Arts Division Newsletter

Natalya Gonzalez grew up in Los Angeles. As a kid, she loved to sketch and draw with pastels. She came to UC Santa Cruz to study biology since she was interested in research and all the labs on campus. Studying the subject in a beautiful place like Santa Cruz seemed like a great fit to her.

Lee Chang Ming’s work Chromatic is currently on view at the NUS Museum in Singapore. Chromatic is a series of experimental photograms that looks at the transience of memory and corporeality of photography as a medium. The exhibition brings together individuals who use photography as a means of visual research that complements their respective disciplines and those who employ it as a form of artistic research.

While making Yours in Sisterhood, UC Santa Cruz professor and documentary filmmaker, Irene Lusztig, went to 32 states to film people reading and responding to letters sent to Ms. Magazine in the 1970s. One of towns she went to was Richland, in Eastern Washington to meet Trisha Pritikin, who chose as her backdrop for reading her letter a huge logo of a mushroom cloud that covered the back wall of the high school.

Ricky Lomeli, the Music Department Manager at UC Santa Cruz, started playing drums in 5th grade. No one in his family played an instrument, but he had some friends in bands and thought it would be fun.

"Any chance to return to my alma mater and encourage young minds to explore their own original creative pursuits is a blessing and a privilege that I do not take lightly," says Ken Corday. "I am forever in awe at the vibrance and spirit of the UCSC community. I hope that students leave with a renewed sense of peace as they continue with their scholastic journeys. Go Slugs!" On Nov. 17, Corday will perform in a solo piano recital just for students, faculty and staff, at UCSC’s Music Center.

The Trail of Tears Association is a national nonprofit with a mission to identify, protect, and preserve Trail of Tears National Historic Trail resources and to promote awareness of the Trail’s legacy, including the removal stories of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole, consistent with the National Park Service’s trail plan. Joseph Erb, Assistant Professor, Film and Digital Media, spoke at their 26th annual conference (Oct. 16-18) and his animated film Grandma was an Outlaw also was screened there.

Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department, Amy Beal’s book "Terrible Freedom: The Life and Work of Lucia Dlugoszewski," published by University of California Press, has received a 2023 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award. ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) is a historically important entity, started in 1914. It is a performing rights organization of 940,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers. Beal is also the author of New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification, Carla Bley, and Johanna Beyer.

Leta Miller’s book Union Divided: Black Musicians’ Fight for Labor Equality was recently published by the University of Illinois Press. It is an in-depth account of racial segregation within the American Federation of Musicians. Broad in scope and rich in detail, Union Divided illuminates the complex working world of unionized Black musicians and the AFM’s journey to racial inclusion.

Noah Lucé's (Lecturer in PPD) production of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing won Best Theatre Production of 2023 from the Monterey County Weekly. Lucé set the production in the Hollywood Canteen circa the 1940's and featured PPD Alumni Abbi Coomes and Xander Young. 

Jennifer Parker, Professor, Art, and founding director of OpenLab, presented Sensing the Wrack: The Symbiotic Relationship between the Oceans and Humans, a creative field research project at the Imagining America National Gathering, an annual convening of public scholars, artists, designers, students, and cultural organizers who are addressing the most pressing issues of our time. The gathering offered participants a three-day immersive experience in which to connect, dialogue, learn, and strategize around the ways to build new knowledge and inspire collective imagination toward transformative education and action.

FDM undergraduate alumna Frances Horwitz’s film Who? was screened at the opening of the Small File Media Festival in Vancouver, Canada. The film was developed in FILM 171S: Experimenting with Small File Media class taught by Ph.D. Candidate Marilia Kaisar. Who? explores the avatar body and navigates the obstruction and distortion that the digital age places upon us. “In this piece, my character inhabits several different types of bodies— monster bodies, animal bodies, etc., all of which I am trying on in an attempt to dispossess from my human self. My questions in making this film were: Which bodies allow for freedom from social convention?”

The American Academy in Rome 2023 New York Gala recently awarded Sir Isaac Julien, Distinguished Professor of the Arts, filmmaker, installation artist and their 2016 Resident, with an honorary medal. He also currently has a large survey exhibition in K21 Museum in Düsseldorf, Germany that reveals the breadth of his groundbreaking oeuvre from its emergence in the 1980s to the present.



Continuing lecturer in Music-Guitar, Christopher Mallett’s album, Justin Holland: Guitar Works and Arrangements was highlighted in Acoustic Guitar magazine. The recording focuses on Black classical guitarist, Justin Holland. Mallett breathes new life into music that has languished since Holland’s passing more than a century ago. “This project has been dear to my heart for many years, and I am excited to share it with the world,” Mallett says. The album is currently under consideration for a Grammy nomination.

CounterPulse Theater in San Francisco hosted dance-maker Marina Magalhães, Assistant Professor of Dance at UC Santa Cruz, and a select group of collaborators on Oct. 27-28 to engage in the generative body practices of her Creative Capital Award-winning project, Body as a Crossroads. This process laboratory allowed the dancers to share creative space without the pressures of “productivity”, and serve as a curated & care-full way for Magalhães to begin integrating with the larger Bay Area community.

Film and Digital Media (FDM) Social Documentation alumna and third-year FDM Ph.D. student, Mahshid Modares, was interviewed by Best Film Awards in London for her second documentary, Sanctions on Us (May 2023). The film won Best Human Rights Short at the Nashville Independent Filmmakers Festival (Summer 2023) and Best Documentary Film at the Indobali International Film Festival in Indonesia (Summer 2023). Her first film, Sanctions on the Sky, won Best Human Rights Film at the Berlin Shorts Film Festival (Spring 2023). And, Athens International Art Film Festival published a review on Sanctions on the Sky in August 2023.

Associate Professor of Art, Karolina Karlic’s arts research initiative, Unseen California, opens a group exhibition of new works at New York City’s Penumbra Foundation – Field notes from Unseen California: Aspen Mays, Dionne Lee, Karolina Karlic, Mercedes Dorame and Tarrah Krajnak. The exhibition is on view through January 2, 2024.

Russell Rodríguez, Assistant Professor of Music, has recently been selected for the prestigious Américo Paredes Prize. The Paredes Prize recognizes exemplary achievements that build upon Paredes’ cross-disciplinary, socially engaged legacy which recognizes excellence in integrating scholarship and engagement with the people and communities one studies. Américo Paredes (1915–1999), a leading scholar in folklore and Greater Mexico studies, worked relentlessly throughout his life, in the words of Olga Najera-Ramirez, “to better understand, represent, and respect the rights, lives, and culture of US Latinas and Latinos.”