Marina Nebro: Arts and Culture

During my Fall 2015 semester, I took a Ceramics I course with artist and professor Matthew Nolen. It was a great experience, and something I looked forward to every week. The last time I played around with clay was elementary school, can you believe it!? It was a definite challenge, and required patience, planning, and learning new skills – pottery wheel, soft and hard slab creation, coiling, and glazing! I definitely would like to go back to exploring the potential of clay at some point, but for now, here are some of my creations! (more…)

This semester was dedicated to completing my double major in History and Art History – only 3 classes. I had all the room in the world to take exciting electives, and I decided I wanted to start getting into art again, having taken a large hiatus since my AP Studio Art days. Professor Nancy Cohen was a great professor, and I think I progressed a lot in these few months!!! (more…)

Crocheting has been a hobby of mine for a little over a year now. I picked up the skill when I was in Spain during the summer of 2012. My great-aunt taught me how to crochet, and I learned all the stitches and patterns in Spanish. When I came back to the States, I had to do a bit of re-learning so that I could understand English-language patterns and explanations!

I have been knitting since I was much younger, having been taught by my grandmother. Unfortunately, I can only knit scarves, though I have recently tried some other stitches. (more…)

It is extremely hilarious how unmotivated I am while at home, but when I’m at college, I hop right onto my computer and type up a blog. Well, here’s my first post of the new year!!! Hope it meets your expectations.

I have neglected up until now to mention Inisfada or the St. Ignatius Jesuit Retreat House located in Manhasset. But before this, I would just like to thank Father Damian Halligan, the onsite historian at St. Ignatius, for being so welcoming to me, taking me around, and informing me of all its intricate details. (more…)

So the semester is over, and I will never again step foot in that strange warehouse/studio looking classroom at the back of Klapper with the same students. I must say, I really enjoyed these past 16 weeks of Introduction to Theatre Design with Meghan Healey (see previous post).

For our final project, we were asked to listen to and read Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw – a fairly modern and hard to listen to opera. I originally wanted to design costumes, but after seeing The Mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway, I was inspired to design the set. I created drops to illustrate all of the scenes instead of three-dimensional settings. I used props sparingly, to bring more focus to the grandiosity of the drops, stage, and story. I wanted the opera to feel slightly old fashioned – where the singers come on stage and sing their lines then leave (unlike modern operas when they almost act as if they are in a musical or drama). (more…)

I can’t believe my first semester of college is almost over!!! Today I presented my last emotional response project for my Introduction to Theatre Design class. Mine seemed to be very different from most of the presentations. So many people had moving traumatic experiences that they remembered – and if not experiences, moving and emotional fears. And what are my fears? (more…)

Marina Nebro
Acrylic, collage
2012

I’ve been asked by the Macaulay Messenger, my college’s online newsletter, to write a “blurb” about this piece of artwork. How they chose this one, I have no idea, but I was extremely flattered that they thought to contact me for a little bit of an explanation.

This painting was probably one of the last ones I worked on in my senior year’s AP Studio Art class. It was my thirteenth piece in my twelve piece collection – being a very punctual student, I had some extra time to give myself multiple options for my final portfolio. It might help to understand what my concentration actually was, and then to go on and talk about this particular piece. (more…)

The Introduction to Theatre Design project on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing was probably the most nerve-wracking by far, but mostly because it was my first legitimate group project (with Tom Stagnitta and Livia Crespo) and I didn’t want to let anyone down. I was assigned costumes again, which I was very pleased about because the other options were set design and lighting. Set would be my second option, but lighting? I’d rather stick to costume design, thank you very much!

