Filed under: Outside Project | Tags: Music, Outside Project, study abroad, writing
Singer/Songwriter spending final COA year abroad
Singer/Songwriter Cora Rose Lewicki
Cora Rose Lewicki, known to music lovers around Mount Desert Island as Cora Rose, will be performing a farewell concert at the college’s Gates Community Center on Saturday, May 30 at 8 p.m. Lewicki is known for her singing and song writing, and for her MDI performances during her time as a student at COA. While she is not actually graduating this year, Lewicki will be spending her senior year studying international trade in Ghana and Mexico. As in previous concerts, Lewicki will be performing her own songs, with possibly a few covers. She’s been playing piano since kindergarten, writing songs since 3rd grade, and started performing her own work in 8th grade.
Filed under: Senior Project | Tags: marine, photography, Senior Project, watercolor
Christiaan van Heerden and Adam Kumm exhibit work
Underwater photography by Adam Kumm
Local artist and owner of the former Moss Gallery, Christiaan van Heerden will be showing watercolors at College of the Atlantic’s Blum Gallery along with underwater photographer Adam Kumm.
The two are exhibiting their work as part of their final projects as graduating COA seniors.
The show features 14 images taken of fish swimming through deep coral reefs in the Caribbean by Kumm and six large watercolors by van Heerden. (more…)
Filed under: Senior Project | Tags: Blum Gallery, fiber arts, photography, Senior Project
Exhibit features weavings of seven fibers, photos of the hands of ten artisans
"Working Hands" by Hannah Stevens
College of the Atlantic’s spring series of senior work continues with “Working Hands,” a show focusing on the artistry of the hand. The exhibit combines the efforts of Becky Wartell of Portland, ME and Hannah Stevens of Canton, NY. Wartell is a weaver and all-around craftsperson. Stevens is a photographer who has spent the term photographing craftspeople in the highly artistic region in upstate New York where she was raised, known as The North Country.
Wartell’s project involves seven different items each woven with one of seven different fibers: animal fibers of wool and silk; plant fibers of cotton, linen and hemp; and two cellulose fibers (plant fibers that require heavy processing): bamboo and tencel. Her exhibit includes the graduation dress she made from silk she wove, a bamboo skirt, a woolen blanket and some cotton plaid fabric. At the reception, the runner on the food table will be made of linen woven by Wartell. Also part of the exhibit will be a loom on which gallery visitors can experience weaving. The resulting communal piece of fabric will be turned into a purse that will be sold to raise money for a weaving-related cause. (more…)
Filed under: Senior Project | Tags: anthropology, photography, Senior Project, writing
Michael Keller, Watson Fellow, presents images and a book of refugee experience in the US
A Chinese man and his Bosnian wife were resettled by the International Rescue Committee. They opened a noodle and dumpling shop out of a small window. They were very successful and now operate a much bigger restaurant in Charlottesville, VA. Photo by Michael Keller.
To celebrate the publication of his book, “Streets, Boundaries, and Other Places: Stories of Asylum,” College of the Atlantic senior Michael Keller is presenting an exhibit of photographs and narratives of refugees resettled by the International Rescue Committee in Charlottesville, VA.
“Too dangerous to go back” was the phrase many used to describe the nations that these people left, says Keller of his encounters with refugees in Virginia. His photographs and stories, he says, “show the resilience of refugees in starting over, in starting new lives.” The photographs depict resettled individuals from Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Myanmar, China, Afghanistan, Togo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia. (more…)
Filed under: Outside Project | Tags: bollywood, interdisciplinary, Shakespeare, theatre
Production brings dance, music and new flair to Shakespeare
The Bollywood Tempest at COA
College of the Atlantic’s production of “The Tempest” is unlike any you have ever seen. Co-directors Dan Mahler and Alicia Hynes have set William Shakespeare’s island fantasy as a Bollywood production, adding the music and dance style of contemporary Indian movies. Says Mahler, who last year created a masterful blending of music and dance in his direction of the Greek tragedy “The Bacchae,” “We can do this with Shakespeare because it’s so open-ended. The text transcends its time period. Choreographers are Tanvi Nair of India and Aishath Loofa Mohamed of the Maldives. Both are familiar with Bollywood style and the traditional dance upon which many of the numbers are based. (more…)
Filed under: Senior Project | Tags: ethnography, Law, photography, poland, policy, Senior Project, study abroad, sustainability
Mike Kersula, Matt McInnis reflect on connections
Self-proclaimed radical environmentalist Janusz Korbel has fought for years to expand the Bialowieza National Park. Photo by Matt McInnis.
