Author: Theresa Mott

Ulrich Spring Family Fun Day features art-themed activities at the plaza in front of the Ulrich Museum of Art, between the Ulrich and McKnight Art Center, and in the museum galleries. Join the activities from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 15.

Learn origami, make puppets, print with stamps and wood blocks, fill the air with bubbles, play masterpiece games and more. All ages are welcome. It’s an opportuninty to explore the Martin H. Bush Outdoor Sculpture Collection, too.

Attend the next part of the Writing Now/Reading Now series for a reading by WSU’s 2023 distinguished visiting writer, Melinda Moustakis, at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 6 in the Beren Gallery of the Ulrich Museum of Art. A reception will begin at 5:30 p.m. Writing Now/Reading Now is cosponsored by the Department of English, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Watermark Books & Café and the Ulrich Museum.

Moustakis’s story collection, “Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories,” is set in the rugged landscape where she was born, and received the Flannery O’Connor Award and a five Under 35 selection by the National Book Foundation. Her forthcoming novel, “Homestead,” has been called a “stunning debut” by Booklist, given a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, and been praised as follows by New York Times bestselling author Jess Walter, “Moustakis’s writing is so good, so precise, so strong, and so deeply felt that it immediately creates a sense of time and place.”

Robert Bubp explores his immediate environment to examine alternate notions of place and space. Marco Hernandez delves into issues associated with the societies and politics of contemporary Mexican and Mexican American cultures.

Both are faculty at WSU’s School of Art, Design and Creative Industries and artists featured in Transmissions: The XXIV Faculty Biennial, on exhibit until April 22 in the Polk/Wilson Gallery in the Ulrich Museum of Art. Join them at 11:15 a.m. Tuesday, April 4 at the Ulrich Museum to learn about their inspiration and processes.

Join the Ulrich Museum of Art at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 4 in the Beren Gallery for a presentation from April Vollmer titled, “Looking Forward-The continuing relevance of Japanese printmaking.”

Vollmer’s presentation is a short overview of the Japanese “mokuhanga” printing technique and its history. She will connect it with contemporary use and use in her own art, with an emphasis on how the work is made. She will speak about how learning this flexible technique has affected her as an artist, and has inspired a community of creative artists who now keep in touch with exhibitions and triennial conferences. A reception will be held starting at 5:30 p.m.

Irma Puškarević investigates the semiotics of regional alphabets through collective and personal history and memory. Levente Sulyok explores the relationship between the present, the past and the future in terms of shifting cultural and physical borders.

Both are faculty at WSU’s School of Art, Design and Creative Industries and artists featured in Transmissions: The XXIV Faculty Biennial, on exhibit until April 22 in the Polk/Wilson Gallery. Join them at 11:15 a.m. Tuesday, March 28 at the Ulrich Museum of Art to learn about their inspiration and processes.

Attend the next part of the Writing Now/Reading Now series for a reading by WSU’s visiting emerging poet, Cindy Juyoung Ok, at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 23 in the Beren Gallery of the Ulrich Museum of Art. A reception will begin at 5:30 p.m. Writing Now/Reading Now is cosponsored by the Department of English, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Watermark Books & Café and the Ulrich Museum.

Cindy is a book reviewer at the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet, poetry editor at Guernica magazine, a translator of Korean poetry and teaches creative writing at the University of California. A MacDowell Fellow and Lambda Literary Fellow, her first full-length manuscript recently received the Yale Younger Poets Prize. She is the author of the chapbook House Work and has recent work in Poetry, The Nation and the Massachusetts Review. Her poems utilize intelligence and disciplined music to write about being conscious within complex histories.

Adelia Wise uses charcoal on a large scale to invoke the raw vitality it possesses in juxtaposition with flesh and the human form. Fiber Artist Ernst S. Kind expresses his true voice through his work.

Both are faculty at WSU’s School of Art, Design and Creative Industries and artists featured in Transmissions: The XXIV Faculty Biennial, on exhibit until April 22 in the Polk/Wilson Gallery. Join them at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday, March 22 in the Beren Gallery at the Ulrich Museum of Art to learn about their inspiration and processes.

Join the Ulrich Museum of Art for the visiting scholar talk, “Yes, no, maybe so: Connections between Japanese prints, anime and manga and the stories we tell about them” by Andrea Horbinski at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 21 in the Beren Gallery at the Ulrich Museum. Participants are invited to a reception starting at 5:30 p.m.

Focusing on art and society in the 19th and 20th centuries, when Japan underwent a rapid, self-imposed transition to modernity, this talk examines not only the linkages between anime/manga and printmaking, but also the limits of those connections, and how the evidence for and against them has been deployed to serve larger stories about race, modernity and culture in the Asia-Pacific and worldwide.

Ulrich Museum of Art Curator Ksenya Gurshtein will share her experience curating “Nature in the Floating World: Images of Nature in Japanese and Chinese Art,” currently on display in the Beren Gallery.

Join the Ulrich Museum at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 15 in the Beren Gallery. Refreshments will be provided starting at 10 a.m.

The Ulrich Alliance is a group of dedicated volunteers who raise awareness and promote the arts throughout the community, and it also funds scholarships for students in the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries (ADCI).

The Ulrich Alliance awards two, $1,000 scholarships annually, one to an undergraduate student and one to a graduate student. Applications will be accepted until 5 p.m. Friday. March 10 to students in ADCI.