The Bowdoin Orient

“15 Villainous Fools,” Maggie Seymour ’16 and Olivia Atwood’s ’17 two-woman clowning adaptation of Shakespeare’s play “The Comedy of Errors,” was recently picked up by the People’s Improv Theater (PIT) in New York City. The show will be performed at an Off-Off-Broadway venue for two months this summer starting in July.

The 75-minute performance tells the story of two sets of identical twins and their adventures following a boat crash. There are 15 characters in the play, with Atwood and Seymour acting as half each.

"It's just a whole Shakespeare classic dilemma,” said Atwood. “It's a comedy so by the end everything gets sorted out and everybody gets married.”

Seymour’s became interested in Shakespeare during her sophomore year at Bowdoin after taking an acting class with Sally Wood, who made Shakespeare’s voice accessible and understandable. Then, when Seymour was studying abroad in London fall of her junior year, she had the opportunity to see a production of “The Comedy of Errors” at the Globe Theatre.

“It was amazing. The control of the language, the accessibility of the show and the sheer joy that everyone was having was something I was very passionate about and wanted to explore,” said Seymour.

Through “15 Villainous Fools,” Seymour is able to find an intersection between her love of Shakespeare and clowning, a term used to describe physical theater that is rooted in actors finding their inner child or inner joy.

During an improv class Atwood and Seymour were in together, Seymour enlisted the help of Atwood for her honors project, which ultimately became “15 Villainous Fools.” It was first performed at Bowdoin on November 20, 2015 and then put on twice more as part of Seymour’s honors project. The duo further reworked the play and put on one more show for Admitted Students Weekend last April.

"We were revamping the show for the summer tour,” said Atwood. “Having another show at Bowdoin was another really good test run.”

Then, last summer—with the help of Axis Fuksman-Kumpa ’17 as a technician—Atwood and Seymour took “15 Villainous Fools” on tour, participating in fringe festivals. Fringe festivals are week to month-long theater festivals held in various venues across the country.

“It's a place where people mount their shows,” said Atwood. “Most people do one fringe festival per summer. We decided to do five.”

Atwood received a Micoleau Family Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts from Bowdoin, which helped fund the tour, and both Atwood and Seymour contributed their own money to finance travel expenses. Over the summer, the duo performed “15 Villainous Fools” first in Portland, Maine before continuing on to San Diego, Washington D.C., Rhode Island and New York City.

"The hardest one [to get into] by far is FringeNYC. The application is impossible. You have to submit a cover letter, resume, a video or trailer of your shows, reviews if you have them,” said Atwood. “It's a super selective process. We ended up getting up waitlisted and then we got in. That is the reason this play was discovered.”

Atwood and Seymour performed five shows during FringeNYC over the course of a week, four of which were sold out.

"We got stellar reviews and having a nearly sold-out run is pretty impressive with 200-plus shows at the festival” said Atwood.

The success of the “15 Villainous Fools” at the festival caught the attention of the PIT and in December, after Atwood met with the artistic director, the PIT picked up the play. It is slated to begin the first week of July.

Unlike last summer, Atwood and Seymour will stay in New York City all summer to perform their show at the PIT, allowing them more stability and the benefits of having a homebase venue. The duo will be performing 13 shows as of now.

“We’ll be moving in New York in June to start rehearsing in the space, meeting people, starting to market more in the area, building up toward opening night and trying to sell out all the houses if possible,” said Atwood.

Currently, Atwood and Seymour are working on revamping their image, working on graphics, marketing and creating a more professional-looking website. In the summer, the duo will start to focus more on the logistics of the show and figuring out lights, costumes and more.

“Baseline [the show is] the same feel, but I think in a lot of ways it's going to be different just because we won’t be travelling,” said Seymour. “I think we're putting in a lot of work reimagining it but also cleaning it.”

Looking ahead, neither Atwood nor Seymour is sure what will happen with “15 Villainous Fools,” but the prospect of the show being optioned to go off-Broadway is exciting.

While Atwood was attending the National Theater Institute the summer after her first year at Bowdoin, she received a piece of advice from a speaker and often thinks back to what he told her.

“He said that if there isn’t a space for me in theater, I can make a space for myself,” said Atwood.

"I think the ultimate goal is to keep doing theater because that's what we both love to do,” she added. “And we're going to do whatever we can to keep making that happen.”

Editor’s Note: Olivia Atwood ’17 is an associate editor of the Orient but was not involved in the production or editing of this article.

Tomorrow night, Israeli punk guitarist Yonatan Gat and his band will bring their improvisational, atmospheric and eclectic sound to Ladd House’s living room in what is expected to be an immersive, synergetic performance.

