Five years after a devastating fire, CU Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose reflects on the significance of the renowned cathedral’s Dec. 7 reopening

When University of Colorado Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose thinks of the famed cathedral Notre Dame in Paris, his mind goes back to when he lived near the site while researching European art and architecture.

He’d make a point of walking past the church every morning―repeated encounters that made him appreciate how much the building is part of the life of the city.

Kirk Ambrose, a CU Boulder professor of classics, notes that since its beginnings, Notre Dame has been the center of Paris.

He recalls that there was a regular vendor who sold pet birds in the cathedral’s shadow.

“I relished the entanglements of soaring towers and buttresses vis-à-vis these caged flying animals,” says Ambrose, whose great aunt was married in Notre Dame. “In other words, Notre Dame offers a lens through which one can understand Paris. This notion is underscored by the vista from its towers, which offer unparalleled views of the city.”

Ambrose, a professor in the CU Boulder Department of Classics who studies and teaches the art and architecture of medieval Europe, says from its beginnings in the 12th century, Notre Dame was at the center of Paris. (It is literally the city’s center: In front of the church, a small plate engraved with a compass is known as “point zéro des routes de France,” which marks where all distances to and from Paris are measured.)

Five years after the April 15, 2019, fire that collapsed the cathedral’s famed spire, consumed its wooden roof and heavily damaged its upper walls and vaults, Notre Dame is set to reopen to the public Dec. 7, with the first mass held the following day.

In his public remarks following the fire, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “Notre-Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our lives.”

In the more than 800 years since its first stone was laid, Notre Dame has not only come to symbolize Paris but become one of the world’s great buildings. When it burned in 2019, people around the globe mourned, and its reopening is garnering international celebration.

An 800-year history

Throughout its multi-century history, Notre Dame has not been stagnant, but has reflected the shifting currents of culture, Ambrose says.

“This was the seat of the bishop of Paris and was a stone’s throw from the king’s residence,” Ambrose says. “Given these royal associations, there were many renovation campaigns to keep the building looking stylish, in line with the latest building trends.”

During the Middle Ages, the streets surrounding the cathedral were home to bookshops, ivory shops and other niche workshops. “The towers of the cathedral loomed large, both physically and conceptually, over these artistic activities,” Ambrose says.

After extensive renovation following a devastating April 2019 fire, Notre Dame will reopen to the public Saturday, and the first mass will be said Sunday. (Photo: Stephane De Sakutin/Getty Images)

The height of 's tower is 226 feet, and its spire is 315 feet. Until the Eiffel Tower was completed, Notre Dame was the tallest structure in Paris.

Historians note that the cathedral was an easy target during the Napoleonic Wars, when it took such a pummeling that officials considered razing it. To boost awareness for the church and revive interest in Gothic architecture, the renowned author Victor Hugo wrote the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1831.

Ambrose says Hugo’s novel made the building a vivid character for readers’ imaginations. The book was met with immediate success, and in 1844 King Louis Philippe ordered that Notre Dame be restored.

“By the way, Hugo was friends with many of the leading architectural historians of the day,” Ambrose says. “Thanks largely to Hugo, the building was subsequently the subject of films, of garden sculptures, of gargoyles, etc.”

But five years ago, all of Notre Dame’s beauty and history was nearly lost. According to news reports, a fire broke at about 6:20 p.m. April 15, and in fewer than two hours, the spire collapsed, bringing down a cascade of 750 tons of stone and lead. It’s been speculated that the fire was linked to ongoing renovation work, but officials have yet to name a definitive cause. By 9.45 p.m., the fire was finally brought under control.

Saturday, the cathedral will reopen supported by about 340,000 donors from 150 countries who contributed almost $1 billion.

Might Notre Dame become even more popular after the fire and subsequent restoration? Ambrose says there’s reason to believe it will.

“As a medievalist, I can say that fires often make buildings more popular,” he says. “The great cathedral of Chartres [a Catholic cathedral in Chartres, France, much of which was destroyed by a fire in 1194] leaps to mind as a comparison. In medieval lore, fires were often interpreted as expressions of divine will; that’s to say, they were interpreted as commands to make a building even more splendid.

“In the case of Notre Dame, the fire will, I believe, also make us appreciate this remarkable monument all the more, not taking this historical legacy for granted.”

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Whether in a somber performance in the National Portrait Gallery or in her wry takes on Native humor, Anna Tsouhlarakis follows her heart

Anna Tsouhlarakis was a self-described “math and science nerd” in high school, even representing the United States at the International Science and Engineering Fair in her senior year. But while studying at Dartmouth College, she took classes that interested her, particularly studio art and Native American Studies.

“That’s where my heart was—and still is,” Tsouhlarakis says. Math and science nerds might not be expected to love art, but following her heart—and contravening stereotypes—was a wise choice.

In recent years, Tsouhlarakis’ art has appeared as a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and New York City’s , and it has appeared in Switzerland, Greece, Canada and in dozens of venues in the United States. In 2023, she performed and exhibited her work in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Anna Tsouhlarakis' "She Must Be a Matriarch" sculpture, part of the "Indigenous Absurdities" exhibition. (Photo: Wes Magyar)

Just as she broadened the notion of what might interest a budding scientist, she now transcends stereotypes of what constitutes Native American art. Tsouhlarakis, an assistant professor of art and art history at the University of Colorado Boulder, works in sculpture, installation, video and performance and is of Navajo, Creek and Greek descent.

At the National Portrait Gallery, her work drew on those strengths and backgrounds. There, she performed and showed , which commemorated murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.

