“Obiewood is the name of the alumni group that is ‘Obies in Hollywood,’” Kyle Farris, assistant director for career readiness, said. “It’s a loose kind of alumni association for folks who are involved in or looking to break into the entertainment industry.”

Obiewood primarily functions in Los Angeles, where panels, mixers, and other events allow alumni of all years to create connections and foster relationships that can lead to job opportunities.

“The whole idea of it is to provide graduates with a community that could provide support and connect people to other resources,” Farris said. “It’s primarily focused on the alumni side of things, which is why I’m really happy that they were kind enough to come in and talk to the current students. But I know that folks out there will sometimes try to arrange mixers, or networking events, or just help each other out one-on-one.”

Farris, who also serves as an advisor to the arts, communications, and creative professions career community at Oberlin, is the driving force behind the panel. They said that when students looking to go into entertainment come to him, he follows a less traditional route to prepare them for the job hunt.

“I make sure that they are very well educated about the industry, because it is a very difficult industry,” they said. “It’s very rare that someone graduates college and goes straight into a job, to be honest. There’s usually a period where you’re hitting the pavement, looking for work, doing freelance, assembling some gigs.”

Farris said he tried to represent a diversity of experiences in the panel, because there are so many ways in which careers in entertainment can manifest.

“We’re lucky because we have folks coming in from a variety of different spaces,” they said. “We’ve got someone who has experiences as a writer, that’s Liam Oznowich; Kendra James has been more on the journalism/reporting side for a lot of entertainment stuff; Fiona Brennan has documentary experience and other kinds of pieces of production experience, and Sarah Goodstein has got production experience as a camera assistant. We tried to assemble folks who weren’t just from one portion of the industry but who can speak to what it’s like in a variety of different areas.”

Oznowich, a panelist who currently works as the personal assistant to Ed Helms, OC ’96, met Helms multiple times through Obiewood networking events before coming to work for him.

“It wouldn’t have happened if Obiewood didn’t exist, so I’m very thankful to that group for putting on these events and creating spaces — not only for recent graduates moving out to LA or New York for the first time, but also providing a space for people who have already been out there,” Oznowich said. “I’m so thankful to Obiewood, and there’s hopefully going to be more movement to create more resources for current students, graduates, and people who’ve lived out here for a while to create a real community. I’m really excited for what Obiewood is doing and how they will expand in the future.”

Farris notes that the most difficult obstacle in getting into film and television can be the industry’s emphasis on connections and networking, a hurdle Obiewood hopes to help bridge for Oberlin alumni.

“More than any other field that I have encountered so far, film and entertainment is a who-you-know industry,” Farris said. “You know, they’ll post internships and jobs, but to be honest, it’s a connections-based kind of thing. That’s where a lot of the workforce is moving, but it’s much more intense with film. You need a resume, but it’s all networking. That’s a big reason why I wanted to do this — so a lot of people could meet some folks.”

Sarah Goodstein, OC ’21, another panelist who works in various positions on camera departments on sets in Los Angeles, agrees with the sentiment that lack of connections and competition can make success in the industry difficult.

“The main thing about the industry is, it’s about who you know,” she said. “The other thing is the sheer number of people trying to do what I’m trying to do. There are maybe a million people right now, who are in exactly the same place, doing the exact same job, and there are not a million jobs. It’s been very difficult, and I’ve had to do quite a bit of my own research, marketing, and networking, and absolutely nothing I did at Oberlin prepared me for this.”

Oznowich noted that Obiewood can help bridge the gap in connections for Oberlin alumni struggling to find work in the industry, as established older alumni can give newer graduates a leg up.

“Because this is a business that’s so focused on relationships, who you know, and personal recommendations, just having the Oberlin label is a huge boon to knowing someone — knowing that they’re capable and smart,” Oznowich said. “The virtues of a liberal arts education are really noticeable now, especially as I get older, because I feel like Oberlin students know how to write. They know how to be creative, and they have out-of-the-box ideas and interesting things to say.”

Oznowich is hopeful about the opportunities of connection and community Obiewood and Oberlin career communities can offer.

“I didn’t really know about Obiewood when I first moved out here, and I think that’s because it was nascent,” he said. “When I graduated there, we didn’t have career communities; We didn’t have any of the resources that they have now; they were just starting an early version of Oberlink. To see those services expand and more alumni connections that can be built will be really exciting, because ultimately we want to give back and help people get jobs. Every single job I’ve had except for the agency was through word of mouth. To create those kinds of networks amongst Oberlin alumni, older Oberlin alumni, younger Oberlin alumni, students — that’s the real takeaway — cross-generational connections and networking opportunities that are so crucial to this business. I think Oberlink makes that easier, and also future Obiewood events, just a place for people to gather and meet people.”