The concert is sponsored by WBOR and Bowdoin Hillel. Gat’s performances are unique in that his band sets up in the middle of the crowd, asks for pitch blackness except for a couple of spotlights and is largely improvisation-based with limited vocals.

“We stand in the middle of the room and we surround ourselves with the audience. We have a very intimate communication with them, it’s not direct, we don’t talk to each other, but we look at each other,” Gat said in a phone interview with the Orient. “But I think they sense what we need and we sense what they need and certain atmosphere just gets built in the room. It’s very special.” 

Gat, the creator of the trio, started playing guitar during his teens growing up in Tel Aviv. Along with two friends, he formed the band Monotonix in 2005 and it went on to perform around the world until 2011, when it disbanded. 

Gat has been inspired significantly by punk and rock ‘n’ roll music over the years and finds the physicality of the two genres particularly influential. 

“I remember the first times I saw really good bands playing ... I was really, really struck by the fact you could stand in the first row or something like that and you can feel the wind from the stage,” said Gat. 

In 2014, Gat started a solo project, performing under his own name, eventually recruiting bassist Sergio Sayeg and drummer Brian Chase. 

Gat’s songs draw from music around the world and incorporate elements found in a variety of musical genres, from Brazilian beats to Israeli punk music. All of his shows are improvised, which means that the trio goes into a performance with a blueprint but has the ability to change its sound within that framework. 

“When you improvise, you just teach yourself because you cannot rely on anything, you can’t really rely on music you composed before or things you agreed on. You have to get yourself to a pretty high spiritual place,” said Gat.

Gat has performed over 1,500 shows around the world and finds each show to be different and exciting in its own way. He looks forward to every performance and the interactive relationship his music forms with each audience. 

“I love the energy, I love the atmosphere, I love the communication with the audience,” said Gat. “I think music is a much better way of saying things than any other language that I know of.”

While performing, Gat tries to create a particular experience for his audiences. In his albums, such as “Iberian Passage” (2014) and “Director” (2015), he experiments with music that can fit different moods. 

“I want [the album] to work in your life when you wake up in the morning, when you go to sleep at night, when you’re sad, when you’re happy,” said Gat. “I want it to be something that becomes a part of your life, something a bit more permanent, different, timeless.”

WBOR’s concert director Nick Benson ’17, who invited Gat, was struck by the organic, improvisational and cyclical feel of Gat’s performance style when he attended his show in Portland last October. Once Benson realized Gat was within WBOR’s budget, he was determined to get Gat to perform on campus.

“It’s one of those moments in life when you feel like ultimately explaining something to someone who wasn’t there is futile, because no matter how you describe it, it cannot even compare to the reality,” said Benson. “It’s frankly out of this world how intense the whole experience is. It’s ridiculous.” 

Bowdoin students will have the opportunity not only to see Gat’s performance style first-hand, but also to attend a talk by Gat on Saturday at 4 p.m. in MacMillan House. Later that night, student band 20/20 will open for Gat, who plans to begin his set around 11 p.m. 

 “The whole night is going to be pure music,” Benson said.

Allie Wilkinson’s ’11 artwork, she says, is all about humanity. She discussed her exhibit “Within,” which is filled with ink and graphite pieces ranging from a portrait of her friends to a horizontal depiction of DNA yesterday afternoon in the Lamarche Gallery. 

“My art really focuses around the things that we share as human,” said Wilkinson. “Whatever political views or differences we have, we all love, we all have fears, we are all insecure. It’s what unites us. I think that’s where art has the potential to be very profound.”

Wilkinson’s father is a sculptor and although she grew up surrounded by art in New York City, it wasn’t until she took a drawing course during her first year at Bowdoin that she realized she wanted to pursue art as a career. 

“I’ve been making art my whole life, but it really took off here,” said Wilkinson at her talk. 

Through her professors and her senior studio, Wilkinson learned lessons about perseverance and the importance of continuing to make art regardless of circumstance. 

“Motivation is a lie. Motivation is not going to strike you and come out of the sky and motivate you for the rest of your life,” said Wilkinson. “That message to keep going and keep persisting was really valuable to me.”

After graduating with an interdisciplinary art history and visual arts major, Wilkinson soon became discouraged with the professional art spheres. She put art on hold and began teaching English in France. However, she eventually decided she needed an outlet for creative expression and began to draw portraits of her friends. 

Wilkinson continued to draw portraits and produced a collection of nine portraits of her friends in 2016. The collection, titled “Hiding,” is on display in the Lamarche Gallery as part of “Within.”  In it, she used colored ink for the first time and found that she enjoyed the medium. 

Wilkinson primarily works with ink and on denril, a type of paper generally used by architects. All of the pieces showcased in exhibit are done on denril. 

