Over the past year, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ 11 graduating studio art and visual culture students have spent countless hours working in their own favored media, each creating intricate paintings, drawings, photography, or sculptures for their thesis projects. 

On April 17, they’ll step outside of their Olin Arts Center studios to share their work with the world as At the Table: Senior Thesis Exhibition 2026 opens at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art.

Creating the annual senior thesis exhibition is a big task, but one that brings students, faculty, and staff together in collaboration. The students write in-depth artist statements, sign contracts with the museum, and work with Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Lead Preparator at the museum Michel Droge to learn about framing and physically displaying their works.

“Art school students across the country are lucky if they get a week-long exhibition for their senior thesis work,â€� says Museum of Art Director Carrie Cushman. “A six-week exhibition in a professional museum is a truly remarkable opportunity for the students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ — an opportunity that they live up to with equal parts professionalism and ambition. For our part, hosting the show is a highlight of the year as a time when the community gathers together to celebrate and learn from our students.â€�

The process takes place across two semesters; the fall course, taught by Professor of Art and Visual Culture Cat Balco, focuses primarily on rigorous research into various artistic practices, idea development, and the first stages of physically creating the art. That research includes not only learning about specific materials but also exploring how these materials are represented across various sociopolitical and cultural contexts.

The winter course, taught by Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture Carolina González Valencia says, is about synthesizing those ideas into exhibition-ready works. 

“We as artists engage in research in many different ways,� González Valencia says.

The entire year-long process is intense, requiring students to leap from a place of boundless possibility and uncertainty to physical creation, with the willingness to redirect their paths when something isn’t working.

“I have a student this semester who is always asking, ‘But how do I know that this will work?’� González Valencia says. “I always tell her, ‘You never know,’ which is very scary, but very exciting. Seeing them struggle with the uncertainty is very beautiful because it’s in that uncertainty that they start finding themselves, finding their voice and trusting it to start building their ideas.�

The chance to display their work in a museum, which ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ offers its graduating studio art students each year, is a fantastic opportunity, González Valencia says.

“That’s something very, very beautiful — that the students get to experience what it’s like to actually put it out there and have people experience it and have their own meaning about it,â€� González Valencia says.

The students worked together to brainstorm the name of the exhibition, which conveys their belief that each artist, with their unique collection of work, deserves to have their ideas heard — to have a seat At the Table. The exhibition opens with a reception at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art on April 17 at 5 p.m. and will remain on display through May 30. Below, learn more about each student’s work, drawn from their artist statements.

Sam Bunar

With her charcoal drawings, Sam Bunar of Harwich, Mass., explores the way that releasing control can lead to artistic expression. She interrogates the self and the cosmos, and how the two interact, with self-portraits portraying her reflected in a mirror, surrounded by cosmic patterns.

“I draw inspiration from the inherently complex and uncontrollable nature of the cosmos, inexplainable forces that humans may never completely understand, yet remain profoundly beautiful,� Bunar writes. “In their vastness, they remind us of the infinitesimal scale of our existence within the boundless universe.�

The loose quality of charcoal drawing reflects this idea of relinquishing control, which Bunar wrestled with in her personal life after a physical injury forced her to release her all-encompassing identity as a soccer player. A double major in art and visual culture and physics, Bunar’s scientific interests also inform her work.

“I tell a story about embracing chaos as I visualize an accent toward metaphysical weightlessness and serenity. It is a conscious state of liberation that allows for intrinsic growth, unhindered by the need to control every parameter and outcome in life. My individual pieces come together to model the cyclic nature of my obsession, perfectionism, and fear of the uncontrollable.â€� 

Audrey Esteves

Audrey Esteves of Cranford, N.J., explores sleep — as a place of rest and warmth and also as a receptacle for exploring memory — through oil painting. She mixes wet and dry oil painting techniques to allow “figures and spaces to emerge� in layers of subtle, hazy definition.

“My body of work strives to imagine recurring moments of rest, wherein memory and meaning are distorted by darkness and lucidity,� Esteves writes. “I want to find warmth in what is unknown and unseen — in what happens when the light goes out.�

A double major in art and visual culture and American studies, Esteves looks to Expressionism and the Italian medieval and early Renaissance periods for inspiration about sleep’s eerie qualities and the narratives and images that the brain imagines in sleep.

“I employ repetition when painting these intimate moments of everyday life, skewing the perspective of sleeping figures, their bedrooms and their objects. This process helps me to answer the questions my body and brain have about what happens in the dark — both within dreams, and the liminal moments between sleep and consciousness.â€� 

Jeremy Felton

With his ceramic works, both art and vessel, Jeremy Felton of Sebastopol, Calif., interrogates the value of a piece.

“Each piece can and should be used, but I think of the visual and conceptual components of my work as valuable in themselves, beyond any functional enhancement,� Felton writes.

Felton, a double major in art and visual studies and philosophy, decorates his pieces with clay, wood, and rocks collected in Maine, imbuing each work with a sense of place. He completes the pieces in a kiln with soda firing, a process in which the draft of the kiln pulls a vapor of sodium carbonate across the pots, leaving dramatic marks of flames across the works.

