Issue 12
Winter/Spring
When Anthony McCann, director of CalArts MFA in Creative Writing, approached School of Critical Studies Associate Dean Mike Bryant with the idea of participating in a desert-focused climate change initiative, it sounded like a no-brainer. A biologist and statistician by training, one of the general studies courses that Bryant teaches at CalArts is Biodiversity and…
Dancer and choreographer Jasmine Sugar (Dance BFA 18) has forged her career by taking on both commercial and concert work. Her efforts have led to projects with A-list stars—from dancing under the direction of Solange Knowles (with the developed work featured in Solange’s art book In Past Pupils and Smiles) to dancing at the 2020…
Upon graduating from CalArts, Don Cheadle (Theater BFA 86) scored supporting roles in such decade-defining television series as Fame, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Night Court, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, as well as the Vietnam War-era film Hamburger Hill and the action movie Colors. By the early 1990s, Cheadle had booked his first…
A large kiddie-sized pool filled to the brim with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Cardboard cut-outs celebrating a quinceañera. At first, they don’t seem to have much in common. But both connect to themes that run through much of Jazmín Urrea’s visually striking work: an exploration of her Mexican and Honduran cultures and food. “Food makes it…
When Don Cheadle (Theater BFA 86) stepped from the stages of the Mod Theater and E400 to the sets of Hill Street Blues and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the late 1980s, CalArts was a very different place—or was it? Recent graduate Jo Siri (Theater BFA 22) talked to Cheadle for The Pool about…
Juan Pablo Contreras (Music BFA 10) takes the stage, baton held aloft, and the hall resounds with the swell of classical music. From the podium, he expressively guides the performers through the work, which mounts to an epic orchestral brawl as soloists duke it out with their instruments. They’re also wearing Mexican wrestling masks. Such…
On Spotify, Pandora, or any other music-rich platform, songs flow like water from a spigot—no waiting and no travel necessary. But for as much as technology transformed the ways people listen, the music industry failed to think through all the implications—all the possibilities—of the digital revolution, argues Volker Straebel, dean of The Herb Alpert School…
