Arts

Volume 22, Issue 15

Art on board, literally
'Eight Board Feet' featured at Visual Art Gallery

By Gabrielle Wiegand - Feature Writer

Internationally exhibited artist Marina Mangubi has a dozen pieces on display in the UIS Visual Arts Gallery in an exhibit entitled “Eight Board Feet.”
Mangubi paints beautiful landscapes onto two-by-four wooden beams spanning eight feet. Her work is very detailed and colorful. Being on long beams, the paintings seem to stretch out far into the distance much in the same way as the real landscapes would.
According to Mangubi, while she was driving in Oregon she was struck by the scenery. “It reminded me of 17th Century Baroque painters.” She decided to capture these images on two-by-four lumber. Mangubi said the main problem she had when beginning the project was packing the space that spans miles into a two-by-four space.
Mangubi’s first two paintings on two-by-fours are of Oregon, completed in 2000. One gives the viewer an idea of the wild beauty of Oregon and the other conveys the idea of a majestic calm.
In spring 2004, Mangubi worked in Cassis, France, as an artist fellow at the Camargo Foundation. One of her paintings on display at UIS depicted the landscape from that region. It is a beautiful, delicate illustration of cliffs over the sea.
There are also two paintings of Ohio, completed in 2003. One is of swaying fields of grain and the other shows a marsh. The exhibit includes several of Mangubi’s etches on copper.
“The images are not real,” said Mangubi. “The images taken from life are mixed with imaginary sites.” Mangubi said her task was to make the images look believable while they are not exact depictions of real life. In order to do this, she said she had to adjust the colors she used and the horizons of the pictures. As she continues with her work, Mangubi said her images become more meticulous and more abstract.
These images take Mangubi a great deal of time. “Normally I can finish a painting in a month working 12 hour days.” She uses Douglass Fir and occasionally pine wood.
Mangubi is an assistant professor of art at the College of Wooster in Ohio where she teaches painting, drawing and printmaking. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley and received a Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
According to the College of Wooster website, Mangubi has had a solo exhibition in Moscow and her work is included in permanent museum collections in Maine and Oregon.
Manubi’s work will be on exhibit at UIS until February 10.
The Visual Arts Gallery is located in the UIS Health and Sciences Building, Room 201 and is open Monday-Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

'Eddie from Ohio' gives spirited, clever concert for UIS First Week

By Gabrielle Wiegand - Feature Writer

     Eddie from Ohio, a folk band from northern Virginia, closed out UIS’s first week activities with a concert in the Studio Theater Saturday, January 15. While the band was exceptionally talented and the concert was very enjoyable, I do not think this was an event that particularly appealed to students. The Studio Theater was practically filled but there were very few students there.
     The band sang over 20 songs and each one was better then the first. I felt I really got my money’s worth (actually it was free for UIS students, $15 for nonstudents, but you know what I am saying). Their music has real character. It is fun and clever and at other times poignant and expressive.
     Eddie from Ohio’s songs range from the sad and mournful, such as “This Is Me” a song inspired by the Bosnian War, to the comical, like the song “Horse” that warns men not to fall in love with women who love horses.
     Eddie from Ohio consists of four extremely talented performers: Julie Murphy Wells (vocals, tambourine and shaker), Robbie Schaefer (guitar and vocals), Michael Clem (bass, harp, guitar and vocals) and Eddie Hartness (percussion and vocals), who have been performing together since 1991.
     Eddie from Ohio has a very warm, folksy feel. Their sound is almost a mix between the Barenaked Ladies and Jewel. The four members harmonize in a way that I can only describe as smooth. Julie had a very “Ani Difranco with a country twist” thing going on and Robbie sang with a scratchy deep voice that was both sexy and soulful.
The band was very funny and interacted with the audience in a very natural and enjoyable way. A highlight of the show was when the bass player said “go Prairie Stars” in a confused voice before introducing a song.
     Eddie from Ohio has independently released nine CDs. The most recent was “This Is Me” that was released last year. I was so impressed with the concert I purchased the CD and have listened to it about 10 times since then. “This Is Me” is Eddie from Ohio’s first collaboration with Lloyd Maines, who won a Grammy Award in 2003 for his work on the Dixie Chicks album “Home.”
     A friend of mine, Christopher Wyant, who went to the concert, summed it up best, “I listened and I left cleansed.”

