Displaying items by tag: Skidmore College

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Yo La Tengo is bringing their wondrous mix of sweetness and noise to the Spa City June 6 for a performance at the Zankel Music Center, on the campus of Skidmore College

The event is billed as an hour-long “live documentary,” with filmmaker Sam Green narrating the film and cue-ing images for “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller,” while Yo La Tengo performs their original score live. Tickets are $25. For more information, go to: skidmore.edu/zankel.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Skidmore’s Hockey team has concluded their progressive season and is already looking ahead to come back stronger next season.

Their program finished 6-17-2 last year and bounced back this year and finished with a regular season record of 13-9-3 with an overall national ranking of 24th in the country out of 90 teams. Th eir focus for the next year is recruiting players who will share the same goal the team has established.

"I took this job because coach Hutch said he wanted to win a national championship within five years,” said assistant coach Shane Talarico.” We just got done with year two and we're coming off  a recruiting class that finished sixth in the country and we believe this recruiting class coming is going to be even better."

The team has 13 wins and are striving to get over the 15-win mark, in order to gain the opportunity to be a national tournament team. With such a close goal mark, the coaches are paying a lot of attention to the incoming class of recruits, who will match the talent already on the team.

"We just had a kid, Austin Rook. He just finished up his freshman year. He was on the all-conference second team, and he made the all-rookie team as a freshman."

After the team took a loss to Babson College at the New England Hockey Conference, the team is taking this as a learning experience.

“Babson is a team that we've had trouble with, not only this past year but over a lot of years,” said Talarico. “We really gotta get over that hump. It's important for us to come into the rink every day to get better and jump those elite teams."

Attendance for their games is in the top 25, meaning the team is already getting a great amount of support from the community and the college, which does not go unnoticed. Giving back to the community that supports them is a top priority for the team and their Stable Club have helped them to do so. This year Skidmore’s Hockey team played at a few fundraising “Hockey Night” events where the proceeds went to the Wilton Food Pantry and the Do it For Daron Foundation, which aims to raise awareness, inspire conversation and transform youth mental health.

"We were very fortunate. We had Adirondack trust and the barrel house that joined our Stable club and we would like to continue that with them,” said Talarico. “We really thank those guys for giving us opportunities to put fundraisers together."

Swishes of oranges and yellows, dots of brown and stacks of frilly white spiraling strands graced the plates at Skidmore College last week. 

They were entries in the 8th Annual American Culinary Federation (ACF) Competition held on Friday, Jan. 11 but would’ve fit in just as well at an art show.

“Everything is just so beautiful, I think its art,” said Ron Taylor, Skidmore’s Media Services Operations Coordinator.

Stress & Surprises

The competition — similar to the television series “Chopped” — challenged 10 four-person teams to use a “market basket” of surprise ingredients to create a salad or appetizer, a soup or dessert, an entrée and a buffet platter within a limited amount of time. 

“It’s pure adrenaline. You’re excited but nervous and it’s hard to stay focused,” said Skidmore chef Joe Greco. This was his third year competing in the event, which is always a confidence-boosting experience for his team, he said. 

Skidmore earned gold with the highest total points for the sixth consecutive year. Cornell University, which placed second in the point tally, also earned gold, while the other teams were awarded silver medals for their work during the event.

Comradery Amidst Competition

“It’s an experience of a lifetime,” said SUNY Albany chef Christine Bennett. 

With a wide smile and a sigh of relief, her teammate Tara Nunez joins her. Taking off her crisp white chef’s hat and untying her apron, she talks of how fun it is to meet new people, discuss new ideas and experiment with unusual ingredients. 

“You learn little things from each team. It’s very nice,”
said Bennett. 

Food for Thought

Skidmore’s Dining Services organizes the annual competition which gets better and better each year, agreed the competitors and the judges.

 “We are extremely proud of our gold medal and how the Skidmore team worked together to earn it. We were also pleased to hear from the judges that this year’s competition was the best yet — with some of the tastiest food. We look forward to raising the bar again next year,” said Mark Miller, Skidmore’s Dining Services Director.

