Sewanee Launches New Performance Arts Efforts

by Kevin Cummings, Messenger Staff Writer
The University of the South is injecting renewed vigor in the school’s performing arts programs to strengthen student opportunities and enhance visibility of public performances.
“There are a lot of people involved in making art (here) and this is really exhilarating and exciting,” said Dan Backlund, chair of the University’s Arts Task Force and professor of theatre arts. “We have enough plans to last for the next 20 years.”
The task force is a result of Sewanee’s 2012 Strategic Plan, and Terry Papillon, dean of the college, said the committee is moving from the planning to the enacting stage. An accomplished musician, Papillon praised the role of arts in all areas of life.
“We have seen in modern academic culture and in the culture in general, a lack of value for the arts; I think that’s incredibly unfortunate,” he said. “I think it’s just shortsighted and makes us less able to interact as human beings. We’re seeing the results of that in modern American culture.”
One of the first missions is the new website portal <artssewanee.sewanee.edu>, which synchronizes performance scheduling and allows the public to find events in one place. Two other new additions are a University fiddling program and starting this spring, an artist-in-residence program.
Sewanee has also hired a number of highly-accomplished faculty members in the arts department (look for more on new faculty in coming weeks).
Hiring more technicians for lighting and sound and bringing in visiting musicians are also high on the task force’s list, Papillon said. The performing arts series starts Saturday,
Oct. 8 with a performance by acclaimed bassist Edgar Meyer, followed by an organ recital by Catherine Rodland in November.
The third part of the series, in February, features the American Spiritual Ensemble, a world-renowned vocal collaborative, which will be in Sewanee for five days, performing and workshopping with students and local music groups. Among the various activities, the Ensemble and the Sewanee Symphony Orchestra will perform Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess.”
In addition, Stephen Miller, professor of music, noted that a benefactor made a large donation to bring in Americana musicians to work with students. Some of those musicians may perform for the public as well.
The University has also broadened the way it thinks about choral music activities and church music, so look for expansion in those areas, Papillon said. Among the long term goals is a 250-seat lecture/recital hall at Bishop’s Common, which will be renovated as the School of Theology moves to central campus. He said the hall should be a top-notch space for chamber and small choral concerts in the next four years or so.
A new performing arts center is also a long term goal, Papillon said. Guerry Auditorium isn’t ideal for large events, like a Broadway tour, because of the difficult access for semi-trucks, and the HVAC system is also outdated and loud and must be shut off during performances.
The present initiatives also involve intentionally recruiting more arts students to campus, including adding additional arts scholarships and internships.
César Leal, artistic director of the Sewanee Symphony Orchestra (SSO), noted that the orchestra’s work study program has expanded and now serves as a model for several other work study programs on campus. The Artistic Leadership Program started last year with only six students and has expanded to 20. The program provides students with a valuable learning experience while producing all musical events. They work as talent managers, assistant production managers, audio visual technicians, music librarians and musicians.
At SSO performances students are in charge of everything from lights, audiovisual production, and all aspects of logistics and pre-production. Leal noted that the SSO is partnering with other organizations on and off campus to bring new innovative programs. The SSO will also carry on its traditional concerts, such as the Halloween concert, which features a night concert for the community and a morning concert for more than 500 area elementary students.
“I am truly happy and excited for the new opportunities that the SSO creates each year for our students and musicians,” Leal said. “The SSO is a true representation of Sewanee, who we are as a community, and how we draw our strength and success from working together. As we work really hard to prepare our repertoire for the 2016–17 season, I am confident our audiences will keep supporting us with their attendance and applause.”
Another recruiting program that started last year gives prospective students a behind-the-scenes tour of plays, concerts and dance performances. Backlund said the University invited students within a 100-mile-radius to tour campus, which included a backstage look at dress rehearsals and questions and answer sessions with cast members and directors.
And for students who are graduating, the University has added to its “Beyond the Gates” program by bringing in professionals in areas such as lighting, arts history, dancing, singing, and film and television to help prepare students for possible careers in the performing arts.
In the theatre department, the first production of the year will be “The Good Doctor,” by Neil Simon, based on the short stories of Anton Chekhov, said Peter Smith, professor of theatre arts. Smith is directing the production, which is scheduled for Friday–Sunday, Oct. 28–30 and Thursday–Saturday, Nov. 3–5.
On Thursday–Friday, Nov. 10 and 11, guest artist and Sewanee graduate Raymond McAnally will present his one-man show, “Size Matters,” in the Tennessee Williams Center.
For more information go to <arts​sewanee.sewanee.edu>.