Midwinter Heat
Hit musical ‘Contact’ coming to Sangamon Auditorium

By Brian Mackey - Feature Writer

   This January has been colder than normal of late, but a Broadway hit should generate plenty of heat as Sangamon Auditorium resumes its 2004-2005 season.
In late 1999, New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley declared “Contact” no less than the second coming of the Great American Musical.
     The show opened off-Broadway, and rave reviews like Brantley’s soon led to bigger things, ultimately including four Tony awards.
     The show is divided into three marginally related “dance plays.”
     The first, “Swinging,” is based on a painting by 18th-century French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. It features two men of divergent social stature – one upper-crust, the other a manservant – competing for the affections of an upper-class woman on a swing.
Next, “Did You Move?” is set in an Italian restaurant of 1950s New York. In it, a woman tries to escape her decaying marriage through fantasy sequences in which she dances with the restaurant’s staff.
     Finally, the third scene, from which the play takes its name, follows a middle-aged executive into a present day nightclub. He is taken with a woman in a yellow dress (which has become a symbol of the show), but he never seems to be able to catch up with her.
     Brantley, writing in the New York Times, said this last section “has a pulsing urban anxiety, a feeling of being alone in a crowd that will be familiar to anyone who has ever spent time in a singles bar with nothing to talk to but his glass and the bartender ... ”
     “Contact” is a unique musical in that it has no original music. The score consists of diverse selections including both Tchaikovsky and the Squirrel Nut Zippers. At times, “Contact” may feel like a ballet, but that signifier is every bit as inadequate as “musical.”
In 2000, “Contact” won four Tony awards: best musical, best choreographer, best actor and best actress. Its hybrid nature – was it a play or a musical? – contributed to the Tony organizers’ decision to create a new category of “Special Theatrical Event” for subsequent years.

Le Cinéma du Prairie
The Independent & Foreign Film Series Strikes Back

By Brian Mackey - Feature Writer

The Office of Student Life has assembled an impressive list of selections for the Winter/Spring 2005 installment of the ongoing Independent & Foreign Film Series.
The more bold choices offer controversial takes on some of the world’s most touchy political hot spots. Others are quite simply the best films you have not had the chance to see.
In a town otherwise dominated by a chain theater monopoly, cinephiles should be thankful for the refuge offered by the UIS series.
Check back here each Wednesday this term: The Journal will be reviewing many of these films before they are screened.
All shows take place in Brookens Auditorium on Friday nights at 7:00 p.m. (except “The Holy Land,” which is showing on observant-friendly Thursday night in addition to the usual Friday screening). Here, arranged by date, are the current selections:
• Good Bye Lenin! (Germany, 2003), 1.28
In East Germany, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a woman lapses into a coma. Upon awakening, her son must protect her from any great shocks, so he enlists the help of his neighbors to trick his mother into thinking their communist utopia is still keeping the forces of Western capitalism at bay. Madcap hilarity – and poignancy – ensues.
• The Saddest Music in the World (Canada, 2003), 2.04
Set during the Great Depression, a wealthy Canadian woman (Isabella Rossellini) entices musicians from around the globe in a competition to play for her the saddest music in the world. This highly stylized film has elements that will delight some and leave others checking their watches.
• Shall We Dance (Japan, 1996), 2.11
A Japanese businessman, father, and husband (in that order) secretly signs up for dancing lessons in what film critic Roger Ebert describes as the country’s repressed, “Victorian” society.
• The Holy Land (Israel, 2001), 2.17-18
This parable – with deep, biblical roots – follows a young rabbinical student as he begins to explore the world outside his narrow experience. A brief encounter with a Russian prostitute has consequences that will only become clear with time. This film, set largely in Jerusalem, shines a harsh light on the divide between secular and Orthodox Judaism.
• Osama (Afghanistan, 2003), 2.25
“Osama” is the first Afghan film made in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Set while the Taliban’s repressive policies were still in effect, it follows a widow who must attempt to pass her daughter off as a boy if the family is to have any income and hope of survival.
• Dogville (USA, 2004), 3.04
Nicole Kidman dirties her face to play a fallen woman on the run. She finds refuge in Dogville, which in this minimalist film is nothing more than chalk lines in a studio. The townsfolk begin to turn on her, and some nastiness ensues. Actually, somehow, almost three hours of this film ensue.
• The Corporation (Canada, 2003), 3.25
Many thinking liberals who find Michael Moore’s bombast off-putting will find refuge in “The Corporation.” This thoughtful, engaging, and at-times humorous documentary looks at the role of the corporation in modern life. These institutions affect our culture, economic situation, and health in ways in which we are often unaware.
• I’m Going Home (France, 2001), 4.01
An in-demand actor must reexamine his life when a car accident leaves him solely responsible for his orphaned grandson.
• Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring (South Korea, 2004), 4.08
A young boy is taught the ways of spirituality by a Buddhist monk living on an isolated lake. Taking place entirely in one location, this metaphor-laden film follows his growth into manhood.
• Bride & Prejudice (India, 2004), 4.15
The director of “Bend It Like Beckham” fuses Hollywood and Bollywood (India’s filmmaking capital) in a riff on Jane Austen’s rhyming title.
• The Motorcycle Diaries (Argentina, 2004), 4.22
When he was 23, still a medical student and not yet the man who went on to grace so many hippie t-shirts, Ernesto “Che” Guevara set out with a friend to see South America from the back of a motorcycle. This journey, the beauty and injustice he saw would plant the seeds of revolution in a man who was eventually killed at the behest of the CIA.