When I think of Shakespeare plays, I automatically think of Elizabethan style costume. This was my group’s first idea in terms of an overall theme for our design. But, when reading this play, it had a more airy quality than Elizabethan would allow for. Livia found an amazing picture while researching lighting: Fragonard’s The Meeting. I was so glad she brought this to our attention because Fragonard was one of my favorite artists when studying the Rococo era in Art History with Ms. Emily Man in high school. Once we all saw the painting, we immediately agreed on a Rococo theme. Easy, right? Not so fast! We weren’t going to make it that simple for ourselves. Instead of setting the play in the mid-1700s, we would pick a more modern era with Rococo inspired costumes and set. Not as easy as it might sound. (more…)

Twice before I have posted blogs about emotional response projects I had for my Introduction to Theatre Design class. This is the third time that I shall post something of the sort: this time in response to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. The assignment for this play was to create a sculpture. I am an artist, but I rarely venture into the realm of the three dimensional artwork, so this was a new adventure for me! Just like for any other art project for which I have an idea, the idea is a lot more crisp and clean than the outcome. And due to the the terror that hurricane Sandy wrought on Long Island, I didn’t really have time or a way to get any commercial art supplies to aid my struggle. (more…)

If you’re following my blog, you will know that I’m taking an Introduction to Theatre Design class my first semester here at Queens College. I’ve just completed my final assignment for the first play we’ve read: The Liar by Carlo Goldoni. For a brief synopsis of the play, there is a young man named Lelio who has come to Venice from Rome. He sees these two beautiful young women, Rosaura and Beatrice, atop a balcony and decides that he is going to make them fall for him. Through many mischievous lies, he gets both of the sister to fall in love with him. He takes credit for many gifts such as a serenade, lace, and a poem given to Rosaura by her secret admirer, Florindo who is too shy to let her know of his love. The entire play is fairly short and it’s entertaining to see the characters get fooled again and again by Lelio’s lies.

For my final project on Goldoni’s The Liar, we were split into groups of two to design costumes and sets for the play.

Project #1: The Liar by Carlo Goldoni (Collaboration and Analysis) due September 24th.

Groups of two – Costume and Scenic Designer

• Research for two different concepts of the play (some examples of a “concept” would be: Modern Dress production, Traditional Commedia, Futuristic, Non-Western Culture, or Parody of Current Events)
• Set Designer: 2 Sketches or collages depicting each concept’s environment (4-5 sketches total)
• Costume Designer: 2 Costume renderings for your assigned characters depicting him/her in each concept (4 sketches total) (more…)

This semester I’m taking a very interesting and enjoyable class: Drama 111 – Introduction to Theatre Design. It turns out, the class is pretty much an art class where the students have to design sets, costumes, and occasionally lighting and sound cues. It is taught by Professor Healey who happens to be a professional puppet and costume designer.

For the first assignment, the class had to read Carlo Goldoni’s “The Liar: a Comedy in Three Acts.” Written in the mid-18th century, this play was considered part of the genre called Commedia del’Arte. The actors in these plays wore masks to identify them as certain characters. Going off of this tradition, Professor Healey asked the class to create a mask while keeping the following in mind. (more…)

It was the twenty-seventh of August, and I was excited to go to my first Macaulay Event – Night at the Museum at the Brooklyn Museum. The Brooklyn Museum just happens to be one of my favorite museums due to its variety – art, artifacts, and great temporary exhibits. I visit the feminist wing every time I stop by – Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is so interesting to look at and I love learning about history’s strong women! So, of course I was excited for this event.

The assignment for our visit was to talk about the artwork in an intellectual manner. For me, there’s no difficulty in talking about artwork. It comes naturally to me. However, many of my fellow “Macaulians” were very nervous about this assignment. They felt insecure. My group-mates thought I was a genius, as I talked about Hellenistic-esque drapery and the symbolism of the color white. But little did they know, my group-mates themselves made several comments that far exceeded my perceived genius.

I was really blown away while admiring Abbott Handerson Thayer’s My Children in the American wing. As a group, but I was mostly influenced by the others’ ideas, we decided that the painting was representing Mother Nature and Adam and Eve. From this assumption, I offered some feedback about Thayer’s style (brushstrokes) and possible symbolism – are the brushstrokes of Mother Nature’s hands more visibly sparse because mankind is killing the natural world through industrialization? One of the other members of the group suggested that the children (believed to be Adam and Eve) were in a darker shadow because of sin and evil, as they no longer took care of their earth. (more…)