Jarred Kennedy-Loving ’15

Portrait of an artist: Molly Rider '15

As a visual arts major, Molly Rider ’15 has pursued everything from film to making her own furniture. She dedicates much of her time at Bowdoin to the visual arts, and plans to pursue a career in this field after graduation.
In her sophomore year, Rider began to get involved in the arts as a part of Bowdoin Artist Activists, through which she did art projects with local elementary schools.
The next year, while taking her junior year off from Bowdoin on medical leave, Rider was able to take art classes in industrial design at the University of Minnesota. She is currently working on her senior studio project.
“I am doing woodworking and photography and printmaking for my senior studio,” she said. “I have really enjoyed printing photos on wood.”This project also includes making her own furniture.
“I just made a coffee table and some side tables,” she said. “I also made a lamp that hangs from the ceiling, which I definitely will include in my room in the future.”
Students in the senior studio class will present a project at the end of the semester.
“It is like an independent study because you make your own schedule and stick to it,” she said. “It’s great because the art department as well as local artists come critique your work so you get a lot of feedback.”
Rider has also been involved in film throughout her time at Bowdoin. She interned at a film company called By Kids the summer after her freshman year.
“They get filmmakers to go all over the world and make documentaries about kids’ lives,” she said. “They tell stories about their lives to bring relevant issues to the public that are not in the mainstream media. I did a lot of grant writing for them and met a lot of filmmakers.”
On campus, Rider is a leader of the Bowdoin Outing Club.
“I love kayaking, skiing, and rafting,” she said. Rider’s favorite art class at Bowdoin was landscape painting with Associate Professor of Art James Mullen.
“Our assignments were more open, which pushed my painting skills and encouraged me to paint a different way,” she said. “I also got to paint more of what I liked to do.”
The projects Rider is most proud of include her Landscape Painting final project and her senior studio project.
“For Landscape Painting, I made fifteen paintings and they were fun because they were quick and very colorful,” she said. “What I am working on now, specifically bending wood, has also been really fun.”
Rider’s mother is a children’s book editor, and she loves the artwork of many illustrators her mother has worked with.
“Melissa Sweet is a local artist who is great,” she said.In addition, Rider finds inspiration in printmaker Rick Allen’s work.“I love his work because of the level of detail he puts into it,” she said. “He uses beautiful landscapes and includes the natural world, which I am drawn to.” Rider plans to go abroad to New Zealand this summer to complete her last semester.“I am taking two industrial design classes there and then considering going to graduate school for industrial design after that,” she said.
To suggest an artist for Portrait of an Artist, email Arts & Entertainment Editor Emily Weyrauch at eweyrauc@bowdoin.edu.

Portrait of an artist: Diamond Walker ’17

Diamond Walker ’17 tried out for an Irish dancing team though a program at her elementary school at age eight. She was accepted into the program, which turned out to be the beginning of a lifelong love of dance. Now a sophomore involved in many projects on campus, Walker still finds the time to pursue her passion.
Though Walker was an Irish dancer in her childhood, she switched to hip-hop when she was 15. Walker took dance classes as a first year, and has continued to be involved in dance through her choreography and leadership of Obvious Dance Crew.
Walker’s current project has been choreographing a piece for the Asian Students Association (ASA) Fashion Show, which is coming up in two weeks. However, she plans to do a more personal piece for the student show in May.
“Usually my dances are more fun and I usually do my dances for other people,” said Walker. “I really want to do a dance that’s about identity and about race with all the events that have been happening this year, like Ferguson.”
Walker said her family inspired her to become a dancer.
“Dancing in my family is normal. My mom played music in the mornings while cooking or cleaning and music is always on in the house,” said Walker.
“We would always be moving which was something that I loved. I love to move. It was a way that I enjoyed expressing myself and it was comfortable for me,” she added.
Walker recalls times when she would choreograph dances for her cousins to perform. “My male cousin was always the footstool. He hated it,” said Walker.
One of Walker’s sources of inspiration is Nappytabs, a husband and wife dance duo from the TV show “So You Think You Can Dance.”
“They do the craziest isolations and choreography,” said Walker. “To this day I still watch some of my favorite pieces of theirs to get inspired in my own work.”
Walker also finds inspiration in music of all kinds.
“I love listening to classical music when I’m doing my homework,” she said. “I’ll be sitting there and I’ll start dancing to a classical beat which is very unheard of.”
Walker is involved with many clubs and organizations outside of dance. She is currently a member of Residential Life, serving as a proctor in Osher, and is a student director for the Women’s Resource Center. Walker is also a staff member at the McKeen Center for the Common Good. She recently co-facilitated a four-week group discussion series about identity at Bowdoin for Undiscussed, a student group dedicated to discussing difficult issues.
In her spare time, Walker loves to learn about the science of hair and how to take care of it. She is passionate about social activism and loves to discuss issues surrounding race and diversity at Bowdoin. Walker wants to bring her love of dance into everything that she does and plans to incorporate her passion into whatever career path she chooses to go down. She uses dance as a method of expressing herself.
“I love to be big when I’m dancing. I’m a small person, so in my dancing I like to do big expressive movements to show the big person I am on the inside,” she said.
To suggest an artist for Portrait of an Artist, email Arts & Entertainment Editor Emily Weyrauch at eweyrauc@bowdoin.edu.

