Historically Speaking: Mary Beth Heston

Mary Beth Heston has received the Murray International Travel Scholarship to participate in the Council on International Educational Exchange’s International Faculty Development Seminar, “Tradition and Transformation in Vietnam” in July.

Additionally, Mary Beth will be giving a paper in April at the ASIANetwork conference to be held in Greenville, South Carolina. Her Roundtable session is called “Paying the Piper: Asian Studies and Globalization.”

In March Mary Beth spent a week at the British Library in London completing research for a chapter of her palace architecture book called “‘An Orgy of Foreignism’: Royal Palaces in Colonial Kerala.”

On the Go: Frank Cossa

Frank Cossa presented a paper on the play Marat/Sade at The First International Congress Sade in North America, in a session titled “Sade Entre Scene et Image — Sade’s Theatre.” The paper dealt with the transformation from Weiss’ script (mainly a debate about violent revolution) to the dynamic spectacle of Peter Brook’s stage production with the Royal Shakespeare Company, featuring songs, mime, and the constant threat that the “lunatics” will take over the “asylum.” The work changes again in Brook’s film version. Shot with intimate close-ups, the “revolution” becomes more personal as well as more radical.

On Friday, March 28 Frank spoke at the University of Virginia’s Jefferson Literary and Debating Society (founded 1825) and participated on a panel discussing the topic “Is Drama Dead?” His area was contemporary film.

Frank is currently shooting a short film entitled Elevations from his own script, at various locations (but mostly in an elevator) in Charleston.

On April 11 Frank presented a paper at the annual conference of the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society, held in Charleston for the first time. His subject was “Gavin Hamilton’s Homeric Paintings and Pope’s Iliad.”

Happenin’: Marian Mazzone

Marian Mazzone will be curating the next exhibition at the Halsey Gallery during Piccolo Spoleto. The title of the show is “Yu Hong: A Woman’s Life,” featuring new work by Yu Hong, a contemporary Chinese painter from Beijing. Britta Erickson, a renowned authority on contemporary Chinese art, will deliver a lecture in conjunction with the show on May 22.

Marian has also had a paper entitled “Location, Process, Identity: Actions and Happenings in the 1960s” accepted for an international conference on modern art in Central Europe to be held June 11-15 at the Institute of Art History in Prague, Czech Republic.

By Herself: Diane Johnson

Diane Johnson presented a very well received slide lecture entitled, “The Visual Art of Zelda Fitzgerald,” on Thursday, February 21, 2003. The lecture introduced the Halsey Gallery exhibit, “Zelda by Herself.” Diane’s presentation raised the question: “Where does Zelda Fitzgerald’s style of painting fit in the history of American 20th century painting?”

Fitzgerald’s art, unlike her youth, was not well known and not an expressive part of her life until after the end of the Jazz Age, in 1929, and her subsequent breakdown in 1930. During the last fifteen years of her tragic life, Fitzgerald put her visual memory of images seen during the Parisian and American modern 1920’s into her works of art. As the exhibit title suggests, “By (and for) Herself,” she produced work solely for herself and those she loved - her child and grandchild. The lecture explored suggestive relationships of Fitzgerald’s paintings to that of “high” avant-garde paintings of European artists from Pablo Picasso to Henri Matisse, and Americans from Charles Demuth to Georgia O’Keefe, as well as to the “low” art of puppetry and ballet designs.

Alumni Update: Chip Howell

Art History graduate Chip Howell will be attending Architecture School at UNCC in the fall and plans to “continue to indulge my interests in American Art and Architectural History and hope to one day to re-enter academia in the capacity of professor once my long hours of study and work are done.”