ALLYSON DOMBEY | costume design and multimedia sculpture | NOV. 16-17
Allyson Dombey is CEO of Dombey Design, a collaborative New Orleans glassblowing, metalworking, woodwork, costume, 3D-printing, and CNC machining multimedia design team. Dombey specializes in creating custom glass barware for patrons imbibing beverages throughout New Orleans and beyond, as well as multimedia costume pieces as a founding member and masker of the Krewe de Lune and Cosmonaughties dance troupe during the carnival season. In addition to her design work in the studio, Dombey is a creative information technologist with over twenty years of experience. Speaking French fluently, she has a multidisciplinary and international educational and professional background spanning French, sociology, public health, and information with degrees from Tulane University, Liverpool John Moores University, and the University of Michigan, and coursework at La Sorbonne in Paris. Dombey’s career has largely been in leading digital transformations and innovation for companies of all sizes, including advising executives of Fortune 100 companies. She brings Agile & Lean methodologies to art and glass studio manufacturing in order to create an empowered, collaborative business in Dombey Design. Dombey is a seasoned workshop facilitator and innovator for women and girls in STEM. In addition to applying STEM and business management expertise to the visual arts, she leans heavily on her multilingual skills to help break down communication barriers among teams by facilitating the co-creation and co-definition of the words they use to have a truly shared meaning. This residency is sponsored by the School of Langauge and Literature in conjunction with the Department of Art and Design and is part of the “Our Louisiana Heritage” series. Additional support is provided by Engage Management and Global Learning and Engagement. For more information, contact Dr. Adele Okoli at kokoli@uca.edu.
Class Visit FREN 2310: Intermediate French
Nov. 16, 2023 | 9:25-10:40 am | Irby Hall 204
Class Visit FREN 3315: Creole Atlantic Seminar
Nov. 16, 2023 | 10:50-12:05 pm | Irby Hall 204
Student Presentation: “The Business of Art” and Q&A
Nov. 17, 2023 | 2-2:50 pm | Windgate Center Lecture Hall 167
Art Display and Reception
Nov. 17 | 5:00-7:30 pm | Windgate Center
BEN DOMBEY | glassblowing, welding, woodworking | NOV. 1-2
Originally from England, Ben Dombey lives and works in New Orleans, a leading global hub of glassblowing studios and artists. He is a skilled metal worker in addition to an expert glassblower and has a reputation for making sturdy sculptural works of fine art in a notoriously fragile medium. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tulane University and his Masters of Fine Arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Dombey has shown his work in exhibitions and collaborated on large-scale installations in multiple galleries in New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Washington, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. In recent years he has worked as a Demonstrating Artist for Ajeto Glass in Novy Bor, Czech Republic, as well as the Roman Furnace Project of the Provincial Archeological Museum in Zottegem, Belgium. Dombey has taught several semester-long studio classes at the Rochester Institute of Technology as well as Tulane University and has taught many workshops and exhibited his sculptures by invitation at the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, the world’s largest space dedicated to the display of contemporary art and design in glass. This residency is sponsored by the School of Language and Literature in conjunction with the Department of Art and Design and is part of the “Our Louisiana Heritage” series. Additional support is provided by Engage Management. For more information, contact Dr. Adele Okoli at kokoli@uca.edu.
Torchwork Demonstration
Nov. 1, 2023 | 3-5 pm | Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, 501 E 9th St, Little Rock, AR 72202
Class Visit with Sculpture I (Art 3361)
Nov. 2, 2023 | 8-10:40 am | UCA Windgate Center 3D Building, Room 116
Art Display and Artist Talk-Back
Nov. 2, 2023 | 1:40-2:30 pm | UCA Windgate Center Art Lecture Hall, Room 167
Class Visit with French Students (French 3300): Seminar on Exile and Q & A
Nov. 2, 2023 | 2:40-3:55 pm | UCA Windgate Center Room 121
EPIPHANY “BIG PIPH” MORROW | hip-hop, public speaking, community activism | OCT. 9-10
Pine Bluff-raised and Stanford educated, mechanical engineer Epiphany “Big Piph” Morrow turned to hip hop, public speaking, music, and performance to explore themes of racial injustice with an eye toward uplifting his community. His songs include many Little Rock performers including Dee Dee Jones and Bijoux, and he has collaborated with global hip hop artists TI, Ne-Yo, and Big Sean. His songs have also been featured on the film Teach Us All, a documentary sponsored by Ava Duvernay’s arts and social impact collective Array, and on Boo2!: Madea Halloween, a movie produced by Tyler Perry. This residency is sponsored by the School of Communication and is a featured event in the school’s Communication Week. For more information, contact Dr. Christine Busser at cbusser1@uca.edu.