“Raw clay is exposed when flame is blocked, each surface dictated by its context in the kiln. Many pieces are designed around this process — a ewer and its stand, or a teapot and its cups — each aspect working as negative or subject for its counterpart; a story only revealed when they’re separated.â€�

Aratrika Ghosh

Aratrika Ghosh of Mumbai, India, explores memory, distance, and culture by painting on top of saree — also known as “sariâ€� — garments. Her piece in the exhibition features a harmonium painted across her grandmother’s white, pleated saree, exploring her now fading memory of the instrument she was trained in for 10 years. She paints from memory instead of photographs, employing various degrees of opacity and completion across her works to further illuminate the incompleteness of memory.

“The folds disrupt the image, partially obscuring it, paralleling my fading tactile memory of playing the instrument,� Ghosh, a double major in art and visual culture and mathematics, writes. “What once lived in muscle memory now exists as visual memory — fragmented, softened, and mediated through distance.�

An international student living far from her family, Ghosh uses her artistry to connect with her ancestors and culture, participating in the Bengali tradition of passing sarees down through generations.

“Across my practice, I use inherited textiles to bridge physical separation and emotional continuity. By layering my own memories onto fabrics that pre-date me, I create a dialogue between past and present, absence and presence, inheritance and authorship. The work becomes both an act of preservation and an acknowledgment of loss: a recognition that memory, like fabric, stretches, folds, and inevitably changes with time.�

Mia Goodwin

Mia Goodwin of Freeport, Maine, also explores memory through oil painting. She creates paintings, inspired by her grandfather’s photographs made on film, on large canvases that require bodily movement, mimicking the way that one moves through memories. 

“These photographs encapsulate familial memories, ones that my memory doesn’t directly live in, but still is physically and generationally tied to,� Goodwin writes. “Although these moments predate my own lived experience, they have been passed down through stories, images, and emotional inheritance, allowing them to feel both distant and deeply familiar.�

Playing with color, washes, and empty space, Goodwin, a double major in psychology and art and visual culture, explores how memory takes shape and is warped by time and distance.

“I hope my paintings give a feeling of lost time and space. These thinned areas of paint act as visual pauses, mimicking the moments memory cannot fully retrieve. Ultimately, the absence becomes just as meaningful as what is rendered. I hope they allow the onlooker to reflect on what was lost through time. My paintings function as sites of collective reflection, inviting viewers to project their own histories, absences, and emotional memories into the work.�

Ella Hannaford

In her self-portrait photography, Ella Hannaford of South Portland, Maine, is both art and artist. She photographs herself on the coast of Maine, where she grew up, incorporating elements of reflection such as mirrored tiles placed across her face in order to blur the lines between body and landscape. 

“I engage self-portraiture and performance as methods capable of confronting the boundaries of the body and landscape — where a body reads as terrain or a landscape behaves like a portrait,� Hannaford writes. “Here, looking becomes implicated, carrying intimacy and scrutiny at once.�

She primarily photographs during Maine’s off-season, challenging notions of how the coastline is defined and exploring “how a landscape shifts once it is no longer performing itself.�

“Control over my image is not given but produced through creative and embodied risk. Printing large-scale extends that negotiation outward, inviting a physical encounter in which viewers must register their own looking and position in relation to the image. The exchange holds intimacy and distance, recognition and uncertainty — held in suspension.�

Bissan Kablawi

With her mixed-media works combining oil painting, threadwork, sewing, fabric, gelatine, and layered surfaces, Bissan Kablawi of London expands the boundaries of tatreez, the centuries-old practice of Palestinian embroidery that she learned from her grandmother Badriyeh. 

Kablawi stitches and sews directly onto canvas and embroiders over oil paintings, “creating a dialogue between heritage and contemporary interdisciplinary studio practices,� she writes. “In the repetitive act of stitching, a historically feminised and unrecognised form of labour, I mirror and induct myself into the legacy of Palestinian women preserving culture and identity in diaspora.�

Kablawi explores the tension of diaspora, weaving symbols representative of traditional Palestine among fractured images representing her memory and imagination of Palestine. The slow nature of embroidery, she writes, is an “act of care, resistance, and identity-making.�

“My cultural preservation work represents more than tradition; it is testimony to our existence, perpetual and immemorial. In stitching, painting, and reimagining Palestinian art practices, I join Palestinian artists whose work asserts our presence and rejects our collective erasure.â€� 

Simon Klompus

In his pen drawings, Simon Klompus of Williamstown, Mass., combines anatomically accurate depictions of bones from different species to highlight the elements that unite all biological creatures.

“While we strive for fulfillment, financial success, and material goods, we often forget the raw, biological fragility that underlies and ties all organic things together,� Klompus writes. “I create drawings that allow me to play with the composition of differing species, often creating something illogical and awkward, though occasionally shockingly plausible.�

Through this “creative paleontology� practice, Klompus begins by creating drawings exploring each animal’s bones individually, then randomly selecting a group of the drawings and assembling them.