The two-day conference also included a screening of “The Bullish Farmer” documentary, a discussion with Skidmore alumnus John Ubaldo, owner of John Boys Farm in Cambridge, and several food preparation presentations. 

The panel of judges said the culinary competition expectations presentation really helped to improve this years’ experience for everyone.

“Sometimes I learn more than I teach. Like, I wouldn’t have eaten yesterday because there were some things today I wanted to eat a lot more of,” said judge Victor Sommo.

Putting Change on the Menu

Competitions like this one are a reflection of a changing attitude toward food. “Things are changing when it comes to food and people are thinking more about what they consume. They want food with flavor that excites them at school and in their own dorm room. It’s the demand for it that drives it. You have to change with the times. Change is inevitable,” said SUNY Albany chef Jeff Rayno.

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Tim Davis roams the corridors of the Tang Museum, surveying the gallery landscape where the work is ongoing in preparation of this weekend’s opening of his new show.

“This is the first time I’ve ever really done a show on this scale of things - things that aren’t just pictures that I took on a wall,” he says, the sonic echo of swinging hammers and buzzing drills flowing all around him. “This has a lot more going on.”

There are photographs – which he calls cartoons, selfies captured in the South Sea, videos of radios that he filmed in Tunisia; There is a self-portrait sculpture composed of multiple copies of Bob Dylan’s “Self Portrait” album, and a multitude of grave rubbings of people with funny names. “I can’t believe that I spent all this time in the summer doing these grave-rubbings,” Davis says, with a laugh. “It just seems insane.”  

“While I’m out there making photographs about the immediate moment, I’m also collecting stuff all the time,” he explains, posing for a photograph in front of his Library of Ideas. Here, the book shelves are lined with titles that boast the word “Idea.” 

 "It all started with the sheet music of the song ‘(When We Are Dancing) I get ideas,’ Davis says. “I started collecting printed matter that has the word IDEAS in it, thinking that if I ever needed more ideas…”

Davis had staged solo exhibitions in Italy and France, Belgium and Canada. He has been involved in group exhibitions in spaces like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “When We Are Dancing (I Get Ideas),” - which opens on Saturday at the Tang Museum - marks the first large-scale exhibit in Saratoga Springs for the artist who spent his childhood here.  

Davis grew up in Saratoga where at a young age he went around town with his friends making home movies with a Super 8 camera. He played in local bands. He created handwritten stories that were published in a homemade newspaper created by his friends. The TV news was their inspiration.   “We were all obsessed with this weekend news anchor in Albany named Joe Moskowitz,” he recalls. “We got his 8x10 glossy, signed. We were in his fan club…”  

The artist’s father, longtime Saratogian Peter Davis, was the program director of the Flurry Festival and plays a variety of instruments with numerous bands in the region, from Annie and the Hedonists to Saratoga Race Course house band Reggie’s Red Hot Feetwarmers. Music also plays a prominent rule in the exhibition. A monitor inside the museum displays music videos the younger Davis created for each of the 11 songs that he wrote for an album titled “It’s OK to Hate Yourself.”   

“It’s got many of Saratoga’s finest musicians on it,” says the artist who spent many years writing lyrics for his brother’s band, Cuddle Magic.  On Dec. 6, Tim Davis will perform all new material with his all new band.  “We’re called Severely Brothers. not THE. Just called Severely Brothers, OK?”

He is an artist, writer and a musician who makes photographs, video, drawings, sound, and installations. Humor plays a vital role.     

One of his earlier videos - “The Upstate New York Olympics” - depicts Davis leap-frogging over lawn jockeys. Sixteen different lawn jockeys in fact and some of which would be readily recognizable to residents of the Spa City. 

“On my 40th birthday, I said: I’m going to go out and just make something that’s super fun, something I enjoy. My birthday is Nov. 5 and it’s always cold and miserable and I came up with idea of making new sports. And I love playing sports, so I was like: Can I make art as fun as playing sports? For a year I made this thing – The Upstate New York Olympics - and I went all around upstate scanning the landscape,” says Davis, who is 48. “The lawn jockey leapfrog seemed logical. I get a rush out of doing something I’m not supposed to do. I never really got in trouble,” he says. “And I only went to the hospital once.” 

