The Art of Change

The 2021 Irwin Scholars talk about the personal challenges of studying and working remotely, while also trying to create work for a virtual exhibition during a pandemic.

Entitled "Fabricating Solace", the Irwin exhibition opens online on June 3, 2021.

For more information about the Irwin 2021: Fabricating Solace virtual exhibition and related events, and to find out more about the artists, please visit: art.ucsc.edu.

Please note that this episode contains brief references to sexual assault and emotional trauma.

After over 30 years at UC Santa Cruz, Professor Danny Scheie is retiring from teaching, but thankfully not from acting. He’s enjoyed a spectacular career as a stage actor, winning numerous awards, including the Bay Area Critics Circle Award three times for Leading Actor; two times for Supporting Actor, and once for directing. His sharp and hilarious observations make him the ideal guest, and it’s no wonder that he’s not only a very beloved professor, but also an exceptionally talented actor.

African American Theater Arts Troupe director Don Williams is joined in conversation by two alumni from UCSC's African American Theater Arts Troupe, Ms. Niketa Calame-Harris (Oakes, ’02 and voice of ‘Young Nala' in Disney's 1994 animated feature The Lion King) and Dr. Eric Jackson-Scott (Rachel Carson, '95). Moderated by KZSC's Luisa Cardoza.

Professor Jimin Lee's work explores themes of mobility, displacement and labor on the personal and social level as seen in traffic, places of transport, or objects that move or are "in transit" -- travel in both the daily and in the migratory sense. She talks with guest host Lyle Troxell about her ongoing work in print media that adopts emerging print strategies in an expanded art context.

Professor Jennifer Maytorena Taylor's work is regularly seen around the world through broadcast, film festivals, and theatrical screenings at venues like the Sundance, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Locarno Film Festivals, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, New York Museum of Modern Art, PBS, Sundance Channel, Al Jazeera, and NHK-Japan. She talks with guest host Lyle Troxell about the fast-paced and unpredictable turns her filmmaking has taken her, from FBI raids to witnessing the effects of incarceration on disenfranchised populations.

Professor micha cárdenas sees education as a path to liberation, and her teaching focuses on discussion, interactivity and creative practice as research. cárdenas is writing a new algorithm for gender, race and technology. As the director of the Critical Realities Studio, she talks with guest host Lyle Troxell about this hybrid studio/lab that uses multiple realities, in art, to address critical global issues including climate change, racism and gendered violence.

Professor Michael Chemers, founding Director of the Bachelor in Fine Arts Dramaturgy program at Carnegie Mellon University and Associate Professor of Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz, talks with guest host Lyle Troxell about his "Ghost Light" model of dramaturgy, a muscular, creatively engaged, artistically vibrant approach to dramaturgy that requires thorough historical understanding, theoretical training broad and deep, and a passionate dedication to creating powerful, relevant performances of all types. Chemers also has a thing for monsters and reveals to Lyle some of his deepest fears.

Nominated for an Academy Award for her animated documentary film "Last Day of Freedom", Professor Dee Hibbert-Jones talks with guest host Lyle Troxell about her work that incorporates animation, installation, public art, and documentary film examining power and politics. She also reflects on how surreal it is to walk the red carpet.

The annual Social Documentation (SocDoc) Graduate Exhibition presents premieres of new master's thesis documentaries by nine graduate students in the Social Documentation M.F.A. program at UC Santa Cruz. In this episode, six of the students talk about their films.

Rachel Nelson, PhD, talks with guest host Lyle Troxell about her artistic journey that has led her to become the interim director of UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS). Nelson also teaches in the UCSC’s History of Art and Visual Culture department (HAVC). Currently, Nelson is co-curating a multi-sited group exhibition, Barring Freedom, engaging art, prisons, and justice, which will be shown bi-coastally in New York City, San José, and Santa Cruz.