“The build up of something semi permanent through the use of thousands of small fine lines is reminiscent of our bodies’ construction. When viewed from further back, the intricacy disappears until what is left is form and shadow. Yet upon closer viewing, the form’s creation is nothing more than a great many lines.â€�

Qwynn Kobertz

Qwynn Kobertz of Framingham, Mass., uses coding and 3D printing to create interactive, sculptural, and participatory games. Kobertz’s work asks questions about how we interact with technology such as, “Do we all live in a hyperrealistic computer simulation? Does it even matter if we do?�

The 3D-printed sculptures are based on ecological features such as countershading, a color pattern animals use to blend into their surroundings. Kobertz’ thesis project is an interactive game in which participants stand in front of a projected live video of themselves and must move their body to fit into continuously changing outlines superimposed over the video, with at least 70% accuracy to advance to the next outline.

“In playing or engaging with the projector screen in some way, participants are moving around in physical space, but their behavior is being dictated by or following rules conceived in the land of ones and zeros. The ecology inspired sculptures enter into the same play area as the participant, and in doing so complete their lifecycle from digital conception to physical sculpture and then finally being brought back into a semi digital space by the player.�

Maia Schifman

Maia Schifman of Minneapolis, a double major in biochemistry and art and visual culture, crafts stoneware pieces from hand, forgoing a pottery wheel to instead meticulously pinch and smooth the pieces into shape.

“Stoneware is durable but not indestructible,� Schifman writes. “I like the idea of creating something with materials that will last centuries, like archeological findings displayed in museums hundreds, sometimes thousands of years after their original owners’ lifetimes.�

Schifman’s pieces reflect the textures and forms of nature, using Japanese glazes like celadon and shino that draw inspiration from nature. 

“These forms are practical containers to hold food and drink, but the goblet, or chalice, has a spiritual meaning as well: symbolically, the chalice represents the deep feminine capacity to hold complexity, intuition, and emotion. It is a vessel in which transformation occurs and is the physical embodiment of the part of the psyche that holds and nurtures creative and transformative energy.�

Grace Thomas

Grace Thomas of Bethesda, Md., creates tunnel books, crafted from a series of cut-paper panels placed atop each other to create an optical illusion of depth, painted with gouache. In her pieces, Thomas compares societal behaviors, such as excessive screen time, to cannibalism to evoke a sense of discomfort and disgust, reflecting on how we consume and are consumed.  

“The intense reaction and curiosity cannibalism brings out of people allows me to call attention to situations and experiences we have intense feelings for but have been numbed to,� Thomas writes. “These range from hegemonic systems, to interactions with material culture, to societal norms, and to the consuming nature of my own emotional and mental states, which I translate into images.�

Thomas draws inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki, beloved Japanese filmmaker of such animated classics as My Neighbor Totoro and co-founder of Studio Ghibli.

“I am not interested in creating gory or disturbing images,� Thomas writes. “Rather, I want to draw my viewer into my work through bright and interesting colors and then allow them the space to take in all the details.�

Carrie Cushman talks Museum of Art’s Marsden Hartley Legacy Project on Maine Public

Carrie Cushman, director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art, spoke about the museum’s current projects .

In conversation with Heather McDougall, manager of music and people at Maine Public Classical, Cushman, who joined the museum in August 2025, discussed the excitement of arriving at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. The museum is preparing to launch the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project, an online digital catalog of all known paintings and ephemera by modernist painter and Lewiston native Marsden Hartley, which has been in development since 2019.

“We’re really lucky that this is happening at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and we will be the home of it and responsible for stewarding it into the future,â€� Cushman told McDougall.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art was founded because of the Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection, Cushman explained, comprising over 400 paintings and ephemera by Hartley — by far the largest collection of Hartley’s work — which Hartley’s niece donated to the college in 1955. 

“We have people coming to the museum almost weekly requesting to see work from the collection, and many are artists who are looking for inspiration in this 20th century modernist who is finally getting his due,� Cushman said.

Additionally, Cushman’s exhibition The Worlds of Ilse Bing was featured in a in the online magazine What Will You Remember?.

The exhibition is on view through May 24 at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum, where Cushman previously worked as the Linda Wyatt Gruber ‘66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography. Exploring Bing’s rise to prominence, coinciding with 35mm photography’s growing popularity, the exhibition “brings her work into conversation with her creative influences and with those who she influenced in the worlds of modern art.�

What Will You Remember? also included the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art’s exhibition Shellburne Thurber: Full Circle, co-curated by Thurber and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ assistant curator Samantha Sigmon, in its February roundup. On view through March 21, the exhibition demonstrates how Thurber’s photography has “visualized interior work that is private, domestic, psychological, or insular.â€�

Mara Tieken opines on rural schools, students in The Hechinger Report; Women Writers, Women’s Books

Though public school closures and consolidations are becoming increasingly common, they rarely serve their intended purpose of saving struggling school districts money, writes Professor of Education Mara Tieken in an .

For school districts with declining enrollment or decreasing state and federal funding, “school closures may seem logical,� Tieken writes. “Close schools, ‘right-size’ districts, save money. Problem solved.�

However, she explains, school closures require additional transportation and renovation costs, often leading to districts saving little to no money, while students’ test scores and future college and employment outcomes decrease.

Tieken has extensively researched and written about rural schools and their students. On Feb. 5, she published a piece about the process of developing her latest book — Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges—And What It Costs Them — in an .

While writing the book, which explores how students from rural places experience attending a small elite college, Tieken developed an approach to research characterized by slowly developing relationships with the students she was interviewing, she writes.

