MOUNT VERNON — Art goes under the microscope — literally — in an exhibition opening Sunday, Jan. 11, at the Peter Paul Luce Gallery in McWethy Hall at Cornell College.

Iowa City photographer Lily Michaud’s installation, “Spiritual Anatomy,” features slides of tissue samples from plants, animals and natural formations. The images are viewed with a microscope while a patron is seated at a lab table. Nearby are two anatomical posters labeled where tissue samples were taken.

Michaud’s work is paired with an installation, “Fire in the Shadows,” a collaboration with photographs by Steve Tatum of Iowa City, ceramics by Amanda Lehtola of Lawrence, Kan., and wrapped sticks by David Kamm, gallery coordinator at Luther College in Decorah.

“When you see the installations, they have some things in common that have to do with quieting of the mind to really see in a more introspective kind of way, a spiritual dimension,” says Susan Coleman, Luce Gallery coordinator.

Michaud’s work explores the subtle energy of the body, as well as the sense that our inner experience contains the whole world. The philosophical context of the work comes from mystical Hinduism. Michaud, who received an M.F.A. in photography from the University of New Mexico, studied with Tibetan monks in India.

“When examined under the microscope the slides reveal images extracted from the subtle body, rather than gross anatomy,” she says. “Looking through the microscope gives the viewer an intimate experience where everything besides the image disappears. It also places their experience within the context of scientific inquiry. The images, on the other hand, are associated with meditative introspection. Faced with this paradox, viewers are asked to reconsider their experience of their own body.”

“Fire in the Shadows” features Tatum’s prints of negatives — dark objects are pictured as light, and vice versa — created with a pinhole camera. He collaborated with ceramist Lehtola for an exhibition installed by Kamm at Luther in 2002. All three earned degrees at the University of Iowa.

An opening reception is Jan. 11 from 2-4 p.m. The exhibition continues through Feb. 15. Gallery hours are 9-4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2-4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will present a stage adaptation of the beloved children’s program, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” in three performances Wednesday, Dec. 17, in Kimmel Theatre of Youngker Hall.

Performances begin at 4, 5 and 6 p.m. No reservations are required and admission is free, although donations will be accepted to help fund other student plays. The Cornell production is directed by Jonathan Levine, a senior from Manchester, Mo.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas,” featuring the Peanuts gang created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, first aired on television in 1965. ABC will broadcast the program on Saturday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m. CST.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will stage “Trust,” a contemporary comic drama by Steven Dietz about relationships set against the backdrop of the rock music scene, Dec. 11-14. Performances are at 8 p.m. in the Plumb-Fleming Studio Theatre of Armstrong Hall.

Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for students, seniors and youth. Admission is free to Cornell students, faculty, staff and emeriti faculty. To reserve tickets, contact the Cornell box office, (319) 895-4293. Seating is limited.

As the six characters’ lives become ever more intertwined, the play offers insights about desire and betrayal, longing and fidelity. “Trust” is intended for mature audiences and contains adult language and situations and brief partial nudity.

The Cornell production is directed by theater professor Mark Hunter and features lighting design by theater professor Scott Olinger. Scenic design is by senior Mary MacFarlane (Fairfax, Va.) and costume design is by sophomore Shelby Newport (Cedar Rapids). The cast features senior Joseph Curnutte (Mahomet, Ill.), sophomores Sonya Thompson (Orinda, Calif.) and Jackie Johnson (Eden Prairie, Minn.), and first-year students Jessica Dunne (Minneapolis, Minn.), Daniel Kelchen (Long Grove) and Colleen Metzger (Naperville, Ill.).

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College’s holiday concert, “A Great and Mighty Wonder,” will honor Cornell’s sesquicentennial year with carols and anthems featuring choral ensembles and King Chapel’s Möller organ at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6. Admission is free.

The 88-voice Concert Choir will perform the festival piece “Jubilate Deo” by Mack Wilberg, with senior Andrew Sorensen (Algona) on timpani and sophomore Miriam Landmark (Marshalltown) on percussion. Other pieces will include two anthems by Felix Mendelssohn; a spiritual, “I Can Tell the World,” by Moses Hogan; a West Indian carol featuring junior John Feldman (Lisbon) and sophomore Katie Brown (Brooklyn Park, Minn.) on steel drums; and a fanfare for double-choir by Daniel Pinkham, “Glory Be to God.”

Chamber Singers, the 22-voice select ensemble, will sing seasonal motets and carols including “Mary’s Magnificat” by Andrew Carter, featuring sophomore Erin Prall (Eagan, Minn.) as soprano soloist. Other selections will include the traditional carols “I Saw Three Ships,” “Ding Dong! Merrily on High” and a jazz arrangement of “Deck the Hall.”

The Chamber Singers toured to Kansas City last spring and in Europe in 2001.

Both ensembles are conducted by Lisa Hearne, Cornell director of choirs for 11 years, and accompanied by organist Lynda Hakken, a Cornell music instructor and doctoral candidate in organ performance at the University of Iowa.