Grundy Arts Council Joins National Survey

Grundy Area Arts Council is joining with Americans for the Arts in its national study of the economic impact of spending by nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences.

“The Arts Mean Business” is the message being delivered by the Grundy Area Arts Council (GAAC). GAAC is part of “Arts and Economic Prosperity 5,” a national study measuring the economic impact of nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences. The research study is being conducted by Americans for the Arts, the nation’s nonprofit organization advancing the arts and arts education. 

It is the fifth study over the past 20 years to measure the impact of arts spending on local jobs, income paid to local residents and revenue generated to local and state governments.

As one of nearly 300 study partners across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, the GAAC will collect data about local nonprofit arts and culture organizations such as museums, festivals and arts education organizations. This data will be used to show the economic benefits of art and culture in a community. 

“We believe this study will make clear that the arts are a formidable industry in our community—employing people locally, purchasing goods and services from local merchants and helping to drive tourism and economic development,” said Cameron Swallow, a GAAC board member.

GAAC members will be out with paper surveys at concerts, performances and arts festivals in Grundy County this spring. The surveys are anonymous, and the surveyors are volunteers with nothing to sell but this community effort. Please help them out by filling out a survey; you can fill out a new survey every time you attend an event. 

Surveys will be collected throughout calendar year 2016. The results of the study will be released in June of 2017.

The Grundy Area Arts Council works to promote the arts on the South Cumberland Plateau, supporting school programming and community events.

Hastings Mobile Seeks New Home

Artist Jack Hastings is remembered for his extraordinary sculptures, paintings and drawings, much of it in public spaces. But now, his partner, Arlyn Ende, must find a new home for one of Hastings’ largest creations: a 40-foot by 25-foot mobile, “Homage to Calder,” which presently hangs in the TVA southeast headquarters in Chattanooga.

“This is a unique opportunity to have a major work of art by a local artist with a national reputation,” Ende said. The piece is available because TVA is renovating the building; as part of this process, TVA is returning major artworks to the artists it commissioned 30 years ago. 

The mobile was constructed at Hastings’ and Ende’s studio in Bradyville, Tenn., where they lived until they moved to Sewanee in 1994. The piece is made of airframe aluminum and painted with permanent acrylic colors. He named this monumental artwork “Homage to Calder” in honor of the sculptor-engineer who in 1932 created hanging sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by the wind, which Marcel Duchamps christened mobiles.

Ende recalled the creative process: “If you had gone looking for Jack 30 years ago at his studio and farm in Bradyville, you’d have crossed a creek, climbed a hill and found him back behind his studio intensely absorbed in an aerodynamic exercise that was somewhere between physics and aesthetics. He would have been at the controls of his antique Oliver tractor, hoisting with slow, deliberate precision a 30-foot-long rod, higher and higher, as he calculated and calibrated its swing and balance with a bright orange spiral icon dangling from its end. He’d pause, break concentration, and invite you into his large workroom to show you a scale model of the work-in-progress and explain what was up.” Ende recalls the process of getting the enormous piece installed in the new building.

“One night just prior to the official opening of the new TVA building, Jack and I drove to Chattanooga to deliver and install the mobile,” she said. “Our truck was filled to capacity with the carefully identified parts Jack had tested so precisely, and with tools and backup parts ‘just in case.’ 

“His well-thought-out plan was in place to finally assemble the sculpture in its entirety for the first time. A crew had already attached the master cable to the solar glass ceiling high in the five-story atrium and were there waiting for the main event to begin. 

“Jack laid out the rods, fittings, and colorfully painted aluminum icons systematically on the floor. The cable was lowered. From a balcony four stories up,” Ende said, “Jack called out instructions to the crew below to attach, and very slowly, very gently hoist the rods and icons from the floor in the proper order.”

As the piece was installed, she said, “I remember the magical, jaw-dropping suspense as we saw the air itself take shape around each moving arm and attenuated icon as it glided upward and outward to the ephemeral airspace. 

“There was a breathtaking silence when the last fitting was tightened and the crew drew back. I sensed and shared the pride, gratitude and relief that filled Jack as his ‘Homage to Calder’ was released, finally on its own.”

Hastings, who died in 2013, has two mobiles installed at the Nashville International Airport, as well as public art across the U.S., including pieces in Tennessee, as well as in Germany.

For information about being considered to receive this large and precious piece of art, contact Hastings’ art trustee, Susan Tinney, at <susan@tinneycontemporary.com>