“We often think of research as a one-way process, a passing of ‘data’ from ‘subject’ to ‘researcher,’� Tieken writes. “But that approach is neither ethical (in fact, it’s often quite exploitative) nor useful. So much more can be learned when the relationship is actually relational.�

The 13 years that Tieken spent researching and writing the book taught her to be a more patient teacher, she says, with an expanded awareness of the struggles that her students from rural backgrounds may be facing. The book culminates with suggestions for how academic institutions can better support rural students.

“All those recommendations that I make in the book’s final chapter?â€� Tieken writes. “I have to do them, too, and I feel obligated—in a really good way—to encourage others to do them, as well.â€� 

Caylin Carbonell ’12 gives public talk exploring daily life, labor dynamics in colonial New England

Caylin Carbonell ’12, an assistant professor of history at Bowdoin College, gave a public lecture about labor dynamics in colonial New England households, .

The talk, entitled “Laboring Lives and Hidden Stories in Colonial New England,” was the second installment in a series of free online lectures hosted by the Lincoln County Historical Association, based in Wiscasset, Maine.

Carbonell shared insights on “the daily lives inside colonial households as the country was beginning to take shape, with a focus on laborers, often a diverse group ranging from enslaved and indentured people to hired workers, including Indigenous, African, and European women and men.�

She also discussed the challenges of uncovering the stories of 17th and 18th century laborers from incomplete or nonexistent records. Carbonell, who majored in history at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, is currently working on a book manuscript that closely explores daily life in colonial New England households.

Boston Globe, Sun Journal cover MLK Day at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½

The held during ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day,  “From Silencing to Empowerment: Exploring Anger, Justice, and Post-traumatic Growth Among Refugee Women and Women of Color,â€� led by Yun Garrison, assistant professor of psychology, and Fowsia Musse from Maine Community Integration.

During the workshop, Garrison and Musse presented a framework of healing from trauma that they developed by examining the experiences of refugee women. For Musse, herself a refugee from Somalia, and other Somalian refugees and immigrants living in Lewiston, the workshop was particularly topical, the Globe reports; Musse said that anxiety caused by the Trump administration’s immigration deportation agenda led her to reflect on past trauma from her immigration experience.

“When something traumatic happens, how do we hold both anger and peace at the same time? Because sometimes they are pulling us in opposite directions,� Garrison said. “Maybe love and healing can bridge this. I do not know, but that’s what I’m sitting with right now.�

The Lewiston given by Myisha Cherry, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside.

Cherry’s address — â€œWhat Do We Do With All This Fear?â€� — explored the day’s theme of “Love, Anger and the Struggle for Justiceâ€� by closely examining and interpreting MLK’s writings and words.

The Sun Journal quoted from President Garry W. Jenkins’ introductory remarks addressing the day’s theme, sharing his interpretation of how love and anger may intersect in the pursuit of justice.

“I would rather spend my days in a space of love rather than a space of anger,� Jenkins said. “But we don’t always get to make that choice. … In linking these two, we have to wrestle with how they exist together — both in tension and in harmony.�

In sharing MLK’s thoughts about fear, Cherry explained that not all fear was negative; it can, in fact, be harnessed and transformed into a powerful force for change, the Sun Journal reported.

“We should be maestros as opposed to mere masters of our normal fears … and we should transition that normal fear into courage,� Cherry said. “Courage is just not doing something in spite of your fear, it’s taking your fear and matching it up with confidence … and engaging in action.�

As the Sun Journal reported, Cherry linked this healthy fear to MLK’s nonviolent protests and actions, urging all in the audience to use their “normal� fear to advance causes they care about.

“What we should do with this fear is make something beautiful out of it,â€� Cherry said. “This is a time of fear for lots of us … Turning to King has been illuminating, and I find that fear doesn’t mean that we are weak, it doesn’t mean we’ve given people the upper hand. It means that we’re sensitive to injustice. It means we value the people we’re fearful for and we value the principles that we are scared we are going to lose.â€� 

Brian Shankar Adler featured in DownBeat magazine’s cover story

Brian Shankar Adler — percussionist and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ instructor of drum set, tabla, and other hand percussion — and Grammy-award winning soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom released their debut album once like a spark, in their February issue’s cover story, “Making music in the moment.â€� 

The magazine used the stage at Olin Concert Hall as the setting for a photo shoot with the two musicians, who have performed extensively in Lewiston and Portland, Maine as a duo.

“We played each other’s compositions, and the music came alive instantly,� Adler told DownBeat. “Over the years, we built up a hefty book of tunes and a musical language with which to communicate.�

Without chorded or bass instruments, the brass-drum duo is a rare one, DownBeat reported. The combination makes for a unique, melodic sound, with roots in jazz, North Indian Hindustani, and Indonesian musical traditions.