A public reception in Bowman-Carter Hall will follow the concert.

MOUNT VERNON — Fall concerts at Cornell College will feature the Chamber Orchestra and Wind Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, in King Chapel, and two jazz groups at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16, in the Ringer Recital Studio of Armstrong Hall. Admission is free to both concerts.

The Chamber Orchestra’s selections include Haydn’s Notturno VI; Aaron Copland’s “Down a Country Lane,” a lovely simple piece with a gentle, pastoral quality; and Mozart’s overture to “Don Giovanni.” The Wind Ensemble will perform Samuel Barber’s “Commando March,” written during World War II; Beethoven’s Egmont Overture; and Leonard Bernstein’s “Slava!,” an overture written at the request of Mstislav Rostropovich (”Slava” to his friends) for the inaugural concerts of the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Rostropovich.

The jazz concert will feature the seven-piece jazz combo, the Cornell Screamin’ Jazz Babies, performing the well-known blues tune “Night Train,” a funk ballad arrangement of “Angel Eyes,” “Sittin’ Here” by jazz altoist Phil Woods and an original tune composed by the band, “Mary’s Mom.”

The 17-piece Jazz Ensemble’s program features a Count Basie-influenced arrangement of “April in Paris” by noted arranger and tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer; a Mintzer original, “Hop, Skip, and Jump”; Movements 1 and 2 from Mike Tomaro’s award-winning suite for big band, “Nightowl Suite,” an arrangement based on “a night in the life of the quintessential jazz fanatic” and featuring sophomore John Ugaste on tenor sax.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will celebrate its start 150 years ago with a Founders March on Thursday, Nov. 13, to commemorate the 1853 processional from the Mount Vernon Methodist Church by faculty, students and townspeople to open Old Sem, the college’s first academic building.

At 10:45 a.m. the bell atop College Hall will start ringing 150 times to signal the end of morning class and the formation of a processional of faculty — led by actors representing historic Cornell characters — on the campus pedestrian mall. The processional will add Cornell students, Mount Vernon community and church representatives, and other distinguished guests as it travels through Old Sem to King Chapel for an 11 a.m. convocation. President Les Garner will tell the Cornell story, and speakers from the community, the Methodist Church and Cornell’s faculty, student body and alumni association will give brief remarks.

In September 1853, classes began at Cornell — then called the Iowa Conference Seminary — in the old Methodist Episcopal Church because construction was not finished on the first academic building on the new 15-acre campus. Once the Seminary Building was complete, on the morning of Nov. 14, 1853, faculty and students walked in procession through the village and took formal possession of their classroom facility. Today, the Seminary Building, which eventually became known as Old Sem, houses administrative offices.

Cornell’s campus includes 41 buildings on 129 acres and is one of just two U.S. campuses named entirely to the National Register of Historic Places.

MOUNT VERNON — Acclaimed Italian classical guitarist Emanuele Segre performs Nov. 3 at Cornell College for a Music Mondays concert.

The concert begins at 8 p.m. in King Chapel. General admission is $8 at the door. This event, the second of four Music Mondays performances during the school year, is part of Cornell’s sesquicentennial celebration.

Segre’s program at Cornell highlights the music of Spain, including pieces by Gaspar Sanz, Fernando Sor, Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albeniz.

The Italian press has hailed Segre as “Segovia’s successor,” in reference to Andres Segovia (1893-1987), regarded as the father of the modern classical guitar movement. Britain’s Classical Guitar claims, “Everything he plays, believe it or not, becomes a masterpiece.” Segre has earned these and more rave reviews by splendidly interpreting the works of Rodrigo, Villa-Lobos, Paganini, Rossini and Giuliani and other composers.

Born in 1965, he studied at the Milan Conservatory under Ruggero Chiesa, graduating summa cum laude. In 1987 he won the prestigious East & West Artists Prize and New York’s Pro Musicis International Award. Two years later he was selected for the UNESCO International Rostrum of Young Performers. Since then Segre has performed throughout the world, including appearances with the English Chamber Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the European Community Chamber Orchestra. He has attended master classes by Julian Bream and John Williams, and pursues studies in composition and violin as well.

The rest of the 2003-2004 Music Mondays schedule is:
Feb. 9, 2004: Chanson, male a cappella sextet
March 15, 2004: The Peabody Trio

MOUNT VERNON — “The Man Who Discovered Iowa,” a performance by Mel Andringa re-enacting the highlights of Grant Wood’s career, will be staged at Cornell College’s Kimmel Theatre in Youngker Hall at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8.

Admission is free. Tickets can be reserved online or by phone at 895-4293.

Andringa, co-executive director of Cedar Rapids’ Legion Arts, combines visual spectacle, live music and autobiographical anecdotes in a performance that veers from grand opera to low comedy as it relates the story of Iowa’s best-known artist. Andringa re-enacts the high points of Wood’s career — the fame he enjoyed as creator of “American Gothic,” his importance as a Midwestern regionalist and his founding of an art colony in Stone City — and brings to light lesser-known aspects of the artist’s life, including several youthful trips Wood made to Europe, his intense devotion to his mother and a short, unhappy marriage.