In 2018, the Urban Indian Health Institute released . As of 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women, but only 116 were logged into the Department of Justice’s database, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

“I knew there was nobody more important that I could highlight in terms of their story,” Tsouhlarakis observed. Her work featured missing-person posters of indigenous women. In a video recording of one performance, she carries a sculpture topped with a poster seeking information about Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, who was murdered in 2019 in Montana.

Tsouhlarakis notes that most of her art is not activist, but rather expands upon long-held expectations of Native American art. Her father is a Navajo silversmith, and she grew up going with him to art markets, shows and galleries.

“There was this expectation of Native art to always be beautiful, and for the aesthetic to be very perfect and for it to be very serious,” she observed, adding that she rebelled against those expectations.

Performance of Anna Tsouhlarakis "Portrait of an Indigenous Womxn [Removed]" (2023) at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. (Photo: Matailong Du/courtesy Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery)

“I want to make things that question that expectation of Native American art, and for me, humor does that as well.” That humor was evident in her 2023 exhibition titled “Indigenous Absurdities,” at MCA Denver.

Tsouhlarakis, who is the mother of three young children, described a key moment in which Native humor seemed an obvious way to frame Native art. While at a powwow in Montana, she overheard two Crow women conversing.

“One said, ‘You never come by to see me,’ and the other responded that she didn’t know where she lived,” Tsouhlarakis told a New York writer. “Then, one said that the other didn’t ever call them, and she said: ‘Well, you don’t even have a phone.’ Then they just burst out laughing—like almost falling off the bench.”

Such everyday observations underlie textual work like HER FRYBREAD ISN’T THAT GOOD and HER BRAIDS ARE ALWAYS TOO LOOSE. Humor, Tsouhlarakis noted, is a good coping mechanism in times of hardship, which Native communities know very well.

Tsouhlarakis’ art has been recognized and supported by a host of organizations. This year, she won a and a , and she’s also been recognized with more than two dozen other awards and fellowships. Also this year, she has artist residencies in New Hampshire and Maine.

In addition to her BA from Dartmouth, Tsouhlarakis holds an MFA from Yale University. She joined the CU Boulder faculty in 2019.

Top image: Performance of Anna Tsouhlarakis' "Portrait of an Indigenous Womxn [Removed]" (2023) at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. (Photo: Matailong Du/courtesy Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery)

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Hands-on project lets CU Boulder intermediate ceramics students create functional and unique pieces for Boulder’s Café Aion restaurant

A bowl is not just a bowl.

It may seem like the simplest thing in the world, but it exists at the nexus of form and function—able to live as art, but not useful in a restaurant if it can’t contain the gazpacho.

So, Kim Dickey’s intermediate ceramics students learned a particular kind of balance, meeting the needs of clients as well as their own artistic vision—and doing it in multiples of 12.

   See more photos of the intermediate ceramics dishes made for Café Aion

“I enjoyed creating pieces that would actually be used for their intended purpose instead of sitting on my shelf or being dumped into a trash can,” says Dylan Xu, a senior majoring in strategic communications-advertising. “What I learned is that you will break more than half of the plates you make.”

Dickey, a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Art and Art History and associate chair for arts practices, and her intermediate ceramics students recently completed an unusual project in which they partnered with in Boulder to create one-of-a-kind ceramic dishes for some of the restaurant’s menu items.

For the week beginning Nov. 6, Café Aion patrons enjoyed French onion soup and chocolate torte, crispy cauliflower and kale salad and shakshuka from ceramics the students custom made for the dishes and the restaurant. At the end of their meals, patrons were invited to complete comment cards, sharing their experiences of eating from handmade dishes.

CU Boulder Professor Kim Dickey and her intermediate ceramics students created hand-made ceramics in partnership with Café Aion chef and owner Dakota Soifer.

“I thoroughly enjoyed all of the unique styles of dishes!” wrote one, while another patron noted, “It was nice, and I loved looking at them.”

“It was so exciting to have the opportunity to work with a wonderful restaurant, to learn how to work with a client and meet their needs, to work to a deadline, and then experience what it means to have your art received in the real world,” Dickey says.

An artistic and practical challenge

At the beginning of the fall semester, Dickey contacted Dakota Soifer, owner and chef of Café Aion, about a possible collaboration. She was involved in a similar project at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received her bachelor of fine arts degree, and knew how much students could learn from “developing pieces for a client and having that kind of public reception,” she explains.

Soifer, a CU Boulder graduate in architecture, was immediately on board: “I went to CU and have a sweet spot for being in school and being creative and that whole scene,” he says. “Café Aion’s a small, independent restaurant. It’s funky; it’s not super big, so we have the opportunity that a larger, more corporate restaurant can’t do if we decide we’re going to change all of our plates. Plus, I really wanted to support students and give them a chance to have this real-world experience.”

Early in the semester, Dickey and her students visited the restaurant to talk with Soifer, discuss his menu and get a feel for the restaurant’s atmosphere. Then, they each designed a prototype dish for a specific menu item based on the cuisine and Soifer’s needs. Dickey asked the students to not only create their dishes based on the menu item, but to bring in two outside influences to inform their designs.

Soifer visited the ceramics studio to offer rigorous but generous feedback, so the students adapted their designs as needed.

“We talked about how, first and foremost, it needs to be functional,” Soifer says. “If it’s going to have some sauce in it or a broth, it needs a rim on it, and we don’t want the edges to be too sharp or too angular. We want guests to be able to get that spoon in the corner and get that last bit of taste. We also have to think about how are we going to set this down without getting our fingers in customers’ food? Is it going to sit level on the table?”