One of the pieces, called “Connect,” was created specifically for the Lamarche Gallery and is the first piece Wilkinson has done horizontally. “Connect” features a strand of multi-colored DNA on two layered sheets of paper. 

“All of my pieces are very rooted in the figure,” said Wilkinson. “[DNA]  just seemed like a great thing to explore abstractly.”

Two of the other works of art shown in the Gallery,  “Fall” and “Rise,” were done in 2014 using graphite and ink on denril. The pieces are influenced by some of the work Wilkinson did at Bowdoin. During her senior year, she had a solo art show in the Visual Arts Center called “Wanting.” It featured large pieces of paper with two figures, one drawn in Sharpie and the other obscured behind it, similar to the figures explored in “Fall” and “Rise.”  

Like many of her pieces, “Fall” and “Rise” capture the human experience and examine the ways in which we hide from ourselves and others. 

“I made them at a point in my life where I felt like there was a disconnect between what I was showing the world and what was going on inside me,” said Wilkinson. “I think that’s something a lot of people experience and I wanted to capture that with these pieces.” 

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R&B and hip-hop artist ELHAE will perform at Studzinski Recital Hall tomorrow night in the first collaborative show put on by the African-American Society (Af-Am) and WBOR, Bowdoin’s campus radio station.

This concert is a part of Black History Month programming. 

“We’re hoping to be able to draw a lot of people from different parts of the campus to get together and try some new music out,” said WBOR’s concert director Nick Benson ’17, who co-planned the event. 

The choice to hold the performance in Studzinski was both a practical and atmospheric one: it has an almost 300-person capacity and the auditorium lends itself to a more calmer, more controlled setting.

“At this point, [my music is] very melodic, chords-driven. I love dark chords and very ambiance, vibe-y tracks on top of hard hitting drums,” said ELHAE, which stands for “Every Life Has An Ending,” in a phone interview with the Orient.

“ELHAE is a slower type of music. It’s not fast paced or anything, it is a little more R&B, so I think there will be good vibes,” said Af-Am minister of public relations Lydia Godo-Solo ’17.

Although Studzinski generally hosts classical and jazz concerts, the auditorium was designed to accommodate various music styles. Depending on the performance, curtains can be deployed to absorb sound reflection and shape the response of the room. 

“For instance, for something like ELHAE’s performance, which will be a little more percussive—and it’s contemporary music styling—we tend to dampen the reverberation of the room,” said Chris Watkinson, adjunct lecturer in music and recital hall technical director. 

In terms of a visual aesthetic, artists perform on a bare stage with minimal light and backdrops. This contributes to the small, intimate feeling of the auditorium. 

“We try to let the artist present themselves in their own right as best they can,” said Watkinson. 

For ELHAE, this means performing what he knows best: songs from his first album, “Aura,” which he released as an EP in 2015. 

“Nine times out of 10 that’s where a lot of people have heard me from,” said ELHAE.

He also plans to perform a few songs from his most recent album, “All Have Fallen,” which debuted last March. 

ELHAE compared the process of writing songs to his childhood hobby of coloring. 

“When I was a child, I used to have my coloring books and I would trace the lines first with a crayon and then once I had the lines perfect, that’s when I would go in and color in the picture,” said ELHAE. 

For him, tracing the picture is equivalent to murmuring in the studio. Once he develops a melody from that murmur, he begins to write the lyrics. The lyrics are him coloring in his picture. 

ELHAE grew up in Georgia and has always been interested in pursuing music—both his mother and grandmother sang in church choirs. He began writing songs when he was 12 and then started working in the studio a few years later. 

 “I always knew that I was going to do something with music. I didn’t know what it was going to be­—either behind the scenes or in front of the camera,” said ELHAE. “I had no idea, but turns out I’m in front of the camera.” 

Following a successful release of “Aura,” ELHAE plans to debut the sequel, “Aura II,” at the end of this month. Ultimately, ELHAE hopes that people will be able to relate to his music and connect with the personal situations he talks about in his songs. 

“Helping people through my music is what I’m here to do,” he said. “So hopefully making that on a bigger scale, a grander scale—getting the music heard globally is the end goal.”

ELHAE will perform tomorrow in Studzinski Recital Hall at 8 p.m. Tickets are free and available at the door.

In an effort to bring comedic dialogue around femininity and politics to campus, Callye Bolster ’19 has established Purity Pact, an all-female stand-up and sketch comedy group.  

The club was chartered with the College at the end of last semester. There are already 16 members, all friends and classmates Bolster recruited. She is not planning on holding auditions to expand the group this semester.

Bolster got involved in comedy while she was living in Chicago last summer. While attending various improv and stand up shows, she noticed how male dominated the comedy world is. She wanted to start an all-female group to push against this norm. 