Another early video features 12 minutes of various Dollar General stores that accompany the lonesome traveler on a journey across the upstate landscape. 

“I was visiting a friend in Chenango County, out near Binghamton. You’re driving around an realize there are these Dollar General stores in like every town, these amazing glowing things where they leave the lights on really late at night. You’re like: Oh, there goes another one. He fixed his camera to the side window of his car and continued on his journey. ”I enjoy being out in the world and being dedicated to capturing something about the immediacy of the moment.” 

In the Tang Museum exhibition, two fixed walls play moving images that showcase, respectively, the formative beginnings of the hope-filled power of creativity - called “Counting In” - and its successful conclusion, called “Curtain Calls.”  

“This is all footage I shot. Counting In took a year of going to band practices and waiting for them to say: one, two, three, four. Filmed in their rehearsal spaces, I just take the part where they go: one, two, three, four and string all of those together, before the song even starts. Curtain Calls are of amateur theatrical plays. It’s the ecstasy of the thing being over. Different plays from all over the country, shot from the same vantage point,” Davis says.  

“A curtain call is what everyone is aiming for in a play - especially an amateur play that’s three hours long. Everyone’s like: can we get it there without messing it up? And Counting In is something that’s necessary to make music happen. I feel these two pieces are the real American Dream – which is playing in a band in your basement and doing an elaborate theater production. It’s not making a million dollars on Wall Street. “  

Another music-meets-culture depiction - Un-Easy Listening - takes up a glass housed section of the museum’s second-floor space.

“There are about seven or eight hundred easy listening record in here - records you pick up when you go digging through the Salvation Army,” Davis says. “Elevator music. Music meant to be in the background in a suburban house in the ‘50s, when people moved from urban ethnic-type apartment tenements to the suburbs, where they created all this music to fill up that space. That happened at the same time of the invention of the long-playing record and hi-fi stereo. So, it was the perfect storm of blandness.” A trio of record players simultaneously spin three different easy listening selections. “It’s interactive. People can come in and take records, put them on, change them out, take them home if they want. I would be grateful to get rid of them.”  

Davis lives in Tivoli, N.Y., near Kingston and teaches photography at Bard College. He previously taught a different generation of students at Yale, from 2001 to 2004. It was an era before Google, before Facebook and prior to Instagram. The technological changes of the past 15 years have been massive.

 “One thing that’s harder and harder is going out into the world (for a new generation of students). Computers and the Internet are things that make us… we know where we can go to get answers. Every question can be answered in one place. The idea of moving through the world randomly may lead you to your answers, and unexpected answers, but it’s harder for them to do that. So, I give an assignment that’s called ‘Let’s Get Lost’ and the idea is you have to be completely lost before you can take any pictures, and you can’t have a phone with you. For me, the idea is that there’s a heightened attention when we’re lost, a feeling of being hyper-aware,” Davis explains.

“On the other hand, the idea of their lives being something they want to share with other people is something that’s totally familiar to them. It’s easier for them to make work that’s more personal, that’s more connected, because they’re used to it. It’s something they’ve done their whole lives. Not only making art about their whole lives - but publishing it, for all to see.”

The exhibition reflects the wide variety of the artist’s works. “I’m paying attention all the time,” Davis says. “The thing is, we may run out of a lot of things, but we’re never going to run out of significance. We’re never going to run out of something to say. As long as there are human beings, there is going to be significance in a sense that: this is really important, let me tell you this. And that’s what I’m here for.”

 (photo: the artist in the spotlight, at the Tang Museum, Oct. 17, 2018. Photo: Thomas Dimopoulos)

Tim Davis - When We Are Dancing (I Get Ideas), a solo exhibition opens Saturday. Oct. 20 at
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. Opening reception is at 5 p.m.