Nature of Poland, featuring photos by Matt McInnis and ethnography by Mike Kersula. The exhibit explores Poland as a country of contrasting environments, from moss-covered old growth forests to smoggy industrial wastelands.
The exhibit came about following the annual United Nations conference on climate change hosted by Poland last December. Kersula and McInnis attended the meetings-but with more than the treaty process on their minds. They wanted to understand how people of a post-socialist society connect to nature. (more…)
Filed under: Outside Project | Tags: interdisciplinary, Outside Project, senior, Socially Responsible Business, sustainability, travel, water, Watson
Brett Ciccotelli, Nick Jenei, and Michael Keller receive Watson Fellowships
Brett Ciccotelli
All three of College of the Atlantic’s Watson nominees have been awarded Watson Fellowships this year – despite the Watson Foundation’s reduction of the awards by 20 percent due to the economy. This prestigious fellowship funds a year of international travel to graduating seniors. In past years, fifty fellowships were awarded; this year, there were only forty, chosen from 177nominees from forty-seven of some of the best colleges in the United States.
In his letter congratulating COA and the recipients, Watson Foundation Director Cleveland Johnson noted that, “the elimination of ten fellowship slots has made this year’s competition especially fierce.” The awards to all three COA nominees, he added, “is a high honor given the extraordinary strength of the national pool of nominees this year and the reduced number of available fellowships.”
The students are Brett Ciccotelli, Nick Jenei, and Michael Keller.
Filed under: Senior Project | Tags: 2009, California, cartography, computer science, GIS, interdisciplinary, Senior Project, Socially Responsible Business
Senior Builds a City’s Emergency System
Apoorv Gehlot, senior, working in the GIS Lab
It’s not unusual for College of the Atlantic students to do extraordinary work during their 10-week internships and 10-week senior projects. Students have created large gardens, conducted original fieldwork, completed novels, written business plans. But seldom does their work make a difference for an entire city.
Senior Apoorv Gehlot has built a GIS emergency management system for the Silicon Valley city of Cupertino, CA, population 55,000. Should disaster strike, thanks to Gehlot, the emergency operations manager will be able to (more…)
Filed under: Senior Project
Fieldwork Studying Women and NAFTA in Chiapas, Mexico
Ashleha Khadse and Katarina Jurikova in Chiapas, Mexico
As politically engaged, probing women, Katarina Jurikova and Ashlesha Khadse were inspired by the struggles of the indigenous women of Chiapas against the changes wrought by NAFTA. Katarina, who is from Slovakia, and Ashlesha, from India, had no interest in just reading what others had to say about these women, they wanted to experience the routines of their lives first-hand: to rise at 4 a.m. with the women, learn to fashion tortillas from grainy masa harina, breathe in the wood smoke, touch the thick, beautiful embroideries of their traditional clothes, and help with tasks from fetching water to harvesting—all the while listening to the women’s stories.
Though Katarina and Ashlesha purposefully went to Chiapas without a firm plan, they found ways to get involved. “We joined the women’s movements and helped organize a march against NAFTA, volunteered for (more…)
Filed under: Class Project | Tags: arts, design, digital, film, literature, narrative, photography, printing
"Morning Routine," Grace Cherubino
Meaning arises out of context—and lack of context. A new course at COA, Multiples in Photography: Creating Context, explores this dynamic of understanding. Works from the course utilize double, triple, and multiple presentations of images (in the forms of diptychs, triptychs, quadtychs, and even quartychs and books!) as a means of developing photographic narrative technique; thinking about multiple ways of seeing; and ultimately, in the words of fourth-year student James Liepolt, “creating a photograph that conveys a greater message than any single photograph can.”