"An all-female group is a political statement in a way," Bolster said. "It gives you license to do more edgy, controversial humor.” 

Purity Pact is one of three student-run comedy groups established within the past year, following the improv group Office Hours and Bowdoin Stand-Up, which is currently the in the process of being chartered. 

“We have a pretty good comedy scene on campus,” said Bolster. “But it's pretty apolitical for the most part. We should talk about things that matter to us outside of Bowdoin, so I'm excited to bring that kind of comedy to campus.” 

Millie Vergara ’19, a member of Purity Pact, recognizes the importance of comedy in current politics and wants to create an environment where students are able to interact with the topic. 

“I think comedy is a really important medium and it's really useful in spreading messages and ideas,” Vergara said.

"I'm excited to have a space for more political comedy on campus, because I feel like, right now, a lot of Americans get their news or at least a good portion of their news from comedy,” Bolster added.

Purity Pact is currently in the midst of writing sketches and skits, most of which focus on issues of gender and politics. Bolster is hoping to host comedy pub nights on campus beginning at the end of the month. 

"There's definitely a strong theme around gender that is coming up a lot in the context of campus, but also in bigger ways,” said Bolster. “Because we are an all-female group, that definitely comes up a lot, but I do think that we'll move beyond that as time goes on." 

Ultimately, Bolster hopes that creating Purity Pact will give women on campus a platform to share their stories, thoughts, and feelings in a humorous manner. 

“I think that this is going to be another way … that signals to first-year women that [Bowdoin] is a place where women's voices matter and where they are listened to and where women are funny,” said Bolster. “A lot of people don't come from places where that is the case."

Crystal Hall, associate professor in the digital humanities, has fond memories of participating in the Brunswick Memorial Day Parade. She rode alongside her father and Rene Bernier, laboratory instructor/support manager and Science Center manager, as they gave rides in their World War II Jeeps to veterans. These experiences piqued her interest in cars, and as soon as she was old enough to hold a screwdriver, she began helping her dad in his garage.

Hall began seriously working on cars when she was 13. 

“We restored my Jeep before I got my learner’s permit so that we could go off-roading with it,” she said. 

Hall is currently in the process of creating a hot rod from a 1934 Dodge, a car of particular sentimental value as it is the same type of car her grandfather drove. She has restored one and half cars with her dad, but the ’34 Dodge will be the first hot rod she has built. 

Creating a hot rod is the process of drastically improving old cars—different from restoring cars, which is taking an old car and bringing it back to working order. 

Building a hot rod can be time-consuming and frustrating. For Hall and her father, it is more like a jigsaw puzzle. 

“The biggest challenge with the hot rod is that you have a completely blank canvas to work with,” said Hall. “My father and I are very meticulous about history and historical accuracy and being very precise in our work, but there isn’t a blueprint for how to make this hot rod, so it’s really challenging our creative side.” 

As a professor whose main focus is working with computers, working with cars allows Hall to clear her mind and get her hands dirty. Unlike coding, where the products are on a screen, the results of restoring cars are tangible and immediate. 

“It’s satisfying to code, but it’s a completely different satisfaction to clean something, paint something and put something together,” said Hall. 

Through her work restoring and building cars, Hall has noticed improvements in other areas of her life. She credits these improvements to the intelligence her dad has shared with her. 

“Watching him think and problem solve and the different ways he approaches problems has helped me to be more flexible and open to different ways of solving problems,” said Hall. “When you are coding, that’s the best thing you can ask for.”

Another benefit of creating a hot rod is having the ability to build it exactly to one’s needs. With the ’34 Dodge, Hall is planning to install a Corvette engine and transmission as a nod to her dad’s favorite type of cars. She is planning on picking a Porsche color for the car as a nod to her long-lasting infatuation with Porsches. 

“That’s where the amalgamation of parts and pieces of different places comes into play,” Hall said. “We’re picking from the things we really like and the flexibility of being able to put them together.” 

Hall and her father plan to begin the assembly process of the Dodge in September and hope to have it up and running by next summer. They went on a road trip to retrieve the car parts and plan to go on another one when the hot rod is finished. 

“I have a feeling hot rods are in my future for a long time,” said Hall. 

Noticing the need for a more community-oriented and diverse dance group on campus, Arah Kang ’19 and Joy Huang ’19 decided to create ReFRESH, a group dedicated to exploring movement through various styles of dance. Kang and Huang came up with the idea over the summer and ReFRESH began offering classes at the beginning of the semester.

“We wanted [it] to be a very inclusive dance community,” said Kang.

Last year, both Huang and Kang were part of dance groups on campus. Huang continues to perform with Vague, a jazz dance performance group. Kang was a member of Intersection, an Afro-Latin dance group. ReFRESH joins eight other dance groups on campus. They noted that the other dance groups on campus are audition and performance-based and wanted to create a group where anyone could come, regardless of experience.