The initial goal was to produce 20 plates each, “but we realized that was too many and decided to reduce it to 12 finished pieces per student,” Dickey says, adding that during each class period students were making between five and 10 dishes so that they could experiment with weight, size and finishes.

“I learned a lot about making multiples and trying to get each bowl to be the same and to be stackable,” says Micaela Del Cid, a senior double majoring in art practices and sociology. “I also learned that I don’t enjoy making things exactly the same, because I am not skilled enough and I love uniqueness. I learned that I could make it enjoyable by doing different designs on each bowl.” 

Intermediate ceramics student Katie Sieker at Café Aion packing dishes she made.

Ivy Edberg, a senior studying art practices, added that she “learned a lot about the standards of restaurants when it comes to the quality of tableware.”

Bringing people together

After completing their 12 dishes, Dickey and her students took them to Café Aion, where they were used in place of some of the restaurant’s regular dishes for the week of Nov. 6.

Alicia Bolstad, a senior majoring in art, created a dish for the restaurant’s baked brie dessert, drawing inspiration from Moroccan architecture and tile motifs, and creating a plate shape that was based on a beautiful doorway. Bailey Diamond, a senior majoring in art practices and journalism, created a dish intended for the kale salad, “but they ended up being used to serve a number of dishes, which was really exciting.

“I love wheel throwing and knew from the start that I wanted to create a wide, wheel-thrown bowl,” Diamond says. “I took inspiration from the dish itself—the visual fullness of a big salad, and the comforting nature of it being shared among people.”

Dickey and her students returned to Café Aion Nov. 13 to gather their dishes and, if they wanted, leave one there as a memento of the week. Soifer says that restaurant patrons loved the project—during the week the students’ dishes were in use, each table had a small sign explaining who had made them—and that the students successfully aligned their artistic ideas with the restaurant’s needs and funky, eclectic vibe.

“I was so heart-warmed by this project,” Diamond says. “Seeing my dishes used in a restaurant was something I had dreamed about and wanted before this experience, and having that desire fulfilled was incredible. It was a beautiful experience to see how much this project brought people together.”

Top image: plates made by intermediate ceramics student Amanda Jack

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In his Distinguished Research Lecture Nov. 28, Professor Kirk Ambrose will discuss how institutions used art to authenticate religious relics, as well as condemn counterfeiting

During the Middle Ages in Europe, religious relics were highly prized—not just by individuals, but also by institutions. Possessing them could bolster prestige and wealth, as well as enhance spiritual credibility.

So, the temptation to forge relics and make fake claims about them was strong. In fact, the years between 1000 and 1150 CE are called the “golden age of medieval forgery.”

How did institutions strengthen their claims to possess authentic relics? Kirk Ambrose, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of classics and founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, will explore this question in a Distinguished Research Lecture from 4 to 5 p.m. Nov. 28, with a question-and-answer session and reception following.

Kirk Ambrose will give a Distinguished Research Lecture at 4 p.m. Nov. 28.

Ambrose will discuss relics and authenticity claims through the example of the French monastery of Sainte-Foy, Conques, examining how this community used the visual arts to advance their claims and condemn those who engaged in counterfeiting.

About Kirk Ambrose

Ambrose earned master’s and doctorate degrees in the history of art from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, after earning a bachelor’s degree in art history from Oberlin College.

He specializes in the art and architecture of medieval Europe and has published four books and dozens of scholarly articles on the topic. In partnership with Steven Martonis, exhibitions manager in the CU Art Museum, he curated two exhibitions on the art of the American West at the CU Art Museum, including “Pioneers: Women Artists in Boulder, 1898-1950,” which was the basis for a feature-length documentary film. He served seven years as the chair of the Department of Art and Art History and a term as editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, the journal of record for art historians in the United States.

Among other research projects, Ambrose is working on a book provisionally titled The Frailty of Eyes, which connects medieval studies and art history with the rich theoretical concerns of disability studies. His published books include The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe and The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing.

In 2019, Ambrose helped launch the CU Boulder Center for Teaching and Learning, which develops and supports CU’s teaching community of practice. Its foundations are grounded in research-based practices, inclusive pedagogy, and equitable assessment techniques.

“Much of my work as a medievalist has focused on the production and reception of knowledge within communities, especially monastic communities,” Ambrose of the University of California-San Diego. “I think that has positioned me to regard teaching less as an isolated activity of a teacher transmitting knowledge to a group of students, than as a deeply collaborative enterprise.

   What: 122nd Distinguished Research Lecture: The Authentic and the Counterfeit in Medieval Art

  Who: Professor Kirk Ambrose of the Department of Classics

  When: 4-5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28

  Where: Chancellor’s Hall and Auditorium, CASE

“To my mind, this works on a number of levels. Teachers collaborate with their students to advance learning. Teachers collaborate with one another to share effective practices. And our center serves as a space that collaborates with units and specialists from across campus to support educators in achieving their goals.”

About the Distinguished Research Lectureship

The Distinguished Research Lectureship is among the highest honors given by faculty to a faculty colleague at CU Boulder. Each year, the Research and Innovation Office requests nominations from faculty for this award, and a faculty review panel recommends one or more faculty members as recipients. 

The lectureship honors tenured faculty members, research professors (associate or full) or adjoint professors who have been with CU Boulder for at least five years and are widely recognized for a distinguished body of academic or creative achievement and prominence, as well as contributions to the educational and service missions of CU Boulder. Each recipient typically gives a lecture in the fall or spring following selection and receives a $2,000 honorarium.

