Five Williams Seniors Awarded Hubbard Hutchinson Fellowships
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Office of Fellowships has awarded Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial Fellowships to five graduating seniors pursuing careers in the arts: Ariel Chu (creative writing), Mia Hull (theater), Samantha Stone (music), Brian Trelegan (art), and Maria Vicent (dance).
The Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial Fellowship is a cash award established in 1940 that is granted to a member or members of the graduating class to support their continued work in the creative and performing arts. Prizes of $22,000 are awarded in the categories of writing, art, dance, theater and music.
Chu is an English major from Corona, Calif. Knowing that she wanted to be a professional author, she enrolled in upper level English courses while at Williams, in addition to fiction, craft, playwriting and screenwriting workshops to prepare for postgraduate creative work. Chu has completed an honors thesis in English, and has worked as an editorial intern with the Asian American Writer’s Workshop in New York and spent last summer in Iceland doing ethnographic research into the Reykjavik’s literary community as a Wilmers Travel Fellow.
Chu plans to pursue an M.F.A. and says she will use the Hutchinson to continue her academic studies, attend writing conferences and start an online literary magazine for Asian American youths. "Whether as an M.F.A. workshop participant, teacher or editor of an online magazine, I hope to forge empowering connections between fellow writers, especially those who have been denied a place in mainstream culture," Chu said.
A double major in theater and comparative literature from New York City, Hull intends to pursue a career in directing. She has acted in 11 theater department productions while at Williams, and has assisted both faculty and Williams College Summer Theatre Lab directors with productions. She also has been a member of Caps & Bells, a Williams student theater organization. Hull plans to spend the next two to three years gaining experience in directing before entering an M.F.A. program.
"Eventually, it is my plan to enter an M.F.A. program, but I have taken the advice that experience in-between undergraduate and graduate study gives the training a drive and focus, making it far more invaluable," she said. With the Hutchinson, she plans to travel to New York City, Paris and Toga, Japan, to observe theatre directors with various styles and at different points in their careers. Hull plans to work with Caitlin Sullivan, '07, a freelance theater director, and Zi Alikhan, to learn about new play development. In Paris, she will work with Godefroy Segal and his company, Compagnie in Cauda, to study his practice. She will travel to Toga to study Tadashi Suzuki's Summer Theatre Intensive.
Stone, a music major from Baker City, Ore., is an oboist, saxophonist and composer. She began composing music at Williams as a result of working with the Williams Percussion Ensemble and IOTA Ensemble and has written works for string quartet and other small chamber ensembles, both for readings with visiting artists and student ensembles. Two years ago, she staged a campus-wide sound performance piece called Tactus/Chroma and she has created a sound installation for the lobby of the Bernhard Music Center featuring a collage of imitated "bird" sounds from various compositions and recordings.
In 2015, she performed a summer residency at the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives creating sound art about sustainability. With the Hutchinson, Stone plans to pay for living expenses while pursuing an M.A. in composition at SUNY Stone Brook, and also to continue pursuing musical opportunities outside of her graduate program. "Eventually, I want to be involved in the creation of a new music ensemble, in collaboration with musicians and composers with whom I have developed close partnerships as an undergraduate," she said.
Trelegan is a studio art major from Cumberland Center, Maine. While at Williams, he has created work that includes video, photography, sculpture, sound and performance. His work focuses on two questions: How can flaws in old and forgotten technology carry emotion? How can familiar images and sounds create disorienting experiences? Trelegan's work includes collecting old technology, taking it apart and reassembling it to use it incorrectly to create images. He's mounted a solo exhibition this year in Williamstown, Almost Zero: New Work by Brian Trelegan and has opened a small graphic design practice in Maine working with musicians.
With the Hutchinson, Trelegan plans to replace and repair broken equipment used in past work that has made some of his sculptural pieces unable to function. He also plans to put some of the funds toward printing and mounting past and future work, and branching out to acquire more expensive, but still obsolete, technologies. "I am primarily a tinkerer and collector," Trelegan said. "My perpetually changing collection of interesting odds and ends is the world from which my work emerges."
Vicent is a biology major and Phi Beta Kappa member from Caracas, Venezuela, who wants to take a detour to further her interest in dance before deciding on graduate studies in science. In her first semester at Williams, she took an introductory dance course, and in the spring joined Dance Dhamaka, the college's Indian dance team. After interning for the David Koch Theater in New York City last summer, her first summer not spent in a biology lab, Vicent returned to Williams to take a dance tutorial and audition for CoDa, the contemporary dance student group. She then did an independent, interdisciplinary project related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on a friend’s experience. She first conducted a literature review of aspects of PTSD and then choreographed three group dances and a solo based on her friend’s story.
With the Hutchinson, Vicent intends to pursue more dance training, first through a summer intensive program and then by taking classes at dance studios in the Chicago area. "I do not want to abandon science," she said. "I would love to find a way to merge my passion for dance and science. However, I feel that I have a lot of catching up to do on the dance side before I can formulate a strategy to combine them."
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