“I made the film with some really talented students around me, and we just kind of made the film on impulse,” Emeka said. “The film takes place on the day a young Black man has to report [to] prison for six years. The film is about how a cousin/friend tries to prepare his mind to do the time.”

Inspired by William Shakespeare’s Richard II, the film was officially selected by five festivals, some of which include the Black Harvest Film Festival in Chicago, the Vancouver Black Independent Film Festival, and the London Director Awards. 

“Applying into festivals has just been kind of an exercise; I had no idea that there were over ten thousand festivals a year,” Emeka said. “Who would have known? There’s just tons and tons of film festivals that you could apply to; I’m just kind of getting to know them, getting to know that world, getting to know that market, getting to know the art form, [and it] has been very exciting the past two years.”

College fourth-year Trey Scantlen, who worked as assistant cameraman on the short, enjoyed the community experience of shooting the film.

“It had that feeling where everybody was learning from each other, which was good,” Scantlen said. “It was one of the first crews I was on where I didn’t know everybody there. It definitely was inspiring, how much outreach the film has got. It’s done pretty well in its festival run, and it was inspiring to see that happen, especially with a professor coming from the theater background and jumping straight in. With that film in particular, out of all the crews I’ve been on, the Oberlin community just made it … more of a collective than just working for a class, just helping a classmate, so I think that was what I took out of it. It was a fun experience, I really enjoyed it.” 

Emeka is currently in post-production for his second short, “Biological,” and planning a feature film, Rhythms in Raindrops. He is currently on a two-year sabbatical as he explores the world of film after decades working in theater.

“I had only directed in theater for 30 years,” Emeka said. “At the heart of [the film], it’s telling a story — that’s what I love about it. … And I’m excited about what I bring as a theater artist to TV and film, because I think my stuff is very much informed by years of theater sensibility.”

On stage, Emeka has worked for the past 20 years on adaptations of Shakespeare through the lens of contemporary Black life. His interest in these adaptations has carried over to film.

“One of the challenges for any modern director of Shakespeare is to contextualize it for an audience that’s getting it 450 years later,” Emeka said. “I am excited about what it can be in films, in terms of what I do specifically; reimagining the cultural aesthetic and cultural landscape of the world of the play. But essentially the same story, the same characters, the same emotions, just contextualized in a different way.”

Miyah Byers, OC ’20, served as both co-producer and co-director of photography for the film.

“I’ve worked with Justin on and off for six years,” Byers wrote in an email to the Review. “I’ve always known him to be an artful, thoughtful, and caring theater director with a deep respect and love for Black people and Black culture. In particular, Justin is masterful in blending Black culture with Shakespeare’s work, and he is incredibly skilled in working with actors. Under Justin’s direction, I’ve seen so many actors unlock themselves and find freedom in their roles in ways that make their acting so genuine. Justin brought his skill to this project in a way that shined on screen. The three actors, ranging from very little acting experience to years of acting experience, all delivered genuine performances under Justin’s direction. And the concept of the film itself is very creative and is one that I haven’t seen on screen before.”

Byers, who was a Cinema Studies major during her time at Oberlin, has worked with Emeka mostly in theater, and was excited to collaborate with him on film.

“All around, the film was an experiment and an opportunity for a small group of people to come together and make some art with limited resources, but with a lot of vision and talent,” she wrote. “In the moment, my hope was to do the best job I could do to bring Justin’s vision to life. This was actually the first fiction film I’ve ever worked on, so the entire process was a learning experience for me from start to finish. I learned a lot from pulling the team together, all the way down to managing the shoot days and passing the materials off to Justin and the post-production team. I’m proud to see that the hard work of a small team for a few weeks became a short film that has been so well received, and that it has made its way into some awesome festivals. That result is a testament to Justin’s vision and determination as a director, and of course to our amazing and dedicated actors and crew.”

Now that “Six Winters” is headed for festivals, Emeka reflects on the hope the short has inspired in him.

“‘Six Winters Gone Still’ taught me that I could make a film,” Emeka said. “It taught me everything about it; it helped me learn quickly how to talk to the people involved in film in a different artistic language and vocabulary. ‘Six Winters Gone Still’ is very dear.”

When I picked it up, my housemate remarked, “You got the digital art piece.” The rather large piece looks somewhat like a QR code. Staring at it in my living room, I parsed through the ink markings to find the form of a deer in tall grass. When I looked closely at it, I noticed the work is slightly wrinkled in its frame, like a piece of paper overinked by a printer.