Ambrose and Rebecca Safran, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, have been recognized with 2023-24 Distinguished Research Lectureships. Safran will deliver her Distinguished Research Lecture on Tuesday, March 12.

Top image: the reliquary statue of St. Foy (photo by )

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CU Boulder art history professor explores how art can create community to counter violence

Leo Tolstoy once mused that art could thwart violence, writing, “Art should cause violence to be set aside, and it is only art that can accomplish this.” 

A CU Boulder art professor tends to agree. 

In her upcoming book,  (Duke University Press, May 2023) University of Colorado Boulder Assistant Professor of Art and Art History Brianne Cohen delves deeply into the role that art can play in creating public commitment to curbing structural violence in Europe.

Art often looks at past violence, and has, at times, enabled it. In Don’t Look Away, Cohen explores how it can be used to prevent violence, particularly by helping to create a “shared social sense of vulnerability” and “mass stranger relationality.” 

Brianne Cohen’s research and teaching focuses on contemporary art and visual culture in the public sphere. Her new research addresses questions of ecological devastation and the formation of critical publics in Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Singapore.

“Art can have a critical role to play not only in challenging injurious public discourse but also in actively reconceiving the groundwork of more ethically self-reflexive, pluralistic public spheres,” she writes. “I wish to transform a question of informed public action in the aftermath of violence to one of the informed public prevention of both direct and more indirect aggression.”

Cohen grew up in Dallas and spent four years living in Germany as a child. She later did graduate work in Germany, London, Brussels and elsewhere in Europe. Her experiences— including moving through German society with a traditional Jewish name, to Irish Republican Army terrorist threats against her brother’s British school, violence in response to the publication of cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in Denmark and rising anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-Roma sentiment in Europe—all helped shape her interest in broader questions about “public spheres.”

“Those real instances of violence raised questions of who belonged, in terms of community,” she says, “and the meaning of a pluralistic society.”

Her book approaches the question of “what it means to make a public sphere through a visual realm and how to bring strangers together around common matters of concern” via an examination of the work of three participatory, “recursive” artists, German filmmaker , Swiss artist , and the art collective Henry VIII’s Wives.

 

I’m really interested in how we prevent violence in transnational space, and the question of art as nonviolent action. I’m trying to think about how we can prevent violence in the first place, not just thinking about the aftermath, what kind of images and artwork can change public attitudes and the conditions that allow this kind of recurring violence to happen. ​

Reflecting on violence and vulnerable populations in Europe, which has often generated “fear-based publics,” Cohen argues that their backward-looking art is a more potent tool to prevent future violence than art focused on current events or bringing perpetrators to justice.

“I’m really interested in how we prevent violence in transnational space, and the question of art as nonviolent action. I’m trying to think about how we can prevent violence in the first place, not just thinking about the aftermath, what kind of images and artwork can change public attitudes and the conditions that allow this kind of recurring violence to happen,” she says. “Maybe it’s utopian, but art can change public mindsets.”

She examines Farocki’s 2007 film, , which he created from 1939 Nazi footage of a Dutch refugee camp for Jews fleeing Germany that was subsequently converted into a labor camp and stopover for prisoners who were later sent to death camps. 

Cohen highlights the image of a 10-year-old girl named , which became “a quintessential image of the Jews’ subjugation in the Netherlands.” But as a 1990s documentary revealed, the girl was “in fact Sinti,” Cohen writes, highlighting a “lesser-known genocide.” 

The film “recursively brings into public circulation and awareness questions of slow and direct violence for contemporary Romani peoples, a fact that has not received any in-depth interpretation in film or art historical scholarship,” Cohen writes. 

“Without a historically self-reflexive attention to how publics have perpetuated such violence, it would arguably be impossible to begin the project of actively envisioning a pluralistic, nonviolent social imaginary in the future.”

 

Without a historically self-reflexive attention to how publics have perpetuated such violence, it would arguably be impossible to begin the project of actively envisioning a pluralistic, nonviolent social imaginary in the future.” ​

Hirschhorn’s installation of his “” in a Turkish-German neighborhood in Kassel, Germany, generated controversy, in part because he was perceived as an outsider imposing his vision on marginalized people. But Cohen argues that his installations in “banlieues”—a derogatory French term for immigrant suburbs—effectively link “disparate, embodied, and virtual publics around such common matters of concern.” 

With the atomization of information and people in the internet age, art can play a role in countering violence by creating community, she says.

“Typically, you can solve questions of civic relations or matters of concern through the local community,” she says. “But once you get to a huge, transnational space—online, social media—how do you connect strangers in ethical ways? Artists are part of that. They can create publics that ethically bind people together.”

At the top of the page: A scene from Harun Farocki's film Images of the world and the inscription of war, 1988 film. Courtesy Goethe-Institut London.

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The King Awards and Exhibition have been celebrating CU Boulder students’ artwork for more than a decade

When asked what inspired her to create the King Awards, which honors the artwork of CU Boulder students, Gretchen King (English and fine arts, ‘59) points in an unexpected direction. 

“It was the government’s idea, in a way,” she says. “When I turned 70-and-a-half years old, I had to withdraw a certain amount of money from my IRA by Dec. 31 or else face a penalty.” 

A penalty didn’t sound like fun, so she did as she was told and withdrew the money. But then she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. 

At the top of the page:Shloka Dhar (MCDB and fine arts, ‘22) won second place in 2021 and first place in 2022. Above: Gretchen King (left) and Kevin King (right) at the 2014 King Awards and Exhibition, along with two student winners. Photo courtesy of Gretchen King.

