Monday, September 29, 2014

Optional Practical Training (OPT) Workshop!!!




 Dear International Students,

If you will be completing your studies in the Fall Semester of 2014 and are interested in engaging in temporary employment to gain practical work experience in your field of study, this workshop is for you. Please note that this will be the only Optional Practical Training (OPT) workshop for this semester and that attendance is mandatory for any student wishing to apply for OPT.

If you plan to attend the workshop, please complete the following survey at:   https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/V3GWJM8     

Date: Friday, October 10, 2014
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Location: Citrus Room of Bradshaw Building

- Please arrive at least 5 minutes early -

Japanese Volunteers Needed



Good morning Japanese International Student Ambassadors!


 The International Center wants to enlist 5 Japanese students to help clean the Japanese Gardens at White Park on Saturday, October 4 starting at 9 am and ending at 11:30 with a picnic lunch to follow.  RCC International Center has a history of helping with the cleaning of the Japanese Gardens since its establishment in 2007.


Riverside and Sendai have been friends since 1951 and sister cities since 1957 in what is one of the oldest continuous sister city relationships in the United States. Over the past five decades there have been museum, citizen, youth, and governmental exchanges between the two cities. In 2007, on the 50th anniversary of the relationship, Sendai gave Riverside the gift of a Japanese Garden at White Park in Downtown Riverside. Riverside’s 50th anniversary gift to Sendai was a giant orange sculpture that commemorates the citrus heritage of Riverside as well as the historic ties between the two cities.

Sendai committee members, William Tarpai and John McArthur will be in charge of garden cleaning.  They will assign students where they would be working. There is no heavy work involved.  Bring your own garden gloves and small trowel if you have.  work is simple and fun.

Please contact the Center for International Students and Programs at (951) 222-8160 to confirm you will be at White Park on Saturday, October 4 at 9 am to keep this tradition going.





Friday, September 26, 2014

Psychic Barber!




Psychic Barber

Finishing School and Yucef Merhi Present Psychic Barber at the Riverside Art Museum
September 30 – November 25, 2014
Live Psychic Haircutting Event at the Free Fall Exhibition Celebration on Friday, October 3, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
For more information, visit www.riversideartmuseum.org

Riverside CA – The Riverside Art Museum is proud to host Finishing School and Yucef Merhi Present Psychic Barber at the Riverside Art Museum, running September 30 – November 25, 2014, with a live psychic haircutting event during the museum’s free Fall Exhibition Celebration on Friday, October 3, from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Psychic Barber is a public engagement situated in a sculpture inspired by barbershops and psychic storefronts. The sculpture is staffed with hair stylists who also possess supernatural gifts. They give free psychic readings and create a new hairstyle for the participant that reflects the insight gained through the experience. Megan Steinman has written an essay to accompany the project, titled The Law of Contiguity (to read it in its entirety, go to finishing-school.net/press/steinman.FSPB.final.bios.pdf).

“Psychic Barber came out of a chance encounter in 2012 with a neon sign that said ‘Psychic Barber’”, says Jean Robison of Finishing School. “That unshakeable image led to an ideological exploration, including a session with a psychic, that lead us to envision and realize the project as it is: a glass barbershop where people get a new hairstyle from a barber with psychic abilities.”

Psychic Barber was first commissioned by Side Street Projects and generously supported by the Pasadena Art Alliance. Psychic Barber is a collaboration between Finishing School and Yucef Merhi.

Established in 2001, Finishing School is a socially engaged artist collective that explores an expansive range of subject and media territories. The Los Angeles-based collective has seven members who represent a broad range of skills. Finishing School produces interdisciplinary actions, installations, workshops, design, studio art, performance, and new media. They have presented work throughout the United States and internationally. 



Recently, FS has produced projects for Occidental College in Los Angeles, Side Street Projects in Pasadena, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Hammer Museum, the 2010 California Biennial, Engagement Party: a three-month residency program at MOCA, Living as Form: a 20-year survey of social practice for Creative Time in New York, The Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, and a site-specific commission for DFLUX in Detroit. Finishing School has also presented projects internationally in The Netherlands, Switzerland, Thailand, England, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, and Italy. 



Yucef Merhi is an artist, poet, and computer programmer. Considered by many to be the pioneer of Digital Art in Venezuela, Merhi creates interactive environments, computer-based works and digital applications, while proposing various ways to experience natural language and code. He has exhibited across the US and internationally, including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Exit Art, Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), De Appel in Amsterdam, the 2007 Biennial de São Paulo, and the 10th Istanbul Biennial.

RAM relies on the generosity of members and donors to support its exhibitions, education programs, and special events. A 60-plus-year-old, private, non-profit cultural arts institution housed in a National Historic 1929 building designed by Hearst Castle and AIA Gold Medal-winning architect Julia Morgan, the museum welcomes over 50,000 visitors a year. The museum is open Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, 12:00 noon – 4:00 p.m. For information on exhibits, events, classes, memberships, or sponsorship opportunities, visit www.RiversideArtMuseum.org. Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/riversideartmuseum), Twitter (RAMRiverside), Instagram (@riversideartmuseum), and Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/ramarts).