I began to wonder how it might feel for Art Rental artists like Sheehan to have their work hung on infinite varying walls of faceless students who dwell and breathe with it, completely separated from its creator. I sent my artist an email with the subject line “Press Request” and quickly learned she had no idea her piece was in Art Rental.

“I sold it to Jock Reynolds and Suzanne Hellmuth [OC ’68], and I knew that Jock and Suzanne had donated it to Oberlin,” Sheehan said on our Zoom call later that day. As an Art History major during her time at Oberlin, she had spent a lot of time at the AMAM and in the Clarence Ward Art Library and was excited to see the work return to her alma mater. “Jock had talked to me when he was considering donating the piece; he was like, ‘How would you feel about that?’ I was like, ‘That would be awesome, that’s a great end, a great home for the piece. … I didn’t know it had gone into Art Rental, but that’s super cute. I’m delighted. I myself was a recipient of Art Rental!”

Sheehan  was fun. She had a great laugh and spoke thoughtfully. She told me that in her time at Oberlin she delivered The New York Times on weekends and helped in an initiative to do more prep for meals at Harkness House because “nobody knew how to soak a damn bean!” She has been teaching for around the last 20 years at CUNY Baruch. For fun, she flies a paraglider.

“I don’t remember the exact piece or pieces that I had,” Sheehan said when talking about participating in the Art Rental as a student, “but I had Art Rental pieces and stood out there in line and had them up. I was in Harkness House in my first year, and I had pieces on the wall there. … I know everybody was fighting for the Claes Oldenburg but I don’t remember what I got. If you remember everything you did at Oberlin, you probably didn’t go to Oberlin.”

From our conversation, I learned that the series my piece is a part of — which documents America’s most dangerous things — highlights how we perceive threats. 

“The most dangerous — in that case, animal — turns out to be the white-tailed deer, because so many people are in car accidents with them,” she said. “A lot of it was about your idea of danger and then how that danger is much more banal and human-generated than anything else.”

The other pieces in the series include America’s most dangerous volcano and America’s most dangerous intersection, all centered not on the fear we feel about these things, but on the actual damage they could do specifically to humans. A lot of Sheehan’s work negotiates this idea of the human as the machine and how hand-making can exist in a machine era. In the case of “White-Tailed Deer,” there’s also an interesting effect in how the imperfections of the piece betray its handmade nature.

“To create the pieces, I was starting with a found image on the internet and then did a bunch of manipulations to it in various photo processing stuff and then rendered the result in ink on vellum paper,” she said. “So they’re all handmade, but they’re handmade by an artist becoming a plotter in a machine; in a lot of my work, I was interested in being more machinelike in what I was doing, although not with the accuracy of a machine, but trying to approximate that somehow.”

Part of the intention of my call was to reunite Sheehan  with her piece, to know where her white-tailed deer lived, what it saw. About half an hour into our conversation, I took my laptop on the move, giving her a short tour of my kitchen and living room to show the painting in its full context. When the piece was first in frame, Sheehan  lit up and began to flip the interview on me, asking about life at Oberlin. She was particularly interested in how the younger generation is or isn’t focused on technology — how we separate ourselves from screens. 

“Part of why I resonate a lot with the art that I was looking at on your page is because those things are handmade and then they’re returned to a space that is occupied by machine-made objects, and [they ask] what it means to be making things by hand today,” I said. “My favorite artists here at Oberlin are the ones who when I go to their exhibition and they’re making every element themselves, down to the frame the piece is in, the table that holds up an object; every piece is made by hand. I love that dedication to physical objects and craft.”

Her response stuck with me. 

“It can be a position of extreme control, though,” she said. “Part of that, asserting your hand in every single thing, is like not being able to let go. There’s an anxiety in a lot of that that I recognize in my own self and my own work, but I try and listen to it; maybe that’s a part of sending it off: imbue this with all your anxiety and then send it off.”

This is the second mural from the Oberlin Community Mural Project, after the “We Are Oberlin” mural on the wall behind the bookstore. The group’s organizer, Tanya Rosen-Jones, OC ’97, said the community wanted more public art.

“The first mural we did was in partnership with the City schools,” Rosen-Jones said. “I worked with the high school, brought three mural artists in, did a three-day workshop and got ideas directly from the high school students for what makes Oberlin special. We had a vote for the winning design and a community paint day — it was a real community mural project. It was amazing, but so much work, and people were like, ‘When are you going to do the next one?’”

Having established the Community Mural Project, Rosen-Jones now had a group of people to help make decisions about the content of proposed murals. For the vintage postcard mural, that meant a series of decisions of what iconic elements of Oberlin to highlight in the individual letters of the sign.