She admits she could have bought something nice for herself, gone on a luxurious vacation, treated her friends and family to expensive dinners at Boulder’s swankiest restaurants. But those things didn’t feel right. She wanted the money to be useful, to make a difference in people’s lives. 

So she donated it to her alma mater and continued to do so regularly thereafter.

Then in 2012, art professor Yumi Janairo Roth, the interim chair of the Art and Art History Department at the time, had an idea.  

She remembered that her undergraduate institution, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, held several competitions and exhibitions that brought in a lot of diverse student work. “External jurors were invited to select the winning works, and students felt extremely motivated to participate,” she says. 

She therefore suggested that King fund something similar at CU Boulder.

King thought this idea sounded superb. “As soon as I heard that, I said, ‘That’s it!’” she recalls.  

Thus, the following year, in 2013, the King Awards were born, and they’re still going strong today. 

“It came about so organically,” says Amber Story (art history, ‘99), director of development for the College of Arts and Sciences. “It just kind of happened, and now it’s this big thing, and it’s been going on for 10 years!”

Story adds that the King Awards and Exhibition “have become a cornerstone event for the Department of Art and Art History. Not only have they created a collaborative environment within the entire department … but they’ve also provided outward-facing, meaningful experiences for our students.”

The awards are divided into two categories, one for graduate students and one for undergraduate students. This year, each category will confer five honors: first place ($3,000), second place ($2,000), third place ($1,000) and two honorable mentions ($500 apiece).  

“The cash was nothing to sneeze at,” says , a graduate student in art and art history who won second place in 2022. “The money from the King Award meant that I could pay all of my bills and have a bit left over to buy art supplies.”

Shloka Dhar (MCDB and fine arts, ‘22), an undergraduate who won second place in 2021 and first place in 2022, agrees. “The financial assistance provided by the King Award encouraged me to continue my studies in art [and] allowed me to focus more on schoolwork [and] purchase necessary supplies for my projects,” she says.

But both Marsella and Dhar say that the impact of the King Awards goes beyond the money.  

“Winning the King Award … gave me a chance for more people to hear the story of me and my family,” says Dhar, whose work explores the complex history of her identity. “[It] encouraged me to do more and aim higher. I felt a great sense of inclusion and community.”  

“Winning the King Award was significant,” says Marsella. “Artwork is judged in so many nonsensical ways in an endless variety of contexts. I believe a fair approach in judging artwork is by its merit, which is what I believe the curators who selected my work did.” 

The jurors for the King Awards are carefully selected arts professionals, people with deep knowledge and years of experience. In 2022, for example, they were Miranda Lash, the Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, and Simone Krug, curator of the Aspen Art Museum. 

This year, they’re ceramic artist and curator Sam Harvey of Aspen; David Smith, owner of the David B. Smith Gallery in Denver; and Molly Bird Casey, chief curator of NINE dot ARTS, an art consulting and placemaking organization headquartered in Denver. 

Receiving recognition from such figures, Marsella says, was “emotionally validating.”

Once the jurors select the winning pieces, those pieces are then featured in an exhibition at the Visual Arts Complex, which this year will take place from April 12-20. 

For King, however, the most enjoyable aspect of the gift-giving is not the exhibition itself, gratifying as that is. It’s visiting the artists in their studios. “That for me is the really fun part.” 

Yet it was even more fun for another member of the King family—Kevin King (fine arts and philosophy, ’81), the second of King’s five children and a lifelong patron of the arts, whom King recruited to head up the awards beginning the second year. 

Kevin King relished the opportunity, his mother says. “He really mingled with the artists, and they loved it. I’d have to drag him out of the studios!” 

Dhar vividly remembers Kevin King’s keen interest in and observant eye for her and her fellow contestants’ work. “You could tell he was passionate about the arts and giving to students. He smiled the whole time.”

Kevin King unfortunately died in 2021 after a long battle with brain cancer. His , written by his brother Neil King, longtime writer for The Wall Street Journal and author of the recently published book , contains snapshots of a personality particularly well suited to the benefactor of an arts award. 

“He was a great giver of silent gifts,” his brother says of him, “ones you didn’t know you’d received until long after he’d given them.” 

“People loved him,” says King. “He was really a character.” 

Now 89, King is at the reins again and says she’s happy to remain involved with the arts program and to provide both financial and emotional support to its students.  

This year, the award ceremony, which Story calls “a celebration of the art department and the work that’s happening there,” will take place in the Visual Arts Complex on Friday, April 14, at 4 p.m. King herself plans to attend, to see the lit-up faces of the students whose lives she continues to change for the better—and not because the government has told her to.  

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Shloka Dhar, who majored in art practices and molecular, cellular and developmental biology, is the College of Arts and Sciences’ outstanding graduate for fall 2022

Shloka Dhar began her studies at the University of Colorado Boulder with a plan: take a pre-med track to become a doctor. Four-and-a-half years later, she’s chosen a path that better reflects who she is and where she is from.

Last week, Dhar graduated with a BA in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, along with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in art practices, summa cum laude. She also has been named the outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences for fall 2022.

At the top of the page: Shloka Dhar smiles in front of her thesis project, which is titled Mõaj. Above: Before completion, Dhar poses next to her project's metal framework, which reflects the  topography of the Himalayas in Kashmir, her family homeland.

What changed, Dhar told fellow honors graduates last week, was that she realized her interests were broader than medicine. Dhar has worked in a lab studying muscle stem cell regeneration in mice. Although that was exciting work, Dhar said, she felt she was not doing justice to who she is as a person.

