Jenna Schnuer

The New York Times: In Alaska, Slowing Down to Take Things In

 With rain hitting the roof, the temperature outside hovering in the low 50s and a cast iron stove keeping things warm inside the cabin that, on this July weekend, is serving as an art studio and classroom, I feel a nap coming on. Summer days in Alaska. They are not always the bluebird skies promised in travel ads.

But there’s no time for napping on this trip to McCarthy, a bustling summer community of artists, writers, seasonal workers and visitors that sits 60 miles down a gravel road in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve.

I’m here to expand the techniques I use to observe and record the natural world, to gain a deeper understanding of the animals, plants and geology of the state I’ve called home for eight years. Over the next two days I’ll attend a field-sketching workshop taught by the science illustrator and natural history artist Kristin Link through the Wrangell Mountains Center.

Read the piece on the NYT site.

Anchorage Daily News: From Wee Tots to Trained Professionals, There’s Room for Every Artist at the Alaska State Fair

Enter the Alaska State Fair through the green gate and there’s no avoiding the instant assault on your senses. Even before the flashing lights of the rides and games fan out in front of you, the scents of sugar and barbecue smoke smack you headlong. Yet on this grim gray afternoon, it took the stunningly loud pop of the Mash-a-Mouse game’s oversized balloons to snap me out of what had become an overwhelming desire to take a nap.

Even a Monday at the fair can feel very Monday.

Gray day or not, I maintain that any adult in need of a one-day pre-winter vacation from reality should head out to Palmer on the second Monday of the fair season. Solo.

Read the piece.

Anchorage Daily News: Singer-songwriter Annie Bartholomew Shares Stories of Gold Rush Women on 'Sisters of White Chapel'

“Alaskan Storyteller.” That’s the phrase Juneau-based Annie Bartholomew uses to describe herself on her website. Simple and to the point but way too modest.

Just one round of listening to Bartholomew’s first album makes that clear. “Sisters of White Chapel,” which tells the stories of the women who did sex work during the Klondike gold rush, was released earlier this month. The life stories woven into the album’s nine songs took Bartholomew several years to research and write.

Read the story on the ADN website.

Sarah Lawrence: Into the StormSpring 2016

Avant-garde theatre tends to attract rule breakers. For David Neumann (theatre), the founder and artistic director of Advanced Beginner Group, a multidisciplinary dance troupe, breaking the rules meant smashing the old chestnut that says kids should resist joining the family business.

https://www.sarahlawrence.edu/magazine/finding-courage/campus/into-the-storm.html

American Way: Light It UpDecember 2013

Let’s get beyond “storytelling” as a buzzword. Marketers toss it around with abandon these days. Fine. Yawn. Whatever. This story isn’t about that. It’s about the essence of storytelling. The person-to-person connections that well-told stories build. The things that happen in your brain when you’re on either side of a storytelling.

“Stories are our ultimate democracy, in the sense that everyone has them. Everyone has a deep need to tell them and to listen to them. They define us. They go across borders, boundaries, gender and their age — no matter what it happens to be,” says Colum McCann, author of novels including TransAtlantic and Let the Great World Spin. 

Read the full story on the American Way site. 

One+: Tell It Like It IsApril 2013

There are many traits common to real New Yorkers: A love of discussing how much they pay for their apartments; the absolute confidence with which they hand out subway advice; and the inability to keep the first appointment of the day—it’s part of the narrative of New York life.

So it wasn’t a big surprise when Joan Firestone, executive director of New York-based storytelling organization, The Moth, emailed to change the next day’s interview time. But Firestone had the most NYC-of-all reasons for the change: She was going to former Mayor Ed Koch’s funeral. 

Read my profile of Firestone from the April One+.

One+: The InterdisciplinarianMarch 2012

It’s practically a requirement to raise an eyebrow at a person who calls herself an innovator. Innovator. It’s such a grand word. Isn’t that something we get to brand a person, not something she gets to call herself? Yet, every once in a while, somebody gets a pass. Or more than a pass. Every once in a while you come across a person who really should have “innovator” bedazzled on all of her shirts and printed on her license plates.

Take, for instance, Cathy Davidson. After a few minutes of eyeballs a-jumping through her bio—co-founder of the 7,000-member Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), former Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke from 1998-2006, current English professor at Duke; after scrolling through the list of books she’s written or edited, which cover territory from understanding Japanese culture to the rise of the American novel to brain science; after finding out about her role in the creation of programs at Duke, including the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the program in Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS); and, even more so, after hearing the sheer excitement in her voice when she discusses the Internet, education, her newfound love of young adult fiction and her ability to tie ideas together and make them accessible—well, innovator sounds downright humble.

Read the profile.

American Way: Mission ImprobableOctober 15, 2010

Can artist Jason Polan draw every person in NYC? Maybe not, but that won't stop him from trying.

No piece of paper had ever looked so blank. Or so threatening. But the only way to get a Taco Bell Drawing Club membership card--and you want a Taco Bell Drawing Club membership card--is to grab the pen being offered and start drawing a line on the blank before you.

It doesn't matter if the line wobbles, weaves and is the start of something horrific. With that first line, artist Jason Polan starts filling your name in on that card. You're part of his world.

And it's a good place to be.

 

National Geographic Traveler's Intelligent Travel Blog: The Atlas of Remote IslandsOctober 6, 2010

The first five times (or so) that I paged through the Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will, I fell deeply in love with the book. But I also didn't see it for what it really is. The problem wasn't that of the early stages of romance between people: I wasn't blinded to the book's faults but, instead, I underestimated the extent of its charms. Though the elegantly-lettered first words of the preface caught my eye, "Paradise is an island. So is hell," I skipped over the text and went straight to the maps.

Read the piece.

National Geographic Traveler's Intelligent Travel Blog: Make Your Own FestivalSeptember 28, 2010

 I couldn't tell exactly what the noise was or where it was coming from: There was the ping ping ping of xylophones, a beating drum, and the shaking rattling noises of...something. Pursing the sounds across the grounds of the New York Hall of Science, I expected to find a small band of people using a clearing as a practice space. Instead I found a guy in a plaid shirt standing behind a folding table loaded with small player-pianoesque musical instruments (aka, Nick Yulman and his Bone Conductor Mechanical Orchestra).

My brain-swirling day at World Maker Faire NY was officially underway.

Read the piece.

Continental: Latin American LeaningsApril 1, 2010

Gilbert Vicario wanted to be a painter. He even went to art school. But there was one little problem. As he explains it: "I didn't know how to paint to save my life." 

Luckily, the visual arts program at the University of California, San Diego, where Vicario earned his bachelor's degree, focused more on concept than on craft. "I realized the training I got in that program was similar to what was necessary to become a curator," says Vicario, who since August 2009 has held that very position at the Des Moines Art Center.

Read the profile.