual Arts Room 210. The topic is: “Design and Aesthetics: Balancing and Integrating Gold, Jewelry and Artistic Design in the New South Africa.”

On Thursday, Oct. 4, Skotnes will address “The Aesthetic Legacy of Indigenous Art in Post-Colonial Africa” in Brian Peterson’s class, Africa to 1800. The class meets 10:55 a.m.-12:40 p.m. in Social Sciences Room 017.

Skotnes’ campus visit will culminate with the lecture, “Overcoming the Legacy of Apartheid: Public History and Museums in South Africa Since 1994,” Thursday, Oct. 4, 7-9 p.m. in Humanities Room 019. The lecture, sponsored by the Africana Studies Program, History, Anthropology and Visual Arts Departments, UNITAS and the Entrepreneurship Club, is open to the campus community and guests.

Andrew Morris, assistant professor of History who is accompanying students to Cape Town this year, will provide the introduction.

Skotnes has been a part of the struggle against apartheid and for a new democratic South Africa, intervening at the point where politics and art meet. Involved in the founding of two museums in Cape Town, he was among a group of artists who prepared a special exhibit at the Stone Quarry on Robben Island to commemorate the historic occasion when Nelson Mandela and other former political prisoners returned to the site of their imprisonment for the first time after liberation.

Posted on Sep 27, 2007

Bill Finlay is always looking for a good fight.

The professor of theater, who specializes in stage fighting, will give a talk about combat choreography on Sunday, Sept. 30, at 1:30 p.m. at Capital Rep, 111 North Pearl St., Albany. About 40 Union students are expected to attend.

Finlay choreographed a scene involving a character who slaps a maid in Capital Repertory Theatre’s production of Moonlight and Magnolias. Finlay’s moment comes at the end of Act One.

The comedy deals with the back story of the making of Gone With the Wind. Three weeks into filming, producer David O. Selznick halts production because he is unhappy with the script. He calls together director Victor Fleming (Wizard of Oz) and screenwriter Ben Hecht. The problem: Hecht hasn’t read Margaret Mitchell’s magnum opus. So it falls to Selznick and Fleming to act out the parts of Rhett and Scarlet.

The closing performance of Moonlight and Magnolias by Ron Hutchinson, directed by Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill, is Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For more information, call the box office at 445-SHOW (7469) or visit www.capitalrep.org.