May 30, 2000
RELEASE ON RECEIPT

Four Oberlin Artists Receive Ohio Arts Council Grants

OBERLIN, OHIO--The Ohio Arts Council (OAC) has awarded individual artist grants of $5,000 each to four Oberlin artists: critic Roger Copeland, photographer Pipo Hiev Nguyen-Duy, composer Anna Rubin, and poet Caitlin Scott.

Four essays by Roger Copeland, professor of theater and dance, were recognized by the OAC with its grant. Demonstrating the range of the artist's interests, the essay about Richard Foreman's "Paradise Hotel" is a review of a specific theatre production; "Merce Cunningham and The Modernizing of Modern Dance" is an excerpt from an upcoming book on the pioneering choreographer and dancer. Copeland's third piece about dance criticism is a plea for a mode of dance writing that is consistent with the author's own designated style. The final essay "Cabaret at the End of the World" is an extensive piece on the musical's many productions; it is now in revival on Broadway.

In February, Copeland was one of three performing-arts critics in the country to win a new writing award from Stagebill, the national performing-arts program, for "Cabaret at the End of the World," the cover feature in the January 1999 issue of American Theatre.

Pipo Hiev Nguyen-Duy, assistant professor of art, is originally from Vietnam. In "AnOtherWestern" he addresses cultural identity and cultural authenticity and the assimilation into the West. The sequence deals with race, sex and gender, with respect to cultural assimilation and uses 19th century photographic syntax to reinterpret and to simulate tintype portraits made in the West during the late 1800's. The prints--self portraits taken with a 4 by 5 camera--are made with polytoner and sepiatoner and stained with tea and coffee.

In the last three months, Nguyen-Duy has received two other awards: a photography fellowship of $5,000 from the School of Visual Arts, Aaron Siskind Foundation; and an Artist-in-Residence fellowship from Light Work (at Syracuse), which also includes a $2,000 stipend.

Anna Rubin, assistant professor of composition in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, received a grant in recognition of two works. The first--"Dreaming Fire, Tasting Rain" --a work for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, was written in 1995 for the Nash Ensemble of England. It was recently selected by the International Association of Women Musicians for presentation at the National Museum of Women in Washington DC on June 11.

Rubin's second work, "A Short Entertainment concerning the Delaware & Raritan Canal," was composed for tenor, flute, clarinet, viola, bass, percussion, piano, and synthesizer. The narrative work portrays five different characters, ranging from an anonymous Irish canal digger to the historical figures of Rev. Samuel Cornish and Robert Stockton all related to the tumultuous pre-Civil War era in the mid-Atlantic area.

Caitlin Scott is the assistant director and youth-education program coordinator for the Center for Service and Learning. An 1988 Oberlin graduate, she also served as student editor of the College's prestigious poetry journal, Field Magazine, her senior year. Her 11 poems focus on four themes: the local landscape, travel abroad, the use of language and human reproduction or its failure. Often these themes overlap in a single poem; however, each poem has its own primary focus. The poems include "White Water," "Flatland," Past Perfect," "Syntax," "The Lizard Underneath," "Injection Interjection," "Attic Window," "What Good Can Come of Grief," "Exotic Places," "Expatriate Londons of Childhood," and "Three Day Weekend Sand."

Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli 5/30/00 #90 bg