Behind the scenes
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Returning to Illinois theatre to direct, mentor students
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — It’s a few days before the opening of a new play at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and the student actors are rehearsing the opening scene. Director Tyrone Phillips is watching from the seats of the theater – a place familiar to him from his days as an acting student at […]
Nurturing a tropical paradise in the heart of the Midwest
URBANA, Ill. – Lexi Gomez is knee-deep in a pond when I first see her in the U. of I. Plant Biology Greenhouse and Conservatory. A fifth-year senior who will graduate this semester, Gomez dips a net in the dark water to clear the pond of debris fallen from the lush jungle of tropical plants […]
Teaching generations of students about outbreaks – with art
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Most people don’t visit the health department to view student art, but here we are, in the busy main hall of the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District. We are wearing face masks, reading artist statements and reviewing more than a dozen visual and digital explorations of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, COVID-19 and – […]
Using a 19th-century hand press to teach history of printing technologies
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Three students gather around an old iron letterpress at the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab, preparing to make a print using 19th-century technology. The press requires all three students to operate it. One student uses a roller to spread ink across the type sitting on the bed of the press. Another places the […]
Bringing a game to life through dance
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — I’m in my little sister’s room, where I’ve grabbed her Bop It! toy from her desk. I will use this toy to structure the dance I’m choreographing. I have my little black notebook and favorite black pen nearby. My phone leans against my computer, ready to record. I pull the Bop It! […]
A marvelous morning of migratory bird banding
CHAMPAIGN COUNTY, Ill. – My alarm is going off as I quietly, yet eagerly, get out of bed at the dark and early time of 4 a.m. Today, I get to do something that I love that also benefits bird conservation. Weather permitting, the team treks to each of the 10 mist nets scattered at […]
Vivifying ikebana: Japanese flower arranging
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Sitting at the long covered tables in the heart of Japan House, I close my eyes. All 18 of us do. We are students in the Japan House class Ikebana: The Art of Japanese Flower Arrangement. Professor Kimiko Gunji is introducing our sixth ikebana arrangement, and this is our first step. My […]
Learning from chickens
About 1,200 chickens, including white leghorns, pure Columbians and brown egg-layers known as Hy-Lines, inhabit a facility designed to hold roughly 2,500 chickens. Photo by Michelle Hassel Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed. align image leftalign image centeralign image right CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The first thing I notice when […]
Bringing an enslaved potter’s story to the Met
NEW YORK CITY – As we climb the mountain of stairs that leads to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and step inside, I’m struck by the scale and grandeur of what lies before me and the complexity, beauty and discourse it offers. My family and I are entering one of the pinnacles of American artistic […]
Exploring an ancestral Maya neighborhood
Incised ceramic sherds excavated from an ancestral Maya building. Photo copyright ©2022 VOPA and Belize Institute of Archaeology, NICH. Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed. align image leftalign image centeralign image right CENTRAL BELIZE – We stand in the open fields of Spanish Lookout, a modernized Mennonite farming community […]
Searching the Texas brushland for a rare, temperamental plant
ZAPATA COUNTY, Texas – Our truck rumbles down a dirt road, kicking stones and swirling clouds of dust in our wake. Illinois Natural History Survey senior plant ecologist Brenda Molano-Flores, INHS researcher Janice Coons and I drive at a snail’s pace to avoid deep gullies created by flash flooding, a defining feature of this region’s […]
Waiting for the sun to set to find a rare bird
MASON COUNTY, Ill. – When most people are just getting home from their workdays, I’m about to start mine. I am a researcher studying the breeding behavior of the Eastern whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus), a cryptic bird that is primarily active after sunset as it forages on the wing for moths. So – for the summer, […]