Beat Development

Capstone Class Mimics Real World

2007-12-30T13:23:00.000-05:00

When I began the journey through journalism 421, my beat development senior capstone, I was honestly terrified. I didn’t know how I was going to write a story every two weeks, let alone stories that weren't handed to my by an editor but rather found through my own sources and research. The class far surpassed any of my expectations or fears—in a very good way. Because of this class I feel perfectly capable of developing a beat of my own in the real world. I anticipate the process being even easier without 15 other credit hours and 26 novels to read weighing me down.

One of the most rewarding parts of the beat development process was forging relationships with sources and finding story ideas through them. It was extremely gratifying to discover very interesting people and events happening on campus. A whole other side of the university was opened up to me. I undertook several aspects of the School of Fine Arts as my beat: the administration, art museum, and architecture/interior design department. I had never set foot in the architecture and interior design building before this semester, nor taken an interest in what amazing projects the students and staff were undertaking.

A couple of my stories were not only written for the class deadline, but for our student paper as well. This doubling of expectations put pressure on me to really work ahead for each story. I found it very frustrating when my grades and the good graces of my editors were in the hands of sources who may or may not return my phone calls or emails in a timely fashion.

Welcome to the real world, Megan.

-- Megan Milstead
Nov. 27, 2007

New SFA Dean has Big Plans

2007-12-10T21:16:00.000-05:00

BY: MEGAN MILSTEAD

SEPT. 11, 2007

Teacher, composer, musician and leader are just a few of the roles Jim Lentini fills at Miami University as the new dean of the School of Fine Arts (SFA). Barely entering his third month in Oxford, Lentini has already begun to assess not only the departments of the SFA, but the students of Miami and the wider community as well.

“I’m living on campus and getting the full flavor of how the students on campus live both night and day. There’s a vibrancy to it,” Lentini said.

As a Michigan native, Lentini, 49, isn’t a stranger to the Midwest. “The Midwest isn’t at all a mystery, but I haven’t really lived in a small town per se,” Lentini said. “It’s amazing how small the network really is. For my family this was a good move and we’re adjusting well.”

And, as far as his assessment of the SFA is concerned, Lentini doesn’t believe his role as dean necessarily involves many dramatic changes.

“I didn’t come in with the idea that I needed to fix anything,” Lentini said, “but I came in with the idea of assessing where the strength areas are and what the next steps need to be.”

Lentini’s first step will include a year studying the six departments that make up the SFA—architecture and interior design, art, music, theater, the Art Museum, and the Performing Arts Series—and forming strategic plans to move forward with each department. The plans—a first for the SFA—will address broad questions: What is the mission and vision of each department? How have its goals been supported and funded? What are the points of excellence for the department? How is the department perceived by students and the community?

To find the answers to these questions, Lentini, along with the faculty of each department, will look at data such as admissions numbers, selectivity in each major, and awards students win.

John Weigand, interim chair for the department of Architecture and Interior Design, feels Lentini’s approach to change has been a good one.

“He’s been very public about wanting to strategically plan and establish these goals collectively,” Weigand said. “He is very conscious about not coming in and telling everyone exactly what they need to do.”

Miami alumna and architecture major Michelle Bennett represented undergraduate students in the dean search. She felt from the start that Lentini would bring positive change to the SFA.

“When he first interviewed, I immediately noticed the infectious enthusiasm he spread throughout the entire room,” Bennett said via e-mail. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘If Dr. Lentini could instill such inspiration in a few short minutes, imagine what he could do in only a few short years.’ ”

One of the overriding themes for all this change will be technology. In his nearly 15 years at Wayne State University in Detroit, Lentini was involved in the fundraising and designing of two music computer labs that cost $75,000 to $100,000 each at the time. These labs were built to support a new bachelor of music degree, which Lentini created to fuse music courses with technology. And, as founding dean of the School of Art, Media, and Music at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, N.J., Lentini has firsthand experience merging the arts with modern methods of instruction. The College of New Jersey created the first interactive multimedia program for arts undergraduates in the country, where students can take a more innovative, technological approach to majors such as music and art.

