Our second high school master class brought students together with choreographer Zoe Scofield, and visual artist Juniper Shuey. Each student made "films" based on still photos of their own choreography. Check out this film of high-school student Jeffrey Shirbroun.
Zoe and Juniper will be part of the faculty for our weeklong, Summer Arts Intensives at the end of June.
[Video: Jeffrey Shirbroun's student dance film]
A quick note from Young Artist Project core faculty members Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey...
(p.s. if you are a high school dance or video artist, you can work with them at our summer high school intensives...)
ZOE SCOFIELD AND JUNIPER SHUEY
the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t
Thu – Sat | Apr 24 – 26, 2008 | 8pm
Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey’s dance show “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t” is at On the Boards -- Apr 24 - 26. We’re thrilled to have this up-and-coming Seattle company at OtB before they take this show on a national tour next year. Scofield's signature blend of fierce ballet and modern dance aligns perfectly with visual artist Shuey’s otherworldly video and special effects..
Featuring original music by Morgan Henderson. Performed by Zoe Scofield, Christiana Axelsen, Ezra Dickenson, Lizzy Melton and Allison Van Dyck.
$18 General | $12 Student | $12 opening night RUSH
Tickets @ ontheboards.org
206.217.9888
June 22-27, 2008
High School Summer Arts Intensives:
Jeanine Gailey, Amber Wolfe, Amy Johnson, Juniper Shuey, Zoe Scofield
Spend
a week pushing the boundaries of what you know in your chosen
discipline, with the guidance and inspiration of our core faculty and a
learning environment enriched by a community of peers.
In this June workshop, you’ll be able to pursue your passions in creative writing, dance/video, visual art, and drama in a week-long workshop immediately following the end of the school year. Sessions are designed for high-school artists at any level of expertise.
Jeannine Gailey will teach “Comic Book Heroes, Mythology, and You,” a week-long adventure in creative writing, in which you’ll be able to explore the mythological tie-ins between ancient heroes (from Greek and Roman to Norse and Japanese) and modern fictitious superheroes and how they relate to our culture and ourselves. You will look at mythology and popular culture in class and use them to help launch several creative writing exercises during the week, including writing poems in the voices of superheroes and villains, making up our own myths, and writing a character sketch for an original superhero(ine).
Amber Wolfe will lead "Exploring Shakespeare."
She will show you how to tackle Shakespearean language and bring the
texts to life while creating a performance that incorporates
Shakespeare’s text with movement and stage combat. Wolfe’s expertise
with stage combat includes both hand to hand and the use of swords.
Deepen your stage skills in this unique, focused theater workshop!
Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey will be working with dancers to create a short video of their own choreography. You will work with Zoe to create your own unique movement and to think about how your various movements and shapes will look in the confines of a picture frame. Once this is accomplished, students work in pairs to film their work. You will use digital still images or a video camera to capture each other's compositions. Juniper is the video/photo expert. He will help you to take your still photos and video shorts and put them into iMovie, paired it with a musical selection and project the finished piece on a big screen.
Amy Johnson explores “The Art of Installation.” You will be creating images and objects to transform the studio space and completely alter your working environment. “Our process will include both two dimensional and three dimensional demonstrations: collage and printmaking on paper to support two dimensional work and for three dimensional work we will be making rubber molds to cast found objects out of plaster, paper and rubber. You will learn different ways to install, or display the work in a collaborative way,” says Johnson. Be prepared to take risks, get to know everyone in the group and learn different techniques in an experimental and playful way. You will be challenged to think in ways that will stretch your idea of what art is, who needs to see it and where art can exist."
Tuition, room and board is $365. Scholarships are available.
Scholarship deadline is May 27, 2008.
Application deadline/payment due May 27, 2008.
TO REGISTER
Whether
you are a workshop participant, performance attendee, donor, volunteer,
resident, or interested observer, we hope you will take a moment to visit our new Facebook page.
Facebook allows each of you to connect with us and extend your experience at Centrum. Upload your photos and videos. Talk about your past or upcoming workshops, review performances and readings. In large measure, 'our' page is 'your' page.
So take a look, and let us know what you think. We're exploring whether or not to create specific social networking sites for each of our major program areas. What do you think? (Now you have your first discussion topic on Facebook.)
When we redesigned this site last year, we had a vision that at some point, we could invite community members to post/write for the site, sharing their passion with other members of the Centrum community.
That time is NOW!
If you are passionate about youth programs at Centrum, and would like to share your knowledge and a sense of discovery with others, we want YOU. Please contact Keven Elliff at keven at centrum dot org for more information.
A quick update to let you know that we are still accepting applications for the second of our two Explorations middle school weeks. Our first session sold out, so this second week (March 16-21) is your last chance in 2008 to connect your middle school students with this program. For more information, visit our Explorations page, or contact Martha Worthley, at 360.385.3102 x120.
Visual artist and Centrum core youth faculty member Diem Chau will be collaborating with artist Jen Stark on an exhibit in Seattle, February 9 through March 4. If you are in the area (5107 Ballard Ave, NW) stop in and check out the work of these amazing artists!
The week of March 9-14, 2008, Diem Chau, along with dance artist Zoe Scofield, videographer Juniper Shuey, poet Jeannine Hall Gailey, and theater artists Samantha Rund and Erwin Thomas will lead a multidisciplinary workshop for middle school students.
