Faculty adventures from the past summer

Summer seems like a distant memory. The current semester is in full swing as are the CVPA events. We decided to take a breather and remember those months past by catching you up with how some of our faculty spent those months.

Roann Barris, chair of the Department of Art, was accepted into and attended a weeklong workshop, STITAH: Summer Teachers Institute on Technical Art History, held at the Yale University Art Galleries and the Yale Institute for the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage. The title of this summer’s workshop was “Inherent Vice and Best Intentions.” Some of the sessions took place in conservation labs, others were dedicated to the use of art materials in order to understand their properties, some were held in the galleries. Topics included the deliberate removal of paint from painted sculpture and why this happened, the restoration of Dura Europas frescos, determinations of what colors and media are more susceptible to the effects of light, the use of microscopy and ultraviolet lights to see into and underneath paintings, and a presentation on the digital restoration of Mark Rothko’s badly faded paintings for Harvard University.

 Z.L. Feng, art professor, won Best in Show in the Southern Watercolor Society’s 38th Annual Juried Exhibition for his painting “In the Wood.” This hosted The Customs House Museum in Clarksville, Tennessee, hosted the exhibition.

Music therapy Professor Jim Borling, as a Fellow of the Association for Music and Imagery and Primary Trainer in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM), provided the first of three levels of training for professional therapists in Barcelona, Spain. The training was sponsored by the Catalan Music Therapy Association and will continue through all three levels over the next three years.

Borling also presented a continuing education session at the Association for Music and Imagery (AMI)’s bi-annual international conference in New Jersey. His session focused on the use of The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) when working with the Universal Nature of the Addictive Process. His featured session focused on addiction as a spiritual disorder, advocating an approach from the theoretical construct that all addiction is fundamentally a spiritual act.

Theatre Professor Wesley Young returned from Richmond, where he directed a production for TheatreLAB, which is nominated for a Best Ensemble Award “Artsie” from the Richmond Theatre Critics Circle. The company, in its third season, is headed by Artistic Director Deejay Gray, a Radford Theatre Alumnus and former directing student of Young's. Some of Gray's associate company artists are also Radford Theatre Alumni. The play, “C*CK,” by British playwright Mike Bartlett, tells the story of a gay couple who, at a turning point in their relationship, decide to take a break. During the separation, one of them meets and realizes he is attracted to a woman. The resulting debate brings up issues of human sexuality along with questioning what real love is. This is Young's second project with TheatreLAB, and though he has directed and acted around the country, this marked his Richmond directorial debut.

And though this was right before the first day of fall, Young portrayed Oscar Wilde in Richmond’s Quill Theatre’s “Historical Reading Series, Tainted Glory: An Evening with Oscar Wilde.” He delivered excerpts from Wilde's 1882 Richmond lecture on "Decorative Arts," and John Gay's “Diversions and Delights,” in which Wilde looked back on his remarkable, scandalous life after being released from Reading Gaol.