“It is no secret that technological advancement is at the forefront of Dr. Lentini’s vision for the School of Fine Arts,” Bennett said. “He proclaims to be committed to the development of the school’s technological resources—both by improving its existing infrastructure and by implementing innovative tools.”

Lentini doesn’t think that a single student should be graduated who doesn’t have a firm grasp on how to use technology in relation to their area of study.

Though he understands that not all of the nearly 1,000 SFA students will gravitate toward technology in their art-making, Lentini feels each department must find a way to incorporate it.

“We need to look at the right blend of traditional training and education with modern ways of teaching and creating art,” Lentini said.

Bennett said other students also responded favorably to Lentini’s focus on technology—something that has become more prevalent in the arts.

“Technology defines the way we now learn art,” Bennett said. “While traditional methods continue to hold an invariable importance to our education, new technologies allow us to pursue our studies on a deeper level and help us to compete in an increasingly technologically focused job market.”

Plus, Lentini doesn’t just hope to initiate the SFA into the world of technology—he hopes it will become a leader. He has a budget of more than $13 million for the SFA to try and make that hope a reality.

“My dream would be that we’re cutting edge,” Lentini said, “that we’re staying current with developments of technology as they’re related to the disciplines in this school.”

After this year, Lentini hopes to teach a class every once in awhile. But, as an accomplished classical guitarist, a composer who regularly accepts commissions, and a father of three young children, finding time for everything he wants to do is hard.

“[Teaching] gives you a healthy respect for what teachers do. It’s not an easy thing to teach,” Lentini said. But, with such a busy schedule, he added, “It’s always a battle for time.”

Connecting with the music side of the SFA both as dean and as a musician is one of the things Lentini most enjoys about his job.

“[Music] keeps me sane,” Lentini said. “I have to keep some of that going because if it’s all about pushing papers and numbers…well, that’s not why I got into this business.”

The School of Fine Arts has had two other deans in the past three years, but Lentini said he doesn’t plan on following the recent revolving door trend. “I have a young family so it’s not my plan to bop around every two or four years,” Lentini said. “Some period of time would be good here.”

An extended stay is crucial to the fruition of his various strategic plans, he noted. “I think you need about five years to really do things successfully,” Lentini said. “You can derail a lot of things in two years, but I’m not sure you can build much in two years.”

Photo of Dr. James Lentini courtesy of the Miami University School of Fine Arts Web site

SFA Takes on Social Justice

2007-12-09T21:18:00.000-05:00

BY: MEGAN MILSTEAD

SEPT. 25, 2007

Miami University’s School of Fine Arts (SFA) is unifying its departments around the theme of social justice this year. Susan Thomas, director of integrated programs and arts management for the SFA, created the theme at the request of Interim Dean Bob Benson..

“Social justice seems to be on everybody’s radar,” Thomas said. “We haven’t reinvented anything. We’ve just reframed what we already do. We’ve also been able to spotlight each department and bring attention to each discipline.”

Social justice, as defined by the SFA, involves a process and a goal to have a society that is “equitable” where “all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure.” The school is hoping this theme will help learning environments become “creative, active and engaged.”

To do this, each SFA department designated one of its performances or exhibitions as part of the social justice series.

The art museum kicked off the series with its exhibition Tanks, Helicopters, Guns and Grenades: The Afghan War Rugs of the 1980s-2007 on Sept. 13. The war rugs were first created by local tribes and cultures of Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979. Since then, and especially post-9/11, rugs have been woven anonymously and sold. The art museum opened its exhibit with approximately 80 war rugs, which museum director Robert Wicks said could be the largest show of Afghan war rugs ever put together.

The war rugs’ relation to social justice, however, has been questioned.

“You have the production of art and the question is how are these the response to social forces (economic instability, warfare, dislocation, etc.) and how are they related to the market demand of collectors,” Wicks said.

David Dotson, who holds an MFA in sculpture from Miami and works security for the museum, agrees.