“The way I see it, music is interconnected and has the power to communicate beyond borders,� Adler told DownBeat. “Listening to and playing jazz, it’s evident that the music has roots beyond America and arms that extend to virtually every corner of the world. When approached with open ears, curiosity and a sense of respect for the traditions, the possibilities for exchange are really limitless.�

Art New England reviews current exhibition at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art

On Feb. 5, of “Precision and Expression: American Studio Ceramics from the E. John Bullard Collection,â€� the current show at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art, co-curated by Assistant Curator Samantha Sigmon and Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture Susan Dewsnap. “…Bullard sought diversity and individuality in his acquisitions,â€� Little writes. “He also embraced humor and joy: many of the pieces will prompt a smile.â€� 

Calling it an “entertaining and enlightening exhibition,� Little highlighted an “exquisite vessel� by Mark Bell, “Spherical Vase,� ca. 2011, which he said “exemplifies the Blue Hill, Maine, artist’s seamless style.�

Little also explained the motivation behind Bullard’s generous gift to the museum. “The collector’s longtime ties to Haystack and the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine, inspired his gift, as did the college’s ceramics program led by Susan Dewsnap, who co-curated the exhibition and accompanying catalogue,â€� Little writes. “Bullard envisions future students exploring and learning from these singular objects. That vision is already happening: interns at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum researched artists for the catalogue and labels.â€� 

Carolina González Valencia, associate professor of art and visual culture, was tired of the ways that she saw representations of women like her mother on the screen. She was weary of the ways that she did not see her mother Beatriz on the screen. She hated seeing dynamic people like her mother — who is funny, creative, and opinionated — portrayed as quiet and humble domestic workers. Her mother has a “big personality,â€� and González Valencia, who is accustomed to using art and film to reach an audience, wanted to create a narrative that captured the complexity of her mother’s experience — as a domestic worker in the U.S., but also as a full and complex person. 

The result is How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps, which is in final post-production this month, and will be complete by the end of the year. A recent grant from Unbound Philanthropy gave the final push to bring the film toward completion. In its early stages, though, the biggest obstacle was finding how to authentically tell a story featuring domestic workers that felt new … and true. 

When González Valencia began the process, she sat down to talk to her mother, Beatriz Valencia, about her work. In these early conversations, she saw her mother shrink into a prescribed role. There didn’t seem room for her mother’s complexities to show up in a film when she approached it as a documentarian. She also was aware of “the complicated waters of having this power of representing another person.â€� González Valencia began really thinking about how to approach this project — meant to represent a domestic worker in the U.S. — collaboratively. 

González Valencia has frequently drawn on collaboration to access authenticity. In an installation in Beirut in 2018, she posted a question (“Are you afraid you’ll keep moving forever?â€�) on flyers that hung across the neighborhood where she was in residency and invited responses via text. Her 2019 “Video Postalesâ€� featured photographs and videos shared by artists to accompany lines from González Valencia’s writing. The result was surprising and beautiful — accessing something more true than she could have created alone. Tapping into her collaborative instinct as well as her background in performance art, González Valencia engaged her mother in some improvisatory exercises. 

“Let’s pretend I’m a journalist and I’m here to interview you and you’re a very, very accomplished person,â€� González Valencia said to her mother during the early stages of the film. “What do you want to be very accomplished at?â€� Her mother immediately responded that she would want to be a famous writer. What emerged was a central fictional character around which the collaborative genre-bending film took shape. 

As soon as the fictional writer emerged as a character that Beatriz played, her mother spoke more freely and truthfully to her daughter. “That fiction allowed us to be more honest,� González Valencia said.

González Valencia likely already knew that this film was going to push against boundaries. Documentary is a complicated genre that sometimes poses as simple or straightforward. 

“I was really interested in pushing what we can do as a documentary. It’s a form that needs to be questioned because it comes from a legacy of a very colonial way of looking at the ‘other.’â€� González Valencia was not traveling to a new land to represent another culture, but she knew that she could still fall into the patterns of misrepresentation if her mother was not empowered as a collaborator.

González Valencia notes that other artists have blurred genres — drawing from fiction to access the truth. Author Claudia Rankine, for example, is creating a sort of “collageâ€� in her writing, which has served as a model for González Valencia in her art. She also cites two Belgian filmmakers as influences: Chantal Akerman, who explored her own relationship with her mother in genre-blurring documentary films, and Agnès Varda, who blurred fiction and fact in her documentary films. Models like these allowed González Valencia to collaboratively create a documentary about her mother as a domestic worker, who is playing the role of a famous writer in parts of the film. 

As the semester wrapped up, González Valencia traveled to Splendor Omnia just outside of Mexico City, which she described as a dream studio. This is her first feature-length film, so the experience at Splendor Omnia will not only allow her to finish the film in a very high-end way, but it is also offering González Valencia an education. “It’s kind of like a school to me,â€� she said. 

How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps is the result of what happened when González Valencia and her mother dared to let go of the factual in favor of the truth. Of course deciding upon an approach for the film was only the very beginning. González Valencia’s project has received a slew of grant support. The production of the film has been made possible by support from sources that include the Sundance Film Festival, Abundant Futures Fund, and the LEF fund. The most recent $50,000 grant from Unbound Philanthropy enabled the film to move into post-production.

González Valencia has high hopes for the impact that her film can make. Primarily, she wants to contribute to ongoing conversations about narrative structure, domestic work, and immigrant rights. 

