Making Art, Making Life Out West

By the time you read this, we will have reconvened as a college after a summer scattered to the four corners of the globe. Bright-eyed first years will have settled into their studios and rehearsal rooms, beginning the process of coalescing as a community. Graduate students will get to know their colleagues and mentors. New tenure track faculty — Alisha Wormsley in Art; Michael McKelvey (musical theatre), Mary Ellen Stebbins (lighting design), and Yong-Suk Yoo (directing) in Drama — will have found their offices, met their classes for the first time and begun to figure out CMU and its quirky folkways.

This issue focuses primarily on our amazing alumni, with a geographical focus on those making art and life on the West Coast. A conversation with CFA’s Associate Dean for DEI, Dr. Angelica Perez-Johnston, demystifies and makes concrete the many contributions her office makes to a healthy and productive artistic community, in an era of nonstop uninformed attacks on DEI externally.

When I meet a stranger and they ask what I do, their kneejerk reaction (“cool!”) is sometimes followed by something like, “That must involve managing some gigantic egos!” Somehow — I blame the 19^th century, tbh — we artists acquired a reputation for solipsism. And certainly the drive and focus required to make art can sometimes look like selfishness from the outside. But reading the words of our alumni, I’m struck by the humility that exists alongside the high levels of craft and ambition. They are explorers, collaborators, the helpers Mister Rogers told us to seek. Through their extraordinary abilities they are determined to make the world a better place.

That spirit drew me to CMU, and it keeps me here.

 | Dean Mary Ellen Poole