Portrait of an artist

March 27, 2015

Grace Mallett

**I’M LOVING IT:** After he broke his leg, finishing his minor in dance has proved difficult for Kennedy-Loving ‘15. Despite this, he continues to work on his independent study.

Jarred Kennedy-Loving ’15 was not always encouraged to embrace his body. It was only after he took his first dance class with former Visiting Professor Nya McCarthy-Brown his sophomore year that he felt inspired about dancing. Now a senior, he is a gender and women’s studies major and dance minor who is completing an independent study in dance that explores identity, reflection and perception—thanks to and in spite of any and all of obstacles that stood in his way.

Coming from a lower socioeconomic background, dance wasn’t on his radar when he was growing up. When one of his foster families put him in a church production as an angel, the pastor approached him and told him boys shouldn’t wear tight clothing like his. After that experience he became self-conscious and discouraged not only about his body, but how he moved it.

“I didn’t dance that much,” said Kennedy-Loving. “But I always knew that I could.”

At Bowdoin, working with McCarthy-Brown was a turning point for him.

“She changed my life; she believed in me,” he said. “She taught me how to isolate my rib cage—I could move it like Shakira.”

In class, Kennedy-Loving liked observing how different people move and figuring out how they did it.

“I got to the class and it was like food for me,” he said. “It’s so good to see what people are coming up with.”

From these experiences, Kennedy-Loving started to think about the questions that would evolve into his independent study: How do others view us in our space? How do we interact?

But before his independent study was completely underway, Kennedy-Loving had a setback.

On February 7, he started the day breaking records with the track and field team at the Maine State Track Meet, including his personal record of 23 seconds in the 200-meter dash. He ended the day, however, in the emergency in Lewiston, Maine. While running the 400 meter race, he suffered a compound fracture in his leg.

“It was an emotional time for me,” he said. “I was in my hospital room thinking, how am I going to finish my minor?”

For Kennedy-Loving, being an athlete and a dancer work together because both demand his attention and awareness of his body in space.

“I listen to my body,” he said. “It’s more important than the beat itself.”

In addition to his experiences on the dance floor and the track, Kennedy-Loving brings another level to his personal journey with identity, reflection and perception. While he has been supported at Bowdoin, he still finds it difficult to navigate his identity as a gay black man.

“Whatever you may be, you have to find that creative truth,” said Kennedy-Loving.

For his independent study, Kennedy-Loving is choreographing a piece based on his favorite poem, “And Yea...This is a Love Poem,” by Nikki Giovanni. He emphasizes that a lot of his work is about making choices and accepting them.
When choosing dancers it was important for him to emphasize that no dance experience was necessary.

“It’s ludicrous to say only certain people can move in space,” he said. Teresa Liu ’15, Adaiah Hudgins-Lopez ’18 and Christabel Fosu-Asare ’18 are dancing in this project.

When it comes to the actual choreography, Kennedy-Loving said he sees it as a collaborative effort. Throughout the process, Kennedy-Loving said he has felt inspired by his dancers and their energy.

“I have to watch these three [people] move in space to work through the choreography,” he explained.

His piece is comprised of angular movements and fluid motions that focus on the upper body as a representation of the constrained identity.

“Am I an artist? I don’t know if I’m an artist. I love movement and patterns and space and expression,” he said. “But I struggle to call myself a dancer, so I just call myself Jarred.”

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