By Heather Hennigan
Writer
No, University students didn’t meet the baby elephant with the huge ears. What they did do was even better, believe it or not. On Sept. 24, over 40 students hopped onto a bus bound for Brooklyn to visit a temporary Mecca for the arts in New York–-the 15th annual DUMBO Arts Festival. The Presidential Arts Initiative and the Griot Institute for Africana Studies sponsored this one-day event.
DUMBO featured 100 studios, 50 galleries and stages, and over 500 artists from a variety of disciplines, encompassing art from local, national and international communities. Musicians, painters, poets, performance artists and dancers filled the streets and created an atmosphere that was nothing short of spectacular.
“Everyone was involved in everything that was going on; the audience was just as engaged as the performers were,” Elyas Harris ’13 said. “I’d love to see something like this brought to the Bucknell campus.”
The Festival also featured a gallery talk and exhibit, “Invisible,” by art and art history professor and artist Tulu Bayar.
“[The festival had] cutting-edge multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary works. The whole neighborhood was turned into a creative lab. Besides the galleries in the area, various artwork was displayed in elevators of buildings, on and under the bridge, in dumpster trucks converted into display units, in the park and on the sky,” Bayar said.
“[My exhibition] received very positive feedback from hundreds of festival attendees and gave me the assurance that ‘Invisible’ was a great beginning for a new direction in my work. It was worth all the hard work, risk-taking and experimentation. I would like to thank every Bucknellian for their invaluable support. I am especially grateful to Carmen Gillespie, who organized the ‘Bucknell in Brooklyn’ bus trip. Her enthusiasm, wisdom, imagination and organizational skills are amazing. I am a proud Bucknellian,” Bayar said.
For more information on the DUMBO Arts Festival, visit dumboartsfestival.com.
Visit bucknell.edu/x71757.xml for “The Muse,” a new weekly arts overview, to stay updated on arts happenings on campus.