On Tuesday, Oct. 30, Davis hosts an evening at the museum of storytelling about how and why people collect things.  he will also stage a musical performance on Dec. 6. For more information, go to: tang.skidmore.edu.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Skidmore College has recently been recognized in national rankings for their excellence in liberal arts, innovation, and student life. Skidmore has been ranked No. 41 by U.S. News and World Report in the National Liberal Arts Colleges; ranked in the top 50 for “Most Innovative Schools;” “High School Counselor Rankings;” “Best Value Schools;” and “Best Undergraduate Teaching.” Skidmore was also on The Princeton Review’s 2019 list of The Best 384 Colleges, along with earning top 50 positions in the “Best Campus Food,” “Great Financial Aid,” and “Best Quality of Life” categories.

It was also listed as a “10 Best Green School in America” by The Knowledge Review magazine and a “Top 50 Green College” by the Princeton Review in 2017. Among other accolades, Skidmore is also considered a “Hidden Ivy.” Skidmore does not submit themselves for these accolades, rather, they let their publicly available information and data speak for them, as well as student surveys.

“We have a wonderfully inclusive community at Skidmore. We don’t have fraternities and sororities and I think as a result there is a cohesiveness to the community that’s very appealing to students. There’s also a supportive environment amongst students, and that contributes to quality of life,” said Mary Lou Bates, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid.

A typical class size for Skidmore is roughly 690 students and this past year they had just under 11,000 applications. The reason the campus earned a top spot with their food? The students have a say in the menu.

“They provide feedback on a bulletin board in the dining hall and our award-winning Culinarians use that input when making their menus and recipes. Students also offer ideas for special themed meals —like our upcoming Nightmare Before Christmas and Harry Potter dinners. We create our own four-week rotational cycle each semester and adjust it based on the seasons and student feedback. We use only high-quality ingredients and support local farms and businesses as much as possible,” explained Mark Miller, director of dining services.

Skidmore’s sustainability program speaks for itself.

“The Sustainability Office serves as a hub for sustainability at Skidmore. While we lead several student programs and initiatives on campus, we also partner with colleagues across campus and with community members and organizations in Saratoga Springs, all with the goal of advancing sustainability in our community. Sustainability is a broad concept and requires collective community effort, which has been growing for decades at Skidmore,” said Levi Rogers, director of sustainability programs and assessment.

Tucked away in Saratoga Springs has a lot of advantages.

“Our location in Saratoga Springs is a significant factor in students’ decisions to choose Skidmore. They like the fact that they are in a city but it’s not an urban environment. Saratoga Springs is a city with lots going on, with a strong cultural base and great restaurants and coffee shops — it complements everything that happens on campus. Students like being in the beautiful foothills of the Adirondacks and having easy access to New York City, Boston and Montreal,” Bates explained.

If anyone is on the fence about attending Skidmore, Bates has the perfect pitch for that: “What makes Skidmore unique is our strong sense of community, the breadth of choice and flexibility in our curriculum and programs, our outstanding faculty and our interdisciplinary approach that equips students for success.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College held a nonpartisan voter-registration drive and the launch of a For Freedoms public art project from 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, September 25, which was also National Voter Registration Day, in conjunction with the exhibition Give a damn. Skidmore College students from the Student Government Association registered people to vote ahead of the November 6 midterm elections. For the public art project, participants were invited to share their own definition of freedom on yard signs, which was inspired by campaign signage, by completing one of following phrases:

• Freedom Of  ________.
• Freedom From ______.
• Freedom For  _______.
• Freedom To ________.

After participants articulated a vision of freedom in their own way, they were then invited to have their signs installed outside the Tang. They will stay on view as part of a public art project called For Freedoms through the November election. Those who wished to display their signs at their own homes were encouraged to share images of their signs on social media with the hashtags #ForFreedoms, #50StateInitiative as well as #TangMuseum. The public art project is a collaboration between the Tang Teaching Museum and For Freedoms, an organization founded by the artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman that seeks to use art to deepen public discussions of civic issues and core values, and to clarify that citizenship in American society is defined by participation, not by ideology. The For Freedoms public art exhibition is organized by Assistant Director for Engagement Tom Yoshikami and the Tang Student Advisory Council, in conjunction with For Freedoms.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Skidmore College announces the winners of the eighth annual Kenneth A. Freirich Business Plan Competition, held Friday, April 6, 2018. More than 325 students and 210 businesses have entered the competition, which was established in 2010 by Skidmore alumnus Ken Freirich ’90 with the intent of fostering entrepreneurship and creativity among students of all majors and disciplines at Skidmore. Th e competition has grown into one the best-funded among liberal arts colleges nationally, with cash prizes and business service awards valued at over $50,000. Skidmore College was ranked seventh among America’s most entrepreneurial colleges according to Forbes.

