Category: Entertainment

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A key point of OWU graduate Morgan Treni’s musical development was forgetting to do her homework.

Treni, class of 2012, was taking a creative writing course with professor Michelle Disler and got her paper’s due date confused. Instead of turning it in, she ran to her dorm room, grabbed her guitar and ran back to her classroom.

“(I) sat down on the floor of the classroom and I said, ‘I’m just going to sing this one,’ and I sang it and then I ran out of the classroom,” Treni said. “(Disler) came up afterwards and she grabbed my elbow and she said, ‘That was slick but it was smart and you’re a songwriter.’”

Treni credits Disler’s guidance with helping her grow as a “musical essayist,” as Disler called it, and realize her own creativity.

Her creativity reached new heights with the release of her first album, “The Dreamer and Other Essays,” after her second appearance at the annual Community Festival (Comfest) on June 28. But she makes it clear the production was definitely not a solo effort.

“This album is dedicated to (Disler) because she really helped me find my way,” Treni said.

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While Treni had played trumpet before entering OWU and originally planned to be a trumpet major, she soon shifted away from that. She tried the guitar, sang a cappella in the Owtsiders and wrote her first song as a freshman sitting outside Hayes Hall, she said with a laugh. She then shied away from studying music, looking towards business and focusing on the small sports store she helped run. Treni found OWU’s program was more focused on economics than business, and while she enjoyed business her mind is better suited to visuals than numbers. “I felt really lost,” she said. But thanks to Ohio Wesleyan’s liberal arts requirements she would soon find her home in creative writing, as she was required to take three writing courses. “The gentleman I was dating at the time recommended (the course) Writing Essays and so I went and that’s where I met Dr. Disler,” she said. “And for a year and a half she said, ‘Come be an English major, you’re a writer, be an English major.’” Treni eventually did become an English major. While she first thought she had too much energy to sit and read books, that soon changed. “It’s incredible what happened, in a very small amount of time books became my best friend and writing became my art and when I graduated I started singing that art and thus grew the songwriting,” she said. Even while she was at OWU, her reading, particularly on philosophy, often led directly to her music, although not always in university-approved ways. “I was a very late night studier at Beeghly Library and I was reading really heavy theory books, critical theory books, and I would stay up past when Beeghly closed, in the cafe,” she said. One night her junior year, Treni stayed up so late she saw the mailman delivering newspapers to Hamilton-Williams Campus Center. She then noticed and that he didn’t lock the door behind him completely. “I would go over and break in at 4:30 in the morning and play the piano before any of the maintenance people were there and I would leave at about 5:30 and go back to studying,” she said. “…They ended up catching on to my trick and locking the door. So I have a very special relationship with Beeghly Library and with that piano in Hamwill. I did some of my first concerts there.”

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After graduation, she decided to pursue songwriting while also working at a Yamaha piano dealership in Columbus. She later move there from Delaware and eventually left the dealership in February to focus fully on her music. “With all the focus that’s where other opportunities have opened to me,” she said. And she’s had quite a few opportunities, singing in the jazz orchestra of her mentor Vaughn Wiester and being asked to do recording demos for several local songwriters, including a few who approached her after ComFest. She even had a song used as part of a film soundtrack, although it was one produced as part of a Columbus filmmaker’s competition. “I feel very blessed for how well-received everything is developing,” she said. Several of her songs related to her time at Ohio Wesleyan, but none as much as ‘Delaware’, written and practiced those early mornings. [youtube id=”xR8vjqEusnQ”] As a whole, she structured the album like a musical book, complete with a table of contents on the back of the CD case. First, naturally, is ‘Prologue’, although that wasn’t the song’s original title. “It was called ‘Resume,’ kinda the introduction you have for businesses and employment so this is mine to the world and the music community,” she said. Next comes ‘The Dreamer,’ which she wrote in the midst of being told that making it in music was nearly impossible. “I said, ‘Well, I’m going to be kind, I’m going to be loving, I’m going to work hard and failure is not an option,” she said. ‘Fishbowl,’ the third song on the ten-track CD, was written while she worked at a Yamaha piano dealership in Columbus. “I sat down at (the piano) and ‘Fishbowl’ came out,” she said. “I couldn’t be inside, I need to be outside ‒ I have so much energy it’s combusting.” Other songs included ‘Mr. Carroll,’ inspired by her thesis paper on Lewis Carroll and ‘Open Road,’ written on the way to work at a farm in Marysville, Ohio where she milked a cow after graduation.

