Mackenzie Ostrowski and the Intersection of KUCI, Independent Creators and Community Efforts

Support UCI Giving Day By Mia Hammett Fourth year film and media studies major in the School of Humanities, Mackenzie Ostrowski, is one of the few undergraduates on campus pioneering the return to small businesses. A news, music, and talk show host-in-one, Ostrowski’s made a name for herself...

Forging a Common Bond

Three UCI M.F.A. artists from 1969-71 reconvene in an Armory exhibition in Pasadena. By Richard Chang In 1969, three young women entered the newly formed M.F.A. program at UCI not really knowing what to expect. They were all divorcees with children. Each was doing a kind of art that was...

Hooked from the Start

Professor Michael Hooker receives top honor for career achievement in sound design By Jill Kato Professor Michael Hooker has received the 2022 Distinguished Achievement Award in Sound Design from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), the premiere organization in his...

UCI’s Bruce Yonemoto is named a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow

Professor of art is among 180 recipients of the renowned award Bruce Yonemoto, a video and digital media installation artist, educator, writer, curator, and professor of art at the University of California, Irvine, has been awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship. He joins 179 other American and...

8 Top Costume Design Programs

The Department of Drama Costume Design Program recently made the list for the top 8 design programs for Backstage Magazine's annual list. The program combines practical professional training with exploring and identifying each student's artistic voice.

A Whitney Biennial of Shadow and Light

March 31, 2022 | By Holland Cotter After a year’s Covid delay, the latest Whitney Biennial has pulled into town, and it’s a welcome sight. Other recent editions — this is the 80th such roundup — have tended to be buzzy, jumpy, youthquake affairs. This one, even with many young artists...

A Year in Review: Eleanor Yu on Memory, the Pandemic, and Creative Suffering

  Support UCI Giving Day By Mia Hammett Art and Film and Media Studies double major Eleanor Yu is a third-year student with all the cool, calm, and collectedness of a seasoned artist. She’s driven to create by an equally acute attention and appreciation for the subtleties of modern...

A Haunting Film at UC Irvine is Not for the Faint of Heart

The immersive film Malka Germania (“Queen Germania” in Hebrew) references our personal and collective trauma about war and subjugation and artfully turns that trauma into manna. The 40-minute three-channel video is created by Israeli native Yael Bartana.

Los Angeles exhibit features work of video art pioneer Ulysses Jenkins

PBS Newshour (CANVAS Arts), March 18, 2022 (Video) Ulysses Jenkins is considered a pioneer in the world of video art, which emerged as artists in the 1960s and '70s began using lighter and more affordable video cameras to create work and tell stories. One of the first Black artists in the field...

Art from displacement and loss

(excerpt from the Los Angeles Times) Born a refugee, Jenny Yurshansky (UCI, M.F.A. '10) creates works about migration and inherited trauma. By Deborah Vankin When Jenny Yurshansky’s parents fled Soviet-era Moldova in 1978, they could take only a handful of items with them— what...

The Beall Center to present works by computational art pioneer Vera Molnár: Variations

DOWNLOAD THE PRESS KIT The exhibition will include over 80 works by Molnár, the largest one person show of her work in the United States. Irvine, Calif., March 14, 2022 — The Beall Center for Art + Technology is honored to be the first gallery in the United States to present Variations, a...

Steven Lam (Art M.F.A. '04) Named New School of Art Dean at CalArts

An experienced curator with a strong track record of higher education leadership, Steven Lam will join CalArts as its next dean of the School of Art. He’ll hold the Jill and Peter Kraus Distinguished Chair in Art, and is scheduled to begin July 15, 2022.

Ulysses Jenkins, a Daring Video Artist, Expanded Ideas of Blackness

Excerpt from Hyperallergic online. Feature by Allison Conner LOS ANGELES — “You’re just a mass of images you’ve gotten to know / From years and years of TV shows / The hurting thing, the hidden pain / Was written and bitten into your veins,” chants artist Ulysses Jenkins in his 1978 video...

Video Artist and Professor Ulysses Jenkins Finally Gets His Moment

By Richard Chang There are some talented people who create thought-provoking works all their lives, flying just below the radar and occasionally popping up for a moment in the spotlight. Ulysses Jenkins is one of those people. Jenkins is a professor of art, focusing on video, digital and...

Arts Advocates: Mary Watson-Bruce

OPERA AFICIONADO Q&A with Mary Watson-Bruce Mary Watson-Bruce, Ph.D. social sciences ’82, has an extensive history with UCI. She served as the associate director of geriatric medicine at UCI for ten years, and her late husband, Dickson Bruce, was a professor of history for over four...

Daphne Lei Appointed Director of UCI Illuminations, the Arts and Culture Initiative

Professor of Drama Daphne Lei has been appointed Director of UCI Illuminations, the Arts and Culture Initiative, effective Feb. 1, 2022. Provost Hal Stern made the announcement on behalf of Chancellor Howard Gillman on Jan. 28, 2022. Lei has served as interim director since Jan. 1, 2022. Lei has...

A broad canvas for friendship

UCI Art alumna Nancy Buchanan and Barbara T. Smith reflect on camaraderie, show with a late colleague at the Armory for the Los Angeles Times.

Christopher Adriance Named Vice President of Marketing for the Irvine Barclay Theatre

Christopher Adriance (B.Mu. ’11) recently joined the Irvine Barclay Theatre as the Vice President of Marketing, overseeing the organization’s strategic marketing, branding and communications. Adriance joins the Barclay after eight years with the Pacific Symphony. During his time at the...