Young Artists Abroad for the Summer

When school lets out for the summer, young artists at the University of Cincinnati have no plans to stop learning.  Seven have received travel fellowships – either the Wolfstein Travel Fellowship or the Czech Artist in Residency Fellowship, both from UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning – that will enable them to continue working as close to home as Los Angeles and as far away as Japan and Australia.

“I’m looking forward to being in an Eastern Europe rock band,” was one of the first things to come from Isaac Peterson regarding his summer travel plans. Peterson is a graduate painting student and is also the winner of UC’s inaugural Artist in Residency Fellowship, allowing a student to live and work in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

All told, the student recipients of travel fellowships are:

• Katherine Brenner, photographer, who will travel to Hungary and Austria in late July and early August to record the remains of the wagon trail taken by her grandmother when fleeing her village at the end of World War II;

• Scott Conard, electronic artist, will learn the newest technologies in Los Angeles in early August;

• Kathleen Mitalski, photographer, will attend a Paris photo workshop July 9-27;

• Isaac Peterson, painter, will work in Prague, the Czech Republic, for two months starting June 6;

• Lisa Siders-Kenney, fiber artist, will study fiber and performance art in Kyoto, Japan, from July 4-Aug. 1;

• Aradhna Singh, electronic artist, will attend the University of Queensland in Australia, studying virtual reality from July 12-Nov. 1;

• Jennifer Ustick, painter, will travel through Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria from Sept. 3-20, visiting sites related to the Holocaust, in preparation for later work.

According to Singh, the virtual reality course she will take in Brisbane, Australia, will focus on real-time modeling and cover topics including scene complexity, scene optimization, and realism. Apart from two lectures and one practical laboratory per week, there will be additional lectures by industry professionals.  Four faculty members will be teaching the courses, enabling students to get a broader sense on the subject matter.

Painting graduate student, Jennifer Ustick, will be visiting Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Austria this coming summer. Ustick’s work now focuses on the theme of  personal experiences and memories, and she hopes that this experience will allow her to explore how memory can be manipulated. Ustick will devote the majority of her time to  visiting World War II and Holocaust specific sites. To prepare, she took three quarters of German at UC.  Said Ustick, “I’m very grateful for the opportunity to make this trip. I anticipate an intensely emotional and educational experience, and look forward to sharing it in the fall.”  (All the students are required to display their work and present on their experiences once they return to campus for fall classes.)

Joining Singh and Ustick as a Wolfstein recipient is Lisa Siders-Kenney, who will be going to Japan to study fiber and performance art in the Kyoto region. Siders-Kenney  has always been interested in textiles and the role they’ve played in Japanese society.  For instance, the fabric used in creating Japanese kimonos – along with the extent of adornment – was an indication of social status. While speaking of her planned trip to Japan, Siders-Kenny said, “I’m primarily interested in the resilience of spirit and the courage the Japanese people have shown in rebuilding their country.”  On a lighter note, she also said she was looking forward to the Japanese “baths.”

Photography graduate student Katie Brenner will visit the village Eastern Europe where her grandmother was born.  She will then follow and photograph a portion of the wagon trail her grandmother and other villagers used after they were forced to leave their homes in World War II. Brenner’s work focuses on the ongoing theme of hierarchies in families and the relationships between mothers and daughters.  She hopes the journey will provide her with a good opportunity to relate more with her subject matter, saying, “By integrating my own family into this work I will be able to observe, more closely, the inter-weaving of family, as well as explore myself as a woman and an artist.”

Scott Conard, an Electronic Art graduate student is attending one of the most prestigious and highly regarded conventions in the technical world; SIGGRAPH, held in Los Angeles, California. Not only is it a technology trade show and venue, it also has one of the top electronic art shows in the world. Topics covered at the convention cover such ideas as computer-video interfacing, 2D graphics, 3D graphics, animation, Web 3D, Web graphics, input devices, and video effects equipment.