Category: The Rabbit Hole

by Jules Talbot (Gallatin BA ’21)

In 2018, Jules Talbot received both a Gold Key and Gold Medal for Comic Art in Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, one of nine medals given out that year nationally. One of their comics was featured in the Art.Write.Now.2018 National Exhibition, touring to museums across five states, and displayed in the SMFA Student Art Exhibition at Tufts University.

by Ingrid Amelia Apgar, BA ’20

When the world is upside-down, my transgression is shifting my own orientation, inverting along with it. Through disruption, displacement, injury, and ruin, my solace comes in the form of a single tuft of carpet or a wandering line of wood grain.

Credit:
Ingrid Amelia Apgar, BA ’20
Instagram:@ingridameliaapgar
Website: https://ingridameliaapgar.weebly.com

Music: Dear Luna II by Nived Singh (@nivedsingh1023)

by Prof. Kwami T. Coleman’s Spring 2020’s ARTS-UG1345: Music Improvisation class at Gallatin.

Credits
[00:00] Nairobi Hilaire Seabrooks — “Guidebook Gone” (feat. Kwami Coleman)
[01:50] IZ Burns — “Escape” (feat. Jackson, Jalen, Cam, Noah, Brianna, and Chloe)
[05:13] Brianna Sung — “Quara Aura” (feat. IZ, Jackson, Reid, Surabhi, and Jalen)
[07:54] Cameron Centrella — “untitled” (features unspecified)
[11:34] Kat Liu — “Stuck Inside My Head” (feat. Jalen, IZ, Miranda, and Dizzee Rascal)
[13:55] Jackson Plut — “untitled” (feat. Miranda, Kat, Sam, Reid, Myles, and IZ)
[17:11] Noah Guerin — “People’s Dome” (features unspecified)
[21:19] Nairobi Hilaire Seabrooks — “Socially Distant” (feat. Kwami Coleman)
[22:17] Miranda Levingston — “Seven PM” (feat. Reid, Cameron, Jalen, Noah)
[25:58] Reid Sherman — “You Know” (feat. Jackson, Jalen, Chloe, Myles and IZ)
[28:50] Chloe Parker — “Jazz It Up” (feat. Jackson, Niah, Surabhi, Brianna, and IZ)
[31:30] Sam Colman — “Float” (feat. Jackson, Jalen, IZ, Chloe; co-produced by Joe Simmons)
[34:11] Myles Jackson — “Quarantine Tunage” (feat. Miranda and IZ)
[37:51] Jalen Sariñana Edington — “Wasted” (feat. Reid, IZ, Miranda, Surabhi, Jackson, Noah, and Myles)
[41:30] Surabhi Raj — “Wild Air” (feat. Miranda, Noah, Reid, Chloe, and IZ)
[43:47] Nairobi Hilaire Seabrooks — “Throne Tone” (feat. Kwami Coleman)

Improvised music is full of contradictions. It’s both a spontaneous and a practiced form of expression: a real-time and premeditated art form. It’s a generous offering to the listener and a self-serving act for the individual musician. Improvisation is as carnal as it is cerebral, and the roles of the performer and audience are ever entangled. Completed within the two challenging and limiting months of Covid-19 quarantine, the Spring 2020 Arts-UG1345: Music Improvisation class at Gallatin presents, Quarantunes, a genre-bending recording meant to inspire, reflect, and validate the ineffable sentiments of these unprecedented and overwhelming times. Revolving around the class’s central theme of the “Improvisative” (a theory proposed by music scholar Tracy McMullen), we sought the spontaneous expression and interchange of musical ideas, between individual performers and now you, our audience, in a way that draws from the circumstances of the immediate present. We decided to create and publicly share this album in lieu of the live performance scheduled at the semester’s end.

