The artSCAPE events started on campus to represent arts and faith around the world and the nature of college students with concerts.

ArtSCAPE is a new program created by Dr. Greg Straughn, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. His goal was to bring together the performing arts, theater, music, visual arts and design and literature.

“I wanted to show the great work that all these departments had to offer, so let’s create something that might have a little life beyond any of our departments to explore the performing arts,” Straughn said. “This is the landscape of the arts and this idea came from exchanging ideas and thoughts with faculty and department chairmen and we landed on a theme to bring the music groups together.”

The theme for this first artSCAPE is Arts and Faith around the world, which means that they would like to bring faith and art together to influence the world in a form of song, art and literature. 

ArtSCAPE already had a few events, one is with Riyaaz Qawwali, an ensemble music group that came to the Williams Performing Arts Center on Sept. 6. The ensemble performed cultural music from the cultures of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. ArtSCAPE also hosted a recital called “Journey with my Jewishness” on Sep. 26 with performance by Amit Peled.

Straughn said that attendance at these musical events has been good but would like to promote the next events coming up. The first is an art showing beginning on Friday and runs to Nov. 8 at the Shore Art Gallery where they will be displaying works from Leipzig Studio Residency.

Then artSCAPE will be doing a cover to cover reading of Homer’s The Odyssey on Oct. 31. Following that, they will be having an a cappella concert featuring Adinu on Nov. 7, at St. Paul United Methodist Church.  The last event that they will have is the cornerstone play called The White Rose by Lillian Groag on Nov. 18-23.