Building Bridges Virtual Showcase Live Session featuring Jeff Dalzell

Building Bridges is a UMass public art and engagement initiative that draws on the power of solidarity and creative expression to bring people together and create a bridge across difference. Our initiative focuses on the very real and positive possibilities that exist when people come together across race, religion, class, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, nationality, and more.

Our 2021 Building Bridges Virtual Showcase launches on July 20th and will be ongoing through July 29th. This year’s Showcase features creative work and projects by over 70 UMass Amherst staff members.

This session features Jeff Dalzell from Facilities and Campus Services. Here is his artist's statement:

"I am interested in the intersection of landscape and representational painting traditions. And dreams. An architect who has long used drawing for communication, I have been slowly teaching myself oil painting. I am also a haunter of places where old things wash up. I am interested in the whats and whys of things on walls that have evaded life’s hungry, roaming dumpsters. What might people value enough to keep, to restore, to remake? I am interested in the project—the beauty--of survival."

The showcase will feature digital galleries and live sessions. The digital galleries will highlight the creative work of staff including photography, stained glass, painting, drawing, original songs, poetry, and more.

The live sessions are roughly 20-minute presentations/performances by staff members and will highlight Our Immigrant Voices projects, original writing and poetry, art demonstrations, glass blowing, and musical performances.

Live sessions will take place on Zoom and Facebook Live at Noon and 8pm on July 20th, 21st and 22nd and on July 27th, 28th and 29th. Join us!

To sign up for updates and sessions, click here: https://umassamherst.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bIQfwNOIGbo4gCi

Building Bridges is a collaboration among The Office of Equity and Inclusion, The Partnership for Worker Education, Office of Human Resources, and Civic Engagement Service-Learning.

For more information and to get involved, contact Project Director Jacob Carter: jacarter@umass.edu