Pentathlon

Semester 2

As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my first semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.

Pentathlon 1: Puss in Boots - The Last Wish

Event Logistics 2/12/23 @ Cambridge Hall, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Pentathlon category #visualart #film

For the first pentathlon, I decided to treat myself to a movie I’ve been wanting to watch for some time now. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a breath of fresh air in a film industry filled with hits or misses. Ever since viewing the trailers, I was mesmerized by the animation style and visuals. The way the movie looks like it came straight out of a comic book makes the visual imagery so compelling. Not only does it look good, but the movie also has a great multilayered plot and story. A lot of the storytelling connects back to what I learned attending storytelling workshops back in semester one. The way the characters are introduced, animated, and voice acted all serve to assist in driving the story’s theme and message across to an audience such as myself. The climax of this movie also taught me the valuable life lesson of just enjoying the one life we all have. The way this movie explores themes of death, anxiety, and other mature subjects in a kid's movie taught me how some parts of life apply to everyone. Death comes for all. This movie only further moves me as a movie enjoyer as I believe film and writing are great mediums for artists to express their takes on the world around them.

Pentathlon 2: The Book Club

Event Logistics 2/25/23 @ Kay Theater, The Clarice presents The Book Club!

Pentathlon category #Theatre

After watching Intimate Apparel from last semester’s field trip, I have been itching to watch another theatrical performance. The Book Club, presented by UMD’s very own school of theater, follows the story of a book club and the book-loving people that are a part of the book club. It’s a very simple base premise, something that I am learning in my scriptwriting class, with a lot of deep and intricate underlying premises. All the things I am learning in that class, from storytelling strategies to inciting events, were being displayed to their fullest while I watched this play. I was surprised at how intricate the storytelling was and how it treated us to some wholesome messaging and themes. From such a simple premise, I learned a lot about the human psyche and how damaging one's perception of humans as characters can be toward others. It made me connect some aspects of my own life and connect them with the struggles Anna goes through along the way while she manages her book club. The play incites a lot of questions relating to characters in a book and humans living in the real world. Are humans just characters in someone else’s story? How are we perceived by others and what kind of character are we to them? The play doesn’t answer these questions for us, but instead, it keeps us interested in finding the answers to them. It gave me a greater understanding of how a classic form of art, literature, has been used to provide thought-provoking concepts to the reader and allow them to connect those concepts to their own lives to better understand life. I felt inspired in the end to finish a book I’m currently reading on my own personal time.

Pentathlon 3: Piano Room

Event Logistics 3/12/23 @ Bel Air Art Room, Piano Practice Session

Pentathlon category #Music

Today, I decided to give the Bel Air Art Room a visit. Using the keyboard they have there, I wanted to practice and apply what I learned from the music theory I have been learning in my karaoke workshop. My karaoke workshop has been all about my vocals, but I wanted to translate this to an instrument I enjoy playing which is the piano. So along with singing, I can potentially learn and extend my musical range to playing as well. Some of the songs I tried practicing were songs I sang in workshop such as Cold Play’s Viva La Vida. It was important for me to enjoy the music I was playing so that I could maintain the passion and motivation to continue to learn. I was able to connect the music theory I learned to each note and how the song was broken down into smaller pieces. Each chord progression was in a certain major/minor scale that I had to recognize and learn. It even relates to my major as an engineer since I have to constantly break down problems into smaller more manageable problems. My biggest takeaway from this event was that art is just gathered pieces of creativity formed into a bigger picture or song in this case. Those pieces are influenced by many different factors we discuss in Arts Scholars such as one’s culture, passion, and message.

Pentathlon 4: Orientation Presentation

Event Logistics 3/31/23 @ Bel Air Art Lounge, Arts Scholars hosts a Q&A for incoming Arts Scholars students!

Pentathlon category #presentation

During orientation, prospective Arts Scholars students participated in a Q&A session hosted by Arts Scholars. To provide upcoming students with a more comprehensive understanding of the Arts Scholars experience, I offered to be a member of the student panel. I discovered how much more comprehensive and community-focused the curriculum is. Similar to last year’s program, I reaffirmed my understanding of the Arts Scholars curriculum and gained insight into how we conduct our classes and apply our themes to the program. In reflecting on the two times I participated in this event, I noticed that some of my questions and concerns were resolved over this past year. How much more could I do for my Arts Scholars community? I joined the Arts Advisory Board to help plan social events for the program. I became more involved with the scholars community and ended up relaying this information to my peer mentors when I became involved in that as well. It all stemmed from the communication skills I’ve been developing in classes such as COMM107 where I get to learn how to be a better presenter/better communicator which in return has allowed me to engage with the Arts Scholars even more than I did last year. Keeping the arts alive within each of my peers brought me a sense of purpose within my place in this community as I got to see my peers flourish within their passions during capstone critiques and presentations. At the end of the day, I not only was not only receiving from scholars but also giving back to the community that brought me up through my first two years in college!

Pentathlon 5: Golf with Friends!

Event Logistics 3/29/23 @ Bel Air Art Lounge, my peer mentor Abigail hosts a fun little game night for my peer group!

Pentathlon category #ArtsScholars

It’s been a while since my peer mentor group did something together, but I’m glad we got the chance to have a game night together. We played a few games of Golf with Friends which is an online mini-golf game that we could all play locally. During our meet-up, we all reflected on the past year and our experience as Arts Scholars. The idea of community always got brought up which was interesting to me since I never thought that the arts would have community as a major part of how art works. This makes sense though because a piece of art only works if others come to witness it themselves. That is what gives art its meaning in the first place. A statement is only heard if there are others to hear it. Anyways, we kept mentioning how the community was something Arts Scholars was really helpful towards. For example, all of the Craft & Chats were great for getting the community together to accomplish something fun. Then, at the end of last semester, we got together with our class groups to present pieces of art we worked on to showcase to the entire class. We all grew together as one community so that we have people to share our art with. It’s much different than my major community because as a STEM major, our community isn’t based on sharing our creativity with one another. It’s more so about networking rather than sharing. Talking about this with my peer mentor group just brought us closer and I realized that these meet-ups give us an even closer circle of friends within Arts Scholars, further emphasizing that sense of community.