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The University of New Mexico

College of Fine Arts

Celebrating Excellence

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From pueblo paintings to puppetry, across disciplines and mediums, alumni of the University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts follow their compelling love of the arts.

We invite you to meet sixteen of our alumni whose work reflects their education at the University of New Mexico. These profiles provide windows to the environment fostered and the goals set at the College of Fine Arts. We celebrate this excellence on the occasion of the UNM College of Fine Arts 60th anniversary.

Our alumni demonstrate intellectual curiosity, creativity and commitment. They share a joy in the never-ending discovery that is theirs by living a life of exploration in the arts.

College of Fine Arts Alumni

The following profiles appear
on this page.

Steve Anderson, filmmaker
Charles M. Atkinson, musicologist
Mark Attwood, printmaker
Dorothy Baca, costumer
J. J. Brody, art historian
Aaron Carr, filmmaker
Adrienne Clancy, dancer
Patty Cohenour, singer/actress

The following profiles appear
on the next page.

Judy Dubrosky, puppeteer
Sarah Greenough, art historian
Brian Levant, filmmaker
John Lewis, jazz pianist
Delilah Montoya, artist
Kurt Streit, opera singer
Shirien K. Taylor, violinist
Joel-Peter Witkin, artist

Steven Anderson

"Some people were not meant to work regular jobs nor exchange their Earth time for the goals of others—spell that employee," states filmmaker Steve Anderson. "I am such a person. I have always been attracted to the freedom of the arts and the self-expression inherent therein."

Steve Anderson and Oliver Stone

Anderson is the writer and director of the feature-length fiction film, South Central (1992), produced by Oliver Stone, and the director of Dead Men Can't Dance (1997)

Anderson and producer
Oliver Stone on the set
of South Central.

Prior to writing and directing his own feature-length works, Anderson worked in theater and served in various capacities including producer and production manager on films written and directed by other filmmakers. He also wrote and directed short films, among them, Hearts of Stone, an Academy Award finalist for best short film in 1989. The film caught Oliver Stone's attention at the Sundance Film Festival and led to Anderson directing South Central.

Anderson attended UNM from 1976-80, receiving his undergraduate degree. His multidisciplinary education at UNM included literature classes in the Department of English, writing classes with Theatre Professor Bob Hartung and film theory and production with Media Arts Professor Ira Jaffe. "My four years at UNM trained me to focus on worthy goals and opened my eyes to the future and my role in it," says Anderson. "I came to the University of New Mexico on the heels of a troubled past," he explains.

Poster from "Dean Men Can't Dance"

After earning his master's degree in motion picture production and directing from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1983, Anderson went on to produce a series of thirteen short films for Columbia Pictures. The first of the series, Ray's Heterosexual Dance Hall, won an Academy Award for best short film of 1987.

Anderson is a benefactor of the Department of Media Arts at UNM. He returns yearly to UNM to offer workshops, has donated film equipment, provided shooting scripts which allow students insight into the evolution of a film and sponsors the annual Steve Anderson Award to a student who excels in production.

Anderson plans to return to New Mexico after accomplishing his career goals in Hollywood. "Until then, I live in New Mexico in spirit," he says.

Steve Anderson directed the feature
film Dead Men Can't Dance


Charles M. Atkinson

Charles Atkinson

"I am quite fortunate to be professionally involved in the field of music as a teacher, scholar and performer," says Charles Atkinson. "This means I am in constant contact with genius. It's hard to imagine anything more rewarding."

Professor Atkinson is widely regarded as one of the world's most eminent medievalists in the field of musicology. He is noted as the single most outstanding figure in the study of chant in Medieval and Renaissance theoretical treatises. In addition to his scholarly endeavors, Atkinson is an active clarinetist and devoted teacher at The Ohio State University School of Music. He was recently honored with an invitation to deliver the inaugural University Distinguished Lecture on that campus.

