This afternoon at the Hammond Hall Art Gallery, there was an artist talk and reception featuring Hanna Melnyczuk’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes: Reactions to the War in Ukraine” which will be on display through Sunday, Oct. 15,

Artist Hanna Melnyczuk and Fine Arts Professor Andrea Olmstead set up Hanna’s exhibit “Don’t Close Your Eyes” in Fitchburg State University’s Hammond Hall Art Gallery. “Don’t Close Your Eyes: Reactions to the War in Ukraine” will be on display in the Hammond Hall Art Gallery from Tuesday, Sept. 5 through Sunday, Oct. 15. There will be a reception with the artist at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21 at the gallery, located in Hammond Hall at 160 Pearl St. Admission is free and open to the public. Read more here.

A last day of music class impromptu jam session in Conlon Fine Arts. Learn more about our Music Programs here.

Recently, Provost Patricia Marshall welcomed those gathered in the Presidents' Hall for English Studies Professor Elise Takehana who presented her Harrod Lecture "Database and Algorithm as Literary Infrastructure", after an introduction by Acting English Studies Department Chair Lisa Gim.

In the lecture, Dr. Takehana discussed the conflicts and overlaps between storytelling and data analysis by exploring examples in experimental literature, interactive fiction, portraiture, and quantitative approaches to studying language and literature. The talk offered several reflections on the nature of human expression in the age of big data and how that might color what we think of as "human."

Our Women's History Month celebration continued with this afternoon's Women in the Arts at the Kent Recital Hall. It was celebration of women-identified artists and performers, featuring visual artists, musicians, poets, and more. Learn more about our Humanities Programs here.

ARTeries is Fitchburg State University Art Department’s annual juried exhibition 
that showcases the strongest original student work in drawing, painting, sculpture, and mixed-media art. ARTeries provides an opportunity for the university community to celebrate the artistic talents of Fitchburg State students. Student works will be on display from until  April 20, 2023. Learn more about Arts & Culture at Fitchburg State University here.

The Center for Italian Culture at Fitchburg State University continued its series on the “Made in Italy” brand this month this afternoon with a screening of the documentary film Stracci in Ellis White Lecture Hall in Hammond Hall. The documentary discusses the sustainability of fashion by looking at it through the eyes of those who have always recycled used clothes and transformed them into raw materials. A journey that starts from Prato, the world capital of recycled wool, and goes around the world, to discover the impact on the planet of the excessive consumption to which the world of fashion has educated us.

Yesterday, students in Professor Sally Moore's The Art of Puppetry class work on various elements of their puppet. The course explores shape, form and movement as it relates to character, mood and atmosphere. The history of the art of puppetry from around the world is discussed through images, videos and readings. Students learn how to construct masks, shadow puppets, hand and rod puppets, and marionettes, and will work in groups to put on performances of folk tales from various parts of the world. Puppetry is also examined as a tool in education, therapy and advertising.

Students in Andrea Olmstead's Ceramics class worked on vessels they made using the coil method of pottery. Coil pottery is a method of handbuilding pottery where a potter forms a base, walls, and style by combining clay coils (or cylinders). The potter rolls the clay into coils, stacks the coils together, and joins the coils through pressure creating a vessel. Learn more about our Fine Art Program here.

Professor Kisha Tracy, and students in her Global Middle Ages course, assembled some informational packets,  "Hildegard's Horde," a medieval miscellany of entertaining education, as a take away for next week's Choral Kaleidoscope performance. On Tuesday,  the Fitchburg State choirs as well as voices from Gardner High School, Murdock High School and Narragansett Regional High School, will perform in Weston Auditorium. Among the selections performed will be pieces from the Middle Ages by Hildegard of Bingen. The packets are full of information about Hildegard of Bingen, the Middle Ages, and more.