When visual artist Diem Chau and her family first came to the United States—she was born in Saigon—her mother wanted her to have curly hair, and bought a kit from the grocery store that promised to perm hair. But she left it in her daughter’s hair for too long.
“It looked horrible!” Chau recalls, laughing.
Years later, Chau did research into folk art that was done when people didn’t have a lot of money, and had to create art out of the everyday household materials that they had. She decided to create a series of carvings out of crayons, which she had lying around the house. One of the carvings she did was of herself with permed hair. She also did other images of herself—and others—from her childhood, and from childhoods that she imagined.
The carvings eventually became a piece entitled “Storytelling.”
“Stories enable us to live a more vivid life,” Chau says. “I consider myself an artist whose medium is stories. Especially those that are primarily passed on orally. Coming from a nomadic childhood, what few
possessions my family had were necessities. The things of greatest value to us were stories contributed by friends and family. Embedded in these stories are connections to the past, our culture and an occasional escape from reality.”
“My grandmother told some of the best tales,” she says. “She had a wonderful way of spicing up the traditional fable. According to her, Cinderella was kept from the Prince’s ball by having to sort a jumble of mung beans, red beans and soybeans. Snow White went on many dates with Prince Charming before they got married, their first date being a picnic in the park with sandwiches and sliced melons.”
“These small deviations are what fascinate me with oral traditions. Each story is a journey that gives us greater understanding of our past and our culture. Each story is a thread that connects us to each other, the storyteller holding one end and the audience the other.”
Chau has always loved working with ready-made materials, things that are around every day, that have a story behind them.
“I like using what’s already there,” she says. “Writers compose with the words that already exist, that already have meaning. But they put it together in a way that means something. As a visual artist I do the same thing—but I compose with objects, instead of words.”
In March and April, Chau will be leading workshops in visual art for middle school and elementary school students. For more information, please follow this link.
Wanted: young artists ready for challenge and inspiration.
We're pleased to announce that we are now taking registrations for our 2008 Young Artists Project workshops.
Living and working with the Core Artist Faculty, hand-selected from among the region’s most vital, contemporary artists, young artists can engage with their passions in a way not possible in the daily school routine.
First up in January is a Visual Arts Master Class with Jeffry Mitchell and Amy Johnson. Following that in February is a Dance and Video Master Class with Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey. Each of these high school sessions is limited to just 15 students.
...and that's just the beginning. We'll also host workshops and intensives for elementary, middle school, and high-school students through the end of June, 2008, when our intergenerational workshops begin.
We hope you can join us here at Centrum in 2008. If you know of young artists who are looking for an unmatched experience, please send them our way.
As the summer draws to a close, we are just about ready to begin taking registrations for our 2008 workshops. A quick glance around the site will tell you that things are changing. Here's a recap:
Final details are being worked out for our 2008 workshops. Subscribe to this website; we'll post full details and begin registration by mid-September. Plus, we'll have frequently updated information on our Core Faculty as well as students!
In the Fall issue of Experience magazine I wrote that artists teach us that "embracing change can be the
most meaningful way to honor tradition." This understanding plays out in myriad ways at Centrum. Most recently, we have re-invented our programs for elementary, middle school, and high school students by remembering what has always been most transformative for them: deep interactions with practicing artists who are taking risks with their own work and will push students to think very differently about art making.
Visual artist Martha Worthley, our new manager for youth programs, is working to deepen our commitment to youth by deepening our connections to provocative emerging and established artists across disciplines. She is selecting a core group of artists who will serve as faculty for all 2008 youth programs. These artists will also be given residency opportunities to further their own projects and to interact and collaborate in community with other artists at Fort Worden. By extending their connection to Centrum over an entire season, they will have more chance for creative engagement with the physical site and the local community.
For 35 years, Centrum has worked with artists across a spectrum of creative endeavor to inspire and challenge young artists. We are deepening that tradition. Our November 2006 gathering of youth arts leaders from across Washington underscored the critical importance of identifying, working with, serving, and learning from artists whose work recasts and opens up new cultural conversations. Linking our artist-in-residence program with student residential programming will provide an array of new opportunities for learning and creation.
We do not provide arts education; we provide education, community, and creative time for artists--professional, emerging, aspiring, or experimenting. When we talk about Centrum experiences changing lives we are, more often than not, talking about individuals whose decision to be artists were made as the result of their time at Fort Worden.
We wish to give special thanks to the painter Mary Ann Peters, a former student, teacher, and artist-in-residence at Centrum, and the newest member of the Centrum advisory board, for working closely with Martha on this program. Several years ago, Mary Ann, along with writer Matthew Stadler and Anne Focke (one of the nation's greatest advocates for individual artists) proposed an initiative for Centrum that looked a lot like what is emerging for 2008. Embracing change can be the most meaningful way to honor tradition.
Centrum's programs for Washington State youth are supported through generous funding from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, with monies secured by the ongoing advocacy of our legislative delegation. Kudos to Terry Bergeson and Gayle Pauley at OSPI and to Lynn Kessler, Jim Hargrove, and Kevin Van der Wege in the Washington State Legislature.
Centrum is seeking a Development Director to develop, nurture, and manage over 1,500 individual and institutional relationships to inspire $1,200,000 million in annual charitable giving. If you're interested in joining a dynamic and passionate team, read more at The Centrum Information Center blog.
