The current exhibition opened Sept. 5 and will close this weekend. The gallery’s next exhibition, the Fall BFA Thesis Exhibition, will run from Dec. 2 to 13. As a non-collecting gallery, the Grunwald Gallery of the Eskenazi School of Art and Design does not have its own archive of artwork. Instead, it features rotating temporary exhibitions throughout the year.
Grunwald Gallery director Linda Tien said the current exhibition is part of the McKinney Visiting Artist Series, which celebrates the work of artists who visit the Eskenazi School.
“We have now accrued an alumni network of over 100 artists through this series, and so I curated artwork from 11 of those artists to represent each of the studio areas that we have in our school,” Tien said.
Having worked for the gallery since 2017, Tien has attended “New Art New Music” before. Although extremely well-versed in the visual arts, she does not consider herself to be musically inclined. Her knowledge of the exhibition’s art pieces, she said, allows her to fully appreciate the composers’ interpretations of them.
This perspective, she said, allows her to appreciate the musical talent showcased through the event.
Tien said she looks forward to hearing musical interpretations of the art she has curated.
“What I enjoy out of it is seeing how different people interpret the artwork and then create something out of that interpretation,” she said. “I always find that really interesting because I never know what to expect. I think this is another way to expand thinking about visual art through a different lens.”
For the “New Art New Music” concert, Jacobs composition students were invited to choose a piece from the Grunwald’s current exhibition to compose a piece of music around. This concert, a collaboration between the gallery and the Jacobs Student Composers Association, has been held annually for several years. This year’s showcase will include performances of the works of three Jacobs composers: Alex Blanpied, Rui Zhu and Christopher Chiarotti.
Senior composition student Addison Hightower is the coordinator for this year’s “New Art New Music” event. He participated as a composer in last year’s concert and praised the event’s ability to combine visual arts and music.
“I think it’s really important that art is not really made in a vacuum,” Hightower said. “This concert is a great opportunity for composers and painters or sculptors or media artists to celebrate collaboration between artistic mediums.”
First year master’s composition student Chiarotti chose “Diary” by Tetsuya Noda as his inspiration. The piece represents the artist’s personal experience with the events of 9/11. As a New York native with relatives emotionally impacted by 9/11, Chiarotti said he resonated with Noda’s artwork. His resulting composition is “Seasons Pass You By,” a piece written for a string quartet.
“I was born in 2003, but almost all my relatives and everyone I know were deeply affected by that day,” Chiarotti said, “and to see a piece about that and to know that there is some correlation and resemblance to what I was writing, it was definitely a very good match, I would say.”
In terms of his prior compositions, Chiarotti said he finds inspiration in various aspects of life. He said the artistic process for “Seasons Pass You By” differed from his previous works because he used a specific art piece as its inspiration.
“Oftentimes when I write, it’s usually based on imagery that I see throughout my life,” he said. “All art that is created is reactionary to the world around us, our experiences and the people we have in our lives. This is really no different, but instead of a more generalized thing, I kind of had to streamline it towards one specific piece of art.”
Each composer who chose to participate in “New Art New Music” was responsible for assembling an ensemble to perform their work. For Chiarotti, the event will be his first collaboration with fellow Jacobs students. Being new to Jacobs, he found himself with limited connections when he set out to assemble a group to play his composition and resorted to approaching musicians he didn’t know.
Chiarotti said the artistry of the musicians he recruited was a pleasant surprise.