Atkinson received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music in 1963 from UNM. As an undergraduate all of his courses were taught by professors. "I didn't realize the luxury that was until I began my master's work at another fine institution, the University of Michigan. In comparing notes with my classmates, I found that undergraduate students there had many courses taught by graduate teaching assistants. At UNM, even undergraduate students were able to come into regular contact with some of the greatest minds and talents in their respective fields. I'm still amazed by that!" He earned his Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975. "The Earliest Agnus Dei Melody and its Tropes," an article based on his dissertation published by the Journal of the American Musicology Society, is the only article ever to have received both the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological Society and the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize of the Medieval Academy of America.

Among Atkinson's many publications are articles commissioned for Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and three monographs for the Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie as well as articles in Early Music History, The Journal of Musicology and the Journal of Music Theory.

Mark Attwood

Print from "Qauqaua"

"At Tamarind Institute, senior printers receive a one-of-a-kind training not available anywhere in the world," says Mark Attwood. "When one gets out into the working environment, it really helps when people take you seriously. The program is respected by all sorts of people in the most unexpected places."

After earning his Tamarind Master Printer certificate, Attwood returned to his native Johannesburg and opened his workshop, The Artists' Press in 1991—a time of upheaval and rapid change in South Africa.

Print from Qauqaua, a hand-printed artists' book from Mark Attwood's South African lithography workshop. Numerous well-known South African artists have collaborated with Attwood to publish prints at the Artists' Press.

Mark believes that publishing a limited edition artists' book in collaboration with nine Bushmen artists is his biggest accomplishment. With their traditional way of life changing rapidly around them, artists of the Kuru Art Project in Botswana decided to preserve a story told by their parents and grandparents in a book. Named for that story, the artists' book, Qauqaua, contains eleven color lithographs—a medium introduced to the artists by Attwood. He worked with them in their Kalahari desert studio where they drew images directly onto lithographic printing plates. Attwood proofed the litho plates on their etching press, then took the drawn plates to Johannesburg where the edition was printed. Each impression was hand-inked and printed on a hand-crank litho press at The Artists' Press.

"My goals for the future are to continue publishing and printing artists' books," says Attwood, "particularly material which can make a positive contribution to the culture of southern Africa."

Attwood working in studio


Attwood prepares a lithography stone.

Dorothy Baca

Dorothy Baca

After twenty years in Los Angeles designing costumes for film, television and stage, Dorothy Baca returned to teach at her alma mater. Her priorities as a professor in UNM's Department of Theatre and Dance mirror the influences important to her own development as an undergraduate. "I had the opportunity to design shows; work with an excellent costume designer and professor, Carolyn Sirlkle; feel encouraged by the experience and support of the faculty; and learn the importance of a strong professional attitude," says Baca of her experience at UNM.

Divine Madness Poster

Dorothy's most famous costume design work was done with her brother, David, also a UNM Theatre Arts graduate (1974). Both received their master's degrees in costume design and technology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1978. At times, Dorothy and David collaborated as Baca Designs. At other times, each pursued independent projects. Dorothy created foam construction costumes and designed for Warner Brothers Records bands such as Confunction and Rose Royce. David worked in television as a set and costume designer for The Young and the Restless. Baca Designs created Bette Midler's signature costume for the singing mermaid, Delores De Lago, in the Divine Madness World Tour. David also became stage manager for the tour and later, the film. That was the break the Bacas needed to get into the restrictive film union.

Another break came when the Bacas designed for the Shakespeare Video Society. "We called it 'Shake and Bake' Shakespeare because we had to work so fast," laughs Dorothy.

Dorothy and David Baca, both UNM alumni, created Bette Midler's signature costume for the singing mermaid, Delores De Lago, in the Divine Madness World Tour.Associate producer John Ward introduced Dorothy to valuable contacts at Universal Television where she began designing for Charles in Charge, Major Dad and Murder, She Wrote.