“We wanted to have a mixture of things represented for what you would see when you came to Oberlin, or for what Oberlin might be known for,” Rosen-Jones said. “We were limited by what would transfer well to the inside of a letter in the mural and by not wanting to replicate things that were in the mural on the back of the bookstore.”

The letters on the mural contain Oberlin icons, including the historic elm in Tappan Square, the albino squirrel, the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Finney Chapel, and a (fictional) street sign showing the intersection of College Street and Main Street.

Jill Sawyer, owner of event venue Mill on Main, volunteered her building for the new mural with the vintage postcard concept already in mind. Mitchell, who painted the mural, said the design of the lettering is partly inspired by a sign inside.

“They came to me with a little bit of an idea; I started working up a couple of concepts, and then eventually, working with a group of individuals, we started focusing in on some of these subjects within the letters,” Mitchell said. “The letter structure itself is inspired by a sign that they found in this building. … It’s very similar in how the ‘B’ has points on the end; the curvature on the ‘R,’ the ‘L’ — it’s all almost identical to the sign, and from there we kind of went forward with just finding other little details, like colors and such.”

The new vintage postcard mural comes from funding from the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts, sponsored by the City of Oberlin, as well as funds from the Bill Long Foundation. The City has begun working with FAVA to support arts in the community, and the mural is one of the first accomplishments of this new collaboration.

“We partnered with FAVA this year to basically develop a grant program for murals in the downtown business district,” City Communications Manager Diane Ramos said. “This was part of our larger goal to bring more art to the city. FAVA’s been a great partner and we both value the arts and understand the reputation that Oberlin has for being kind of an arts hub, and we just wanted to find different ways to highlight what we have here.”

Mitchell, a local artist whose previous work includes the Amherst Public Library logo, was excited by the positive feedback from community members.

“I love the response from the community; everyone’s been really happy to see it,” Mitchell said. “I guess that’s why I’m doing it, not just for me to enjoy the process, but for others to enjoy it in their way too.”

The new mural looks to be a sign of a bright future for Oberlin’s public arts.

“We’re happy the program is getting off the ground and we have our first mural going,” Ramos said. “I only see this partnership growing, and I think that’s a great thing in such an arts-centric town.”

Rutzky hosts weekly Sunday sits in the attic of his Elm Street home, where we met to chat. The gorgeous house felt empty, the halls lined with boxes. Even the zafu and mat arranged for me to sit opposite Jacques were to be sold in the final Sunday sit. Jacques sat in lotus with his        iPhone on the floor in front of him, displaying a faux-analog clock. He spoke softly and frequently paused, as though waiting for the thought to materialize before speaking.

“It’s not easy to leave the students,” Rutzky said. “The OBF students ask wonderful, challenging questions, and in most places [other students] tend to be in awe of a meditation teacher and don’t get personal. Here, they don’t mind being personal about the questions they’re asking. I love being challenged; I love when they say, ‘Wait a minute. What about this situation?’”

Rutzky also leads a Conservatory meditation group, originally created to improve students’ ability to improvise on their instrument. 

“They come already disciplined,” Rutzky said, describing the Conservatory meditators. “They’ve been practicing to play an instrument since they were four, so they show up on time. And they ask difficult questions. ‘How is this going to affect my music?’ That’s a very challenging question, and it’s different for each person. I try my best not to give pat answers when students ask questions. I will often sit and pause for a minute or two, and I let them know: I’m waiting for a thought to come up. They often find that kind of humorous, that I have to wait for a thought to come up, because their heads are always filled with thoughts.”

As Rutzky prepares to move, the student leadership council of OBF is seeking a new teacher and a new space for meditation. For College fourth-year and OBF president Ethan Nissenson, the fellowship is a place to find a community of like-minded, mindful people.

“I had a meditation practice that was pretty underdeveloped leading up to [my second] year, and I heard people would go to [Rutzky’s] house to meditate,” Nissenson said. “I had kind of a loose understanding of Buddhist practice and meditation practice, but just the thought of meditating with other people interested me. I ended up doing the Winter Term with him, and going to a couple sits and meditations at his house on Sunday, and was pretty immediately sold on the community aspect of it. There was an atmosphere that felt warm and loving, and I was with people that were pointed in the same direction on the compass as me, so to speak. And so I stuck around; my relationship with Jacques deepened. He’s leaving now, but he’s a really good friend of mine. I’ve known him for two and a half years now, and I love him to death.”

Along with meetings in the attic of Rutzky’s home, OBF has also held student-led sessions in the Wilder Hall meditation rooms. However, Rutzky says the option of meditating off campus changed the environment of the sits for the better.