“I don’t believe in the single story,â€� González Valencia said. And when you are part of a group that gets represented by a superficial, single story, the stakes are higher. “I’m interested in being part of the conversation that complicates it, that shows that there is not one story.â€�

González Valencia and her mother are certainly pushing back against a single narrative created “from the perspective of pain and trauma.â€� González Valencia hopes that this film can show that “when we talk about immigrants, when we talk about domestic workers — we are people full of joy and laughter.â€� Especially now, she hopes the creativity and joy of the film — which includes a musical sequence —  will “help people to feel closer.â€� 

As always, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ dancers will perform in the F.A.B. Winter Dance Showcase, taking place for the 11th time on Feb. 6, 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The “F.A.B.” Winter Dance Showcase, says Professor of Dance Carol Dilley, “gives audiences a rare chance to see a variety of dance styles, but it’s also an opportunity for the artists to network.

“Dancers of all kinds work together to present this program, from seasoned professionals exploring new works to young dancers broadening their horizons in this field that they love.”

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students will present two of the 14 performances by dance artists from around Maine — as well as New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts — in the 11th , co-sponsored by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College and the Franco Center, and taking place downtown at the Franco Center at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6.

Here’s the roster of 2016 F.A.B. performers:

• A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ senior from New York City, Mary Anne Bodnar will perform her piece “Sparkle.” A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ sophomore from Middleton, Mass., Jorge Piccole will perform a hip hop solo.
• Claire Porter and Sara Juli perform “Small Stories,” which they premiered at the American Dance Festival last summer. Porter, of New Jersey, is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow who has presented her piece “PORTABLES” extensively. A dancer and professional fundraiser, Juli, of Portland, Maine, teaches at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival and has been a resident artist at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.
• Shawn Hove is a choreographer and dancer, lighting designer and media artist who was video co-director for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival for a decade and is artistic director of the company “shove gently dance.”
• Dancers from the Community Dance Project Ensemble of Saco, a nonprofit dedicated to the infusion of dance in the Maine public school system and directed by Emma Arenstam Campbell ’08.
• Melinda Buckwalter, Kristen Stake and Jacob DeRaadt present “Last Chance to Get It Right.” Buckwalter is a dance writer and movement researcher who resides in Western Massachusetts and is a visiting lecturer in dance at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Based in Portland, Stake is a dance artist and poet, and teaches contact improvisation. DeRaadt, also of Portland, is a sound artist who works with field recordings, tape manipulation, amplified metal and the human voice.
• Alexandra James of Portland works with the nonprofit Swift Urban Movement Project to teach a healthy, active, and social lifestyle through dance.
• Collective Motion, a Southern Maine-based modern dance company, was established in 2006 by Artistic Director Jennifer Bourgeault.
• Molly Gawler, of Monroe, Maine, is known as both a scion of Maine’s folksinging Gawler Family and a member of the renowned Pilobolus Dance Company, with which she toured internationally in a leading role in Shadowland.
• Dancers from the Portland School of Ballet CORPS Program, created in 1994 by Portland Ballet as an innovative partnership with Portland High School, resulting in a preprofessional performing arts high school curriculum unique in Maine.
• The Colby Dancers are directed by Annie Kloppenberg, assistant professor of theater and dance at Colby College. She founded and co-curates Moving Target Boston, and teaches and performs nationally with the improvisational ensemble Like You Mean It.
• Laura Peterson is a New York City-based dance artist and choreographer. Her work “Forever” was recently performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
• indiedanceworks is a Portland-based company, established in 2009 by Susan Thompson-Brown and Lisa Quijano Wolfinger, that has performed throughout Maine and New England.
• Portland Youth Dance is a nonprofit serving Greater Portland by providing a preprofessional dance company and outreach programs for kids and teens.

Admission to F.A.B. is $15 for the general public and $12 for seniors, plus a small fee for credit card purchases, available from the Franco Center at . The student admission fee is $5, cash at the door only.

For more information, please call 207-689-2000.

Zofia Ahmad ’19 of Palo Alto, Calif., and bandmates perform an encore during a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Steel Pan Orchestra concert in December 2015. The orchestra makes its Arts Crawl debut on Jan. 29. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

A revamped format for the sixth annual ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Arts Crawl this week will make it easier for audiences to savor the full spectrum of student work in the performing, visual, and literary arts.

See the full schedule for the Jan. 29 event below.

“This year the Arts Crawl features several art forms that have not figured strongly in our past presentations,” says James Parakilas, who chairs the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Arts Collaborative and is the James L. Moody Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts.

“These include film screenings, a photography exhibit, and a wish tree just outside Chase Hall,” he explains.

To be shown in a Chase Hall space called the Arts Commons, the films will have an environmental theme as part of a greater involvement with the Arts Crawl this year by students in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ environmental studies program.

In other innovations, Parakilas says, the college’s Steel Pan Orchestra will make its first Arts Crawl appearance, and visitors will have an opportunity to try playing the instruments of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Gamelan Orchestra.

The event begins at 4 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29, with performances and exhibitions at Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave. From 5:30 to 7 p.m., the focus shifts across campus to the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. Starting at 5 p.m., ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ popular a cappella groups will sing in the Fireplace Lounge, Commons, 136 Central Ave.

