Month: March 2014

This is the last week to see the show, purchase artwork, and cast your vote for the Community Choice Award. Please visit!

Ashley Kirklen from TV6 highlighted the Great Lakes Showcase in a live segment.

Watch the YouTube video “Ashley at Rozsa Center.”

The Great Lakes Showcase enters last week

“There’s a community choice award, so anyone who’s been into the exhibition can vote on their favorite piece. I will count all the votes at the end of the show and we’ll announce the community choice award on our website” says showcase coordinator, Sarah Scarlett.

Read more at Upper Michigans Source, by Ashley Kirklen.

World Water Day is observed on March 22. This year, Michigan Tech is hosting a week of events, March 20, 26-27, 2014. This year’s theme is “Water and Energy.”

Events include a film, lecture, poster session, panel discussion, and art exhibit, featuring the topic of gas from shale hydrofraccing.

March 20- April 23, 2014
Water’s Edge Art Exhibit
Great Lakes Research Center (1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors)
Featured Artists:
Amy Arntson, Joyce Koskenmaki, Bonnie Peterson

Learn more at the Michigan Tech Center for Water and Society.

World Water Day Sponsors:

Center for Water and Society (CWS), Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative (LSSI), Keweenaw Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (KUUF), Keweenaw Land Trust (KLT), Sustainable Futures Institute (SFI), Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC, Visual and Performing Arts (MTU), Finlandia University. Partial funding provided by the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) through a grant from the Johnson Family Foundation for a Let’s Talk About Water event.

World Water Day Activities Focus on Fracking

World Water Day was started by the United Nations to raise awareness about the problems surrounding water on our planet. The world is more than 70 percent covered in water, yet less than 1 percent is available for people to use.

Read more at Tech Today, by Erika Vichcales.

Art Exhibit at GLRC Focuses on Water

The Water’s Edge Art Exhibition celebrates artists Amy Arntson, Joyce Koskenmaki and Bonnie Peterson now through April 23. The artists use paintings, prints and textiles.

Koskenmaki and Peterson will attend a “meet the artists” event on Wednesday, March 26, at the Great Lakes Research Center from 7:30 to 8 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Center for Water and Society, Great Lakes Research Center, Finlandia University Gallery and the Sustainable Finlandia Committee, and Visual and Performing Arts at Michigan Tech.

Read more at Tech Today.

“World Water Day Exhibition: Water’s Edge” at Great Lakes Research Center celebrates three artists

The Water’s Edge Art Exhibition celebrates artists Amy Arntson, Joyce Koskenmaki and Bonnie Peterson. The artists use paintings, prints and textiles.

Koskenmaki and Peterson will attend a “meet the artists” event from 7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, at the Great Lakes Research Center. The public is invited to attend.

Water’s Edge is the brainchild or Dr. Noel Urban, Michigan Tech professor of civil and environmental engineering. Urban wanted to juxtapose art with the campus-wide celebrations of World Water Day, including lectures, poster sessions and other events, because art can help bring important ecological issues to light. Anne Beffel, Michigan Tech professor and Visual and Performing Arts Department chair, and Carrie Flaspohler, Finlandia University Gallery curator and director, teamed up with Urban and curated the exhibition. Beffel and Flaspohler agree that these are three amazing artists, each with her own way of paying attention to and translating the cultural and ecological qualities of this element.

Read more at Keweenaw Now.

Sadashi Inuzuka’s transcendent ceramic art is celebrated for exploring the overlap between the natural world, science and society. Over the past 20 years, Inuzuka has exhibited his work to national and international audiences.

After having been deemed legally blind, Inuzuka was discouraged from pursuing a career in the arts, but he used his visual impairment as a motivation to reach out to other disabled individuals and to help develop their own artistic identities.

Inuzuka has been awarded a University of Michigan Thurnau Professorship, the highest award for undergraduate teaching. Inuzuka is considered a pioneer in the design and implementation of community engagement courses. He has created courses that enable students to see first-hand the role art can play in social change.

At Michigan Tech, he will help students move beyond their perceived creative limitations in an open, brown bag luncheon discussion. He will share images of his diverse artwork to help lead the discussion. The event is free, and all are welcome, Monday, March 17, from 12 to 1:30 p.m., Walker 202.

Inuzuka will also meet with Michigan Tech students in courses such as Creative Ceramics, Art Appreciation and Creative Drawing.

He will discuss his current artistic endeavors, especially “Whaletown” Project, at a lecture free and open to the public on Tuesday, March 18, from 7 to 8 p.m. on at the U. J. Noblet Forestry Building G002.

Support for the visit comes from the Department of Visual and Performing Arts and the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs.

Telling his story through clay

Chronicling his journey as an artist, renowned ceramist Sadashi Inuzuka took students and others at Michigan Technological University from the first time he touched clay as a student in Vancouver until now during an open discussion Monday.

“The first time I touched clay, something went through my body and I said, ‘this is it.'” Inuzuka said. “I didn’t know anything about art but I knew I wanted to make something.”

Read more at the Mining Gazette, by Meagan Stilp.