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The CD took around eight months and $8,000 to produce, although the funding relied on significant community support ‒ Treni used a Kickstarter campaign to raise $3,500. “(I marketed the Kickstarter) kinda the same way that I’ve been doing everything with this business,” she said. “I love people and the joy of this music for me has been bringing people into my life to be on board with my passion, so I wrote to friends, I sent emails individually to students, to faculty, I performed – I was performing three nights a week at every open mic night I could find to gain support, creating newsletters and it just all came together by faith and good people.” She received donations from 77 online supporters and between 20 and 30 in person; different levels of support received different gifts. Everyone who gave received a handwritten letter ‒ “(I got a) little carpal tunnel,” she joked ‒ and a copy of the CD. A donation of $40 got a signed copy of the CD; $100 got two CDs and Morgan Treni coasters. While she sang all the songs on the CD, they all feature instrumentals by a variety of musicians, including Treni’s father. Morgan’s sister Ashley also helped, designing the cover, and helped drive her to Comfest from their home in New Jersey. While she calls Columbus her home base, Treni recently moved back to the greater New York City area, which offers many more opportunities ‒ although she’ll be back at the end of July for a show at the Brothers Drake Meadery in Columbus, a frequent venue for her performances over the past year. “Columbus is home base, I have incredible relationships here,” she said. “I drew a lot of support from this area here and I was excited to bring the CD, everybody’s been waiting really patiently for this album to come together and it was exciting how this ComFest weekend perfectly placed itself as the piece of the equation for that to happen.”

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She may not know what exactly comes next, but that’s not going to get in her way. “It’s hard to say (where I’ll end up,)” she said. “Definitely singing in many places. To coin an OWU phrase, the world is my oyster ‒ there’s a lot of ears, there’s a lot of stages and I’m very excited to meet people and other musicians, artists.” “…I love to travel, and I love people and I love being creative and so without a doubt I’m going to go all over the world.” It may be awhile before she’s traveling the world, but she only sees good things down the road. “We’re still on the incline, everything’s been a high point, it’s a journey,” Treni said when asked what the high point of her work has been. “Last year (at ComFest) was really special because it was my first music festival to play,” she did note. To be booked she had to compete with 600 other local acts; only 250 got to perform. “It’s definitely competitive,” she said. “I feel very grateful for the opportunity again this year and with my own space, there’s a lot of talent in Columbus, a lot of talented musicians and certainly artists, (Comfest)’s a great thing to be part of.” “I would say it was a little more comfortable this time around because I knew the stage…but I was a little under the weather for the last couple of days so I was nervous about how well I’d perform but it was family, so it was just special.”

The Spectrum Resource Center held the first “Queer Artist of the Month” celebration on Wednesday, April 23 in the Hamilton Williams Campus Center.

“We wanted to sort of up our presence on campus so that people are more aware of us as a resource,” said sophomore  SRC intern Zoe Morris.

“I’ve personally noticed that environments that are most friendly to queer people are environments that celebrate their identities rather than just defend them so we wanted to do something that was celebratory.”

This month’s queer artist was Hannah Höch. Höch is well known for her work during the Wiemar period as a German avant-garde artist as a part of the Dada movement.

Morris said the Höch was selected randomly.

“I was just like hey, Hannah Höch is really cool and that is how it started,” she said.

The event took place during the lunch hour and a table was set up with an assortment of items that students could use to make their own craft.

Morris said she thought the event went well.

“We got a lot of positive feedback and I’m hoping OWU students will start bringing us artists that they would like to see featured,” she said.

“We had a lot of people come up and say that this was a good de-stressor or that the fact that they hadn’t known about the artist prior to this.”

She said it was also good because they heard back from a lot of people who didn’t know much about the resource center prior to the event.

“We also had people who were just happy and that was sort of the idea,” she said.