Dorothy considers "breaking into the professional television and film unions at a time when it was difficult for an 'outsider' to gain a foothold in the business," her most significant accomplishment. She and husband, Lee Wasserman, nevertheless made a lifestyle change in 1993. Encouraged by her former UNM professor, Clayton Karkosh, she became a theatre arts professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. In 1996 she came to UNM as a visiting professor. "UNM was the best training ground for me and it is still a very good training for undergraduates," vouches Baca. "I want to give my students the same level of professionalism and high expectation projected by Clayton Karkosh and Dr. Bob Hartung." To prepare students for the demands of the real world, Baca emphasizes the design shift when working with different mediums. "In television, costumes are important from the waist up. In film, every detail is important, and in plays, the entire stage picture has to work."

J.J. Brody

Jerry Brody has an unquenchable thirst for Native American twentieth-century art and the archeological art of the Southwest. A renowned art historian, Brody established the high-ranking Native American art history program at UNM. He completed his bachelor's degree in art and anthropology at UNM in 1956. He received his master's degree in art history at UNM in 1964. His thesis, Design Analysis of Rio Grande Glaze Pottery of Pottery Mound, New Mexico, grew out of his involvement in the initial excavations of Pottery mound.

J.J. Brody

He was among the first contemporary people to see the famous kiva murals there with Frank Hibben.

J.J. Brody at San Cristobal, New Mexico
(Photo by David Noble)

In 1970, he completed UNM's first Ph.D. in art history. His dissertation, Indian Painters and White Patrons, became his first monograph and remains a seminal work in the field of Native American art history. While serving as director of the UNM Maxwell Museum of Anthropology from 1972-84, he also taught Native American art and museum studies. Brody expanded course offerings in Native American art at both graduate and undergraduate levels. By the time he retired in 1989, his publication list had become staggering and his exhibition list extensive. Brody's books include Mimbres Painted Pottery (1977), The Anasazi (1990), Anasazi and Pueblo Painting (1991). Brody has also curated numerous exhibitions and authored exhibition catalogues on Anasazi and Pueblo art, as well as on Navajo weaving in the late nineteenth century.

Brody continues his passion for Native American art by publishing and lecturing. In 1997, Professor Emeritus Brody published Pueblo Indian Painting: Tradition and Modernism in New Mexico, 1910-1930.

Aaron Carr

"I consider myself first and foremost an artist. It is what I trained specifically for at UNM," states filmmaker and writer, Aaron Carr. "UNM has an excellent film program implemented by Ira Jaffe."

In 1987, Aaron Carr and fellow UNM Media Arts student, Kelly Cosandaey, made A Laguna Woman, a documentary in which Carr's grandmother recalls her life on a New Mexico pueblo. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected the film as one of the five best student documentaries in the United States that year.

Film Clip from "States of Being"

Following the success of A Laguna Woman, Carr produced and directed another documentary, States of Being which became part of the Colores series produced by Albuquerque PBS affiliate KNME-TV in 1995. The program was based on interviews with Native American writers Louis Owens and Evelina Zuni Lucero as they examined American Indian identity and its role in their work.

Footage from Aaron Carr's States of Being documentary.

That same year, Carr served as associate producer on War Code: Navajo, a film about the role of Navajo code talkers in World War II. His mother, Lena Carr, produced the National Geographic television presentation which won an Emmy Award—the first received by a Native American.

Carr gained national attention in 1996 as the author of Eye Killers, a Native American vampire novel praised in Publishers Weekly for "skillfully blending the Native American oral tradition and the Gothic thriller."

Aaron Carr "Albuquerque will always be my home," says Carr, whose heritage is Laguna Pueblo and Navajo. "I have traveled to other countries and I believe I will always try to experience other cultures. But Albuquerque is unique in its variety of settled cultures: and, for myself, this city has been a one-of-a-kind training ground in my art.
Aaron Carr (Photo by Roger Cumming) Carr is committed to continuing his work and to "encouraging other Native Americans to study film and being involved in a Native American cinema."

