Welcome to Art In 3D

Welcome to the  Dean of the Arts blog!  I’m the new Dean of the Arts, having spent the last five as Chair of the Music Department.  I thought that I’d start this blog in order to provide information, commentary, thoughts, ideas and questions for our parents, prospective students and interested observers.  I may even occasionally invite a guest blogger to join in.

The campus is a little electric with the anticipation of the arrival of the students for 2008-2009.  The floor in Wayne Music Hall (the Wengers) was stripped and waxed today,  I spent an hour learning Peter Askim’s new violin and piano piece for the opening faculty concert, and an ENORMOUS leather sectional was delivered to the Fireside Room, ready to host innumerable student loungefests.  Prefects and student government members have already arrived, looking rested, energetic and ready to attack the year.

As we begin, I’m thinking a lot about our alums and the careers and lives they’ve built for themselves.  Of course we have the expected results of training we started here on the mountain:  principal oboe of the New York Philharmonic, Dancer in the Trisha Brown Dance company, lead in Wicked on Broadway….  But then there are the others….  Piano major turned Art History Grad Student at NYU now curator at San Francisco Art Gallery…  Writer turned musician now touring in her own rock band…  violinist now studying law in San Diego,  Visual artist turned social commentator who designed the HOPE poster of Barack Obama…

My point is this:  Our students make fascinating careers for themselves.  I can’t wait to see what entrepreneurial, exciting, innovative things the students entering Idyllwild Arts Academy in the fall of 2008 create.  An actor wins the Oscar, a dancer gets the Kennedy Center Honor, a musician teaches 75 inner city school kids how to play the violin, a writer writes the best State of the Union speech ever.  For herself.

Let’s just see what happens.

Dr.  Douglas Ashcraft, Dean of the Arts
(Dean Dr. Doug, 3D…get it?..)