“I don’t think that the rugs themselves are really an effort to bring about change as they are a novelty to be sold,” Dotson said. “There’s a moral responsibility that artists have that gets lost in today’s culture. When art stops being about social justice it becomes about an object that can be bought or sold instead of a movement or social change.”

Dotson hopes other events related to the exhibition, like Textile Treasures: The Art of Nomadic Weaving and a documentary about the people of Afghanistan, will be more in line with the theme of social justice.

Thomas, however, believes the question as to why the rugs are actually made is itself related to social justice.

“I see that as the very reason we need to examine social justice,” Thomas said, “that there is a need to look at Afghanistan history through a lens of social justice and what would lead them to weave rugs with commercialization in mind.”

Also related to war and how it affects social justice will be the Performing Arts Series’ (PAS) is presentation of L.A. Theatre Works’ production Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers on Oct. 24, at 7:30 p.m. in Hall Auditorium. The play revolves around the Washington Post’s decision to publish papers detailing America’s presence in Vietnam in the early 1970s. Patti Libertore, director of the PAS, said the play is related to social justice because it is about the First Amendment and the public’s right to information.

“It is based on a real-life situation, but it’s at the heart of the public’s right to know versus national security,” Libertore said.

The Heistand Galleries will be exhibiting Pieces of Power: a Selection of Quilts from Gee’s Bend on Oct. 17. The quilts are made in one rural black community, isolated on three sides by the Alabama River, whose roots go back to the mid-1800s. Thomas said the social justice presented here is in a historical context.

“It’s an African-American perspective,” Thomas said. “It is about freed slaves in a rural community, but also what the hand weaving tells us about them as a people and how they have crossed over that river so to speak.”

Euripides’ play Trojan Women will be put on by the Department of Theatre Oct. 4-6 and Oct. 11-14 as its contribution to the social justice series. The play’s focus is what happens to society—and especially women—after war has been waged. It asks its audience to imagine a world without warring and violence. Liz Mullinex theater chair, said the theme of war is important to social justice.

“The reason we designated this play as part of this series is because it is a play about war and what war can do to a civilization or nation,” Mullinex said.

Thomas agrees that the play fits the theme well. “Though it’s a classic its subject matter deals with the remains of war, and what happens to its survivors is as topical as anything you’d want to do,” Thomas said.

Finally, the architecture and interior design departments are presenting a more community-based social justice message. In conjunction with Miami architecture students living in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood this semester, the department, along with the University of Cincinnati, is hosting affordable housing architect Michael Pyatok.

“[Pyatok’s message] comes out of an interesting social analysis of the nature of society,” said Tom Dutton, the Director of the Miami University Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine. “What kinds of values do we uphold or not uphold as a nation?”

Pyatok will be speaking in Cincinnati on Nov. 7.

As far as a theme for next year’s fall series goes, Thomas said she will have to wait and collect feedback on this year’s performances and exhibitions.

“I’ll probably assess after a couple more of these whether or not everyone thinks it’s valuable to them or if it’s business as usual,” Thomas said.

SFA Dean Jim Lentini feels the theme of social justice has been matched well with the SFA.

“The arts are a perfect way to get a view of how injustice plays itself out in plays, visual, art, etc.,” Lentini said. “All kinds of things reflect real-life experiences and I think social justice is something that the departments [of the SFA] can depict and get us to look at.”

Miami students build can cartoon for charity

2007-12-03T10:05:00.000-05:00

BY: MEGAN MILSTEAD

OCT.9, 2007

Forget Legos. Miami University architecture students play with cans. Members of Miami’s chapter of The American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) are participating in a food drive competition called Canstruction.

Brett Roeth, co-president of Miami’s chapter of AIAS, contacted Dayton’s chapter of The American Institute of Architects (AIA) this summer to see if there were opportunities or projects for Miami students to work on. Because Dayton doesn’t have an architecture school, its chapter is responsible for Miami’s AIAS students. Canstruction was just what they were looking for.

“We’re really trying to get our name out there this year,” Roeth said. “And we are a service-oriented organization so it fits with our mission.”