During the performance, Andringa tells New Testament stories with the aid of a flannel-graph, demonstrates the art of clog dancing and paints on black velvet.

“The Man Who Discovered Iowa” coincides with Cornell’s sesquicentennial exhibition, “Grant Wood and the Iowa Landscape,” in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery of McWethy Hall through Nov. 9. The exhibition features works by Wood, Marvin Cone and Lee Allen, a student of Wood’s at the University of Iowa, along with landscapes by several contemporary Iowa artists. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.

MOUNT VERNON — The biggest party of the Cornell College sesquicentennial celebration will bring together more than 600 people for a homecoming gala all-alumni dinner and dance Saturday, Oct. 18, at Cedar Rapids’ Collins Plaza Hotel.

The evening will include a screening of Cornell’s sesquicentennial video, an enormous drop of school-color purple and white balloons and multicolored confetti, special presentations, a banquet and a dance.

Cornell’s homecoming celebration, with the theme “It’s Everyone’s Reunion,” runs Oct. 16-19 with events in Mount Vernon, Cedar Rapids and the Amana Colonies. Due to the record number of alumni expected, the college will host Saturday evening activities for older alumni and reunion classes at the Collins Plaza Hotel; for students and younger alumni, a concert by Better Than Ezra will be followed by a dance and casino night, all at the Richard and Norma Small Multi-Sport Center on campus.

Two facilities for the fine arts will be dedicated Friday at 3 p.m. Kimmel Theatre is Cornell’s new 266-seat, state-of-the-art venue for stage productions and lectures. Armstrong Hall, built in 1938, reopened this fall after renovations to modernize it for music and theater.

Cornell will honor several alumni at homecoming. John Mark Dean, a 1958 graduate, professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and internationally known marine scientist, will receive an honorary degree in a ceremony at 11 a.m. Thursday in King Chapel. In a separate ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday in King Chapel, Distinguished Achievement Awards will be given to Susan Shillinglaw, a 1973 graduate, director of the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University and a world-recognized expert on John Steinbeck; and Larry Dorr of Los Angeles, a 1963 graduate and world leader in hip and joint replacement surgery who founded Operation Walk, an international mission in which operating crews travel to developing countries to perform knee and hip replacements and teach native doctors how to perform the operations themselves. Lu Ann White, a class agent for the class of 1978 for 25 years, president-elect of the Cornell Alumni Association and a Des Moines attorney, will receive a Leadership and Service Award.

Other homecoming highlights on campus are a Friday night pep rally and fireworks at Ash Park (9:30 p.m.); parade along First Street before the football game Saturday afternoon (kickoff at 1:30 p.m.); reception Saturday afternoon (3-5 p.m.) for the art exhibition, “Grant Wood and the Iowa Landscape,” in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery of McWethy Hall; campus tours featuring actors in period costumes Friday (1-2 p.m.) and Saturday (1:30-2:30 p.m.); book signings Saturday with Charles Milhauser (”Cornell College: 150 Years From A to Z”) and alumna Nancy Price (”Sleeping with the Enemy,” “No One Knows”), at The Commons (11 a.m.); and the “Rams All Around” public art project display.

MOUNT VERNON — Local donors have played critical roles in building a new theater and renovating an arts facility that Cornell College will dedicate at 3 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17, as the final projects in a $16.3 million fine arts campaign.

Kimmel Theatre is Cornell’s new 266-seat, state-of-the-art venue for stage productions and lectures. Armstrong Hall, built in 1938, reopened this fall after renovations to modernize it for music and theater. Last fall Cornell dedicated McWethy Hall for art.

Lead donor in the arts campaign is Cedar Rapids’ Hall-Perrine Foundation, which awarded Cornell a $3 million challenge grant. The foundation, in its 50th year, has awarded a total of $7 million to Cornell over the last 25 years, including $3 million for renovations to Cornell’s Cole Library, which also serves as Mount Vernon’s public library.

The late and highly regarded industrialist Howard Hall established the Hall Foundation to support educational, charitable, religious, scientific and literary purposes. The foundation has a long commitment to the area’s private colleges.

Major support for the arts campaign also came from the estate of 1932 alumnus Ronald Fleming and 1933 alumna Winifred Plumb Fleming. The campaign received $1 million of a total estate gift of $2.3 million. The Plumb-Fleming Studio Theatre is the new black box theater in Armstrong.

Ronald earned a degree in music and was bandmaster for many eastern Iowa schools, including the Maquoketa Valley Community School at Delhi where he was director of instrumental music. Winifred earned a degree in English and participated in orchestra and the dramatic arts and wrote for the college’s renowned literary magazine, “The Husk.” She later trained in art and music at Coe College and the University of Iowa. She taught English and dramatics for several years. Ronald died in 1996, Winifred in 1999.