Everything Nac

The College of Fine Arts at Stephen F. Austin State University will present The Hot Club of San Francisco at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, in W.M. Turner Auditorium on the SFA campus as part of the 2015-2016 University Series.

An evening of vintage silent films accompanied by live gypsy swing will hit Turner stage when The Hot Club of San Francisco presents “Cinema Vivant,” a celebration of imagination and innovation. Like the wandering gypsy musicians of the 1930s, these artists play their guitars and fiddles while matching movements on the screen with characteristic virtuosity, passion and humor, according to Dr. John Goodall, associate dean for the College of Fine Arts.

“These superb, multi-talented musicians will impress our Nacogdoches audience not only for their mastery of multiple instruments, but also for the excitement they bring to the Turner stage,” Goodall said. “It’s going to be an extraordinary night of music and fun.”

Prior to the performance, Herbert Midgley, instructor in the SFA School of Music, will present a 7 p.m. informative talk in Griffith Gallery about the upcoming performance. The gallery is located across the hall from Turner Auditorium, which is located in the Griffith Fine Arts Building, 2222 Alumni Drive.

The audience is invited back to the gallery for a post-performance reception to meet the performers and to honor the event’s corporate sponsor, BancorpSouth.

Single event ticket prices are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and $10 for students/youth. For tickets or more information, visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu or call the Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or (888) 240-ARTS.

SFA students may purchase Rush tickets for $3 during regular office hours starting Monday, Oct. 19. Students must present a valid SFA ID for purchase and at the door on event night.

For more information on the 2015-2016 University Series, visit finearts.sfasu.edu.

Cutline: The 2015-2016 University Series presented by the SFA College of Fine Arts will feature The Hot Club of San Francisco performing at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, in W.M. Turner Auditorium on the SFA campus.

The work of Lauren B. Selden, associate professor of metal/jewelry in the School of Art at Stephen F. Austin State University, was recently published in Metalsmith, a well-known publication of contemporary metalworking and jewelry.

The quarterly magazine is released by the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG), the metalworking and jewelry international organization. SNAG described “Moved by Metal: On Beauty as Interaction” as “a showcase of works that help us discover beauty in the process of engagement.”

“Being featured in this ‘Exhibition in Print’ is one of the highlights of my career,” Selden said. “I am so honored to be part of the publication as well as the traveling exhibition.”

The exhibition was on display at the Center for Craft Creativity and Design in Asheville, North Carolina, accompanying the “Spaces of Production” project this past summer from July 31through Aug. 22.

The “Moved by Metal” selection was curated by author Wendy Steiner, whose books include “Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art” and “The Scandal of Pleasure: Art in an Age of Fundamentalism.” Steiner’s essay for this issue reveals how beauty is not inherent in things, or even in the eye of the beholder, but instead lies in the interchange between objects and viewers, according to the article.

“While all of the featured works invite interaction or empathy, they do not all follow the same template for beauty. This issue includes a diverse range of forms and styles, from functional objects to public installations to toys and puzzles. Regardless of their format or scale, each piece has the capacity to move us in some way and to remind us of beauty’s undeniable power,” the article said.

“This publication is the source for knowing the contemporary movements of our diverse field,” Selden said. “In the publication, you will see things ranging from wearable jewelry, art jewelry, sculpture, environmental works, installation and more. Also, the magazine highlights a wide variety of processes and materials that artists today are utilizing to make their work.”

Metalsmith Magazine and SNAG are main resources for Selden’s students as they learn contemporary metalworking and jewelry. Each quarter, the students review the magazine and find inspiration. Many SFA art students are members of SNAG and are becoming more involved in the organization, Selden said.

“When we travel to other conferences and workshops, the communities are linked together, and the knowledge of the makers in our field make it easier to network and find future opportunities,” she said. “I hope that my recent publication gives them the drive they need to continue working and becoming active in the field. If I can lead by example, I expect their possibilities can open further. If I expect the world from them and the highest level of quality, they should expect the same from me and know that I’m continuing to strive to stay current and relevant in our field.”

Selden said the manner in which her work was utilized in the publication may, perhaps, be the greatest honor. Steiner, professor, author and founding director of the Penn Humanities Forum, has written multiple impressive works that discuss beauty in the 21st century.

“My favorite thing about the way they utilized my work in this publication is that they referenced the work in three different locations, under three different subjects, from three very different times in my career,” she said. “I am so grateful that they selected work that spanned from 2007 to the present. I was featured in a section about ‘yearning for connection,’ ‘visualizing interaction,’ and ‘games, toys, playgrounds.’ This diversity of context truly has given me the encouragement that I need in a time where I am questioning the variety of concepts that I employ.”

Selden received her BFA from Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, and her MFA from Arizona State University. Exhibition accomplishments include solo exhibitions across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana and Kentucky. Her work has appeared in juried and invitational exhibitions nationally and internationally. Selden’s outdoor sculptures are currently on exhibition at the Abilene Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition, the Wichita Falls Kemp Center for the Arts Art on the Green Exhibition, and the Palestine Art Track Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition.