“For as long as I have remembered, I have always loved biology, and I have always loved art,” she said. “The rest of the world thought art and science are different career paths, and for a moment, I believed them.”

“But I did not want to settle for one or the other, because I truly believe that they are intertwined,” she continued. Her honors thesis in sculpture thus combined the two, exploring ideas of genetic memory, preservation, loss, physical displacement and genocide.

Dhar was born in Bokaro Steel City in India, an industrial center, but her roots are in Kashmir, the disputed war-ravaged territory at the northern juncture of India and Pakistan.

Kashmir, Dhar notes, “is a war zone that I have never been able to visit, and now I am a citizen of a country that I feel does not want me. I do not belong where I am now, stuck in a liminal space. My art documents my explorations through this in-betweenness, of expeditions through my personal identity and out into my interactions with the physical world.”

Dhar’s mother fled the Kashmiri Pandit Genocide of 1990, which was conducted by Islamic extremists, she notes in her thesis. Legally, Dhar is an Indian immigrant who has American citizenship. “However, I really consider myself a displaced Kashmiri.”

Dhar reflects that her identity is constructed of many parts, “many of which seem to clash.”

“The identity I grew up with is disintegrating, and in the midst of attempting to reconstruct it, I ask myself, ‘How can I be a Kashmiri when there is no more Kashmir?’”

Her thesis project, titled Mõaj, is “a continuing discourse about my experiences of physical and psychological displacement, genetic memory, a reclamation of the land, and reconnection with my ancestors,” she writes.

Mõaj is a sculpture constructed of more than 550 feet of steel and traditional Indian fabric. It reflects the Himalayan topography of Kashmir, and it “embodies the heaviness of these ideas,” she states.

Through her art, she says, “I can visually understand the nature and extent of the psychological pain and intergenerational trauma present in my body. It is given a physical form that persistently highlights the beauty of my culture so that I am able to acknowledge the pain.”

 

My art is my most successful method of communication, and the most important message I want to communicate is that I am here. I persist not only despite my cultural history, but because of it.

“Both pain and beauty must be present so that neither is gone unappreciated. My art is my most successful method of communication, and the most important message I want to communicate is that I am here. I persist not only despite my cultural history, but because of it.”

Yumi Janairo Roth, a professor in sculpture and post-studio practice who was Dhar’s thesis advisor, says that she and fellow faculty member Richard Saxton are "incredibly proud of Shloka.”

Roth adds: “Mõaj is a remarkable work that, in many ways, is semesters in the making, bringing together issues related to the Kashmiri diaspora, identity, epigenetic memory and community that Shloka has been exploring for a while. We're excited for what the future holds for her.”

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Artist Erin Hyunhee Kang cultivates collective understanding in her exhibit: “A Home In Between”

In a word, MFA student Erin Hyunhee Kang is resilient. Her resilience is not only evident in the themes of A Home In Between, her current exhibit at the (BMoCA), but it is definitive of her character and perspective on life.

At the age of 15, Kang moved from Seoul, Korea to the United States. She began to experience a splitting in her identity as she adapted to Western culture, she recalled.

Kang eventually graduated with a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and worked for New Yorker Magazine as a photography assistant, Tapehouse Toons on the visual effects team, Penguin Group USA as a book jacket designer, and the Boulder Valley School District as a visual arts teacher.

Now, she works as a designer for Penguin Random House, a children’s books illustrator for the Denver Art Museum, and a billboard artist for Denver Theatre District & Public Arts, while also working towards her MFA at the University of Colorado Boulder.

At the top of the page: A Home In Between, Partial C: God's plan for the redemption (Erin Hyunhee Kang). Above: Erin Hyunhee Kang. 

Despite her success, Kang felt disconnected from her Korean identity after assimilating to American life, she said. As a Korean American, she did not feel fully accepted in either Eastern or Western culture but existed somewhere in between.

Kang now thrives in what she has deemed the “diasporic space” between the two.

“Diasporic space is a reality for minorities like myself, but it is most often seen as an unwanted place that is occupied only through default where there is no other choice,” she wrote in her artist statement.

“It is a space of constant struggle between processes of diasporic social and cultural inclusion and exclusion.”

Even so, Kang’s resilience and adaptability enabled her to become comfortable in this uncertain space. The duality of her identity and her curiosity towards her relationship to diasporic space now lays the foundation for her art practice and attitude toward life, she said.

Kang’s work is a visual translation of the metaphorical marginal space. She creates fragmented landscapes in which her duality becomes something positive, she stated.

In earlier work, she accomplished this using bright colors and collaged abstracted shapes that create surreal architectural structures. Her process creates dream-like pieces that act as windows into her imagined world.

In her mixed media piece The Perfect Home Failure, she uses these techniques to create an architectural structure reminiscent of a home. In the fragmented, bright space, Kang embraces imperfection, Kang , suggesting that the home becomes a place of healing where the dichotomy of her identity finds compassion.

But late last year, Kang’s own home became a diasporic space, leading to a visually contrasting representation of the home, depicted in A Home In Between.

On Dec. 30, 2021, the Marshall Fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes and damaged nearly 150 more in Louisville, Superior and unincorporated Boulder County. One side of Kang’s neighborhood was destroyed, while the other side was virtually untouched, she noted.

Kang’s home sat right in between those homes destroyed and those spared. The fire split her home in half, destroying one side, but leaving the other undamaged.

Her home became a physical embodiment of the diasporic space—the tragic, yet perfect, parallel for the marginality felt within her identity, she said.

In A Home In Between, Kang explores her identity within the backdrop of her damaged neighborhood, through digital drawings. In this work, Kang’s usual surreal spaces become chaotic and dystopian.

