UW-Madison MFA student Hongtao Zhou, the artist who in 2009 built an enchanting set of ice furniture from the frozen waters of Lake Mendota behind Memorial Union, has now ?Reconstituted? discarded belts and wooden chairs into powerful sculptures on display in the Union?s Porter Butts Gallery through Saturday.
It?s easy to claim some Norwegian pride this weekend when up to 30,000 people flood Stoughton streets to sample lutefisk and admire rosemaling during the annual Syttende Mai celebration. But maintaining that heritage the other 51 weeks of the year has been difficult as fewer people in this city south of Madison identify with Norwegian ancestry and local Norwegian groups face declining and aging membership.
….Part of the challenge could be that young people with European ancestry are less likely than their parents or grandparents to immediately associate with their ethnicity – a trend Jim Leary, who teaches folklore and Scandinavian studies at UW-Madison, has noticed in his classroom over the last decade.
After learning in March that the National Writing Project had lost its federal funding, Melissa Tedrowe remembers feeling “fear” and “uncertainty.”
“I just wondered, what does this all mean?” she says. “It was a bit of a dark time.” That was a stark contrast from January, when Tedrowe enthusiastically explained how she?d spent the past 18 months spearheading an effort to secure funding and pull together a range of educators from around the area to get the Greater Madison Writing Project up and running as the newest member of the National Writing Project.
John Bradley gets around. Bradley, a UW-Madison graduate, is researching what will be the second in a series of next-generation travel books published by Madison-based Modern Overland, a company founded by Bradley in 2009. Bradley decided to turn his passion for travel into a business, and Modern Overland?s first title, “South Africa, Lesotho & Swaziland,” has just been published.
Jerry Apps is professor emeritus at UW?Madison and the author of more than 30 books, mostly about country life and history. His newest, ?Campfires and Loon Calls: Travels in the Boundary Waters? (Fulcrum Publishing, $15.95), springs from journals he kept as he and his son Steve, chief photographer for the Wisconsin State Journal, canoed in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness over the past 25 years.
Fans of Madison-area artist S.V. Medaris can view her work, including “The Handbook Said…” (above), in two spots this week.
UW-Madison Center for Financial Security associate and former consumer science professor Karen Holden recently worked on a project with the popular children?s television show “Sesame Street.”
Maggie Delaney-Potthoff’s unique approach to teaching singing is apparent during a visit to one of her voice classes, this one as unusual as her instruction: Singing for Screamers. The class, offered through UW-Madison Continuing Studies, is an addition to Delaney-Potthoff?s established offerings of beginning and advanced voice classes. It is designed for rock ?n? roll performers and ?anyone who just really wants to belt, to get their power out,? she said.
Jeff Greenfield, a 1964 graduate of UW-Madison?s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, was back at his alma mater this week to take part in a discussion of “where television news goes from here” and to deliver the annual lecture named in honor of the late Robert Taylor, a revered journalism professor. Greenfield, considered to be one of the country?s best political analysts, says he likes to get back to Madison as often as he can.
UW-Madison alumnus and CBS Senior Political Correspondent Jeff Greenfield spoke about the state of “the business and the craft” of modern journalism and his hopes for its future Thursday.
Quoted: Audrey Trainor, an associate professor of education at UW-Madison.
It?s hard to fathom how the garage of a national landmark mansion that?s considered a masterpiece designed by ?the father of modern architecture? could be lost for almost a century. But that?s what happened to the carriage house that once belonged to the 1909 Bradley House in the University Heights neighborhood on Madison?s Near West Side. Bradley House, designed by Louis Sullivan, the mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright, is one of the few residences designed by Sullivan still standing. Recently, Sue Thering, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at UW-Madison who has lived there for a decade, was nominated for a Madison Trust for Historic Preservation award.
Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic for LA Weekly, has eaten sea intestine (a Chinese seafood delicacy), numbingly spicy dan dan noodles and fermented, sticky-slimy soybean soup that is so fragrant, ?it takes over your system like an animus spirit.?
….Gold, the first food writer to win a Pulitzer Prize (in 2007), will speak about the concept of authenticity and global food culture in a local context at the Chazen Museum on Thursday, April 28. Gold is hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Center for the Humanities.