Visiting artist Denise Froehlich, who is teaching the course, says that a photographer can often “say more” with multiples—creating narrative tension and fields of reference (more…)
Filed under: Senior Project | Tags: 2008, advocacy, Sarah Haughn, Senior Project, Social Services, sustainable development, UFDA, Uganda
Improving Social Service Delivery
An Evaluative Study of Two Islands (Rwabitoke & Kisima II) and Two Landing Sites (Marese & Busana) in Ugandan Lake Victoria
Sarah Haughn interviewing in Uganda, 2008
Working closely with the Uganda Fisheries Development Association (UFDA), Sarah worked in four communities in the Jinja and Mukono districts conducting an in-depth study of social service delivery. What she found was an “incontestable lack of social services.” The 2002 government census reported that 99% of households in these communities had access to potable water, but an independent study in 2006 found a (more…)
Filed under: Outside Project | Tags: gender studies, internship work, internships, latin america, london, mexico, Outside Project, paris, philosophy, photography, religion, study abroad
COA Student Encounters “Strangers in Paris (or Secrets)”
(Self-Portrait) Villejuif, Paris, France 2008, Series: Strangers in Paris (or Secrets), Glicee, 35 mm negative, 24" x 16.5"
Diana Escobedo Lastiri (‘09) surely is a world traveler. Raised in Mexico City, she finished high school in India, then came to College of the Atlantic. As part of her studies at COA she spent three months in London as an intern for noted photographer Steve Double.
But it was during her time in Paris last spring when Lastiri says she “became a photographer.” As a stranger photographing strangers, Escobedo Lastiri focused on the quiet moments she noticed in others, reflecting her own sense of quiet on the street. The resulting photographs were displayed in COA’s Blum Gallery from October 1-15, 2008.
The bulk of Escobedo Lastiri’s exhibition, “Strangers in Paris (or Secrets),” is a series of (more…)
Filed under: Class Project | Tags: Class Project, course final, essay, fiction, history, interdisciplinary, monster course, women studies, writing
Historical Research, Fiction, and “The Life of a Samurai Woman”
Featured COA sophomore, Brianna Larsen
Brianna Larsen (’11) is a classic COA student—curious, resourceful. “One of the most important things I’ve learned at COA,” she says, “is that it’s not only okay to ask questions, but that it’s essential to the learning process that we ask hard questions—even if the answers to those questions aren’t out there yet.” So Brianna asks and asks. Accordingly, she has been a broad seeker during her time in college: Brianna’s favorite courses at COA so far include Introduction to the Legal Process, Modern Afro-Caribbean Dance, Marine Biology, Theater Workshop, and the currently-underway Maine Woods “Monster Course”—which combines courses in amphibian biology, experiential education, (more…)
Filed under: Senior Project | Tags: botany, Education, food, Gardens, interdisciplinary, Law, policy, Senior Project
Student’s Educative Garden Creates Controversy
Toria Harr's father tending to her garden. Photo Courtesy of Gian Luiso of the Courier Times
Toria Harr will graduate from COA this spring with a degree in Human Ecology and a teaching certificate earned in the school’s Educational Studies program. But her passionate focus on teaching science to middle schoolers hasn’t diminished Toria’s desire to make connections across disciplines—even when it miffs her neighbors. As a suburban Philly news story explains:
“Toria Harr never thought getting organic and going back to nature would land her in the world of zoning variances and court appeals. But that’s exactly where the Middletown college student finds herself after a neighbor filed an appeal in Bucks County court (more…)
Filed under: Intern Project | Tags: Finance, Intern Project, Internship, Mathematics, Music, Politics, Socially Responsible Business
COA Student Interns with Obama Campaign, Meets with Inspiration
Alyson with co-workers at an event for Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joseph Biden, Chicago
Alyson Bell (’10) is currently interning for COA credit with Obama for America, Barack Obama’s national campaign.
She tells me from Chicago, “I’m working for the finance department in the national headquarters, where our department does pretty much all of the fundraising for the national campaign. Most of what I do involves processing donations. We get tons of donations from individuals in the mail, people send them in after hosting house parties, and then there are events that we organize which bring in larger amounts of money. There’s a lot of Excel involved!
Although Alyson plans to work in the world of finance, she wanted an education beyond economics and Excel—cut to her time in COA’s own study abroad program in anthropology and political economy in Yucatán, Mexico. But her work with the Obama campaign goes beyond the computer monitor, too: Alyson says her “coolest” responsibilities include (more…)