Junior Kyle Simon said the new feature will bring diversity to the Resource Center’s events.

“Much of the art and performance work we tend to bring to campus, at least queer related, tend to be slam poets and spoken word artists,” he said.

“That kind of physical performance that students can watch seems to make a lot of sense and those events tend to have a lot of attendance.”

As of now, Morris said the Resource Center is thinking of featuring one art project per month, but are flexible to further developing the program.

“It’s in its early stages as an idea, but maybe if it catches on, it is something that will expand (into something more),” she said.

This event was the first and last one for the semester, but they are planning to have different artists once school resumes in the fall.

“I would like to feature women because I think that the arts community has been supportive of queer (people) more recently, it’s not something that’s always been the case” Morris said.

The Resource Center works with the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs (OMSA), the Women’s House, the Women’s Resource Center and PRIDE primarily, but Morris said they are interested in any organization that shares a positive mission.

In the future Morris hopes to work with other departments like the Fine Arts department to feature artists. “It would be great if this event could tie into other programing that’s happening,” she said.

 

Seen in Delaware, Ohio – junior Josh Denison sports a rainbow-colored flag.
Photo by Caleb Dorfman
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The grassy hillside known as the HWCC’s amphitheater served as an outdoor stage for two of Ohio Wesleyan’s a capella groups last Sunday.

The concert was organized by the Jaywalkers, the all-male a capella group, and also featured Owtsiders, the coed a capella group. The all-female group, Pitch Black, was scheduled to perform but was unable to attend as not enough members were able to perform

After some minor sound system problems, the Owtsiders took the stage beginning with the Beatles’ “Because,” and ending with OneRepublic’s “Counting Stars,” which featured solos by sophomore Julia Stone and junior Noah Manskar.

The Jaywalkers stepped up to the microphone in a conga line formation and sang “Come Go With Me,” a mash-up of songs by the Beach Boys and R. Kelly’s “Ignition.” The group was met with laughter when the group free versed the line “ask for consent” into the lyrics.

The concert then switched to a more serious tone with Jaywalkers co-leader Incarnato announcing the last song of the night would be dedicated to Jaywalker Cameron Osbourne. Normally, the group takes time to recognize the graduating seniors of their group. However, there are no seniors this year and so the group decided to recognize Osbourne, who will not be returning to Ohio Wesleyan next year in order to serve in the military.

“It’s weird to think I’m not coming back,” Osbourne said.

 

“What was your happiest memory?” 

 “Marrying my wife. I’m a widow now.”

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Junior Kristen Krak and sophomores Margot Reed and Zoe Morris put on “Anthology of Survival” for their SLU house projects.

Reed describes the event as “a production produced and written by students, for the students.”

“It focuses on breaking the stigma of mental health in a way to get the word out about how it affects people in this community,” said Reed, a member of the House of Peace and Justice.

“The monologues written were submitted anonymously and randomly assigned to those who auditioned to perform.”

Morris, a member of the Women’s House, said recent graduates Megan Cook and Jordan Ahmed, who were members of the Active Minds group, first started “Anthology of Survival.”

Krak, a member of the Citizens of the World house, added that this is the third year of the project.

This year’s performance ran for about an hour and featured a variety of monologues.

Booklets from the performance could be purchased with a donation to Helpline.

As for planning the project, Krak said it was nice to have the work split up between three people. Krak said planning for the event started at the beginning of the semester, and she has been thrilled with the amount of participation from students.

“It’s been really encouraging to see people come out of seemingly nowhere to help with this project,” Krak said.

“A lot of the people in it are friends of ours, or housemates, but there are a few who just heard about it and were interested in helping, which is really awesome.”

Morris said she hopes this project will start a discussion about mental health.

“I also hope that the people who submitted stories and the students reading the stories feel that they gain something for the experience, be that, relief, understanding, or catharsis,” she said.

Both Krak and Reed said they want to raise awareness of mental health issues in the OWU community.

“Just being mindful of your own mental illness and others’ is helpful in creating a more welcoming environment for those struggling with it,” Reed said.

“No one should ever feel bad or wrong for something they can’t control.”

