Westmont Magazine Celebrating the Arts on Campus, National Awards and an International Tour

Sixteen graduating art majors displayed their capstone projects at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art in April. Titled “34°26’59.33”N, 119°39’43.29”W,” the museum’s longitude and latitude coordinates, the senior show honored the facility that opened their first year at Westmont. “It reflects how unique the museum is to their educational experience at Westmont,” says art professor Nathan Huff. “It’s a fitting way to locate the viewer while pointing to the students’ personal perspectives.”

Westmont’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance” won three national awards from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival: Distinguished Production of a Musical, Distinguished Scenography for a Musical for Danila Korogodsky, and Distinguished Director of a Musical for theater arts professor John Blondell. “I was blessed with a world-class team of co-creators and a multi-talented, effervescent group of performers and technicians,” Blondell says.

The Westmont College Choir and Chamber Singers toured Southern California May 4-6, singing a diverse repertoire of classic and contemporary sacred and secular music, folk songs, spirituals and vocal jazz before traveling to Russia and Lithuania.The musicians had planned to perform in Ukraine but changed their schedule after Russia’s intervention there.

Nearly 50 Westmont students created or performed in a record 24 pieces during the Westmont Fringe Festival in April. Seven new 10-minute plays grew out of a collaborative weekend writing session. The festival also featured a senior project, “So Small A Thing,” directed by Kelsey Pollard ’14 and starring Rebecca Jacks ’14 and Chris Wagstaffe ’14. Diana Small ’09 penned three pieces: a collaborative play, “Hunting is for Lovers,” a 10-minute play, “Dogfight,” and “The Seven Dimensions of Elk Afterlife.”