BYU Art alumni Jane Christensen and Bryan Hutchison have been named by the Utah Division of Arts & Museums as visual arts fellows for 2020. As two of four Utah artists awarded this recognition, Christensen and Hutchison each received $5,000 to support their careers. “These fellowships are intensely competitive,” said Art Department Chair Gary Barton. “Jane and Bryan represent a long list of BYU alumni who have received this prestigious award over the years.” For Hutchison (BFA ’13), whose work spans various mediums and formats— including photography, installation, sculpture, sound and video — the fellowship feels like a stamp of approval. Read the full article by Abby Weidmer at art.byu.edu.

Tessa Ostivig, who graduated in April 2020, reflects on her time at BYU

How campus went quiet, yet BYU continued on, during the coronavirus pandemic Day by day—and sometimes hour by hour—elements of the BYU experience were suddenly shifting, disrupting everything from budding relationships to Sunday meetings to major university events, including BYU Women’s Conference and April graduation ceremonies—both canceled. All NCAA competition was suspended. Meanwhile professors and campus IT personnel scrambled to take BYU entirely online by Wednesday, March 18. Many faculty turned to the video program Zoom to stream or record instruction, innovating new ways to teach hands-on subjects like dance, music, and nursing or to simulate lab research remotely. Read the full article by Michael R. Walker at magazine.byu.edu.

“There were puffins flying off the edge of the cliff,” says photography major Sylvia Busteed Magleby (BFA ’20), who worked feverishly to capture Múlafossur Waterfall and the Faroe Islands village of Gásadalur behind it, bathed in fading golden-hour sunlight. She carefully balanced her camera on the wooden stem of a fence to take the snap, bracing against the chilly seaside winds. “This image captures the magic of the Faroe Islands,” says Magleby. “I did not know such a beautiful place existed.” Read more at magazine.byu.edu

Lexi Nilson and two others created the book “Jane Was Here” using funds received from a Laycock Grant while students at BYU

Shreenan’s project was inspired by a 2019 visit to the Color Factory Interactive Museum in New York City

As a senior graduating in design with an emphasis in photography, Mario Alcauter knows that a great photo is all about perspective. For his senior capstone project, Alcauter created a photography exhibit titled “La Línea” or “The Line” when translated from Spanish to English. Alcauter’s photos, taken at the international border between San Ysidro, California and Tijuana, Mexico, capture the humanizing details of the immigration progress. Alcauter hoped the exhibit would spark discussion on how borders can divide us. “People were becoming very polarized on the subject of immigration,” said Alcauter. “Either you loved it or hated it, and I wanted to give it a different perspective. It’s about trying to empathize and humanize people instead of making them into numbers and statistics.” This project is especially personal to Alcauter. At the tender age of six, he immigrated to the United States from Mexico, and because of his experience, Alcauter understands the unique struggles with immigration. Alcauter grew up in Visalia, California. As a teenager, he was introduced to Brigham Young University through the Summer of Academic Refinement (SOAR) program–a five-day college preparation program for multicultural students. Alcauter enjoyed the campus environment so much that he decided he wanted to study at BYU. Read the full article by Brenna Seeman at news.byu.edu.

Communications student Hannah Larsen reflects on her time at BYU

After years of helping students achieve their goals, Heelis looks forward to continuing her own education Department Secretary Sharon Heelis will retire this year after working for the Art Department for nearly 40 years — longer, if you count her time as a student employee. She remembers such momentous milestones as the first computer in the office (“My typewriter was the printer, so when I printed it sounded like a machine gun”), the first fax machine (“We stood and watched as the message printed out from a roll of paper”) and the first copy machine (“It gave us oily paper, it was expensive and the copies weren’t very good”). Fortunately, Heelis said, technology has come a long way since then. Heelis began her decades-long career in the department in December of 1979, after the Barbizon Manufacturing Company — where she had worked for several years before and after serving a mission in Chile for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — announced they were closing. She had been an on-again, off-again student for seven years as she worked and saved money to put herself through school, though she had not yet settled on a major. At first, Heelis worked part-time as a student secretary — typing, preparing syllabi and making copies for faculty with a mimeograph machine. Just six months later, Heelis applied for and was accepted to the full-time gallery secretary position, where she helped care for the university’s art collection prior to the opening of the Museum of Art (MOA) in 1993. The timing was fortunate for Heelis, whose father died suddenly one year into her new job. The oldest of six children, Heelis was able to support herself and ease the pressure on her mother, who was still caring for three children at their home in Payson. Read the full article by Abby Weidmer at art.byu.edu.

Music composition major Kalysha Chandler and commercial music major Zach Griffin headed up technical aspects of the project, which culminated in the 2019 live screening

Joe Ostraff, Diane Reich and Brent Barson will begin their new leadership roles in the college in July, with Curt Holman continuing on as Department of Dance chair

School of Music