 “There is a lot of talent from students on campus who aren’t necessarily in the dance groups and we reach out to them,” said Huang.

ReFRESH offers dance classes once a week for an hour. At the beginning of the lesson, the instructor—a Bowdoin student—creates a 30-second combination. The rest of the class is spent working on the combination and free-styling. So far, they have offered classes in contemporary, hip-hop and bachata dance, all taught by different students at Bowdoin.

“We thought it would be cool for us to start something where you could have peers teaching peers and different styles,” said Huang.

Huang and Kang have used this semester to gauge interest in the group and develop their method. The turnout of the classes has been steady so far although they are hoping for more participants next semester.

“The biggest challenge is just getting enough people to come to make it a good community,” said Huang.

Sarena Sabine ’19 has been attending ReFRESH classes since they started. Part of her high school dance team, Sabine ultimately decided not to pursue dance at Bowdoin during her first year. She found that she missed the community aspect of dance and the range of genres, so she began to look into new dance groups on campus. ReFRESH provided just what she was looking for.

“Every week, there’s a new piece, a new song and a new style of dance,” said Sabine. “Different people bring in their talents, and collectively we have been able to try out a bunch of things.”

Huang and Kang have also created multimedia concept videos with the group. In one video, they projected various colorful images onto themselves and danced to “Breezeblocks” by alt-J. In the future, they are hoping to explore the intersection between various types of artistic mediums by creating more videos.

 Huang and Kang ultimately want to create a safe space where people feel comfortable to go, learn a new dance style and hang out with other people who are passionate about dance. 

“Dance is such a great source of joy and a stress reliever, especially in an environment like this class,” said Sabine. “It’s been a great addition to the Bowdoin dance community.”

Exploring suicide, sexual assault and gun violence in a suburban high school setting, Bowdoin’s student-run musical theater group Curtain Callers will perform the satirical, dark comedy “Heathers the Musical” this coming weekend. 

The musical is based on the 1988 film “Heathers,” a cult classic set in a fictional Ohio high school. Unlike the movie, the show is focused primarily on the relationship between Veronica and J.D., two nerdy outcasts.  

 “It’s a high school comedy-drama gone so wrong,” said director Holly Hornbeck ’18. 

The play centers around Veronica, who is invited to become friends with a group of popular girls at school, all named Heather. As the “Heathers” start to compromise Veronica’s image as the friendly girl, she devises a plan with the rebellious J.D. to kill the cool kids. 

“Veronica is super satirical, ironic and ‘girl power all the way,’ so I have some rock-out, strong numbers. I love playing this character who’s just a really strong woman,” said Phoebe Smukler ‘17, who plays Veronica. 

This year, “Heathers” will be performed in Kresge Auditorium, a location that allows the show to use more advanced audiovisual equipment. In the past, the Curtain Callers have put on performances such as “Sweeney Todd” in Chase Barn, which is not ideal due to its small size and lack of equipment. Hornbeck hopes that performing in Kresge will revamp the Curtain Callers’ image. 

“It’s going to be a way bigger production than Curtain Callers has put on,” said Hornbeck. 

Hornbeck decided she wanted to perform “Heathers” because of its popularity and cult following, and received enthusiastic responses when she told people she was considering directing it. 

“I wanted an edgy show, I wanted a funny show, but I didn’t want to put on a show like ‘Rent’ because that was too much to live up to,” said Hornbeck. 

The show also presents sensitive subject matter such as sexual assault and homophobia in a comical way and discusses the daily, relatable struggles of suburban high schoolers. 

“The show does say a lot about, no matter who a person is and how they portray themselves, everyone does have inner insecurities and deeper issues,” said Hornbeck. “I think that the show itself takes these characters that seem so one dimensional, but then you are able to see their deeper struggles within their relationships and friendships.”

The show’s intense, violent topics are presented in such a nonchalant way that Hornbeck and Smukler hope that it will bring about discussion and draw awareness to the fact that these subjects are difficult to discuss. 

“It’s satire and it’s dark … It’s definitely an imperfect show, but I do still think it has value as a satirical, dark comedy,” said Hornbeck. “You’ll be able to see the characters go on a journey and mature. It’s a coming-of-age story. I think it’s going to strike exactly the right tone.”

The musical will be performed this Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium. Tickets are free and not required in advance.

An anonymous woman in a gorilla mask visited campus last night to speak to students about the discrimination found in the art world and beyond. The speaker, a founding member of the Guerrilla Girls—an New York City-based collective of anonymous female artists devoted to combating sexism and racism in the art world—goes by the pseudonym “Frida Kahlo” in order to preserve her anonymity.

