Working Weekend with entrepreneurial aspirations

Posted on November 14, 2011 by

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Thanks to inspiration and coordination from Adam Riggs ’95, Reed will hold its first ever “Working Weekend” on campus, February 3-5, 2011.  This is a career-focused and entrepreneurship-focused event to help students and alumni, and it is open to everyone.

Alumni representing any interest or interest group–whether entrepreneurship in the for-profit or non-profit world, other career angles, or quality of life beyond Reed–are all welcome to participate. In collaboration with the alumni board as well as the alumni relations and career services offices, this program will be highly publicized to students and local alumni.

This will be a great chance for alumni to connect and reconnect with each other, as well as to make an enormous difference in helping current students start to bridge the gap between Reed and the wider world.

Please take a moment to fill out this survey and rsvp, created by Adam, so that we can start to firm up the programming based on who is able to join us.  

If you cannot come to campus, please consider locating or creating a paid or unpaid internship opportunity for which Reedies could compete.  Also, please pass along this info about Working Weekend to any alumni you think would enjoy participating in this new initiative.

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The Lutz Tavern reopens

Posted on November 11, 2011 by

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We’re pleased to report that the beloved Lutz Tavern is holding a grand reopening tonight, Friday, November 11!  When the venerable neighborhood hang-out closed last fall after 57 years, we reported here that the “working-class watering hole with a juke box and a pool table and a clutch of grizzled regulars” would be much missed (in theory, if not practice) by legions of Reedies past and present.  Luckily, Mike Rosen ’04 and Rosie O’Connor ’07 took the Doyle Owl for a farewell visit on closing night (photos by Mike).

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Last week a few of us paid a visit during the “soft launch,” and we heartily approve of less Keno and more (not-too-gourmet) grub.  The red leather booths and retro phone booth remain, and the midcentury fixtures have been polished.  Clinton Street Pub owners Jayson Criswell and Robert Kowalski (also of Crow Bar) are behind this reverent makeover. Indeed, the flyer for tonight’s festivities purports that “Your old friend is back with some new clothes.”

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New features include a full kitchen menu, including pork-loin sandwiches, burgers, and hand-dipped corn dogs, as well as a handsome range of liquor offerings.  Credit cards are accepted, and there is a smoking patio out back.  Tonight’s big draw, besides nostalgia, will be cheap beer (yes, PBR is still served) and half-priced food from 5 p.m. to midnight.

Everything has been polished to a shine, though in keeping with the old-school vibe, there is no website to share with you: the bar will be open 11 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. “every damn day,” and there are SIN specials on Mondays, 6 p.m. to midnight.  

Hope to see you on a bar stool debating the state of the demos one evening soon…

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The lady vanishes? Jamie Isenstein ’98

Posted on November 1, 2011 by

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Jamie Isenstein ’98 doesn’t hesitate to inhabit her art, literally. She’ll pose as an arm chair or a headless lady and lie under a wolf in sheep’s clothing covered by a taxidermy bearskin for hours on end. Last Thursday evening she returned to Reed, in conjunction with the Cooley Gallery’s Museion exhibition, to speak about this sleight of hand.

Resistant to being called a performance artist, she has been recognized for her inventive blending of media installation, performance, sculpture, and drawing.  After viewing some of her exhibitions, we might ask ourselves, what is sculpture? or what is performance? and she’d be delighted to use this confusion to get us thinking about the immortality of art. Inspired by the “materials challenge” embraced by Marcel Duchamp and others in the Dadaist tradition, Jamie thought that the ultimate combination of art and life would be lending her own limbs to the creations she conceives.

Whether she is becoming an arm chair or making art-historical gestures with her hand inside a gilded picture frame, Jamie would like us to consider: if a work of art is forever, is it comprised of a human element that is by nature finite in its existence?  To play with this question, and propose her own “ephemeral solution,” she has created a body of work (no pun intended) that is very much tied to her own lifespan.  Though patrons have purchased the physical trappings of her art (the empty gilded frame, for example), Jamie’s personal presence is required to breathe life into it (yes, she is willing to perform the hand gestures at the patron’s home).  When she is not occupying her art pieces, she hangs a conventional “will return” sign on them, titillating us with the perpetual postponement of it all.

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Here’s to the misfits…

Posted on October 14, 2011 by

“Here’s to… the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently…”

Enjoy an unaired version of Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” commercial that was narrated by Steve Jobs (via laughingsquid.com).

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Feel Different.

Posted on October 14, 2011 by

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As noted on our sister blog, Sallyportal (‘Think Different”), the death of Steve Jobs (an “almost” alumnus) has occasioned many tributes to his “archetypal Reedie” persona.  He was unconventional, driven, and a bit subversive.  Reed coursework influenced him deeply, whether or not he was officially enrolled, especially his study of calligraphy at the hand of Robert Palladino. An article on Smithsonian.com has gone so far as to suggest that mastering the lettered hand led Jobs to think like an artist.

Steve Jobs’ sense of design and artistry set him apart from other engineers, to be sure, but I like to think that his intuition and personal taste are what made the first Macintosh, and consequent inventions, so distinctive.  He is quoted as observing that “Taste is trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.”  This concept of applying human qualities to technological devices may be at the heart of the appeal.  While the Smithsonian article talks about typography triggering emotion, an essay by Adam Penenberg ’85 takes this idea further by arguing that the design of Apple products moves people to “ascribe human values” to them.