“There’s nothing more rewarding than watching amazingly talented and creative students take on the biggest challenges of their lives and succeed,” said Ken Freirich, Skidmore College class of ’90 and founder of the Kenneth A. Freirich Business Plan Competition.

“I am extremely proud of all the students, and I know that this experience will change many of their lives. Students told me that this has been a transformative event, and I’m
immensely proud to be able to give back and to enrich these students’ educational experience at Skidmore,” said Freirich.

Competition founder Ken Freirich was a student entrepreneur while at Skidmore, starting his fi rst business as a sophomore publishing a magazine for college students that was distributed on 35 college campuses in three states. Today, Freirich is president of Health Monitor Network, a thriving entrepreneurial company that has grown almost tenfold over the past ten years and is celebrating its 35th anniversary. For additional information about the Freirich Business Plan Competition, please visit: www.skidmore.edu.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – “Free To Rock,” a documentary film directed by four-time Emmy-winning filmmaker Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, will be screened 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 21 at Skidmore College. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with executive producers Nick Binkley and Doug Yeager.

“I believe music is one of the most powerful change agents the world has ever known. It opens hearts and minds and plants dreams and imaginations,” says Binkley, who points out, among other things, a popular underground heavy metal scene in places like Cairo and Tehran, Islamabad, Damascus and Baghdad.

Ten years in the making, “Free To Rock” explores how American rock and roll contributed to the end of the Cold War.

What prompted the film? “The realization that the ‘soft power’ of American music and culture had a profound effect on the kids behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War,” Binkley explains. “I equate soft power and music and culture with freedom of speech. And freedom of speech is the lifeblood of truth.

“Hard power is military, it’s bombs in the air, it’s bodies in graves and it is destruction. Sometimes we need to use hard power in the military to thwart an imminent danger. Soft power opens hearts and minds, plants dreams and imaginations and is really the extension of the American set of values. That to me is what I hope people come away with,” Binkley says.

Perhaps most unusually, is Binkley’s background, which is in international affairs and banking. He’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations who is just as easily capable of discussing The Plastic People of the Universe – a rock band born of the musical influence of the Velvet Underground, who inspired rebellion to helped transform the Communist rule of the Czechoslovakian landscape.

“I was a musician before I was a venture capitalist,” he says, with a laugh. “I played music in high school and college and abroad in the 1960s and I’ve been writing songs all my life.”

“Free To Rock” features presidents, diplomats, spies and rock stars from the West and the Soviet Union who reveal how rock and roll was a contributing factor in ending the Cold War. The film has been screened – along with an accompanying Q&A session – across the country as well as abroad.

“A lot of college kids were not aware that American music and western Pop Culture was prohibited by the central authorities in the former Soviet Union – that electric guitars were not allowed to be imported and that rock music was considered propaganda from an alien ideology,” Binkley says.

“The question we get often is whether rock and roll music is as relevant today as it was 25, 30, 40 years ago. What’s the answer? Come to the Q & A and you’ll find out.”

The screening and Q&A will take place at Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall, on the campus of Skidmore College and is open to the community.

Jeff Goodell, author and Rolling Stone contributing editor, will deliver a free lecture at Skidmore College Tuesday night.

Goodell, who traveled across 12 countries to interview scientists and leaders about climate change, will present his findings and report how climate change and sea level rise are affecting major cities, coastal villages, island nations and the military.

Goodell’s most recent book, “The Water Will Come,” was named as A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2017 and Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2017. Goodell is also author of “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind American’s Energy Future,” and “How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate.”

The event takes place 7 - 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at Gannett Auditorium in Palamountain Hall.