65 members of Santa Barbara AIA, a chapter of the American Institute of Architects, attended a Q&A session with Maya Lin in the Mural Room at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse. Lin discussed her architecture training and commissions and her views regarding the differences between architecture and art.

A recipient of the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom, Maya Lin burst into the public eye at age 21 after winning a blind competition with her controversial Vietnam Veterans Memorial, now considered one of the most important public works of our time. She went on to create many remarkable large-scale site-specific installations, intimate studio artworks, architectural works and memorials such as the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

110 students and faculty in the UCSB History of Art & Architecture Department attended a Q&A with Maya Lin. Lin discussed her work in the arts including her land sculptures, memorials and her current environmental “guerilla art” What is Missing? (Hosted by Professor Swati Chattopadhyay)

Playwright, performer and activist Sarah Jones’s masterful characterizations have placed her squarely among today’s leading figures in theater. Her Broadway hit Bridge & Tunnel expressed the full humanity and humor of voices seldom heard, and The New York Times has called her writing “lively, compassionate, mildly sardonic and smart.” She performed  excerpts from her solo show, Sell/Buy/Date, which opened off-Broadway to rave reviews in October 2016.

Photos by David Bazemore

Janet Wong, the Associate Artistic Director for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company taught a choreography class for UCSB dance students. The class was attended by 16 junior dance majors who are currently working on choreography. They were divided into four groups of four, and each group collaborated to create a short movement sequence that was based on eight group shapes. They performed this movement sequence in conjunction with a randomly selected one minute story from Story/Time (which Janet provided and read out loud). First, they were challenged to dance without responding to the words/story – allowing the movement and spoken words to simply coexist. Later on in the class they developed their movement sequences to correlate with the story that was being told, creating a more dramatic effect. For the last 30 minutes of class, 23 freshman dance majors and faculty members came in to observe the final products, and the class had a brief discussion about choreographic tools moving forward. All of the students in the class attended the performance of Story/Time by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company the following night at the Granada Theatre..