“For a couple of years we sat in the basement of Shansi [House], and then we were sort of shuttled over to Lewis House, where no one was given a key, so we often ended up calling Campus Security to let us in, and it felt less substantive, and that… didn’t help the group to feel more cohesive,” Rutzky said. “And then we bought this house and turned the attic into a meditation hall. Students always talked about really enjoying meditating here and not in an industrial building.”

Rutzky seems irreplaceable, though Nissenson says they don’t know what the future holds.

“Jacques has been around teaching students, but he’s been meditating 50, 60 years, and got his blessing to teach from a Thai Buddhist meditation master, so it’s this lineage, this continuity,” Nissenson said. “As much as I like the idea of a grass-roots effort, I personally have my own fears about spiritual commodification and blind-leading-the-blind. ”

Rutzky has also historically led a Winter Term retreat for daily meditation, which also has an uncertain future in his absence. Director of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life David Dorsey says that the ORSL systems are structured to follow and support the needs of students.

“I have met with some of the student leaders; they’ll be the ones who choose the next teacher, or teachers, and the next location, but we already had conversations to ensure there’s no gap between Jacques’ departure and their practice,” Dorsey said. “They get to decide that, and then we come behind and support.”

Rutzky came to Oberlin over a decade ago, in part to heal from a brain condition.

“I was recovering from viral encephalitis, which is an inflammation of the brain,” he said. “I caught it when I was traveling in Paris and almost died. I wasn’t recovering as well as the doctors thought I should, and so they said, ‘You need a quiet place to heal, and we’ll see what happens.’ Oberlin was the quiet place.”

During his time at Oberlin in the early ’70s, Rutzky has been credited as the originator of the co-op pizza night tradition. Since his time at the College, Rutzky says the town of Oberlin has stayed with him even after he left.

“I always had this perfect image of Oberlin in my mind — whether it’s perfect or not is a different story,” Rutzky said. “But in my mind, it was a quiet place. And we were living in a Japanese farmhouse built for us by Zen priests in the San Francisco Bay Area, and left that to come here. Both my wife and I had private practice therapy sessions, [and] she was also training as a Jungian therapist.”

After moving to Oberlin, Rutzky opened a woodworking studio near Slow Train Cafe, where he says a student introduced him to a group of Oberlin meditators for the first time. 

Rutzky will join his wife, Dyane Sherwood, who works as a Jungian therapist in the Chicago area. He says he has not made set plans to continue teaching meditation after his move; instead, he will allow new opportunities to find him. While Rutzky moves on from over a decade of service to students in Oberlin, OBF hopes to preserve the community fostered in that time. 

“Really baseline is the atmosphere and the space that I walked into, of people coming together, more or less united under a direction of insight and mindfulness,” Nissenson said. “That’s what I want to preserve, as Ethan. As an organization, it’s just a turbulent time — I don’t know what it could look like. And that’s scary, but then again, I never do.”

Rutzky will host two more Sunday sits, on Sept. 16 and 23, before he departs from Oberlin.

Fairplay, a European-trained stone carver, has a body of work on display from Westminster Abbey to New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He now owns Fairplay Stonecarvers LLC in Oberlin. Fairplay donated the slab of Indiana limestone used in the new “Oberlin Reader,” which is the same type of limestone used in the facade of the building. 

Over the summer, Grounds Service Manager Becky Bode worked with gardeners, beautifying the area, developing a small mulch garden with a loose stone path leading to the statue and bench. 

“We wanted to activate the small courtyard and garden below the ramp of [Mary Church] Terrell [Main] Library,” Azariah S. Root Director of Libraries Valerie Hotchkiss wrote in an email to the Review. “First we cleaned up the plants and then we decided that a sculpture of some kind would be nice, along with a nicer ‘contemplation garden’ and a bench. Conceived as a ‘gathering place,’ we also ordered three nice tables for the concrete area — and there are plans for a student chalk mural on the wall down there.”

In July, the sculpture was delivered by crane. Its accompanying bench has an inscription in Greek which translates to “a healing place to the soul” — the words on the door of the Library of Alexandria.

Seated on the bench, students would have a view of the opposite side of the monolithic stele sculpture, where an updated version of a familiar figure sits.

“At first, the committee asked Nicholas [Fairplay] to carve an updated version of our mascot, ‘The Reading Girl,’” Hotchkiss wrote. “The design was lovely, but when we saw it, we began to think about what ‘updating’ really means.”

Oberlin’s iconic marble statue, “The Reading Girl,” sculpted by John Adams Jackson, has been studying her book in the Oberlin College libraries since 1885. In her longtime home in Mudd Center, she sports various ever-changing accessories, including necklaces, COVID-19 facemasks, and — always — a size six Converse sneaker.