Formed in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls are known for their protests of social inequality through humorous multimedia and speaking engagements. Primarily in the form of witty, provocative posters using dry humor and statistics, the Guerrilla Girls generate discussion about the lack of diversity found in major institutions in the United States, such as household name museums and Hollywood. 

In her talk, “Kahlo” discussed her experience working as a part of the Guerrilla Girls—what she called the “conscience of the art world”—and described their various projects, including a projection on the Whitney criticizing wealth in the art world that proclaimed: “Art is sooo expensive.” 

“We didn’t do it at the Whitney. We did it on the Whitney,” said Kahlo of the projection. 

Much of what the Guerrilla Girls aim to do is bring awareness to the gender inequality of art in museums and galleries; one poster they made in 2011 states that less than 4 percent of the artists in the modern art section at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are women, although 76 percent of the nude images in the museum are of women. 

“In general, it’s a lot easier to be a male artist than a female artist in terms of being respected and being critiqued,” said June Lei ’18, head of Bowdoin Art Society (BAS). “If the Guerrilla Girls did not do what they did, like in the ’80s, I think we would live in a very different world today in terms of the arts and the way our culture is represented. They’ve done some really important things.” 

Through their striking imagery and biting social commentary, the Guerrilla Girls have created major change in the global art society and sparked a new wave of activism.

“I think there’s a whole generation of artists now who are training to be artists and are rejecting the conventional idea of an artist as someone who produces expensive works of art for rich people,” said “Kahlo.” “Now, art students are rejecting that. And they want to use their skills to improve circumstances in the art.” 

Lei came into contact with “Kahlo” during the summer of 2015 while interning at the Brooklyn Museum. She said that the issues the Guerrilla Girls address are beneficial for all Bowdoin students and emphasized the importance of engaging arts, not only as a solution, but as an avenue to a more equal society.

Following the For Freedoms initiative—a project that brought the works of the only artist-based super political action committee (PAC) to Bowdoin earlier this year—Lei hopes that the Guerilla Girls’ visit will serve to further bridge the gap between art and social activism on campus. 

“I think the arts at Bowdoin can often times feel very removed. My hope is that people see the work of the Guerrilla Girls in the public sphere and they see that it’s a socially relevant thing as a way to get engaged and channel what they are feeling in their experiences of politics and social injustice,” said Lei. “And that they can then use those experiences and create something that speaks to other people.” 

Beyond pushing for social change within museums, the Guerrilla Girls also use their hard-edge humor to spark discourse on civil commitment and social change at universities and colleges across the country.

“Last year, there was this whole conversation surrounding race on campus and so that’s really a nationwide student movement that’s happening,” said Lei. “I think that there’s a certain value to bringing in the big leagues and someone who knows what they are talking about and has a lot of experience with this.”

Kinaya Hassane ’19, who organized the program with Lei, thinks that bringing “Kahlo” to speak on campus can also help address issues that are especially salient given the presidential election.

“[The Guerrilla Girls discuss] broader politics and broader issues of gender and race, and I think now that’s especially relevant, given the fact that we have elected Donald Trump as our president,” said Hassane. 

“I’m an art history major, so the issue of representation in art has always been important to me,” said Hailey Beaman ’18, creative director of the BAS. “Hearing that there are people who are so impassioned about that issue and have been for so long is really inspiring as a young person hoping to go into the art world in some capacity.” 

For Kahlo, the work she’s done over the past 30 years can be summed up in one phrase: “It’s righteous fun.

When he took the job at Bowdoin 41 years ago, Isaac Henry Wing Professor of Mathematics William Barker probably wasn’t expecting to one day have his own son as a co-worker.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sean Barker returned to Brunswick three years ago and joined the faculty and his father as a tenure-track professor.

Originally from the New York City area, William Barker began his career at Bowdoin after going to graduate school at MIT and doing a brief instructorship at Dartmouth College. He has worked at the College ever since.

“I almost like every aspect of Bowdoin,” said William Barker. “I’m really, extremely pleased that I’ve been able to spend my career here. I think the faculty, my colleagues and my students are great.”

Growing up, Sean Barker frequently spent time on campus.

“I would often come and meet my dad in his office,” said Sean Barker. “His office was in Adams, somewhere high up, I remember, because I went up the stairs and I recall a couple of times I would use the computer lab at Bowdoin.”

Sean Barker’s interest in computers began early­­­—his dad gave him an old Mac laptop to use when he was three­­­—but he hadn’t originally intended to go into teaching.

“For quite a number of years, I thought I would go into industry because I always liked building things, but as a graduate student I had the opportunity to teach a couple classes at UMass Amherst and I really enjoyed that,” said Sean Barker. “It was relatively late in my time as a student that I decided I wanted to go into academia.”