According to Canstruction’s Web site, teams of architects, engineers, and in some cases students, compete in cities across the country to build structures out of full cans of food. At the end of each exhibition, the cans are donated to local food banks. Since its inception in 1992-93, Canstruction has donated 10 million pounds of food to the needy.

As the only student group competing against three professional architecture firms, the event provided valuable contacts for Miami’s architecture students.

The students also started the project a month or two later than the other teams.

“It’s kind of interesting because (the professionals) have even less time to work on this than we do,” Roeth said. “They’ve really treated us as equals and it’s been really cool. We can hopefully make some connections for speakers and tours to firms.”

J.E. Elliott, faculty adviser to AIAS, agreed that projects like Canstruction could benefit students in the future.

“It’s kind of just one of those odd things for an architecture student to do,” Elliott said. “It’s also an opportunity to connect with professionals in AIA. It’s also an opportunity to exercise their design chops.”

He added that Canstruction has provided students with an experience outside the traditional Miami educational setting.

“[Canstruction] has deadlines that are similar to things they work for in studio here, but because this is a project with a lot of public exposure it’s a different work environment,” Elliott said.

Dayton AIA waived Miami’s $100 entrance fee and was very helpful throughout the project.

Wende Morgan-Elliott, chair of Dayton’s Canstruction event, said the committee decided to waive the fee to help create a positive experience for the students.

“We wanted to make sure it wasn’t a huge burden on the students,” Morgan-Elliott said. “We were really excited for their interest and I think for their willingness to help the community.”

According to Roeth, every Canstruction project has a theme, and for Dayton’s event it was “CANtoons,” which relates to cartoon characters. Miami chose to create TouCAN Sam, the mascot for Froot Loops cereal.

“We were trying to think of cartoon characters and we didn’t want it to be something someone else would do,” Roeth said. “And it’s relatively easy to build.”

The team used nearly 3,500 cans, most donated by Aldi Grocery Store in Hamilton.

Briana Markham, director of store operations for Aldi, received a letter from AIA asking companies to participate in Canstruction by donating products.

“We donate to causes from time to time,” Markham said. “It really sounded like something we were interested in doing since the cans are donated (to a food bank) after the project.”

Markham decided that Aldi would donate 3,000 of its 39-cent cans. The students had to go to the store, pick out what cans they needed, and then place an order with Aldi.

Morgan-Elliott said that for this competition the cans would be donated to the Miami Valley Food Bank. The Canstruction committee took a tour of the food bank to learn how it works and what the community needs. Food banks are especially low on food around the holidays, which made the timing of Canstruction especially beneficial.

Linda Crouch-Roepken, associate executive officer at the Miami Valley Food Bank, said Canstruction is a large donor to the organization.

“Canstruction is really important to us,” said Crouch-Roepken, “Last year it brought in about 40,000 pounds of food to our center.”

Some of those donations go to the “Good to Go” program, which each Friday gives backpacks of food to children who may not have food to eat through the weekend. Children return the backpacks on Mondays, to be refilled for the following week. The kids also receive a jar of peanut butter a month, Crouch-Roepken said.

“The backpack program is a great opportunity to use flip-top cans that can be used by a child,” Morgan-Elliott said. “It’s really to keep their bellies full till Monday.”

With that in mind, she said many groups, including Miami’s, use cans of Spam, Vienna sausages and soup for Canstruction—since all contain foods that children can easily open, fix and eat on their own.

As for the actual construction, Roeth said Miami’s team had eight hours Tuesday to assemble its sculpture at the Dayton Art Institute, which hosted the competition. The finished projects will be on display until tonight at 9 when an awards ceremony will be held.

While there aren’t any actual prizes, the teams could win honors and plaques. Some of the awards include “Best Use of Labels,” “Judge’s Favorite,” and “Best Meal,” which takes into account what the cans actually contain. According to Canstruction’s Web site, winners from each local event compete internationally with slide photographs of their projects.

Miami architecture students had to follow many rules as they built TouCAN Sam. Rules limited their materials and dimensions, and restricted them to five team members building at a time. Rules also warned that some judges might penalize teams who used non-nutritional foods, such as soda and Pringles cans.

Building their structure went very smoothly for Miami’s team, Roeth said.

