The UWL College of Visual and Performing Arts is excited to announce the 7th Annual Creative Imperatives Festival A Curved Lens: Celebrating Women in the World Through the Arts. The event runs Monday and Tuesday, March 2-3 on the UWL campus.

Sessions and featured guests will highlight the ways in which women can and are celebrated through the arts. The two-day event will include exhibits, workshops, presentations, and performances created by UWL students, faculty, and staff from the departments of Art, Music, and Theatre Arts, joined by participants from Women and Gender Studies, Educational Studies, Communication Studies, and Exercise and Sport Science.

We are also delighted to feature metalsmith and educator Maegan Crowley, composer Ingrid Stözel, and singer, rapper, and writer Dessa as guest artists for this year’s festival.

Festival Highlights

Become familiar with artists working to shift the gaze, rewrite colonization, deconstruct patriarchy, and shape the post-Apartheid landscape. This art presentation, Working to Harness Anger as a Creative Force in South Africa, will be held Monday, March 2 from 11:00-11:55 am in the Center for the Arts, room 120.

Come make your own Wearable Guerrilla Art in the Center for the Arts, room 203 on Tuesday, March 3 from 2:15-3:10pm! In this hands-on session participants will use collage techniques to create their own wearable buttons championing underrepresented female artists while also becoming familiar with women artists who have shaped art history.

On Tuesday, March 3, from 4:00-4:55 pm, you can listen to a presentation by Kathy Gorman on how dancer Martha Graham revolutionized the posture of dance by incorporating the contraction and release motions of the torso into her modern dance technique. Graham created a new freedom in dance movement which has contributed to a much more expressive movement language. This event takes place in the Frederick Theatre on the basement level of Morris Hall.

Enjoy a music performance and discussion entitled Blowing Their Own Horn: Women Composers in Jazz. On Tuesday, March 3 from 3:30-4:30pm, the UWL Jazz Orchestra will highlight the unique contributions to the jazz repertoire by notable women jazz composers such as Mary Lou Williams, Melba Liston and Maria Schneider. This event takes place in the Center for the Arts, Room 56 (Band Room).

2020 Festival Guests

Maegan Crowley

Maegan owns and operates “Iron Maegan Metalworks” in Dolores, Colorado where she produces custom metalwork for residential, public and commercial sites. Maegan is passionate about material exploration and uses it as a vehicle to create sculpture. She draws her inspiration from plant life, mostly from the southwest region where she lives. The work she creates strives to emphasize the beauty of detail found in nature and preserve it’s ephemeral gestures of form. Maegan earned a BFA from University of the Arts in Metalsmithing and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work is in private collections and is exhibited nationally.

You can attend her artist talk, Monday, March 2 at 4:00 pm in Annett Recital Hall, Center for the Arts, to learn about her process. Maegan enjoys creating an irony between material and its expectations by translating examples of botanical gesture into forged steel, emulating their systems of growth. She will present a slide show of her sculptures and the work that is produced in her shop for her clients.

Crowley is also featured at an open studio where you can watcher her form sheet metal into fluid organic, botanical forms! This open studio is Tuesday, March 3 from 11:00 am-1:30 pm in Center for the Arts, Rooms 23 and 25.

Dessa

Dessa is an internationally touring rapper, singer, and writer who has built a career by defying genre conventions and audience expectations. As a musician, she’s appeared on the Billboard Top 200 charts both as a solo artist as a member of the Doomtree hip-hop collective and contributed to The Hamilton Mixtape on the invitation of Lin-Manuel Miranda. As a writer, Dessa’s work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times and National Geographic Traveler. She’s published two collections of essays and poetry, and in 2018, Dutton Books (Penguin Random House) published her first hardcover book, a nonfiction essay collection titled My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love. On stage and on the page, Dessa’s work is characterized by ferocity, wit, and tenderness.

As compelling on the page as she is on the stage, Dessa will discuss her writing process and how it manifests itself in both songwriting and her published work. Dessa will perform a short acoustic set and answer audience questions at this presentation on Tuesday, March 3 from 1:10-2:05 pm in Annett Recital Hall, Center for the Arts.

Join us for an unforgettable evening as Dessa performs live, accompanied by the band MONAKR, Monday, March 2 at 7:30pm in Toland Theatre, Center for the Arts on the UWL campus. Please note that TICKETS ARE REQUIRED for this free concert. Tickets can be picked up at the Center for the Arts Box Office on Monday through Friday from 1:00-4:30 pm beginning February 24. All remaining tickets will be available at the door. Tickets may be picked up in person only. No phone/online reservations. Limit 4 tickets per person. Limited seating available. General admission. The Center for the Arts Box Office is located on the first floor of the Center for the Arts on the UWL campus (corner of 16th and Vine Streets ).

Ingrid Stözel

Composer Ingrid Stölzel has been described as having “a gift for melody” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “evoking a sense of longing” that creates “a reflective and serene soundscape that makes you want to curl up on your windowsill to re-listen on a rainy day.” (I Care If You Listen) Stölzel’s compositions have been commissioned by leading soloists and ensembles, and performed in concert halls and festivals worldwide. Her recordings can be found on various commercial releases including her portrait album “The Gorgeous Nothings” which features her chamber and vocal chamber music. Stölzel serves on the composition faculty at the University of Kansas School of Music.

On Monday, March 2 from 8:50-9:45 am, join Jonathan Borja and Ingrid Stölzel in Annett Recital Hall, Center for the Arts, for a conversation focusing on gender inequality in music composition and steps that can be implemented to achieve gender parity.

In her lecture-recital on Tuesday, March 3, Stölzel will tell us about the development of her compositional style through performances of two works that are ten years apart: There are Things to be Said for flute, saxophone, and piano (2009) and Leonardo Saw the Spring for flute and piano (2019). This performance will feature UW-L faculty members Dr. Jonathan Borja (flute), Dr. Jeff Erickson (saxophone), and Dr. Mary Tollefson (piano). This event takes place at 7:30 in Annett Recital Hall, Center for the Arts.

For full event schedule, please visit https://www.uwlax.edu/event/creative-imperatives/