Adrienne Clancy

Adrienne Clancy is a dancer with the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company in Los Angeles. She made her professional connections to this company as a UNM student. One of Adrienne's teachers was Nora Daniel, Lewitsky's daughter. Dancing with Bella Lewitsky is "an accomplishment which signifies all of my work at UNM," says Clancy, who received her master's degree in dance in 1995. "As a professional dancer, I make use of techniques learned not only in dance class but also from experience gained in public speaking, teaching, studying history and writing."

Clancy appreciates the positive environment provided by the UNM dance faculty. ". . .they were highly supportive and constantly helped to boost my self-confidence as they offered constructive criticism of my own choreography, teaching and writing efforts. . . Another positive aspect of the UNM Department of Theatre and Dance was their support to study in subjects other than my major," states Clancy. "This broadened my education and created a more in-depth understanding of my art."

Adrienne Clancy

While she was enrolled at UNM, Clancy's choreography was performed in Israel, Japan and Mexico. In 1992, she participated in the Suzanne Dellal International Dance Competition in Tel Aviv, Israel. The following year, she choreographed a dance to represent UNM in the 1993 International College Dance Competition in Kobe, Japan. Her international experiences continued in 1994 when she toured with Bill Evans' Dance Company in Mexico.

Adrienne first came to UNM to attend Evans' Summer Dance Institute after being selected as a scholarship recipient by the American College Dance Festival. She liked what she saw and returned to UNM as a graduate student. UNM Dance Professor Evans remains impressed by Clancy's "strong self-direction and clarity of purpose at such a young age. She knew she wanted to choreograph." Another attribute that continues to help Adrienne is her positive outlook. According to Evans, "She always looks for what is there not what isn't there."

As for Clancy, her involvement in the arts is "a manner in which I can learn, travel and connect to populations and locations that I would not ordinarily encounter. Each day I am faced with many different challenges that exist on physical, emotional and intellectual levels."

Patty Cohenour

Pattie Cohenour

"Participating in five musicals that have all won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and the awards I have received are significant accomplishments," explains Patty Cohenour, "but more importantly I have garnered respect for my work from my peers."

Cohenour was the first American actress to perform the coveted role of Christine Daae' in Andrew Lloyd Weber's The Phantom of the Opera. She landed the role as a member of the original Broadway company in 1987 and continued for eighteen months before joining Hal Prince's Canadian touring production of Phantom and later his Showboat tour. Her portrayal of Rosa Bud in Joseph Papp's Broadway production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood earned Cohenour the Clarence Derwent Award for Outstanding Actress and nominations for Tony and Drama Desk Awards in 1986. She later reprised her role as Rosa at London's Savoy Theatre.

Appearing in the original Broadway production of Big River earned Cohenour a Drama Desk nomination and that coupled with her portrayal of Mimi in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of La Boheme, garnered her the Theatre World Award in 1985. She has also performed in Joseph Papp's Pirates of Penzance, Harold Prince's A Doll's Life, Opera Pacific's production of My Fair Lady, and Dracula: A Musical Nightmare with music by John Aschenbrenner.

Cohenour finds the arts "a constant source of creative opportunities." She traces her experience in musicals to Albuquerque's Valley High School, UNM's Rodey Theatre and the Albuquerque Civic Light Opera. While a student at UNM, she performed in the Southwest premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass under the direction of Theatre Professor Robert Hartung. "Without Dr. Bob's guidance and belief in me, I would not be where I am today," says Cohenour, a 1974 UNM theatre graduate.

Patty now makes her home in Gig Harbor, Washington and recently performed the role of Katerina in a production of The Taming of the Shrew for Syracuse Stage. She is currently shifting her professional focus to the recording arts and concert work, but acknowledges, "working in the theater will always by my primary source of pride."

The University of New Mexico
College of Fine Arts
Albuquerque NM 87131-1396
Phone: 505/277-2111 FAX: 505/277-0708

finearts@unm.edu

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Department of Art & Art History
Department of Media Arts
Department of Music
Slide Library
Tamarind Institute
Department of Theatre & Dance
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