“It went really well,” Roeth said, “but we did have to make a run for about 25 cans because we were a little short on one color.”

Other teams’ designs included Yoda (The Force Against Hunger), Yogi Bear (Don’t Feed the Bears), and The Great PumpCAN from Charlie Brown.

“I thought we had the most appropriate and interesting character,” Roeth said.

Morgan-Elliott agreed Miami students did well. Other participating teams and the judges—several of whom are Miami alumni, including Morgan-Elliott, were enthusiastic about Miami’s team.

As for the results, Morgan-Elliott could only say one thing about Miami’s team: “I think they’ll be pleased.”
The members of Miami's team surround their TouCAN Sam creation. TouCAN Sam is lying on his back.

photo contributed by Brett Roeth

Student Group Pushes for more Recycling

2007-11-27T21:22:00.000-05:00

BY: MEGAN MILSTEAD

OCT. 25, 2007

158 million pieces of paper. 2.5 million aluminum cans. 2.8 million plastic bottles. According to Miami Recycles’ Web site, Miami University students, faculty and staff have recycled enough trash to prevent more than 21 million tons of greenhouse gasses from escaping into the atmosphere since January 2003.

But despite the university’s efforts, which created a recycling program in 1990 and has steadily improved it since then, some feel more can be done.

Student group Green Oxford (GO) has a mission to increase environmental sustainability in the Miami and Oxford communities. President Cortney Schiappa said a committee is working to find ways for Miami to improve its recycling practices.

“We don’t think it’s good enough,” Schiappa said. “If you’re going through all the effort to recycle you might as well go all out.”

As part of its initiative, GO splits recycling into three categories: indoor on- campus, outdoor on-campus, and off-campus.

Kay Reichenbach is the GO member in charge of indoors, on-campus recycling. She chose this focus because she wants to see the changes she made.

“I felt like recycling on campus was where changes would actually be visible,” Reichenbach said. “I don’t want to be in a club just to go to meetings. I want to feel like I’m accomplishing something.”

Reichenbach is focusing on plastic to-go containers such as those used at Uncle Phil’s Deli and Bell Tower, and napkins use at dining halls. In the past, the plastic containers have been a No. 6 or 7 plastic, while Miami can only recycle Nos. 1 and 2. The napkins are also non-recyclable.

Jon Brubacher, manager of food purchasing at Miami’s Culinary Support Center, said that within the past year Miami has attempted to make the jump to recyclable plastics.

“We’ve switched the vast majority of our plastic containers,” Brubacher said. “We’ve used from probably well over 1,000 of those clamshells [the No. 6 plastic container] a week down to maybe 200.”

Along with napkins, other items are on the recycling radar for Brubacher.

“We are open to anything,” Brubacher said. “We’re looking at different napkins. I have a couple different types of cutlery on my desk right now.”

Unfortunately, new environmentally friendly products such as silverware are still evolving, he said.

“Six months ago quality was terrible,” Brubacher said. “The only thing going for it was that it was silverware.”

Cost is also an issue. The first round of silverware, made from corn starch, cost nearly three times the price of the plastic cutlery now in use. The price of a second round of silverware has dropped to two times the price. Competition among companies will help make recyclable silverware and other food service supplies a reality, Brubacher said.

“More and more companies are getting into environmental products and the more companies there are, the better it is for everyone,” he said.

Off-campus recycling, meanwhile, may be harder to increase. While homeowners who have trash pick up from Rumpke can request a recycling bin for free, apartment dwellers cannot.
According to Amanda Pratt, communication manager for Rumpke Recycling, the company has a contract with the city of Oxford. Landlords must go through the city to obtain a recycling container. Schiappa hopes to hold an informative landlord luncheon at the beginning of the spring semester with a representative from Rumpke to better inform landlords about recycling.

Contamination of recycling bins is another challenge to increasing city-wide waste reduction.

“It’s a universal issue,” Pratt said. “Any time there’s a recycling drop box people see it and think they can put anything in it.”

While such containers can still be sorted, they require more time and manpower—which could end up costing more money and energy to complete the recycling of a contaminated bin.