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Offspring of Reed Generations of Yesteryear (O.R.G.Y)

Posted on September 28, 2011 by

New Reedies with alumni parents (or other relatives) qualify as members of a prestigious organization fondly referred to as O.R.G.Y (Offspring of Reed Generations of Yesteryear). They, along with family members, were invited to join other Reed legacies for a group photo on Wednesday, August 24. Gorgeous weather graced this photo shoot on the chapel steps, and everyone received an O.R.G.Y button to wear proudly! 

Here’s a picture of some Reed alumni and their excited/nervous/non-plussed Reedie progeny (future alumni!).

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Back row, left to right: John Selker ’81, Julia Selker, Sarah Stadler ’76, Natalie Cowan, Jesyca Hernstadt, Liane Hernstadt ’83

Middle row, left to right: Andrew Mason ’90, Sophia Helverson, Della Green, Marcia Kato ’75, Kata Martin, Holly Hurwitz ’79, Sam Jackson

Front row, left to right: Amelia Wolf, Lisa Rackner ’81 (not pictured), Nora Fisher Campbell, Michael Campbell ’81, Lauren Faris, Rob Faris ’80

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Deepak Sarma ’91 to speak on South Asian religions

Posted on September 21, 2011 by

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Deepak Sarma ’91, associate professor of religious studies at Case Western Reserve University, will be on campus presenting two talks that are open to the public. Thursday, September 22, he will give a lecture entitled “Natural Born Killers: Karma and Predestination in one Hindu tradition” at 4:30 p.m. in Eliot 207. On Monday, September 26, he will present “When is a Brahmin a wicked Brahmin? Insider and outsiders in the study of religion” for Religion 470 (senior thesis and religion symposium), from 4:40 to 6 p.m. in ETC 208.

In August, Deepak led local alumni on a tour of rare Indian Kalighat paintings on display at the Cleveland Art Museum (an exhibit that he also guest curated).  The paintings were produced by anonymous artists between the 1830s and 1880s, and they were sold as souvenirs in bazaars around Calcutta and around the Kalighat Temple.  You may watch him speak about this unique artwork in this video.

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Travel to Russia with Reedies

Posted on September 15, 2011 by

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The Reed alumni office and Russian department are happy to announce our next Russia tour, scheduled for January 7-22, 2012.  

This year, in addition to our usual thorough coverage of Russia’s extraordinary museums, performance halls, and historical sites, we will give special attention to its rich literary legacy, visiting Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy’s estate south of Moscow, as well as his home in Moscow and the museum apartments in Moscow and Petersburg of other important figures, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Anna Akhmatova. We will also make an overnight excursion from Petersburg to Novgorod the Great, Russia’s oldest city and the home of some of its most beautiful medieval architecture. 

Besides a carefully designed itinerary of exceptional richness, the program will include lectures on Russian history and culture by the tour leader, former Reed Russian professor Judson Rosengrant, and local experts.  The tour requires no knowledge of the Russian language and is open to anyone interested in learning directly about Russia, its complex history and culture, and its place in the modern world.

For complete information, contact Dr. Rosengrant at jrosengrant@earthlink.net or 503/880-9521.

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Margaret Shirley ’55 art exhibition (extended!)

Posted on September 14, 2011 by

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The exhibition “Margaret Zundel Shirley ’55, A Retrospective” has been extended through Saturday, September 24 so as to coincide with Reed’s centennial celebration. Geraldine Ondrizek, professor of art, will be at the gallery most of the day on the 24th leading tours of the art building.

Also, Margaret will give an artist talk on Friday, September 16, at 4 p.m.

The Feldenheimer Gallery

Studio Art Building

Artist talk, September 16

Margaret Shirley ’55 is one of the most respected artists and teachers in Portland. She has influenced generations of students at Marylhurst University, PSU, and Reed College. She graduated from Reed in 1955 with a BA in sociology. After serving in the Peace Corps in Morocco, she completed a BFA in painting at Yale. 

She settled in Portland, where she taught art, raised her family, and earned an MFA at Portland State University. At PSU, Margaret studied with Mel Katz, whose approach to abstraction greatly influenced Margaret’s own process. Margaret’s quiet, methodical, abstract paintings and drawings are formally based on materials and repetitive rhythms within mechanical and organic structures. The exhibition represents her work from 1979 to 2010.

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Reed’s centennial community day, September 24

Posted on September 1, 2011 by

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cartoon by Mateo Burtch ’82

Centennial Reunions in June was a remarkable event, but Reed’s 100th-birthday festivities are not over! Keep the party going and join in a wide range of fun on Saturday, September 24, at the college’s centennial community-day celebration.

It all begins with the inaugural Reed College 5K Odyssey run/walk to benefit neighborhood elementary schools, which kicks off a day of music, food, and games for the whole family on the Reed campus. Some highlights include a pancake breakfast, a chemistry experiment on the SU porch, a pet parade, and carnival. In the evening, relax on the lawn for a movie and fireworks. See all of the details online.

Also, you may explore Reed’s first 100 years, a century of inquiry, on our centennial website, where you can browse the centennial collection of significant photographs and documents or share your own memories.

Come share in the merriment as we celebrate the past and look forward to the future, marking and enjoying this momentous occasion.

–Alumni & Parent Relations

Follow along on Facebook too!

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