 

We all have trauma and that’s OK. We can rebuild again."

Though deeply rooted in devastation, glimmers of hope remain conspicuous throughout her work, characteristic of Kang’s resilience. A Home In Between provides an immersive experience that connects the viewer emotionally to the work by making deliberate choices regarding color, medium, display and sound that mimic her own experience.

The black and grey imagery contrasts starkly with her previous brightly colored work. “I wanted to remove the juiciness of color and face it in black and white,” Kang said, referring to the loss of her home.

She also wanted to imitate the dark sky from the day of the fire, she added. This effect is enhanced by the dimmed lights of the BMoCA gallery.

While working as a book cover designer, digital drawing became a comfortable and accessible medium for Kang. Equating it to a sketchbook, she found digital drawing conducive to the flow of her ideas, she said.

Using digital drawing in A Home In Between allowed Kang to render her imagined spaces accurately without needing to divert attention away from the subject and toward technique.

The drawings are projected on the BMoCA walls, making them feel ghostly. The projections mimic the quality of floating ash, she said. Kang wants the viewer to almost “breath the work in and out,” imitating the experience of breathing in soot after a fire, she said.

Projecting the work also provides a sense of dynamism that nods to the passage of time and the fluidity of her emotions surrounding the tragedy, she added.

Perfect Home Failure (Erin Hyunhee Kang).

The exhibit’s soundscape echoes through the gallery space, amplifying the show’s immersive quality. Kang describes the sound within the context of her home’s restoration process.

She recorded the sound from her empty living room while construction workers hammered above on the roof. According to Kang, the emptiness of the space created a profound coldness. The contrast of the lifeless quality of her empty living room with the hopeful sound of reconstruction became yet another metaphor for the dualling qualities of the diasporic experience.

Kang is no stranger to tragedy, yet emphatically finds joy and hope throughout her life, as depicted in her work. Resilience is woven throughout A Home In Between in pieces like, God can only give you what you can handle, where smoke continues flowing from the chimney of a house submerged in water, or in the calm livestock of No One Cares But You, who casually graze despite billowing smoke in the distance.

Kang’s optimism is reflected most strongly, however, in My child’s walk to school. These pieces differ from the rest of the exhibit, aligning more closely with the compositions of her previous works.

The sketch-like drawings display pieces of collected debris Kang noticed while walking her children to school after the fire, she noted. She saw beauty in what she described as “little ruins.” Though incredibly sad, Kang saw the debris as pieces of history.

My child’s walk to school provides a newfound meaning and use to the discarded material, she said, adding: “Everything requires attention and love.”

“I know it sounds corny, but after the fire I felt like I just wanted to be a nice person … appreciate the simplest things in life … the ‘little ruins.’” This point of view is embodied in My child’s walk to school. Its celebration of the overlooked ruins is a symbol of Kang’s perspective on life after tragedy.

A Home In Between explores Kang’s life experiences and perspective while simultaneously commenting on the human condition. She freely shares her story with strangers who visit the exhibit, generating collective understanding among its viewers.

“I want to connect to deeper universal feelings of human nature,” Kang said. Through A Home In Between, the Marshall Fire becomes an anecdote of the diasporic experience. The immersive work explores the marginal space of Kang’s destroyed home. It offers a glimpse into her mind and successfully builds connections across cultural boundaries.

Kang put this idea simply, saying, “We all have trauma and that’s OK. We can rebuild again.”

Kang’s exhibit is on display until Feb. 19, 2023. Admission is free on Saturdays ($2 all other days).

Molly Pluenneke, who reviewed Kang's exhibit, is a student in the art practices program at CU Boulder.

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Professors’ conceptual art shines spotlight on those who existed at the margins of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows

Filipinos might not be the first people to come to mind when one thinks of the American West, but two University of Colorado Boulder professors are looking to change that through art.

Emmanuel David, associate professor of women and gender studies, and Yumi Janairo Roth, professor of art, both Filipino-American, have been at work to ensure Filipinos’ place in American history is secure.

It all started a couple of summers ago when the two were talking about their respective research and discovered they had a shared interest in the role of Filipinos in the American West.

At the top of the page: "We are coming" art installation in Cody, Wyoming (Preston Randolph). Above: Emmanuel David and Yumi Janairo Roth collaborated on the project.

They continued to meet and began focusing on something that happened in 1899. That’s when American showman William “Buffalo Bill” Cody hired three Filipinos to join his famed Wild West shows and to work as part of the Rough Riders. Their names were Ysidora Alcantara, Felix Alcantara and Geronimo Ynosincio.

They performed in parades, grand reviews and in plays where various races were often pitted against one another, David said.

The trio’s timing of joining the shows wasn’t ideal. The Philippine-American War was just beginning, and their research suggests the Filipino actors were sometimes booed and heckled when they appeared on stage.

It’s believed the Filipinos worked with Buffalo Bill’s shows in 1899 and 1900, but some information points to their being employed beyond 1900.

To celebrate their legacy, David and Roth developed a conceptual art project called “We Are Coming,” using the same language often associated with Buffalo Bill's show posters announcing the show’s arrival.

If you saw those words, and that face, you knew you were in for something spectacular, Roth told the Cody Enterprise, a paper founded by Buffalo Bill, ahead of the project. But, she adds, many people who put on those shows have been lost to history, including the Filipino Rough Riders.

“Their stories have been sidelined again and again because the focus tends to center around conventional mythologies of the American West, including a sustained focus on the character of Buffalo Bill Cody himself,” Roth said.

