Bogad receives grant from Creative Work Fund

Professor L.M. Bogad (Theatre and Dance) has been awarded a grant from the Creative Work Fund. The grants are given to Greater Bay Area artists collaborating with nonprofit organizations to develop new works of theater, traditional art, dance, poetry, arts activism and more.

For his grant, performance artist Bogad is collaborating with North Bay Jobs with Justice to create Sinfonía de la Justicia/A Symphony of Justice, which will engage indigenous farmworkers in Sonoma County in composing and performing trilingual monologues, Oaxacan/Zapotec music, and digital looping “economusic,” all based on the economic data of their lives and working conditions.

The Creative Work Fund was initiated in 1994 by four Bay Area foundations that wanted to contribute to the creation of new artworks and support local artists. It is now a program of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by generous grants from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Creative Work Fund grants celebrate the role of artists as problem-solvers and the making of art as a profound contribution to intellectual inquiry and to the strengthening of communities.

Read the Department of Threatre and Dance story here.

Brett Snyder wins regional AIA Merit Award for Roommate House

Brett Snyder, associate professor of design, along with Irene Cheng, associate professor of architecture at the California College of the Arts, have received a regional American Institute of Architects (AIA) Award for their project Roommate House in Oakland.

As principals of the firm Cheng+Snyder, an Oakland based experimental/ multi-disciplinary studio, Snyder and Cheng produce work at a wide range of scales, from books to buildings. The pair are especially interested in projects that use architecture to address urgent social issues. 

Over the last decade, accessory dwelling units (ADUs) have become a crucial area of housing design and construction in metropolitan areas of California, as policy makers have come to see backyard cottages as an important part of the solution to the state’s dire housing crisis.

The impetus behind the Roommate House was to see if the project could fit two units within a single ADU with a small footprint of just 550 square feet in order to meet a typical need: space for two roommates who want to economize on expenses through sharing a home, yet also desire their own rooms. A shared kitchen, bathroom, and living area are thus located at the center of the dwelling, attached to two bedrooms—one in a loft mezzanine and the other on the ground floor. Both bedrooms have their own small terraces.  

The Roommate House was designed with flexibility in mind. It can serve to house two unrelated roommates (giving each their own private outdoor spaces), or it can work for a small family with a downstairs bedroom for parents and a loft for a child—or vice versa, the parents in the loft and a children’s bedroom on the ground floor. By placing the kitchen and bathroom in the center, flanked by two equal spaces, the plan provides flexibility to accommodate different kinds of families and living arrangements.

Read the Department of Design story here.

Alumna receives regional Emmy 

Kristin Orlando (B.A. theatre and math ‘08) and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra won a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award in 2022 for their long-form video of Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21. She is vice president of Operations at the NJSO, and in that capacity, the film company, the orchestra and Orlando jointly won the award.

The award-winning performance can be viewed here.

Prior to joining NJSO, she was production manager for Carmel Bach Festival and Carolina Ballet, production stage manager for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts and production scheduler for Central City Opera. 

Read the Department of Theatre and Dance story here.

Professor awarded the Italian Council Prize for Contemporary Art

Professor Fiamma Montezemolo (Cinema and Digital Media) was awarded the Italian Council 11 prize for Contemporary Art granted by the Ministry of Culture in Italy, in collaboration with ON, NERO Publishers. 

The cultural partners for the grant are: Museo delle Civiltà, Rome; Museum of Cultures, Milan; Wallach Gallery of Columbia University, New York; Cátedra Max Aub transdiscipline in art and technology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Université de Genève, Départment d’Histoire de l’Art; Humanities Institute, University of California, Davis. 

Read full story here.