Planned over a number of Zoom sessions, which included several (virtual) digital audio production (DAW) workshops, Quarantunes is a bass-heavy, live vocal- and sample-driven album, comprised of each individual student artist’s interpolation of lyrics, harmonies, melodies and rhythms submitted by their fellow classmates. We had only the key (A-minor) and tempo (120 bpm) as agreed upon parameters, and each member of our class submitted three fragments of music, organized by category (melody, harmony, rhythm), and a set of lyrics over Google Drive. Some of these fragments were then selected and manipulated by each member of the class for their unique song, making the finished pieces an amalgamation of our collective creative thinking and musical talent. It’s this collaborative effort that contributed to the variety of sound you’ll hear here in spite of the otherwise basic parameters (and we like to think of our tracks as being musical mad-libs). The diverse and collaborative nature of this project — where the final tracks were generated both through improvisation and collaboration — has made our album really one of its own stylistic kind.

We recognize the unique power of live, in-person performance, but the current pandemic made such a thing impossible. As a result, this album was a new way of collaborating with each other from afar in the same way that so many people across the world have had to in these last two months. As the world remains in an existentially unpredictable state, we see improvisation as a necessary tool for survival, and it was our goal for this project to capture exactly that ideal. If you’re looking for a sonic life-raft to withstand the proverbial storm, please accept our humble offering of genre-bending sounds that traverse the harmonious, the dissonant, the soulful, and the heavy-hitting. These pieces are composed of the sounds of life under quarantine that held us steadfast. We hope our offering can be of help to you too.

Enjoy.

by Jaime Arredondo’s class “The Mexican Muralists, Their Indigenous Influences, and the American Artists They Influenced”

Covid-19 has affected almost every community in the United States and throughout the Americas. Especially impacted are the poor, and communities of color. Inevitably, this has exposed enormous disparities in health care, and class.

As of the writing of this piece, May 26, 2020, we will soon surpass 100,000 deaths within the United States. Many more will be infected. In the face of such horror Native Americans, and others, for millennia have turned to spiritual guidance by calling upon indigenous goddesses/spirits to heal, and comfort. Two important Mesoamerican goddesses often cited are: Tlazolteotl, known as “The Eater of Filth, or Excrement”, and Tlaltecuhtli, known as the “Goddess of the Earth”.

In my class, “The Mexican Muralists, their Indigenous Influences, and the American Artists they Influenced”, students were asked to create individual works that could be collaged into a large “virtual mural” that addressed the effects of the pandemic (a physical mural could not be created as a result of the pandemic). The title of the mural is “Art in the time of Covid-19: How indigenous goddesses can Heal and Transform”.

Most students chose to depict the aforementioned goddesses as they are not only able to transform, and cleanse, they also possess distinct functions. For example, the specific purpose of Tlazolteotl is to cleanse the transgressions or “sins” of individuals. As such things are considered “filth”, or “excrement”, she aides in eating them away. The result is the rebirth of a new person. Thus, she is often seen in hock position giving birth.

She is shown here individually, and depicted in a mural by Diego Rivera, entitled “A History of Medicine”.

Tlaltecuhtli, “Goddess of the Earth”, or “The Earth Monster”, has the function of cleansing the entire planet in the event that our planet falls ill from a specific malady such as pollution or climate change.

Tlaltecuhtli is shown here as it was discovered in 2006 in Mexico City.

Our collective desire through creating the mural is that societies and governments will come to accept that the physical and mental health of families and communities is paramount. Public health over profits must always be a priority.

I want to thank Courtney Curd for her hard work and generosity in collecting and placing the works in the murals, and for the creation of the mural itself. I also want to thank my students for their invaluable input and dedication and for Zooming in through this difficult time.

by Amanda Charnley (BA ’09)

instagram: @artofamanda

An homage to the “conjur woman,” a lesser known, recurring figure in the work of Romare Bearden. This figure synthesizes African traditions and wisdom, Indigenous cultural practices, and Christian rituals.

for more photos visit @artofamanda and her post here