Weavers who use a combination of new and old techniques are showing work in the Common Wealth Gallery, which celebrates with an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, April 22. Included in the ?N[e]W[e]ave: Five Contemporary Weavers? show are Katie Glusica, who makes lovely, delicate waffle-weave drapes, Christy Madson and her detailed ?loomscapes? of oceans, forests and mountains, and Claudia Herbst-Tait, who uses 3D animation technology to make abstract works. The gallery is located at 100 S. Baldwin St. The show runs through April 27 and is sponsored by the Design Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In the classical music world, Jeremy Denk is perhaps as well known for his blog, ?Think Denk: The Glamorous Life and Thoughts of a Concert Pianist,? as his recordings of J.S. Bach and Charles Ives. Denk, 40, will play a recital of two works at the Wisconsin Union Theater on Thursday, April 21: Ives? Piano Sonata No. 1 and the Goldberg Variations by Bach, a set of 30 pieces.
Of Montreal was introduced Friday night by a Union worker who reminded the crowd of the groups? last stop at UW-Madison: a free show at Club 770 in 2005 that advertised an incorrect start time and offered only red spotlights.
MADISON, Wis.? It won?t come as a surprise to anyone who knows Christopher Taylor that the internationally acclaimed pianist and UW-Madison professor of music is now inventing a musical instrument.
For the Madison Symphony Orchestra?s April program, music director John DeMain brings us three novelties and a warhorse. The program debuted Friday night in Overture Hall.
Billy Collins is one of today?s most popular poets, revered for his ability to evoke humor and heartbreak in verses both subtle and sagacious. Collins served as U.S. poet laureate from 2001 to 2003 and has taught English at Lehman College of the City University of New York for more than 30 years. He?ll speak on Monday night at Union South as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series, which is also part of the UW-Madison student-organized Madison Lit Fest.
Back in high school, not all of the MadHatters were the kinds of guys you?d expect sorority girls to be swooning over in college.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department gets talkative this spring with the conversational ?Vis-à-vis,? running through Saturday in Lathrop Hall.
….UW Dance?s colorful spring program charms the audience, with or without words.
It won?t come as a surprise to anyone who knows Christopher Taylor that the internationally acclaimed pianist and UW-Madison professor of music is now inventing a musical instrument.
In a Hofstra University dance studio, a mixed group of professional and student dancers ? all too young to have lived through the events they were symbolically recreating ? recently rehearsed a work inspired by the turmoil and tragedy of the Vietnam War era.
The university that John Muir attended finally has an environmental studies major. The UW Board of Regents approved two new majors for UW-Madison on Friday: environmental studies and environmental sciences. UW-Madison has a strong history in the field of environmental studies.
A staff photographer at UW-Madison for six years and a former Associated Press photographer in Kazakhstan, former Madison resident Michael Forster Rothbart won a Fulbright scholarship to live for a year in Ukraine just outside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
It won?t come as a surprise to anyone who knows Christopher Taylor that the internationally acclaimed pianist and UW-Madison professor of music is now inventing a musical instrument.
Speakers from Al Jazeera, National Public Radio and The New York Times will debate the role of a partisan press in a democracy at UW-Madison?s second annual journalism ethics conference.
….This is also an important time to be supportive of libraries in Wisconsin. According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Gov. Scott Walker?s proposed budget for 2011-13 includes a 10 percent cut each year in state funding for public libraries, cuts of 11.6 percent in the first year and 6.6 percent in the second year in school library funding, as well as a provision that would eliminate a requirement that local funding for public libraries be maintained, at minimum, at the average of the prior three years.
To kick off National Library Week, the UW-Madison Libraries are again hosting the Edible Book Festival on Tuesday, April 12, from 4 to 6:30 p.m. in Room 460 at Memorial Library, 728 State St.
Peggy Weaver loves the variety of movies that make up the Wisconsin Film Festival each year.
“It?s fabulous. I love seeing movies from other countries and cultures. I love the spirit of Madison when it?s in town,” she said. “I like seeing the lines going down the block and around the corner. There?s a lot of excitement in the air.” This year, for the 13th annual festival, there were 209 films in nine theaters.
Thanks to the University Of Wisconsin and its Office Of Multicultural Arts Initiatives, last year?s installment of the annual Line Breaks has been etched into The A.V. Club?s skulls ever since.
The new Li Chiao-Ping Dance program Take 2: Multimedia Dance Performances and Screen Dance opens strongly with Li?s tribute to her mother, “RE: Joyce.” This is Li at her best, deftly blending dance, theater and moving images.
