Celebrate the Arts!

Celebrate the Arts at Florida Gulf Coast University
Press release by Darlene Feuillebois

Florida Gulf Coast University's Department of Visual and Performing Arts presents three great cultural events in one evening: The FGCU Art Student Juried Exhibition, Senior Project Exhibition, and the Theatre Lab's production of Woyzeck. The celebration will begin on April 11th at 5:00 p.m. when audiences are invited to discover and explore the entire Arts Complex to experience a variety of events such as a live performance by the band Atrophy, a slide show highlighting life at the Arts Complex, sidewalk art, two galleries of senior art work, three outdoor installations of senior work, juried student work in the main gallery, theatre and an opening celebration providing food, drink, a DJ and introductions from the art gallery director and others.

FGCU students will be submitting their works to a jury comprised of art and gallery faculty on April 2nd and 3rd. Using a rubric of aesthetic criteria, this jury will select work for exhibition. Once the selections for the show have been made the 100 to 120 pieces will be displayed in the 2007 Art Student Juried Exhibition on view from April 11th through April 27th.

On the evening of April 11th Senior Project artists will introduce their bodies of work. The following art students will be displaying the culmination of their four-year journey:

"Untitled" by Stacy Finnell, "Elemental Being: a trip worth taking" by Amanda Van Ast, "Because We Can" by Sarah Caspersen, "Graven Images" by Anamaria Ryan, "Black Mass" by Jordana Bitner, "The Hurt Within" by Holly Miklas, "Nana's Grove" by Amanda Lidgard, "Am I Even Close To Me?" by Dena Ewing, "Every Body" by Sharon Mammano, "A Conscious Journey" by Carly Brock.

The pieces range from an array of art mediums and concepts like gender roles and domestic expectations using arrangements and assemblages of slip-cast ceramics. The inspirational and the profane merge in mixed media sculptures juxtaposing ceramics and music will also be seen at the exhibition. Other concepts such as Dena Ewing's collection "Am I Even Close to Me?", involve art and art therapy combined in mixed media and the exploration of self. Jordana Bitner's project exhibits good battling evil in a digital media graphic novel.

To end the eventful evening the Theater lab will be presenting the production of Woyzeck. The history of theatre is marked with a few dramatic works that simply stand above the rest in clear relief as the greatest of the great. One such work that rests secure in this illustrious canon is Woyzeck, a disturbing and fragmented play written by Georg Buchner. The twenty-six year old playwright died of typhus in 1837 before Woyzeck was finalized. So the world did not have an opportunity to marvel at its radical departure from the work of its contemporaries until much later when Berg introduced the story in his operatic interpretation of Buchner's play. New scholarship has now rendered a performance text that seems faithful to the original and this version promises to provide all the power, emotion, and beauty that Buchner first penned. Woyzeck is the timely story of the human animal demeaned into committing animalistic acts of violence in response to abject poverty, oppressive regimes, and a perpetual state of war.

Woyzeck will begin Wednesday, April 11 and continue through Sunday April 15. The play will then run the following week starting Wednesday April 18 through Sunday April 22. The curtain will rise at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday and at 2:00 p.m. for the Sunday matinee. Tickets are priced at 10 dollars for general admission, 5 dollars for Non- FGCU student tickets, 5 dollars for FGCU Faculty and Staff, and free to FGCU students. Students will need to present their I.D. at the front door. Tickets can be purchased in advance by calling the box office at 590-7268.

All are especially encouraged to attend the opening night celebration on April 11th. Festivities will begin at 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Come for the reception and stay for the play. This extraordinary event will take place throughout the arts complex. Be sure not to miss out! For more information please contact Assistant Curator for the Art Gallery, Anica Sturdivant at (239) 590- 7199.