The Issue: Ukraine 

Another deadline has passed in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis. The Ukrainian government wanted pro-Russian militants out of the country’s east. The deadline was set for Monday, April 14, but nothing was done to reinforce it.

According to the New York Times, the government in Kiev threatened to use force in order to restore its authority in the eastern part of the Ukraine, but the Russian government warned against it.

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency session on Sunday, April 13, and the US warned it was likely to impose further sanctions against Russia if nothing is done about the occupation of the east, according to Al Jazeera. According to the Associated Press (AP), Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov asked for the deployment of United Nations peacekeeping troops in the east.

However, “peacekeepers would have to be authorized by the U.N. Security Council, in which Russia holds a veto,” AP said.

The Issue: Nigeria

A homegrown Islamist extremist group is being blamed for an explosion that occurred at a crowded bus station in Nigeria, according to the New York Times.

The explosion happened in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, during the morning rush hour on Monday, April 14. Al Jazeera said at least 71 people are dead and as many as 124 are wounded.

Boko Haram, the terrorist organization, “has been attacking schools, government sites and civilians for years,” the New York Times said.

According to AP, “One official said he believed the bomb buried in the earth while emergency management agency said the explosives were apparently hidden in a vehicle.”

Boko Haram’s goal is to make Nigeria an Islamic state with Sharia, which is Islamic law, according to AP.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan was quick to blame the attack on Boko Haram, however, a police spokesman said “no one has claimed immediate responsibility for the explosion, and that an investigation was underway,” the New York Times said.

The Issue: Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a part of the United Nations, warned that governments are not doing enough to “avert profound risks in coming decades,” the New York Times said.

This report has signaled that the Earth is in a critical position, according to the New York Times, with greenhouse emissions rising faster than ever, and an intensive push over the next 15 years is the only way to bring those emissions under control.

According to the BBC, “scientists will also cautiously endorse a shift to natural gas [as] an alternative to carbon intensive sources.”

The BBC also reports that, “…if significant action isn’t taken by 2030, global temperatures could rise by more than 2 degrees C.”

The vast diversity within the graduating class of Ohio Wesleyan Fine Art students was displayed for all to see this weekend at the Ross Art Museum.

The mixed media now exhibited in “Happenings” ranges from photography and paintings, to booklets and jewelry with each piece telling a distinct and unique story.

Senior Ha Le said she was most excited and honored to display her four portraits of family members.

“They’re the center pieces of the show and they’re hung on the wall right opposite to the entrance,” Le said.

“My parents are coming for my graduation so I can’t wait to walk them through the show.”

Another senior featured in the gallery, Melissa Ward, said she was thrilled to have five of her pieces shown.

She also said that she was excited to display a technique she has become “obsessed” with over the past year.

“I draw with a painted brush dipped in ink onto canvas,” Ward explained.

“I have a large un-stretched canvas drawing of cow skulls and a book created with the ink and canvas featuring an idea of dancing,” she said of her art presented in “Happenings.”

In order to prepare for the senior show, students formed a board with various responsibilities assigned such as Reception Chair, Executive-Installation Chair and Publicity Chair, among others.

Tasks involved fundraising for free wine, appetizers, and the musical accompaniment of student band Wahoo! Sam Crawford to supplement the opening.

“Besides actually creating the art works,” Ward said that she, along with most of the other students, were responsible for framing and displaying their pieces.

“I had a solo show at the Werner Art Gallery,” said Ward.

“And that helped me in prepping for the senior show because I had to have many of the same works finished and framed.”

Similarly, Le said that she put on an individual show earlier in February and framed many of her pieces for that.

“I also signed up to help set up the show,” said Le. “I have some art handling experience from the Gallery Management class I took last year.”

Le also said that she helped to fundraise and promote the exhibit across campus.

Across the 18 seniors that will be featured in Ross through May 11 each has their own vision and background behind their work.

Concise booklets with photos and statements of each individual student were available to make the exhibit easier to digest by spectators.

The booklets also featured a collective artist statement expressing the basis for “Happenings”:

“A celebration of our moments- both the ones that happened at Ohio Wesleyan University, and the ones that happen continually in our work. Though we say a bittersweet goodbye to our peers and professors, our art keeps the memory of our collegiate experience alive.”