“She has witnessed the growth of the Oberlin College Libraries, represents the opportunities the college has provided women scholars, and is a reminder of the value of physical books in the digital era,” The Oberlin College Libraries website reads.

According to a 1980 edition of The Oberlin Observer, “The Reading Girl” was retired from her former place in Carnegie Building, then known as Carnegie Library, after she was subject to vandalism around 1960; for 15 years, she waited silently in the basement of the Allen Memorial Art Museum and, in 1975, she was moved to the barn behind Johnson House. Only in 1980 was she “rescued” by former Director of Libraries William A. Moffett, who moved her to her current residence as the pearl of Terrell Main Library.

“Moffett notes she shows signs of neglect, if not of age: some fingers and toes are missing,” the Observer reads. “Because she ‘is not of a piece’ with the first level decor, he thinks she might eventually be located somewhere else in Mudd. ‘But for now,’ he says, ‘battered and marred though she be, ‘The Reading Girl’ is back.’”

Despite Moffett’s doubts, “The Reading Girl” has become an important part of Terrell Main Library’s first floor and a recognizable figure for Obies new and old. The team at the libraries hoped to modernize the statue to make her relatable to all.

“It was the Director of the Art Museum, Andria Derstine, who first suggested that we place The Reading Girl in one of the famous ‘womb chairs’ which are iconic for our library,” Hotchkiss wrote. “From there, we quickly realized that we did not want a specifically-gendered reader, but rather ‘THE’ Reader, a universal figure that all could relate to. Nicholas [Fairplay] took our ideas and created the wonderful new ‘Oberlin Reader,’ a person in a womb chair with an open book in arms, two legs — and Converse gym shoes, of course! We loved the design and the Friends of the [Oberlin College Libraries] commissioned Nicholas to create it.”

The new “Oberlin Reader” statue contributes to a legacy of art on display in the libraries. Terrell Main Library frequently displays curated exhibitions at its main entrance, and the walls of all floors are decorated with art that watches over students as they study. The library is also recognizable for its landmark brutalist architecture and the iconic design of its beloved womb chairs. 

Hotchkiss has high hopes for new traditions involving the statue.

“I am so pleased to see this beautiful tribute to reading and to Oberlin readers in particular,” Hotchkiss wrote. “I hope the sculpture itself will become a place where students gather, take selfies, and contemplate. Perhaps a tradition will even get started, such as touching the Converse shoe for good luck before an exam or leaving a flower at the base of the stele every time you fall in love with a book. I am sure that Oberlin students will make it their own!”

The sculpture and its surrounding contemplation garden will have a dedication Sept. 29 from 3:30–4:30 p.m. All are welcome.

In August, the band announced it would break up at the end of the year. Two-thirds of the band’s tour dates were canceled, leaving only eight of the initial 23. 

“This upcoming tour will be our last one,” the band wrote in a statement announcing its breakup. “It will be an ode to the past, a celebration for the future, and something we will pour both of our hearts into completely.”

I knew two Girlpool songs before Monday night: “Before the World Was Big” and “Chinatown,” both off the band’s debut album. I knew those tracks from high school and hadn’t listened to them much since, though I still held a quiet appreciation for them. With a little variation, I imagine the majority of the audience at Monday night’s show might say the same thing: that they only knew a few songs from an early record. Perhaps, like me, they gave the band’s latest album or two a listen in preparation for the show. Forgiveness wasn’t for me — I’d describe it as bad hyperpop, wearing its Charli XCX-esque influences on its sleeve. I mostly hated the admittedly raw, real lyricism for its content: themes of disappointing sex and too much partying. I think I hoped that Tividad and Tucker, now both in their late twenties, might have matured from the pleasantly teenage whining and vulnerability of Before the World Was Big.

The audience at the show seemed disinterested in the new works, more often chatting over the concert than reverently dancing. If we all only know a handful of tracks from an album released seven years ago, why was the turnout for Girlpool so great? 

“Knowing that it was their third-to-last show, I liked the idea of being able to say, ‘I saw indie pop icon, cult-ly loved band Girlpool, in one of their last shows!’ even though I’m not their biggest fan,” Anisa Curry Vietze, OC ’22, said of the show. “I feel like it was a good pick for an Oberlin show; I feel like it was a very Oberlin band, and I bet a lot of people listened to them in high school. But also, I feel like sometimes you just go to the ’Sco show because it’s free, and at the ’Sco, and it’s a Monday night.”

Having music so readily available at our fingertips, and for free, gives students something to do in the midst of classes and assignments.

“All in all, I think I got what I expected: a video for my one second of the day, a brisk walk to the car, and to see Harmony Tividad play the bass. Kind of cool that their drummer is an Obie alum with an English major,” College third-year Sequoia Jacobson said.