Public Presentation: “If a Ted Talk Were a Hip-Hop Concert Wrapped in a Spike Lee Narrative”
Oct. 9, 2023 | 5-7 pm | Windgate Center Concert Hall
Workshop with Multicultural Public Relations Class
Oct. 10, 2023 | 10:50-12:05 pm | Win Thompson 206
Presentation: “Empowering Teams and Communities”
Oct. 10, 2023 | 1:40-2:30 pm | Windgate Center Keystone Steps
CHERICE HARRISON-NELSON | textile artist, curator, and arts educator | SEP. 6-7
Queen Cherice Harrison-Nelson is an Afro-feminist New Orleans textile and beadwork artist, curator, arts educator, and scholar who has worked her entire life in the Mardi Gras Black Indian masking tradition. She is the Big Queen of the Guardians of the Flame Maroon Society as well as the Directing Curator of the Donald Harrison, Sr. Museum. She is a third-generation Mardi Gras Indian, and co-founder of the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame. She has facilitated hundreds of panels, public installations, and interactive workshops educating the community about the arts and culture of the Mardi Gras Indians as founder and director of the Guardians Institute. In addition to co-editing eleven publications, she has received a Fulbright Scholarship for research in Ghana and Senegal, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Teacher of the Year Award, the New Orleans Mayor’s Arts Award, the United States Artist Fellowship, and a 2020-21 Joan Mitchell Artist-in-Residence Award. To quote, “I am not masking when I debut my ceremonial attire on Carnival morning, I am revealing my authentic self, naked and rooted in the strength of my personal history.” This residency is sponsored by the School of Language and Literature in conjunction with the Department of Art and Design and is part of the “Our Louisiana Heritage” series. Additional support is provided by Engage Management and Hearne Fine Art. For more information, contact Dr. Adele Okoli at kokoli@uca.edu.
Workshop: “Storytelling through Shadow Box”
Sep. 6, 2023 | 5-6:30 pm | Windgate Center Room 219
Film Screening: Keeper of the Flame (Big Chief Brian Harrison-Nelson, dir., 2010)
and Q & A with Maroon Queen Cherice Harrison-Nelson
Sep. 6, 2023 | 7-9pm | Windgate Center Concert Hall
Class Visit FREN 3315: Creole Atlantic Seminar
Sep. 6, 2023 | 10:50-12:05 pm | Irby Hall 204
Public Performance: “The Plague Doctor”
Sep. 7, 2023 | 1:40-2:30 pm | Alumni Circle, Old Main Lawn
(Rain venue: Ida Waldran Auditorium, Old Main)
Reception for Maroon Queen Cherice Harrison-Nelson
Sep. 7, 2023 | 5:30-7 pm | Hearne Fine Art, 1001 Wright Avenue, Little Rock, AR 72206
THIRD COAST PERCUSSION | percussion ensemble | SEP. 20-21
Third Coast Percussion (TCP), a Grammy Award-winning ensemble based in Chicago, will perform a new program titled Perspectives, featuring repertoire written by the iconic film composer Danny Elfman, innovative electronic music producer Jlin, American legend Philip Glass, TCP artists, and many more. The concert will begin with an original composition by UCA professor Blake Tyson based on the sounds and rhythms created during the construction of the building and featuring musicians from area high schools. Support for this residency is generously provided by the Office of the President in conjunction with the grand opening celebration of the Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts. For more information, contact Dr. Blake Tyson at btyson@uca.edu.
Master Class with Third Coast Percussion
Sep. 20, 2023 | 5-7 pm | Windgate Center Percussion Suite
Presentation/Discussion: “Thinking Outside the Classical Box, Bringing New Musical Works to Life”
Sep. 21, 2023 | 1:40-2:30 pm | Windgate Center Concert Hall
Third Coast Percussion in Concert*
Sep. 21, 2023 | 7:30 pm | Windgate Center Concert Hall
*This event is free but all attendees must have a ticket. You can obtain up to 4 tickets at the Reynolds Performance Hall or Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts Box Office. You can also visit the Windgate Center Box Office online to claim your tickets.
CAROLYN FORCHÉ | poetry and human rights advocacy | OCT. 3-4
An American poet, editor, professor, and translator, Carolyn Forché is known internationally for her human rights advocacy, working to preserve memory and culture within besieged communities via poetry. Her memoir What You Have Heard Is True (Penguin Random House, 2019) is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary work about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others, which was nominated for the 2019 National Book Award. Her famed international anthology, Against Forgetting, has been praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against prejudice, against injustice,” and is followed by the 2014 anthology The Poetry of Witness. The residency is sponsored by the School of Language and Literature in conjunction with the Creative Writing program. Additional support provided by Pyramid Art, Books, and Custom Framing. For more information, contact Professor Michael Blanchard at mblanchard@uca.
Interview with editors of Slant and Arkana
Oct. 3, 2023 | 3:30 pm | Thompson Hall 331
Master Class with Graduate Students in Creative Writing, English, and Languages
Oct. 3, 2023 | 4 pm | Thompson Hall 331
Public Reading, Q & A, and Book Signing
Oct. 3, 2023 | 7:30 pm | Windgate Center Concert Hall
Craft Talk with Undergraduate Students
Oct. 4, 2023 | 10-10:50 am | Windgate Center James M. Bridges Black Box Theatre