When Sean Barker began looking at various liberal arts schools to start his teaching career, Bowdoin happened to have an opening, and he and his wife  decided to move closer to his family.

Both Sean Barker and William Barker see many benefits of being able to work with one another in a professional setting. Although they don’t often get lunch or have meetings with each other, working in Searles allows them to see each other with some regularity.

“What’s nice is that I get to interact here with him more as an equal colleague,” said William Barker. “It’s not that we meet everyday, nor that we are in the same department. That could have been a little bit difficult. He’s making his career here and he should be free to do that without any of my interference. It is nice to interact with him in this professional way.”

For Sean Barker, his dad acts as a source of guidance and advice on campus.

“Mostly, it’s just nice to have someone who has been at Bowdoin much longer than I have. So it’s nice to ask questions to someone who has been around long enough to have more of a detailed view of the ins and outs of how things work than I do as a relatively new faculty member,” said Sean Barker.

In terms of teaching styles, Sean Barker may be more organized, while his dad brings a level of freneticism to the classroom.

“I know that he has a bit of a reputation for being energetic,” said Sean Barker. “I think he’s known for being a bit off the walls sometimes. I think his style of instruction might be a bit higher energy than mine, but that’s a hard bar to reach.”

Before the semester began in August, 12 Bowdoin Marine Science Semester (BMSS) students spent a day collecting plankton in Boothbay Harbor. On Wednesday evening, they presented prints they created from images of these plankton at the “From a Drop of Seawater” exhibit at the Visual Arts Center Fishbowl Gallery. The images were a result of the students’ research into the intersection of art and science.

“Part of their course is looking under the microscope and investigating the diversity and functional roles of the different plankton. They are just really cool and pretty to look at under the scopes,” said Coastal Studies Biology Scholar Bobbie Lyon, who led the project with Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Mary Hart. 

The students took pictures of the plankton under a microscope and then used those images to make pronto plates. From the plates, they were able to use printmaking techniques to create colorful prints of the organisms. 

Each student then created a hand-drawn diagram that analyzed one important aspect of the organism and drew an image to reflect that aspect. They finished the project by writing a short essay about the relationship between the plankton and its environment.

This collaboration arose as a result of both Hart’s and Lyon’s interest in the relationship between artistic and scientific studies. Last fall, the two worked on a watercolor project together and wanted to continue the dialogue by seeking to further understand how the two seemingly different disciplines interact with one another.

“I think especially as students, you are taught scientific thinking and you are taught a very logical stream of thought,” said Hart. “And artists, we are taught to brainstorm and think of multiple solutions and be going off in all directions at once. So that was what I found really interesting about the conversation and I think that the students were starting to think about that in terms of going on in science and how that might inform and enrich their scientific thinking.”

Many of the BMSS students who had not taken any art classes before spoke to the benefit of combining both art and science after doing the project.

“I like doing art, but I’m not an art person,” said Sam Walkes ‘18. “I’ve never tried to combine science and art, so that was something new. I felt like what I was doing was a new way of communicating science.”

Lizzie Givens ’17, another BMSS student, sees combining the two disciplines as a valuable teaching method. 

“As an artist studying biology, so much of my style is formed by my observation and that’s something that I’ve learned from science,” said Givens. “In turn, my science is absolutely better communicated and better understood through my ability with art.”

Some BMSS students who hadn’t worked with printmaking before found challenges in the process, but ultimately ended up with successful final projects.  

“It was difficult to try to get the layers to stick directly on top of one another,” said Jackie Ricca ’19. “I know that I put a lot of time into making the hand-drawn part and I wasn’t exactly sure that it was going to fit over the microscope image. When I finally lifted up the sheet and it worked, I was pretty happy.”

Hart and Lyon were pleased with the results of the project and impressed with the quality of the students’ work.  

“It was really great. It took a ton of time and it was really worth it,” said Hart. “I feel satisfied and it’s always interesting when you do a project and there’s still some questions, you haven’t quite figured it out, and it lures you into the next session of your ideas.”

If you go to a lot of concerts at Bowdoin, you may have noticed the tall, red-haired drummer who is a staple in many campus bands: Jeb Polstein ’17. Polstein plays in the student bands Gotta Focus, Accept the Mystery, Duck Blind and Gibson 10—all of the upperclassman student bands on campus. 

Polstein’s love of percussion began when he received a tiny drum set when he was four years old. From there, he tried out cello in the school orchestra for a year before settling on drums in fourth grade. He was hooked on drums, and in seventh grade, he formed a band called Primate House with four of his friends at his home in New York.

