Vibrant, playful abstractions imbued with a sense of immediacy and urgency comprise this year’s annual faculty exhibition, featuring recent sculptures and other work by Visual Arts Professor Chris Duncan. The show opened Thursday, March 18 and runs through Sunday, May 9 in the Mandeville Gallery.
Chris Duncan, “Grand Canal”
Both Duncan’s two- and three-dimensional works evoke movement, emotion and memory. And for him, the process of creating these pieces is central to the final form they take. What occurs during the making of each piece causes an evolution in form from the concept to completion. Adding and subtracting material, Duncan works until the perfect moment of tension exists between line and volume, solid and void, gravity and balance.
Mario Naves, an artist who writes about art, has enjoyed Duncan’s work. In a catalogue essay he points to “Grand Canal,” a piece included in the upcoming show, as evidence that Duncan’s “a sculptor of no small gifts.”
“What’s remarkable about ‘Grand Canal’ is less it’s crafting – though that is essential, of course, to the work’s realization – but the fact that it pirouettes,” Naves wrote. “Here is a sculpture that moves.”
“The visual arts are static only to the extent that an artist fails to animate his materials,” he continued. “Duncan brings to fruition this longstanding truth with consummate authority.”
For additional information, call 388-6729 or click here.
Stephen Ainlay loves to tell the story of when he proudly called his mother in Indiana four years ago to tell her he got the job as president of Union College. His good news, however, was trumped by his younger brother, Chuck, who had just called home to report that he’d won a Grammy Award.
The divergent career paths of the Brothers Ainlay intersected again on Monday night when President Ainlay sat in as the guest DJ on WRUC, the College’s radio station. For just over an hour, Ainlay focused on the music from the wide array of artists who have worked with Chuck, an accomplished music producer and recording engineer in Nashville.
President Stephen Ainlay Zachary Pearce WRUC guest DJ
Appearing relaxed and comfortable for his first stint at the console, Ainlay kicked off his show with Faith Hill’s “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” the theme song for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.” He closed with Wynonna Judd’s “Change the World.”
In between, Ainlay showed off his musical chops, chatting with his co-host, Zachary Pearce ’12 about his favorite musicians (Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, among others), the artists who have worked with his brother and which music he would choose if he were stranded on a desert island (“In a Sentimental Mood,” by John Coltrane and Duke Ellington).
It was Pearce, who, after attending a dinner for sophomores hosted by Ainlay at Everest Lounge last month, thought it would be “pretty cool” to have the president sit in as a guest during his weekly show.
Landing the president was a bit of a coup for WRUC, “the first station in the nation.” In 1920, Union students used makeshift equipment in a shed behind the electrical engineering lab to broadcast 27 minutes of music through the airwaves, widely considered the first scheduled radio broadcast in the country.
When Ainlay played “So Far Away,” by Dire Straits, the mother of a student from Middletown, Conn. called to express her appreciation because it was her wedding song.
Even Chuck, whose Grammy was for Best Surround Sound Album of 2006 for Dire Straits' “Brothers in Arms” 20th anniversary edition, took time out from working on Lee Ann Womack’s new album in Nashville to call in. He talked about his projects and the state of the music industry, calling it a “time of turmoil.”
President Ainlay WRUC guest DJ
He also razzed his older brother (by four years), asking him to share with listeners the story of when Stephen took their parents to a Led Zeppelin-B.B. King concert in New York city’s Central Park in the late 1960s.
“They never recovered from that,” the president said.
As his guest gig wound down, Pearce extended an invitation for a return engagement, which Ainlay promised to do. He then signed off, “Let me say one more time. The first station in the nation…”
Thursday, March 11, 5 p.m. / Memorial Chapel / Madrigal Singers in concert, presented by the Department of Music; free
Friday, March 12, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Men’s Hockey v. Quinnipiac University
Saturday, March 12, 1 p.m. / Frank Bailey Field / Women’s lacrosse v. St. John Fisher College
Saturday, March 13, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Men’s hockey v. Quinnipiac University
Sunday, March 14, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Men’s hockey v. Quinnipiac University (if necessary)
Thursday, March 18 / Mandeville Gallery, Nott Memorial / Chris Duncan, Recent Works exhibit opens; runs through May 9
Friday, March 19 / F.W. Olin Center / Second Mohawk River Watershed Symposium highlighting recent and ongoing work in the watershed through oral and poster presentations (pre-registration closed; no on-site registration). For more information, click here.
A Union chapter of Campus Kitchens, a national movement on college campuses to combat hunger, is now up and running, bringing fresh-cooked meals to the City Mission each Saturday.