An exhibition of the artwork of Peter Andrew, graphic design professor in the Stephen F. Austin State University School of Art, is currently showing at Southern Arkansas University. Tropical Water Colors is exhibited Oct. 5 through 30 at Brinson Fine Art Gallery, 100 E. University, Magnolia, Arkansas. Andrew’s professional experience includes 12 years of art direction in advertising, publishing and freelance work as a design software trainer for the printing industry. He is an artist member of the New York Society of Illustrators and an artist consultant in the artists’ materials industry. His art is also currently represented by galleries in Corpus Christi and Houston, Texas, and in Salt Lake City, Utah, and on the Internet at www.peterandrew.net.

Cast and production staff members of “The Arabian Nights,” the Stephen F. Austin State University School of Theatre’s current Mainstage Series play adapted from “The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,” have learned a lot about the Far East, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and North Africa.

In the weeks leading up to the play’s Oct. 6 opening before enthusiastic crowds, students and their teachers explored cultures with which many were unfamiliar. But theatre professor Angela Bacarisse, who designed costumes, hair and make-up for the play, and her hair and make-up assistant designer, student Samantha Friedrich, each brought unique insights to the production.

As a freshman student at the University of Delaware, Bacarisse’s assigned roommate was from Saudi Arabia, and through that new friendship with Farida, Bacarisse got her first “real taste” of Middle Eastern culture. But midway through that first semester, Bacarisse returned from class one day to the dorm room they shared to find Farida’s father, who was an economics professor at another university in Pennsylvania, had packed his daughter’s belongings and was taking her home.

“He had decided unmarried women should not live away from their fathers, and he took her home,” Bacarisse said. “That was kind of shocking to me. That’s when I decided I needed to know more about this culture.”

The incident started Bacarisse reading about and researching the culture. When the first Gulf War broke out, Bacarisse had just started her first teaching job. The war made her want to learn even more about the Middle East so she could better explain the daily news events to her students. She also read a series of books by author Jean Sasson about the life of a Saudi princess and how women of the Middle East are treated within their countries and their own homes.

“It was eye-opening to understand the difference between someone who believes in their faith and the good things about it,” Bacarisse said, “and doesn’t believe in the people who are trying to kill those who don’t have their faith.”

Deeper reading about women like Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark, who traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and wrote about their experiences, gave her greater insight into the history of the Middle East and how the countries were shaped and divided without taking into consideration the impact dividing various religions would have.

“I developed this fascination with the culture and women’s studies,” Bacarisse said. “There is a lot of reverence for women as opposed to hatred for women in the culture that I don’t think a lot of people realize. Part of keeping women separate is so that others don’t ‘steal’ them. So some of the thinking is ancient, but what they do is based on reverence.”

At one point during the mid-1980s, Bacarisse worked in an exclusive clothing store in Detroit where she was the only American in the workroom. Every other employee was from Iran. Bacarisse listened to the women tell their stories of escape “with only the clothes on their backs.”

“These were wealthy women who left it all to break away from the ayatollah,” she said.

Bacarisse and Friedrich have had many long conversations about the Middle East. As an American female growing up in the Middle East because of her father’s job in the oil industry, Friedrich had to, at times, “behave in a certain way” outside the home.

Born in Texas but moving to Dubai when she was 4, Friedrich, a self-described “oil brat,” spent most of her early educational years in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia.

“Through living overseas, we were able to travel a lot and experience a lot of different cultures,” she said. “I would love to live back overseas. The culture is so beautiful with so much loyalty and devotion to religion.”

Friedrich plans to use her travels and experiences in the Middle East to create “a melting pot of cultures” for “The Arabian Nights.”

SFA’s production of Mary Zimmerman’s “The Arabian Nights” will not be specific to one Middle Eastern culture, Bacarisse said. Rather, the play will portray and the costumes will reflect many cultures of the region. A donation of Middle Eastern clothing several years ago provides the costume backdrop for the play.

“If you do the research, you’ll find that Kurdish women dress differently than Saudi Arabian women, and they dress differently than women in Yemen and women in Palestine,” she said. “Since the stories in this play take place all over the Middle East and North Africa, we’re not being specific. There is a sort of romanticized version of what the Middle East looks like, and it’s very biblical. These are the clothes you would see in your Christmas pageant in church. But we’re also pulling in the look from Disney’s ‘Aladdin.'”

“I want to represent the beauty the women and men have, and I want to translate that into the hair and make-up design,” Friedrich said. “I loved and cherished my life there, and I want the people to be represented in a loving way.”

The School of Theatre presents “The Arabian Nights” at 7:30 nightly through Saturday, Oct. 10, in W.M. Turner Auditorium on the SFA campus. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors and $7.50 for students. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit theatre.sfasu.edu.

The Mainstage Series is sponsored in part by Tipton Ford Lincoln.