At 7:30 p.m., the popular Sangai Asia Night showcase of performance and fashions from Asia begins in Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St. This year’s theme is “Color of Asia.”

The Bollywood Team energizes the Schaeffer Theatre stage during Asia Night 2014. (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In Chase Hall, performers include dancers, actors with the student-run Robinson Players and members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Musicians Union, all in Memorial Commons, the former campus dining room that has been converted to an event space. In the Little Room, downstairs opposite the College Store, creative writers will read their prose and poetry in the Little Room.

In Olin, senior studio art majors will welcome visitors to their studios. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, with three shows on the walls — including an acclaimed exhibition of digital montages by Maine artist Jeffery Becton — is open until 7 p.m.

Performers in Olin include the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Gamelan Orchestra, singer-songwriters, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Jazz Combo and the Steel Pan Orchestra.

Finally, the event includes an exhibit of three-dimensional theatrical stage designs, which patrons of Asia Night will see when they enter the lobby of Schaeffer Theatre.

Refreshments, prepared by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dining Services, are key to the Arts Crawl experience. In store at Chase Hall are popcorn, hot chai and hot chocolate, apple crisp with vanilla ice cream and assorted cookies.

In the Olin Arts Center lobby, treats include mini cheesecakes and mini “Death by Chocolate” cookies, along with bottled water to wash the sweets down.

Both the Arts Crawl, produced by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Arts Collaborative, and Sangai Asia Night, sponsored by the student organization Sangai Asia, are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8212.

Arts Crawl 2016 Schedule

(subject to change)

Chase Hall 4 to 5:30pm

4:05pm: Kick-off with the Crosstones!

Memorial Commons

Theater, dance, and live music

4:10 – Theater performance: This is Kimmy by Hannah Albertine ’16

4:20 – Mixed media: Keila Ching ‘18

4:30 – Student band: The Retrievers

4:45 – Song and dance duet: Kelly McDonald ’19 and Charlotte Cramer ‘19

4:55 – Singer: Danielle Cohen ‘19

5:00 – Hip Hop dance: Jorge Piccole ‘18

5:05 – Student Band: Hired Help

5:15 – Singer/Songwriter: Alisa Amador ‘18

Little Room

4:30 – Readings and Refreshments

4:30 – Chris Shaw ‘16

4:50 – Julia Dunn ‘16

4:55 – Mary Schwalbe ‘17

5:00 – Hannah Zeltner ‘16

5:05 – Montana Hirsch ‘16

5:10 – Nick Muccio ‘16

5:15 – Will Hallett ‘16

Chase Gallery and Arts Commons

4-5:30 – Music, Movies, Art-making

Wish Tree

4-5:30 – Come hang your wishes here!

Fireplace Lounge, Commons, 5 to 6pm

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ popular a cappella ensembles

Olin Arts Center 5:30 to 7pm

5:30-5:50 – Gamelan Open Rehearsal (Room 243)

5:50-6:10 – Singer-songwriters (Museum of Art)

Duncan Hardy, Amos Libby, and Eric LaPerna are the Okbari Middle Eastern Ensemble.

The Okbari Middle Eastern Ensemble performs at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 22, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

The concert is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required, available at . For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Okbari presents music from the richly varied contemporary and historic traditions of the Middle East, including Ottoman Turkish classical compositions, rural Turkish folk and devotional songs, Arabic classical and folk music, and dance music from the Armenian and Turkish immigrant diasporas.

The Okbari Middle Eastern Ensemble appears as a duo, trio, and a quartet, and has performed at venues throughout New England, the East Coast and the Midwest, including such prestigious venues as the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, Alwan for the Arts in New York City, and the Chicago Arabesque Festival.

As a trio, Okbari is Amos Libby (oud, vocals), Eric LaPerna (percussion), and Duncan Hardy, who plays a microtonal zither called a qanun.

The Decoda Cello Quartet, clockwise from top left: Caitlin Sullivan, Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, Claire Bryant, Hannah Collins.

In a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ concert at 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 16, four cellists affiliated with New York City’s Decoda Ensemble offer a program heavy on contemporary composers, including jazz bassist Ron Carter, but also featuring J.S. Bach and Maurice Ravel.

Exploring themes of whimsy and images from the natural world, the Decoda Cello Quartet performance takes place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Admission is free but tickets are required: . For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Playing a concert in Blue Hill, Maine, as well as the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ date, cellists Claire Bryant, Hannah Collins, Caitlin Sullivan, and Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir are all affiliated with the full Decoda Ensemble.

The artists of Decoda first collaborated with one another in the renowned Ensemble ACJW fellowship program, created by Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, and they now extend that relationship as an Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall.  Since its inception in 2011, Decoda’s projects have reached audiences in schools, hospitals and prisons as well as in prominent concert halls across the globe.

Here’s the cello quartet’s complete Jan. 16 program:

• J.S. Bach: Gavottes from Suite No. 6 (arranged by Colin Hampton);
• Auguste Franchomme, from Douze Caprice (arranged by Caitlin Sullivan): Caprices No. 7, 8, and 11;
• Tetsuro Hoshii: Four Crayons
• Jane Antonia Cornish: Three Nocturnes
• Tina Davidson: In That Early Light
• Gabriela Lena Frank: Las Sombras de los Apus
• Ron Carter:  Desert Winds
• Maurice Ravel: Bolero (arranged by James Barralet).

