1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Events

Opening ceremonies for Transylvania’s new athletics field Oct. 19

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LEXINGTON Ky.—Transylvania University has transformed the site of an old tobacco warehouse into a $10 million athletics facility that will benefit not only the school but also the entire community. Join us Saturday, Oct. 19, to celebrate the opening of the new field at the 555 West Fourth Street facility. Opening day events will include an introduction of sports teams and words from President R. Owen Williams around 3 p.m. and games, music and face painting. A full day of sports will kick off at 1 p.m. with a women’s soccer game. The field will be home to the university’s soccer, lacrosse, field hockey and track and field teams. A grandstand that seats more than 800 spectators will overlook an eight-lane track and artificial turf field lighted for nighttime intercollegiate competition. The field is part of the Athletics Complex, which will include a field house with locker and conference rooms, office space, a sports medicine facility, concessions, a ticket booth and public restrooms. The field house is expected to be open in early January. “We’re absolutely excited,” Athletics Director Holly K. Sheilley said of the project. “It’s a state-of-the-art facility that I think the community and the university can be very proud of.” The public is invited to come out and cheer on our Pioneers and attend the opening ceremonies. With this project, Transylvania is helping revitalize this area of downtown. The site is near the future campus of Bluegrass

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Transylvania University’s third annual STUDIO 300 features vanguard of digital arts and music movement

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University’s Studio 300: Digital Art and Music Festival showcases the cutting edge of art in the digital age with nine exhibitions, three concerts and four lectures presented by 33 musicians and 130 artists in just two days. The festival, free and open to the community, is Oct. 4 and 5. Exploring creative manifestations of technology is the festival’s focus. Timothy Polashek, director of the festival and assistant professor of music at Transylvania, emphasizes the importance of innovation: “All the artists and musicians involved are also technologists who build their own tools, instead of using preexisting tools in traditional ways. This is one of the factors that makes Studio 300 really exciting.” Polashek is himself a software creator and an internationally recognized composer. Studio 300’s exhibitions include “Waves & Currents: An Exploration of Sound, Light, and Time,” by Montréal artist Lenka Novakova and Boston artist Georgie Friedman, in Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery through Oct. 11. Other notable exhibitions include “Vox-Novus 60×60 Video Mix” and the BYTE Gallery International Exhibition. “60×60” is a one-hour multimedia performance made up of sixty 60-second or shorter compositions by artists from around the world. The BYTE Gallery International Exhibition will feature 45 works, selected from several hundred internationally submitted entries. The BYTE gallery features video, audio and still images from all over the world, including Iran, Germany, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Japan, Italy and France. Three multi-artist concerts and four Art Talks over the two days

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Alt-folk group Vandaveer to visit Transylvania on Sept. 19

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LEXINGTON, Ky—Nationally known alt-folk rocker and 2000 Transylvania University graduate Mark Heidinger returns to campus Thursday, Sept. 19, for a free concert and lecture. Heidinger performs under the name Vandaveer with a cycling cast of band members, the latest being co-vocalist Rose Guerin, whose voice has been compared to Emmylou Harris’. Currently on a national tour, the duo will perform murder ballads from the CD Oh, Willie, Please. Last year, the web-based 78 Project asked Heidinger to select public domain songs and record them with a single microphone and a 1930s Presto direct-to-acetate disk recorder. Originally the plan was to record the well-known murder ballad “Pretty Polly.” Although the band ended up covering another ballad, Heidinger was attracted by the “darker side of the human condition” and went on to record 11 murder ballads for this new release. Reflecting on his time as an English major at Transylvania, Heidinger says, “I began to learn how to read and think critically, as an adult. You apply that to your artistic trade almost inherently at that point. You become a chief and strident critic of your own writing. Beyond exposing me to important writers and great writing, the English department taught me how to think.” Transylvania art professor Kurt Gohde created the album artwork for Vandaveer’s 2007 release Grace and Speed. Heidinger will talk about the formation of the band and sources of inspiration for Oh, Willie Please during a lecture Thursday,

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Transylvania kicks off “Still Overcoming: Striving for Inclusiveness,” a year-long celebration of racial and ethnic diversity

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—The year 1963 was a watershed for race relations—both nationally and at Transylvania University. Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. Around the same time, Lula Morton Drewes ‘67 became the first African-American student to enroll in the regular B.A. degree program at Transylvania, an act that heralded the beginning of desegregation at the university. Drewes will soon mark the 50th anniversary of her enrollment with a return to campus. She’ll speak at Transylvania’s fall convocation, which formally opens the academic year, at 7 p.m. Sept. 15 in Haggin Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. The convocation will kick off a year-long celebration and discussion at Transylvania titled “Still Overcoming: Striving for Inclusiveness.” The program will focus on the advent of a more enlightened attitude toward racial and ethnic diversity, which Drewes’s arrival on campus has come to symbolize, and on other events that have furthered this purpose over the years. Additional speakers, scholarly presentations, panel discussions, film screenings, and music and artistic programs are among the other activities being considered for Still Overcoming. It will center not only on Transylvania’s experiences, but also on related issues in America both past and present. “Race is obviously still an issue in this country, and we want it to be the starting point for our conversation at Transylvania as we celebrate 50 years of desegregation,” said Eduardo

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Transylvania University’s Morlan Gallery opens 2013-14 with large-scale video installations

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—An exhibition incorporating video and sound waves to evoke the sights and sounds of moving water kicks off the Morlan Gallery season. “Waves & Currents: An Exploration of Sound, Light, and Time” opens Friday, Sept. 6, and runs through Friday, Oct. 11. The exhibition features two video installations: Dark Swell by Boston artist Georgie Friedman and River by Montreal artist Lenka Novakova. The title “Waves & Currents” references not only the ocean waves and river currents visually represented in the video installations, but also the media in which the artists are working: sound waves and electrical current. “The combination of water and electricity is normally a cause for alarm, but in this case, the results are electrifying in the most positive sense,” says Morlan Gallery director Andrea Fisher. Novakova’s multi-channel video installation “River” transforms the entire gallery space by simulating the experience of being caught up in a river current. The installation consists of multiple conical screens suspended from the ceiling leaving space in-between for participants to walk comfortably. Multiple projectors display river images on the screens. Meanwhile, Friedman’s “Dark Swell” depicts an ocean wave rumbling on a 9-foot-tall and 14-foot-wide wave-like form. The two-channel video installation is projected in various wave frequencies so it moves around the viewer, while a pulsating audio-scape emanates from speakers. Georgie Friedman is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects include large-scale video installations, single and multi-channel videos and several photographic series. She has lived,

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