Because of setbacks like that, educating students and Oxford residents is the key to successful recycling, Pratt said.

“It’s building awareness about recycling,” Pratt said. “It’s getting landlords to buy into having a container somewhere on their property.”

Brubacher agreed participation is crucial.

“We have a pretty good recycling program but it’s like any program—for it to actually work people have to participate in it,” he said.

Schiappa said students especially need to understand how recycling works.

“We need to make sure we inform them to use [recycling] correctly,” Schiappa said. “Even in the dorms when it’s provided, people don’t use it.”

As part of their own education, members of GO recently toured Rumpke Recycling facilities in Cincinnati.

“We wanted to educate ourselves so we could educate other people,” Schiappa said.

Despite its critics, Miami’s recycling center has attracted significant attention. It began a program called Recycle Mania in 2001 with Ohio University. The event tracks the amount of recycling at each participating school over the course of 10 weeks. From its humble beginnings, Recycle Mania has exploded into a competition among 201 schools this year. According to Recycle Mania’s Web site, the schools recycled 41.3 million pounds of waste in 2007. Miami’s contribution to that was an average of 66.2 pounds of garbage recycled per student.

Pratt agrees Miami’s recycling is on the right track.

“You guys have a great program at Miami,” Pratt said. “It’s one of the best in the area.”

Students Design for Wright Homes

2007-11-27T21:00:00.000-05:00

Images of the Fallingwater furniture proposals provided by John Reynolds

BY MEGAN MILSTEAD

NOV. 6, 2007

Balanced on the edge of a natural waterfall, the nearly camouflaged walls of stone and beige concrete appear to grow out of the sandstone and surrounding forest. The setting sun is reflected in the mirror-like windows that face the beauty of the Pennsylvanian mountains. The house, named Fallingwater, is a Frank Lloyd Wright design considered a leading example of organic architecture. Visited by approximately 140,000 people a year, the house has been named one of the 12 landmarks that will change the way you see the world, America’s most favorite historic home, and a building of the century among other accolades. It is also where Miami University architecture students have been both inspired and inspiring for the past four years.

Miami architecture professor John Reynolds launched the Fallingwater work at the invitation of Cara Armstrong, a former student and the curator of education at Fallingwater.

“Be kind to your students because you never know where they’ll end up and they may end up giving you a job,” Reynolds said.

The Beginning

Armstrong had a vision to make the house more accessible to the public.

“I’m interested in how people and museums can be more inclusive and used for more interactive experiences beyond a house tour,” Armstrong said.

The first Miami graduate students who worked on the house, in 2003, benefited from this inclusiveness by designing furniture for Fallingwater’s Servant’s Sitting Room, now used as the tour guide break room.

According to Troy Lowell, one of three students who saw the furniture project through to completion over three years after graduating from Miami, visitors and tour guides to Fallingwater are not allowed to touch anything in the home.

“It’s so homey that you want to [touch things],” Lowell said. His design for the seating area sought to make the tour guides “…not feel so separate from such a warm environment.”

Armstrong said she liked the attitude Miami students brought to Fallingwater.

“They were more about understanding Fallingwater but not about, ‘How can my work be a part of Fallingwater,’ ” Armstrong said.

Lowell said that this philosophy comes from Reynolds’ teaching.

“Our challenge was to extract the DNA of the site and build from that,” Lowell said.

That required walking around the home and property, observing the wind and sun, sketching the structure and grounds, and generally getting a feel for how the home was built and constructed. It is an organic, evolutionary experience for the students who tease out the miniscule details of a building like scientists decoding the secrets to human life.

The Present

Bill James, a Miami student who is currently working on Fallingwater in an undergraduate studio, uses the same process.

“It’s made me a lot more careful in how I approach a site before I just plop a building down on it,” James said.

James and fellow students are creating master plans for the renovation of a farmstead adjacent to Fallingwater as well as working with a second Frank Lloyd Wright home called Westcott.

“We started at the very small scale with the furniture, then at the level of the landscape and now at the scale of the individual homestead,” Reynolds said.