 

Friday, September 19, 2014

Japanese Woodblock Prints Come to Riverside Art Museum





Genji’s World in Japanese Woodblock Prints
September 20, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Free Fall Exhibition Celebration on Friday, October 3, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
For more information, visit www.riversideartmuseum.org

Riverside CA – The Riverside Art Museum (RAM) proudly presents Genji’s World in Japanese Woodblock Prints, running from September 20, 2014 – January 11, 2015, with a free, open-to-the-public Fall Exhibition Celebration on Friday, October 3, from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Featured in this exhibition is a rich array of woodblock prints by many of Japan’s leading print artists, including work referencing the original Genji story (on loan from the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College) and works predominantly drawn from the foremost collection of prints of A Rustic Genji, the extensive holdings of Paulette and Jack Lantz.

The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), written over 1,000 years ago by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu (c.973–1014/25), has greatly influenced Japanese culture, as seen in paintings, short stories, novels, noh plays, operas, movies, manga, and anime. Genji is today celebrated both in Japan and abroad, but in the 19th century it emerged only sporadically as a motif in popular woodblock prints and it was another, Genji-related, story that was a resounding success.

In the late 1820s, when the writer Ry?tei Tanehiko (1783–1842), the print designer and book illustrator Utagawa Kunisada I (1786–1865), and the publisher Tsuruya Kiemon sat down together in Edo to plot the inaugural chapter of the serial novel, A Rustic Genji by a Fraudulent Murasaki (Nise Murasaki inaka Genji), it is doubtful that any one of them envisioned that their actions would generate a new genre, Genji pictures (Genji-e), in Japanese woodblock prints that would flourish until the turn of the century. During these sixty years, almost 1,300 original designs were created, of which many were very popular at their time of release.

Dr. Bruce A. Coats, Professor of Art History and Humanities, Scripps College, Claremont, California, where Genji’s World in Japanese Woodblock Prints was on view in winter 2012, organized the exhibition. “This exhibition includes more than 50 prints that were issued in the 19th century but are in mint condition, with intense colors, intricate details and dramatic compositions - displaying some of Japan's best woodblock printing techniques,” says Dr. Coats. “The artists Kunisada I and his followers were able to visually capture the excitement and emotions of the narratives and depicted A Rustic Genji in appropriate and beautiful landscape settings.”

The story of A Rustic Genji, set in fifteenth-century Japan, is in many respects drawn from the classic novel. It retells the amorous adventures of Mitsuuji—the counterpart to Genji's Prince Genji—and is delivered in contemporary dialogue combined with kabuki theatrics. By 1838, and concurrent with the release of new Rustic Genji chapters, woodblock-print publishers and artists set out to exploit its success through the creation of individual-sheet prints that depicted the principal characters and the most exciting scenes. Under Kunisada’s lead, the theme enjoyed enormous popularity and the craze that gave birth to these publications peaked in the 1850s and continued into the 1860s. Over eighty publishers had Rustic Genji designs on offer, and they engaged an increasing number of artists.

An elaborately illustrated book, written and edited by Dr. Andreas Marks, with contributions by Dr. Bruce A. Coats, Dr. Michael Emmerich, Dr. Susanne Formanek, Dr. Sepp Linhart, and Rhiannon Paget, accompanies the exhibition.

A private dinner reception for Paulette and Jack Lantz, Dr. Bruce Coats, exhibition donors, as well as prominent members from Scripps, RAM, and the Riverside art and international relations community, will be held on Wednesday, September 24, 2014.

“We are so pleased to work with our Trustee Rose Mayes to bring exhibitions and programming to RAM that resonates with our diverse community,” says RAM Executive Director Drew Oberjuerge. “We are also grateful to Scripps Professors Mary MacNaughton and Bruce Coats for loaning us this well-received exhibition.”

The art museum will also be holding a special Saturday afternoon art class for youth on November 15 centered on Japanese-style woodblock prints and symbolism. The students will also get a tour of this exhibit as part of the class. For more information on signing up for the class, please visit the museum’s website.

RAM relies on the generosity of members and donors to support its exhibitions, education programs, and special events. A 60-plus-year-old, private, non-profit cultural arts institution housed in a National Historic 1929 building designed by Hearst Castle and AIA Gold Medal-winning architect Julia Morgan, the museum welcomes over 50,000 visitors a year. The museum is open Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, 12:00 noon – 4:00 p.m. For information on exhibits, events, classes, memberships, or sponsorship opportunities, visit www.RiversideArtMuseum.org. Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/riversideartmuseum), Twitter (RAMRiverside), Instagram (@riversideartmuseum), and Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/ramarts).

Sponsored by: Robert Harris & Susan M. Rothermund | Walter and Betty Parks | Deborah Kotaka & Jim Ferrari | Japanese American Citizens League – Riverside Chapter 

-30-


Caption info:

2012.8.4.jpg

Utagawa KUNISADA (1786-1865)
Published by Izumiya Ichibei
No. 4 (Yon ), from the series His Figure: Related Copies of Other Pictures ,
or Magic Lantern Slides of That Romantic Purple Figure ( Sono sugata
yukari no utsushi-e ), 1850
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Oban
Scripps College Collections
Gift of Mrs. Frederick S. Bailey,  2012.8.4

46.1.76.jpg

Attributed to Okumura MASANOBU (1686-1764)
Published by Yorozuya Seibei and Yorozuya Hikotaro
Murasaki Shikibu , from the book Mirror of Beauties, 1709
Hand-colored woodblock print; ink and color on paper
11 7/8 x 7 13/16
Scripps College Collections
Gift of Mrs. James W. Johnson, 46.1.76


Ai Kelley
Riverside Art Museum Communications
akelley@riversideartmuseum.org | 951.684.7111x303