The first day of shooting a feature film, Justin Daering was saying Wednesday, is not when a young director freaks out. That happens the day before. “I was sitting there,” Daering said, recalling a day in Madison in the summer of 2009, “and thinking that tomorrow, supposedly, 40 people are going to show up and we?re going to start filming.”
What had he got himself into?
Quoted: Jeff Smith, professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It was a bibliophile?s delight, with nary a Kindle in sight. For those of us who love to hold on to a real book, turning each page of a ?page-turner? to find out what happens next, the big Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries used book sale at the UW-Madison Memorial Library was heaven on earth.
Now, we?re not saying modern technology is a bad thing. It?s a lot easier carrying an electronic book collection on a reader than a backpack full of tomes, or listening to your tunes through an iPod instead of a bulky CD player.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. spoke in Mills Hall of the Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus March 24 about the issues aired in his PBS documentary, “African American Lives.” The series shows how African Americans are using genealogy and genetic science to understand their history. Gates spoke about African-American genealogy and about the common myths that Black people believe when it comes to their lineage.
For film lovers in Madison, the beginning of spring is a time not only to enjoy warmer temperatures but also to pour over the extensive Wisconsin Film Festival guide and finalize viewing plans. The 13th annual Wisconsin Film Festival begins Wednesday, and as with past years, it offers a dizzying amount of films in a variety of categories, such as narrative, documentary, experimental, short films, animation and world cinema.
While trying to decide which films to see out of the 209 playing over five days can seem like a somewhat daunting task, many find that browsing through the possibilities and going out on a limb to see movies they may not otherwise watch is half the fun of the experience and can lead to unexpected surprises.
Meg Hamel has always had a novel philosophy for the Wisconsin Film Festival; make it a festival, featuring films, located in Wisconsin. That sounds obvious. But at other film festivals like Sundance, South By Southwest and Tribeca, showing movies is just one part of the experience. Those fests also include a wealth of festival parties, music performances, screenwriting competitions, celebrity sightings, filmmaking classes, swag giveaways and other side events. Not so at the Wisconsin Film Festival, which runs Wednesday, March 30, through Sunday, April 3.
A play by “The Social Network” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin anchors Forward Theater Co.?s 2011-12 season, opening in November in the Overture Center Playhouse. “The Farnsworth Invention,” about the man who invented the television and the executive who stole it from him, ran on Broadway from December 2007 through early March 2008. Forward is able to present “Farnsworth,” a drama with a cast of 16 who play 70 roles, because of a partnership with the University Theatre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Students from the graduate acting program will fill out the cast.
?They Marched Into Sunlight,? David Maraniss?s history about a Vietnam War ambush in 1967 and the simultaneous Dow Chemical riots in Madison, has been translated many times. But for the first time on Saturday, the stories of the soldiers and those they left behind were told in the language of dance.
The Wisconsin Film Festival runs March 30-April 3 and will feature 209 films shown in eight UW-Madison campus and Downtown locations.
Meet two of the most famous guys from Madison you may have never heard of. Eddie Guerriero is a rare book dealer. Mitchell Deprey is a social worker-turned-insurance salesman. But 20 years ago – and again today, thanks to a documentary film that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and shows next weekend both in Madison and at New York?s Museum of Modern Art – the duo unwittingly created an underground audio sensation. What they recorded with their microphone launched a creative explosion and, in the words of one fan, can “burn the hair off your ears.” The pair are UW-Madison alumni.
It?s sad that the performance presented by the UW-Madison dance department and Jin-Wen Yu Dance was a one-night-only event. “March Into Sunlight” deserves to be experienced by more people.
Mike Lawler from the Wisconsin Story Project and Troy Reeves from UW-Madison Oral History Program presented Thursday on their collaborative effort to document stories from the 1970 Sterling Hall bombing tragedy.
“In Madison, once again, we live in interesting times.” Thus begins David Maraniss? keynote, “Into Sunlight: The Connections of War and Peace from Vietnam to Afghanistan, from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama, from a Book to a Dance.” Scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday at Wisconsin Union Theater, the Pulitzer laureate?s address provides context for this weekend?s Sunlight Project & Symposium.
Movie fans, get lots of sleep this weekend. Because the 13th annual Wisconsin Film Festival starts next Wednesday, March 30, and with over 160 screenings of 209 different films in nine theaters, including the Orpheum, Wisconsin Union Theater and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, you?re going to need to be rested and ready.
The Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries are hosting a used book sale Wednesday-Saturday, March 23-26, 2011.
UW-Madison?s Babcock Dairy is bringing back its Wisconsin Film Festival ice cream flavor: In The Dark. The limited-edition festival-themed flavor is chocolate ice cream with brownie pieces, pecans, chocolate chips, and a fudge ripple, and is available now at the Memorial Union Scoop Shop and Babcock Dairy.
Quoted: James Dennis, an emeritus professor of art history at UW-Madison, who has written the book, “Robert Koehler?s ?The Strike?: The Improbable Story of an Iconic 1886 Painting of Labor Protest,
Steenbock?s on Orchard, the high-end Food Fight restaurant inside the new $210 million Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery building on the UW-Madison campus, is nearly as world class as the facility itself.
Meg Hamel is director of the Wisconsin Film Festival, which runs in Madison March 30 through April 3. She began her involvement as a volunteer with the first year of the festival 13 years ago.
Author David Maraniss is fascinated by connections. Maraniss?s critically acclaimed history, ?They Marched Into Sunlight,? juxtaposes the stories of soldiers marching into an ambush in Vietnam with anti-war protests at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, all taking place over two days in October 1967.
It is these connections between people, places and time that provide the basis for two new dance works, together called ?March Into Sunlight,? premiering Saturday, March 26, at 8 p.m. in the Wisconsin Union Theater. The program is part of the Sunlight Project and Symposium, a three-day event focusing on war, peace and protest.
Here?s what you might have done for free Thursday night. You might have walked into the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Mills Concert Hall and heard famed pianist Paul Badura-Skoda play with the UW Chamber Orchestra.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will speak on the UW-Madison campus later this month about the issues aired in his PBS documentary, “African American Lives.” Gates? visit is in honor of Nellie Y. McKay, a UW-Madison professor and pioneer in the field of Afro-American studies.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will speak on the UW-Madison campus later this month about the issues aired in his PBS documentary, “African American Lives.” The series shows how African Americans are using genealogy and genetic science to understand their history.
A lot of people don?t understand what ironworkers do, said Mike Grimslid, business manager for Ironworkers Local 383, so he?s glad a UW-Madison class took an interest and put out a short film called ?The Art of Ironworking.?
Having recently read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks I was looking for more “science for laypeople” books. Deborah Blum won a Pulitzer Prize for science journalism and is a professor at the University of Wisconsin. One of her former students recommended The Poisoner?s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, and I?d also heard from several mystery readers that it was a really fun book, if you don?t mind a little chemistry with your drama.
Add support for the arts to the list of items getting slashed under Gov. Walker?s proposed budget. The budget unveiled Tuesday calls for a 68 percent cut in state funding for the Wisconsin Arts Board while rolling the agency into the Department of Tourism.
Walker also wants to eliminate the Percent for Arts Program, which provides $500,000 annually for public art in new state buildings. Among the projects funded by the Percent for Arts program is the “Nails Tails” sculpture in front of Camp Randall Stadium.
Laura Schwendinger, a UW-Madison music professor, is already a well known composer in contemporary art music circles, the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters fellowship given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts, and the first composer to win a fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin. But this current project has taken Schwendinger in a new direction: a collaboration with her cousin Leni Schwendinger, a renowned New York-based lighting designer whose large-scale architectural installations include Seattle?s opera house and Manhattan?s Port Authority Bus Terminal. The team has paired up for ?Orchestra Underground: Playing it UNsafe,? a project of the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), which is dedicated to the development of new works for orchestra.
After witnessing the lynching of his two friends, James Cameron heard a mob of at least 5,000 people cry for his blood to be shed next.
A rope was put around his neck, and he was hung from the same tree as his two friends, but a voice from the crowd cried out to let him go, making him the only documented lynching survivor in history.
Patrick Sims, an associate professor of drama and theater at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, wrote and performed a one-man play, ?10 Perfect: A Lynching Survivor?s Story,? that incorporated fiction to tell Cameron?s story Friday night in the Lory Student Center. Black Definition put on the event in honor of Black History Month.
Was the entire hubbub over Scott Walker?s controversial budget repair bill just a clever ruse, enabling some lecherous vandal to sneak out onto the ice of Lake Mendota and destroy the Statue Of Liberty head sculpture?
