As students, with paintbrushes in their hands, looked at blank canvases, members of the Colgate Christian Fellowship (CCF) asked, "Where do you see beauty in the world?" and "How do humans contribute to or detract from that beauty?"

The 24 participants in the Open Canvas event, sponsored by CCF, were invited to reflect on those questions and through painting, respond.

Gary Carrion-Murayari '02 will play a key role in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, the signature survey of contemporary American art by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Carrion-Murayari

The appointments for the Biennial, which is a major event in the art world and generates a good deal of attention, were discussed in a lengthy article in The New York Times and in several other publications this past week.

Xu Bing, an internationally renowned printmaker and installation artist, will visit campus next week as part of "A Year of Chinese Art" series, sponsored by Colgate's Institute for Creative and Performing Arts.

In addition to Xu's public lecture Monday at Golden Auditorium, seniors from the university's studio arts community will have a unique opportunity to collaborate with him as he critiques their senior projects.

"A Year of Chinese Art" is a series of public events at Colgate that will feature lectures, exhibitions, and a film screening.

The series will explore 20th century Chinese art in both historical and contemporary contexts, including exhibitions of modern Chinese woodblock print art, installation art, and film; two scholarly catalogues; lectures by visiting artists; performances; and curricular programming.

An interdisciplinary symposium -- Nature/Place/Cinema -- will be spread out over two weekends and two campuses (Colgate University and Hamilton College) providing students with behind-the-scenes access to filmmakers and film scholars.

The series of screenings and lectures will draw attention to the depiction of place and the environment, as well as the history of the nature film. It will also examine cinematic manifestations of place, as it relates to contemporary culture, history, and habitat.

Nature/Place/Cinema begins this Friday at 4:15 p.m. at Hamilton College with a screening of John Gianvito's Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind.

Maps can get you from point A to point B, and if you're a tourist in London, that's useful.

Twelve students taking part in the London Art and Art History Study Group last fall also learned that maps can serve as benchmarks of experience, providing graphical representations of intangible ideas.

The students shared their mapping projects and artwork they created overseas at a recent exhibition at Little Hall.

Desperate times call for creative measures.

To encourage innovative solutions to environmental crises, the arts and activism are teaming up on campus through a series of events titled Environmental Art and New Media Technology: Imagining Sustainable Future.

"It's a time in history when the old models and ways of doing things are not going to sustain us anymore," said Cary Peppermint, assistant professor of art and art history. "It's the perfect time to consider new ways of working."

Instead of rushing home when the last school bell of the day rings, budding Hamilton area artists are heading to the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University.

On Monday afternoons, the Picker is transformed into a classroom as inquisitive 6-to 10- year olds let their imaginations run wild while attending the gallery's after-school art club.

As observers and passers-by witness Willoughby Sharp's Ice and Air outdoor installations on campus, they will experience the artworks differently as the pieces change with the passing of time.

The Colgate campus was brimming over the weekend with hundreds of guests who flocked to informational sessions, concerts, exhibitions, athletic events, and numerous other Family Weekend events.

Students, faculty, staff, and local community members gathered at Colgate's Picker Art Gallery last week to celebrate the launch of a new exhibition, Chuck Close: Self-Portrait/Scribble/Etching Portfolio, 2000.