Since then, he’s continued to play drums with a level of power, technique and creativity that has gained him recognition and has led to him becoming the most requested drummer at Bowdoin. This weekend, MacMillan House’s annual Halloween party was moved to Friday night so that Polstein could play with both Gibson 10 and Gotta Focus in their back-to-back performances.

“It’s cool that people think I’m good at drums and that they recognize that,” said Polstein. “It can sometimes be stressful though—just balancing things and knowing that I can’t devote as much time and energy to each group [as] would be ideal. I don’t really say no.”

Polstein’s thought process varies depending on the context in which he’s working and the style of music he is playing.    

“When I’m hearing a song for the first time, I’m obviously thinking a lot about what would sound cool. Sometimes my mind just wanders and I think about what’s for lunch,” said Polstein. “I’ll think about playing well, which sometimes works, but sometimes that messes you up—especially when you are recording, because of the pressure. You’re thinking ‘I have to play this note well.’ Sometimes you don’t think at all and that’s the best part, especially with jazz.” 

As far as style goes, Polstein’s versatile skills allow him to play a wide range of genres in different types of bands, from jazz to rock to metal to indie. 

“I feel like my style blends all those genres,” said Polstein. “I’m just trying to play things that people wouldn’t necessarily think to play.”

The types of student bands Polstein performs with is a further testament to his diversity of style. While Accept the Mystery has more of a hard rock and metal sound, Gibson 10 has a stronger jazz and rock sound. 

“One thing that really helps when you are working with [Polstein] is that is he picks up things so fast,” said Matt Leventhal ’17, Bowdoin Music Collective’s leader and Polstein’s band mate in Accept the Mystery. “He’ll often also throw out elements that I never would have thought sounded so good. He adds a lot of power and energy to songs.”

At Bowdoin, Polstein has been performing with Gotta Focus the longest—three years. Although indie and pop-rock—which the band plays the most—are not his favorite genres of music, he puts as much time and energy into Gotta Focus as any other, and his band mates value his dedication.

“I very much appreciate his feedback and everyone respects his opinion because he’s, not even arguably, the best musician in the band,” said Leo Levine ’17, Polstein’s band mate in Gotta Focus. “He’s the most amazing drummer I’ve ever worked with. He’s so, so good.

It was their fascination with the student mind that led Associate Professor of Education Nancy Jennings and Suzanne Lovett, associate professor of psychology, to co-write “Practice for Life: Making Decisions in College,” a book highlighting the everyday decision-making processes of liberal arts students.

Co-written alongside professors from Wellesley, the book describes the collective findings from research on over 200 college students at Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Smith, Middlebury, Trinity and Wellesley colleges. It serves as a guidebook, showcase and tool for high school and college students, parents and academics alike.

The book has its roots in the New England Consortium on Assessment and Student Learning (NECASL), which brought together a group of researchers, faculty and professors from seven New England colleges from 2006 through 2011. The consortium met to talk and share data about student learning, with the goal of exploring the intersection between students’ decision-making and their evolution throughout college. 

In particular, NECASL collected data based on interviews between trained students and their peers, allowing for an honest, open dynamic. The interviewees were selected via random sampling, and include a wide range of genders, ethnicities and backgrounds. 

Practice of Life is the culmination of these findings. Although the book exclusively showcases experiences drawn from students that attended elite liberal arts colleges, the authors think that the behaviors and sentiments echoed in the book are common to college students around the country. 

“We think the book applies to everyone because it’s all about decision-making and everyone has to make these decisions,” said Lovett. “What courses am I going to take? How am I going to get myself engaged? Who am I going to have as friends?” 

According to Jennings, the authors were most surprised to discover that seemingly small or trivial interactions, such as talking to a professor outside of class or saying hello to a floormate proved to be the most essential to students’ experiences. 

“In all arenas, small decisions students made ended up having huge impact on how their college experience went,” said Jennings. 

The authors collected the data from the NECASL project and examined the research in the context of five key areas: connection, time management, academic engagement, advice and sense of belonging. The data was then illuminated by anecdotal accounts of decisions students make every day.

Said Jennings, “The more students that were using these decisions as opportunities to learn about themselves, the better their college experience was.”

After collecting and examining the data collected over five years, the authors wrote the book over the course of two years. They wrote the beginning and the end together, but divided up the writing of the chapters while receiving feedback from each other. 

Lovett said that the book’s reception has been overwhelmingly positive, although certain critics have argued that the book fails to give a how-to guide on navigating campus life. She maintained, however, that it was not their mission to curate an instructional handbook on the exact ways to make decisions in college. 

“We consciously decided when writing the book that we weren’t going to do that,” Lovett said. “We can’t say what the steps [of decision-making] are.”

Instead, the book urges students to explore different avenues of problem solving and decision-making as well as encourages them to think of college as a continuous process of starting and restarting.