“Thus, our project about the Filipino Rough Riders is part of an effort to decenter the usual characters and focus on those who existed at the margins of the show.”

 

Through our research, we have attempted to give the Filipinos more dimension and to understand their full lives. …  So much of history is told from the perspective of the dominant groups, and our project looks to decenter those conventional narratives.​"

David and Roth delivered talks on the topic for the College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program’s distinguished lecture series in March 2021, and the panel revisiting 19th Century Asian American history for the Association for Asian American Studies in April of 2021.

Since then, the professors have worked with theaters to get the Filipinos’ names listed on marquees. In August of 2022, the names appeared at the Boulder Theater, and in September of 2022, the Cody Theatre in Cody, Wyoming also listed the names.

In addition to the art exhibitions, Roth and David’s work on the project also includes an academic paper and a book.

“We Are Coming,” which is funded by a research and innovation seed grant from CU Boulder’s Office of the Provost and the President’s Fund for the Humanities from CU System Office of Academic Affairs, will continue to appear in other towns and cities that hosted Buffalo Bill's shows.

“Filipinos figured prominently in the imaginaries of the American West. However, they were often portrayed in negative and stereotypical ways,” said David, adding:

“Through our research, we have attempted to give the Filipinos more dimension and to understand their full lives. The first step is to name them, and the project attempts to name them. …  So much of history is told from the perspective of the dominant groups, and our project looks to decenter those conventional narratives.”

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The funding will allow the scholars to pursue projects related to artists documenting ecological devastation in Southeast Asia and geopolitics in Iran, as well as for career development

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has awarded four 2022-23 fellowships and grants to scholars at the University of Colorado Boulder. The recipients will pursue academic work and lead innovative community projects to empower women and girls.

The fellowships and grants are part of a larger $6 million award that AAUW is providing to 320 scholars and community projects for the academic year.

“We’re proud to support the work of these outstanding scholars and community leaders,” said AAUW CEO Gloria L. Blackwell. “These exceptional awardees are dedicated to making contributions in a wide range of fields. We’re impressed by their work and can’t wait to see the great things they’ll accomplish throughout their research and careers.”

The CU Boulder award winners are:

At the top of the page: A multimedia installation, titled Dioramas for Tanjong Rimau, by Zarina Muhammad, Joel Tan and Zachary Chan that was featured as part of Brianne Cohen's research. Above: Brianne Cohen is the recipient of the AAUW's American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship.

Brianne Cohen, the recipient of the American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, who researches art history and criticism. AAUW awarded Cohen $30,000 for her project, titled: The Emphatic Lens: Contemporary Art, Ecology and Kinship in Southeast Asia.

Cohen’s research highlights art from Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore, where local artists use photography and video to show ecological devastation in the region and to call for renewed attention to the kinship between humans and nature.

“These artists are having their works shown around the world in major art shows, but there’s still not being much written about their wonderful artwork,” said Cohen, who plans to publish a book in 2023 highlighting the art and artists.

“And the kinds of things they are doing right now is particularly pressing and timely in terms of environmental destruction in the region and thinking about larger questions of ecological sustainability.”

��������’s&�Բ�����;, like the one awarded to Cohen, support women scholars who are pursuing full-time postdoctoral research. Candidates are evaluated on the basis of scholarly excellence; quality and originality of project design; and active commitment to helping women and girls through service in their communities, professions or fields of research.

A. Marie Ranjbar, the recipient of a $30,000 AAUW American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, researches critical human rights, environmental justice and decolonial and postcolonial feminist theory by integrating feminist political geography with scholarship.

Since 2012, she has conducted research in Iran, where she examines evolving relationships between social justice movements, international institutions and global civil society.

A. Marie Ranjbar is the recipient of a $30,000 AAUW American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship.

During her fellowship, Ranjbar will be developing her book project, “From Persian Empire to Pariah State: Environmental Injustice, Racialization and Coloniality in Iran,” which examines state repression of environmental movements in ethnic minority regions of Iran.

“I am elated to be the recipient of the AAUW fellowship,” Ranjbar said.

Like Cohen, Ranjbar’s award was an AAUW American Postdoctoral Fellowship, which supports women scholars who are pursuing full-time study conducting postdoctoral research.

Lisa Peete, the recipient of an $11,125 career development grant from AAUW, is pursuing an MA in speech-language pathology. Peete’s award will provide her with financial support to attend conventions and training seminars essential to her profession and future academic goals, including pursuing a doctorate.

In an AAUW press release, Peete said it is an honor to win the prestigious award. She added that she is passionate about providing assistance to those with cognitive and phonological disorders.

AAUW career development grants like the one Peete received go to women who hold a bachelor’s degree and are preparing to advance or change careers or re-enter the workforce in education; health and medical sciences; science, technology, engineering and math (STEM); or social sciences.

Neha Pazare, the recipient of an $18,000 AAUW award as part of the International Master’s/1st Professional Degree Fellowship, is pursuing a master’s in engineering. Pazare’s area of specialization is radio frequency microwave and high-speed digital design.

��������’s&�Բ�����; support women pursuing full-time graduate or postdoctoral study in the United States to women who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and who intend to return to their home country to pursue a professional career.

AAUW is one of the world’s oldest leading supporters of graduate women’s education. Since 1888, it has awarded more than $135 million in fellowships, grants and awards to 13,000 women from 150 countries.

Educational funding is especially important for women, given that they are disproportionately burdened by student debt, which is exacerbated by a lifelong pay gap that affects women in nearly every profession, according to AAUW. The association said its awards alleviate financial stress so women can focus on their educational and career aspirations.

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