The Little Match Girl puppet in the Figures of Speech Theatre production of “the little match girl passion.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Maine’s groundbreaking Figures of Speech Theatre premieres the little match girl passion, a theatrical setting of contemporary American composer David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning piece, in performances at 7:30 p.m. Saturday-Monday, Jan. 9-11, at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College’s Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St., Lewiston.

Admission is $15 for the general public and $10 for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College faculty and staff. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College students are eligible for free admission but reservations are suggested. .

Lang’s piece interleaves the text of Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known story about an impoverished child selling matches in the streets on New Year’s Eve with selected texts from Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion.

“The first time I heard the little match girl passion,â€� says Figures of Speech artistic director John Farrell, “I felt a deep connection to the kind of visual theater that Figures of Speech has practiced from its beginnings, and I began to envision a theatrical setting for the music composed of puppets, masked actors and projected video.

“The performance elevates the suffering and death of the match girl to a spiritual plane, and it asks us to consider our relationship to the suffering of children everywhere.â€�

Farrell adds, “Our production takes the audience on a journey –– from the original story, through Lang’s inspired synthesis of Andersen and Bach, to our vision of the Grandmother as an embodiment of the cosmic feminine.�

Ultimately, Farrell hopes, the little match girl passion will fuse music, dance, puppetry, masks, and projected imagery in a theatrical event that defies categorization.

Figures of Speech has toured the world for more than 30 years with original works created at the intersection of drama, poetry, sculpture and dance. John Farrell and his wife, Carol Farrell, co-founded Figures of Speech in 1982 to explore the interplay of puppets, actors, shadows, movement and masks. Carol Farrell is the supervisor of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ costume shop.

The company is known for psychologically rich, visually stunning adaptations of folk tales, classical myths and original works for adults. Figures of Speech is a four-time recipient of the coveted UNIMA Citation of Excellence, the highest distinction in American puppet theatre.

The production of the little match girl passion is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Davis Family Foundation, the Maine Theater Fund of the Maine Community Foundation, the Maine Humanities Council as part of the Pulitzer Prize Centennial Campfires Initiative, and the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

A scene from the 2011 Service of Lessons and Carols. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In an annual tradition at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, a Service of Lessons and Carols for the Advent season of the Christian faith will be held at 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 13, in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel, 275 College St.

Sponsored by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ Multifaith Chaplaincy, the service is open to the community. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ Service of Lessons and Carols draws on the traditional structure of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, telling the story of the birth of Jesus through traditional scriptural readings mixed with contemporary prose readings.

This year’s readers include Jamil Drake, visiting assistant professor of religious studies; students and members of the college staff; and college President Clayton Spencer.

Music will be provided by keyboardist and Lecturer in Music John Corrie; the College Choir, directed by Corrie; and a cappella singing groups the Crosstones, the Deansmen, the Manic Optimists, the Merimanders and TakeNote.

The Rev. Brittany Longsdorf and the Rev. Raymond Clothier, respectively the multifaith chaplain and acting associate multifaith chaplain at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, will offer blessings.

A jazz pianist and composer, Frank Carlberg is a visiting artist at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2015-16.

Described by DownBeat magazine as a maker of “sophisticated, approachable music played with both freedom and discipline,” pianist Frank Carlberg fronts a jazz quintet at 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission is free but tickets are required, available at . For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Carlberg, at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ this academic year as a visiting artist, is known for his musical settings of poetry. In his ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ performance, titled Word Circus, he’ll present settings for work by such contemporary American poets as Ron Padgett and Anselm Berrigan.

He’ll be accompanied by a quartet composed of singer Christine Correa, alto sax player John O’Gallagher, bassist Kim Cass and drummer Michael Sarin.

At 4:15 on Dec. 3, Carlberg also offers the lecture Jazz and Poetry: A Personal Journey in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center.

Originally a native of Helsinki, Carlberg first gained critical recognition with his 1992 album Blind Drive (Accurate Records), a trio effort primarily consisting of original compositions.

Carlberg’s 1996 The Crazy Woman (Accurate), was his first recorded venture into settings for poetry. The Hartford Courant characterized Carlberg’s 2009 release The American Dream (Red Piano Records), comprising 12 songs inspired by the words of renowned American poet Robert Creeley, as “melodic, challenging, intelligent and fiercely original.”

Other poets that Carlberg has adapted include Jack Kerouac, Anna Akhmatova, Kenneth Rexroth and Wallace Stevens.

As a leader, his groups include the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-bound Frank Carlberg Quintet; the Tivoli Trio, a classic jazz piano trio playing an eclectic mix of Carlberg compositions drawn from cinematic and circus inspirations; and the Frank Carlberg Big Band, performing original compositions as well as arrangements and re-compositions of standards and folk materials.

A notable Carlsberg collaboration has been his two-album partnership with drummer and composer Klaus Suonsaari. DownBeat’s Bill Milkowski praised the duo’s “healthy blend of humor and fearlessness.” Other notable collaborators have included saxophonist Steve Lacy, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler.

In addition to composing and performing, Carlsberg serves on the faculties at the New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music.