African American author, columnist, and public speaker Deesha Philyaw will read from her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, which won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction.

This event will also be available virtually via Zoom, register here.

Part seance, part collective automatic writing, part investigation of philosophical texts, Ancient Evenings will be a collective spiritual awakening in our own Cole Memorial Chapel. Come and explore the Western Canon through your own subversive and politically aware writing. Discover how you creatively think about rational thinking. Participants should bring a pad of paper and a writing implement. Light refreshments will be served before the event outside the Chapel.

Faculty and staff are invited to join the arts staff for coffee and treats. Come pick up the spring 2020 arts brochure, learn about our exciting upcoming arts programming and, check out the current textile exhibition: a nerve is not a nerve but a bundle of fibers. Visiting artist Sarah E. Jenkins will be in the gallery leading an informal drop-in workshop entitled Sewing Conversations. The workshop is a contemporary take on quilting circles and aims to provide social engagement while creating art.

Image credit: Wayne Thiebaud, Three Donuts, 1994, Oil on canvas

a nerve is not a nerve but a bundle of fibers showcases seven contemporary artists, Caroline Wells Chandler, Pilar Sans Coover, Gabrielle Ferreira, Sean Paul Gallegos, Sarah E. Jenkins, Saberah Malik, and Sarah Zapata, all of whom are working with textiles in innovative ways. Though textiles are often thought of as decorative or functional, the artists in this exhibition address complex ideas of identity and cultural history with large-scale crochet, narrative embroidery, deconstructed sneakers, public sewing circles, and traditional dyeing and weaving.

Join Visiting Artist George Ferrandi and students Emmanuel Leal, Daniel Pachter, Christian Pfeiffer, Grayson Beaulieu and Emma Flesher for a celestial ritual to celebrate the conclusion of their semester long collaboration.

Join artists Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco of the Next Epoch Seed Library (NESL) for a multisensorial experience with the wild, disturbance-oriented plants of the Wheaton Campus. We’ll get to know Wheaton’s local weedy plants by finding, collecting, sorting and processing their seeds for inclusion in NESL’s popup library in the Beard and Weil Galleries. NESL re-imagines the conventional seed bank for a new epoch defined by massive human impact on the global environment. Rather than focusing exclusively on human utility or agricultural heritage, they champion the contributions of weedy plant species most likely to survive and thrive in an unpredictable future.

Meet in the Beard and Weil Galleries at 2pm, 2nd Floor, Watson Fine Arts.

This exhibition brings together six artists, Sara Jimenez, Antonio McAfee, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Mendi + Keith Obadike, and Dano Wall, who are reframing historical images and information to encourage a shift in perceptions of race, immigration, and colonialism.

Did you know that Polaris won’t always be our North Star? Artist George Ferrandi will talk about this lesser-known fact and the future cultural customs she’s been inventing with communities around the world to say goodbye to Polaris and welcome our next North Star through her expansive interdisciplinary initiative, Jump!Star.

The faculty members in the Department of Music perform as part of the Faculty and Friends Music Series.

Celebrate the end of semester with a study break in the Beard & Weil Galleries. Come by for printing, snacks, and a fun artsy evening. B.Y.O. T-shirt or print a canvas tote bag supplied by the galleries.