101 Things To Do Before You Graduate Living In History ... - Alumni

computer in the gallery, recorded the
section of the gallery in which it was
located, and then found their 5" by 7"
printed shapes. The shapes were later
distributed to community members at
various locations including Hamilton
Central School, the Palace Theater,
the Poolville Community Center, and
Colgate’s quad. Each shape was signed
by McCollum and provided free of
charge.
Art and art history professor De-
Witt Godfrey coordinated the project
with McCollum, the 2010 Christian
A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Distinguished
Artist in Residence in the
Department of Art and Art History,
through the Institute for the Creative
and Performing Arts.
A team of students and Colgate
staff members contributed to the
Shapes for Hamilton project with
community research, distribution
planning, and setting up the exhibition.
“Each of his creations is unique,
yet they remain remarkably similar
to one another, like us humans,”
explained Shapes staff member Gabe
Rosen ’12, a studio art major.
Although McCollum has used
the shapes system in other projects,
this was the first time he distributed
individual shapes to each member of
a community. Shapes can now be seen
Can I have my shape, please? A Hamilton resident picks up her own individual “shape,” created
by artist Allan McCollum, from art professor DeWitt Godfrey, who invited McCollum
to bring his Shapes Project to town. McCollum can produce more than enough unique twodimensional
shapes for every person on the planet. Before the shapes were given out, they
were displayed in Little Hall’s Clifford Gallery.
Andrew Daddio
Andrew Daddio
around town, hanging in the windows
of homes, in professors’ offices,
and even in school lockers at Hamilton
Elementary.
Two receive Schupf/Lorey
Senior Art Prize
Seniors Kelly Boyle and Emily Rawdon
received the 2010 Schupf/Lorey
Senior Art Prize, which, since 2007, has
been awarded for outstanding work
as identified by Paul Schupf ’58 and
Robert McVaugh, professor of art and
art history.
Boyle, a native of New Hampshire,
was an art and art history major and
an Islamic studies minor. Her ensemble
of four strikingly inventive video
pieces, Story of Some Kind, explores
personal and media imagery in the
context of American discomfort with
ambiguity.
Rawdon, daughter of Dick Rawdon
’65, was a double major in art and art
history and theater from Kentucky.
Her photographic installation Usual
Flow-voids of the Circle of Willis are
Preserved explores the psychic mingling
of euphoria and fear associated
with epileptic seizures. In August, she
will enter the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago.
“Professor McVaugh and I worked
long and hard to choose these two
first-class art works. Owing to the
overall high quality of this year’s
senior art exhibition, several other
entries might have been chosen,” said
Schupf, who expressed special thanks
to Evan C. Lorey ’10 for his gift that allowed
Colgate to award an additional
prize this year.
The awards were given at the
senior awards convocation in
Memorial Chapel on Saturday, May
15. See a full list of award recipients at
www.colgate.edu.
Poetry that matters
Her voice was characteristically
scratchy and barely louder than a
whisper. Yet, true to form, Louise
Glück, the Pulitzer Prize–winning lyric
poet, held her audience spellbound for
45 minutes as she read nine poems
from her latest collection, A Village
Life, at the end of March.
Glück received the Pulitzer in 1993
for The Wild Iris, her sixth of 11 books
of poems. Early in her career, she also
authored Proofs & Theories, a collection
of essays on poetry that received
the PEN/Martha Albrand Award
for First Non-Fiction. Presently, she
teaches at Yale University.
Pulitzer Prize-winning lyric poet Louise
Glück reads from her latest collection,
A Village Life.
After decades of writing with
a minimalist’s precision, Glück
changed course for the poems in her
latest collection, using language that
she characterized as “more relaxed,
even gawky.” Nonetheless, the poems
she read included the “punches
to the gut” described in her introduction
by English professor Peter
Balakian. Earlier in the day, she spoke
to his Post-WWII American Poetry
class.
Scott Reu ’13, who reads his poetry
at open mics and is a member of the
student group Poetically Minded,
came to the reading eager to ask a
question that, he said, led his father
to burn reams of his own early
works. Reu wanted to know: “How
can writers, especially younger ones,
distance themselves enough from
personal experience to create poetry
that really matters?” The question
was especially apropos, not only for
the only American poet who has
twice served as judge for the prestigious
Yale Series of Younger Poets,
but for one whose work addresses
such universal issues of the human
condition as being young, coming
of age, and love affairs beginning or
ending.
“There’s a difference between the
circumstantial and the intensely
personal,” Glück said. “A dramatic
breakup with a lover can make a
great poem, but experience has to
undergo a transformation. It can’t
simply be decanted onto the page.”
Reu was encouraged. “Her
response set my mind to work,” he
said. “I am astonished that a single
answer to a single question could
have such an impact on the way I
think about poetry.”
News and views for the Colgate community
17
Brooke Ousterhout ’10