Three Miami architecture studios have worked with Fallingwater since the initial project. The second looked at how to restore and extend the programming of the farmstead itself. The third explored more of the 4,000 available acres of land and the possibility of bringing in new housing. The fourth and current studio is bringing all these ideas together in a master plan to develop housing prototypes for the 19th century farmstead.

The students are in the process of securing funding for the six housing plans. Armstrong said Fallingwater hopes to expand its educational and residency programs, but needs more space to do so.

As far as real experience goes, Reynolds said the students are in the middle of a wonderful opportunity.

“Students are excited because they see themselves engaged in real world projects. They’re seeing real outcomes,” Reynolds said. “They don’t have to wait for permission. They don’t have to wait to graduate. Their work has real meaning and value now.”

Though James’ studio has undertaken a large project, he feels that the house has many opportunities, big and small.

“I think anything associated with Fallingwater is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said.

Lowell, who now works as a mechanical engineer and also has an architecture license, said that working with Fallingwater impacted how he approaches projects and other aspects of his career.

“It has changed the way I do things,” he said. “It has changed the way I interact with the owner, architect and engineer. I see the benefit of communicating across the board.”

Current Miami students, meanwhile, are honing their communication skills in a second Frank Lloyd Wright project, the Westcott House in Springfield, Ohio. Armstrong made the project possible by introducing Reynolds to Marta Wojcik, curator of interpretation at Westcott.

While the Westcott House has worked with some student groups before, Miami’s students have taken their work with the house to a new level, Wojcik said.

“We never really had a class dedicated to our house, our museum,” she said. “The amount of time they are spending on it is really amazing.”

Similar to Fallingwater, the Westcott House is hoping to expand and reinterpret its facilities to accommodate spaces for more education, administration and housing among other things.

Students are creating different design ideas for ways in which the Westcott House could be used.

“With their fresh input and fresh perspectives they can offer new concepts,” Wojcik said.

The Future

As for the future, the work of past and present Miami students will be receiving both local and international recognition through exhibition. The furniture created for Fallingwater was first exhibited in a barn on the site from March through June of 2006. In 2009, it will be joined with new work in a bicentennial exhibition at Miami University’s Art Museum called “Towards New Conceptions of Organic Architecture: Learning from the Experience of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Westcott Houses.” The museum is giving the architecture students $2,250 to help set up the exhibition which will run from January to May of 2009.

After its time at the art museum, the exhibit will travel throughout the United States to places such as the Boston Architectural Center, the California Institute of the Arts, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. It will then be entered in an international design competition aimed at getting architects to think about living close to the land and sustainable design.

Reynolds will also journey to Florida this spring to attend the Miami Alumni Association’s Winter College. He will showcase what the students have done thus far and where their work will go in the future.

Over the years the students’ involvement with Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpieces has been centered on relationships—relationships between a professor and his students, students and their organic discoveries in architecture, and all humans with nature. Reynolds’ enthusiasm for his students and their success is an undertone to every project undertaken at Fallingwater and Westcott House.

“Anything is possible. We have students who are so completely full of life,” Reynolds said. “I’d put my last name after any of their first names—I’m that proud of them.”

Admins lament lack of performance space

2007-11-26T13:36:00.000-05:00

BY MEGAN MILSTEAD
NOV. 20, 2007

Ever wonder why Miami University doesn’t bring in big Broadway acts like Rent and Wicked to perform? According to Patti Liberatore, director of the Performing Arts Series (PAS), bringing Broadway to Miami is “somewhere between hard and impossible” for a quite simple reason: Miami doesn’t have the space.

Currently, Hall Auditorium, Millett Center, and the Gates-Abegglen Theater are the only venues available for such artistic performances.

James Lentini, dean of the School of Fine Arts (SFA), said that these sites are workable, but not exceptional.

“Taken in whole, the facilities we have here are adequate,” Lentini said. “They’re pretty good in some areas and adequate in others. And in some areas we’d love to be more than just minimally acceptable.”

Hall Auditorium is especially popular and its schedule is filled more than a year in advance for performances or guest speakers.