Although I kept to the back at the Girlpool concert, I know what it’s like to be in the front row at a ’Sco show for a band you don’t know all that well. It’s a feeling that you are performing as much as the band is — performing to a loving and well-versed audience, dancing to every song joyfully and tirelessly. It’s a small venue, and the artists who come to play for us are just people who hope we love their music.

“I have a theory that your experience at the ’Sco show, any given ’Sco show, is really not about the show itself at all, but instead about your own mental state going in, who you see there, and how much you want to be in a crowded bar-like experience,” Curry Vietze said. “All that is to say, I don’t know that I loved the songs that they were playing necessarily, although I didn’t dislike them either, but I still had a good time because I was with people that I really care about, and in a space that … still means a lot to me.” 

Tucker, who came out as a transgender man following the release of the band’s sophomore album in 2017, wrote an essay for Them about the struggle with identity that has come alongside Girlpool’s identity and its past success.

“I felt so distraught over my identity in Girlpool,” Tucker wrote. “The name of the project was gendered, our voices intertwined in a way I couldn’t imagine reinventing. Girlpool was my whole life, passion, journey, and career.”

As artists rightfully grow up and out of their old music, though, the audience still holds onto it dearly. I still love the two songs I know. It’s a nostalgic, tender love, particularly for “Chinatown,” a raw and sparse song about uncertainty and loving your friends. Listening to the track, I feel transported back into my sophomore year of highschool, driving around town in the passenger seat of my first girlfriend’s Prius, staring down at my checkered slip-on Vans. It’s not the kind of music I like now, but I honor it for the place it once had in my life.

“The one main song that I really wanted them to play — and they actually did — I knew because of my experience at Oberlin, because I have so many memories of my freshman year roommate playing it on her guitar in our Dascomb dorm room,” Curry Vietze said. “So it was actually really sweet for me, now as a graduate, an alum, to be able to see them at Oberlin.”

This interview was lovingly edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about your path at the Review.

I was too nervous to write for the Review for the first three years of college, and I really regret it. I was a staff writer over the summer, and at the beginning of this year, in August, I became arts editor. This is the first job I’ve ever had that’s made me realize what it is to be passionate about something, and I am really committed to the Review in a way that I wasn’t expecting to be. 

What do you mean by that? 

I just didn’t really know what I wanted to do for a really long time. I always knew that I loved to write, and I knew that I liked school. In every other professional opportunity, I really hadn’t found any sort of drive, and that scared me, you know? You’re like, “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do after I leave and there’s no more academic validation?” But working at the Review, I’ve gotten more out of this experience than pretty much anything else I’ve ever done. It makes me realize that I want to do this as a career.

What are some of your favorite articles that we’ve put out as a section or that you’ve written?

I really loved your piece that you wrote on winter break and being here for the holidays. Of my own pieces, I cared the most about the Joan Didion article, because I just really liked her, and I kept having this vision of Joan Didion being like, “That sucks!” I also really liked writing this Big Parade article. I got a lot out of that.

What do you want to do post-grad? What’s your dream?

This is what I want to do — I just want to do it on a bigger scale. I’m so happy to start at the bottom of the professional world, at an organization that’s publishing things that I really care about, and moving up. I’m going on a big trip to Italy in June, and then staying in London, and then I’m hoping to move to Los Angeles. 

Do you remember your interview to be arts editor? How did it go?

I had crazy imposter syndrome about the Review. I was visiting my brother at Indiana University when I did my interview, so I was in a hotel room. I spent the whole day super nervous because I had spent the last three years being like, “You can’t write at the Review! The Review is for really smart people!” Honestly, I think I blacked out for the entire interview. They emailed me the next day, and I screamed in my hotel room.

What do you think we’ve accomplished? Has Arts changed since you’ve been brought on to it?

I think that it has changed. Maeve [Woltring] and I wrote really similarly — talking about what the writing meant or what that was supposed to look like was more of our focus. Now, it’s much more about being creative about what pieces you’re choosing to pitch and the angle. That’s something I’ve really valued — I got so in the humdrum of doing the same thing every week that when you came in and were like, “What about this!?” I was kind of like, “Oh. That makes sense, I guess.” I feel like we’ve accomplished just being a little bit more creative in the way that we understand what our job is.

I feel like the Review system forces you to have that new perspective all the time. Someone graduates or leaves, and a new face is there, saying new things.

Exactly — and adamantly wanting to do things a new way. I think that’s really good, and it pushed the both of us.

Do you have any advice for future Arts Editors?

Send out emails right after the pitch meeting. And, I guess don’t put up walls that aren’t there. Really allow yourself to be creative within this medium, because a newspaper is really important. It’s supposed to convey information, but it’s also supposed to push boundaries. I think that’s a really important part about Arts & Culture — that it’s supposed to reflect the values of the community, and the community is constantly pushing, especially Oberlin’s community. So maybe just pay attention to things that aren’t on the events calendar.

Slay.

Slay. 

In 2016, in the face of understaffing and lack of resources, the Cinema Studies department cut its support for senior capstones from the program. Since then, fourth-years in the major have faced obstacles in creating a thesis film. While they were able to do so via private reading with a professor, the small number of Oberlin professors working in film production and their limited bandwidth greatly restricted the number of students who could create a final film for course credit. This semester, a course substituting the role of senior capstone, Advanced Film Making Projects, has allowed 12 students to pursue creating their own work. 

College third-year Alba Robledo Díaz is an exception to the typical fourth-year profile of the course. She is taking the course as what she dubs a “dupe” for a capstone, as she prepares to graduate early this fall. 

“It’s like a collective private reading with [Professor of Cinema Studies] Rian Brown-Orso,” she said. “It functions like that, so we have a scheduled meeting time, but it’s more about: we meet together, we talk about what we are all going to do and where we are standing with our projects. Sometimes we have individual consultations. When we have our meetings together, Rian has the class designed so it really feels like you are in a professional setting; you have to pitch your project to everyone.”

For some students, like College fourth-year Katie Homer-Drummond, the course is an opportunity to realize an already-prepared script and pursue a final reification of themes they’ve explored throughout their Oberlin career. 

“I wanted to do a horror piece for my final, and I wanted to do something that plays around with triptychs and the idea of threes,” they said of their film, Wolf Girl. “There’s these three different sections that are in three different styles, and there’s a piece of music that is used in a lot of different ways. I started outlining it in detail in the fall and writing out a proto-script, scripted it over Winter Term, and finalized everything and started to get the team together. It became more solidly about a theme, which ended up being the horror of puberty in young girls, especially coupled with body trauma or medical trauma.”

College fourth-year Chris Schmucki took a different route with his project. He is creating what he describes as an experimental piece, involving painting on celluloid and mingling with freeform jazz music he commissioned from Conservatory students. 

“It’s almost like a dance film,” he said. “It’s very different from what I’m used to doing — I’ve done a lot of documentary and narrative stuff. I’m using this class as an opportunity to do something more personal and experimental.”

For fourth-years like Schmucki, the emergence of the class was a stroke of luck — not every generation of Cinema Studies fourth-years has had the opportunity to make a culminating final film.

“They haven’t offered this course since spring of my freshman year,” he said. “I was able to work on a film my freshman year for someone who was taking this class, so now it feels like a full-circle moment.”

College fourth-year Julia McCormick, who is co-directing the film Kevin’s Party, noted that the course is helping challenge the major’s fundamental problem — the lack of a senior capstone.

“There’s always a question with the Cinema Studies major of, ‘Why doesn’t it culminate in anything?’ That’s something I’ve been wondering,” she said. “I guess this felt like a final course to pursue a bigger project, but it has been a little difficult with everyone in the class pursuing a project at the same time. I think a little bit more organization with the major would have been better, so that people could have a capstone, but maybe in the first semester instead of all in the second semester.”

College fourth-year Amelia Connelly, writer and co-director of Kevin’s Party alongside McCormick, noted that the course also helps to remedy a lack of intimacy across the Cinema Studies department.

“I feel like that goes back to what Julia was saying, about there not being a closeness or intimacy in the department,” she said. “I don’t think that’s anybody’s fault; I think that’s the pandemic.”

This feeling is one felt almost universally across the class of 2022. Some, like McCormick and Connelly, feel robbed of the chance for greater training in film production, as they were sent home during their second-year spring, when production knowledge usually is first being taught.

“We feel more scrambled than we maybe would if we had had more training in production, but also if the department was more intimate, so that we knew what other courses were being taken, we could get help from people who are learning those fundamentals,” McCormick said. “It’s also a bittersweet feeling, because just when I had an opportunity to work on a film in my sophomore year, we were sent home.”

However, some filmmakers have noticed the course allows an opportunity to remedy the lack of intimacy in the department. Schmucki, who works as a director of photography for two projects in addition to his own, emphasized the role of these films and the large crews they require as a community building experience.

“As much as it is about the films, it’s about the people you meet, and those connections you get to make,” he said. “I think I’ve learned a lot in classes about filmmaking, but I think I appreciate films like this class, because you’re doing the work, you’re literally making films and learning through that process.”

The Cinema Studies department will host screenings of the projects that are open to the public in Dye Lecture Hall on May 30.