“The challenge we have is that Hall Auditorium has 750 or so seats and everyone wants it all the time,” Lentini said. “When anything gets larger than 750 seats it goes to Millett which is completely unacoustic for almost any musical performance.”

Millett, which can seat 1,000 to 10,000 people depending on the event, must be transformed from a basketball arena for artistic performances, and is not meant for music.

According to Liberatore, not just the crowd dislikes the venue.

“Wynton Marsalis actually spoke derogatorily from stage about performing in a gym,” Liberatore said of the jazz musician who performed with the Lincoln Jazz Orchestra April 6, 2003.

Long aware of this problem, Miami launched a study in 1999 to see if a new performing arts center (PAC) was feasible.

Robert Keller, Miami architect, said that the project fell through because of lack of donor support.

“There was a major donor associated with the project,” Keller said. “We started before 9/11 occurred, and then the whole financial outlook in the country took a dive soon after that. It was my understanding that the donor support wasn’t there. So we put the project on hold indefinitely.”

Keller said it is not unusual for projects to be researched and then put aside.

“In our long-range planning process there are a variety of long-range projects out there,” Keller said. “There are a whole lot of factors that contribute to when a project is acted upon and when it is not. We have other projects that are in that category as well.”

According to a long-range facilities plan from 2002, Miami was considering spending $94 million for new PAC space. It was to have room for around 1,400 seats and space for an undetermined type of food service. The proposed site was the current band practice field, which would have moved to the other side of Patterson Avenue. If approved and financed, the building would have opened this year.

“We wanted that building to be bright and full of energy and life and people every day,” Liberatore said.

Though she understands the cost of a new PAC is large, Liberatore feels it’s crucial for a university.

“A lot of students that come here went to high schools with better facilities than we have,” Liberatore said. “It’s a glaring hole in Miami’s toolbox to not offer our students a decent performing arts center.”

Lentini also feels a new PAC would help Miami compete with other universities in the area.

“We are sorely lacking that one performing space with the PAC that would make us highly competitive with the best institutions,” Lentini said.

In comparison, both Ohio University and The Ohio State University have state-of-the-art performance facilities with auditoriums that seat 2,000 and 2,477 respectively, according to their Web sites.

Liberatore understands that it is difficult for some to imagine spending so much money on a PAC.

“It’s a little hard at first glance to justify a huge building like that for a Performing Arts Series that has 15 performances a year. Many departments on campus need a larger gathering space for public events, like the Lecture Series and other student programming,” Liberatore said. “But we can justify huge stadiums for football teams who play seven home games a year.”

The musical specifications and standards required by performances add to the cost of facilities, she explained.

“Performing arts centers are one of the most expensive things to build because you need the volume in the concert hall because it is acoustic. You’ve got balconies and you need the sound to go up there and fill them.”

Though a new PAC is on hold indefinitely, a part of the original building plan is currently underway: Presser Hall renovations. According to Keller, the building’s upgrades, which will cost around $10 million, are not a short-term Band Aid fix to the PAC’s space problems.

“At least in my mind all of our effort and monies and so forth have been put to what is being gained through the Presser renovation project,” Keller said. “It should assist the SFA quite a bit. It should be a real improvement for the music department and the theater department.”

The renovated Presser, which should be finished by the end of the school year, will be used mostly by the music department. It will include three rehearsal spaces for large and small music ensembles and rooms for music education teaching and offices. While some members of the music department will need to stay in the current Center for Performing Arts located behind Shriver, they will vacate a decent amount of space.

This summer, that building will undergo what Lentini called a “functional renovation” to rework vacated spaces with the rest of the building. When ready, the building will include a dean’s suite—the dean’s office is currently in the Joyner House on Spring Street—conference room and theater scene shop. A long range facilities plan for 2007 says there will be additional renovations to the CPA in 2015-2018 that will total $19 million.

Both the Presser Hall and CPA renovations are being financed by the university.
While a new PAC is not on the books at present, the SFA has added it to its For Love and Honor campaign wish list. This time around, administrators are asking for a lead gift of $15 million to begin the project.