Yesterday was the Lunar New Year. Happy Year of the Fire Horse. The School of Art at the University of Arkansas celebrated the holiday by hosting Lunar New Year Fest. The day included performances and activities by student and community organizations, graphic design lectures, and the Under the Same Moon art and design exhibition.
Alice J. Lee is an endowed associate professor of graphic design and the event's organizer. During some downtime yesterday, she spoke with Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis. She says that for this first Lunar New Year Fest, she focused on bringing different groups and people together.
Alice J. Lee: Just to celebrate the dynamism and the richness that I believe that this community reflects, and to be able to celebrate it together and openly. And so I want this to be a joyful celebration of everyone in this community. I want to be able to connect this part of the campus to the main part of the campus, and to connect the university to the larger community and area. And so we've been able to invite several community organizations, as well as student and university organizations, so that they can hopefully interact with new people, get the word out in terms of what they're doing, and engage people that maybe it's been a little bit hard for them to get in touch with. And so we really want to showcase the richness of the community here.
Alice J. Lee: Asian Studies is a program in the university, and they offer really interesting courses and they can be cross-listed with other departments. So, for example, I will be teaching in the fall of this year a course on the Korean alphabet. And so it'll be cross-listed with graphic design as well as Asian studies. And so I'm hoping again to really connect what we do here in the School of Art with the other departments of the university, as well as to be a place of celebration and creativity and hopefully safety for the community.
We have student groups from the Japanese Student Association, the Korean Student Association. We had this wonderful live dance performance by Te Moana Otea, which is a local Tahitian dance group. And we also have the Chinese American Northwest Arkansas Association doing beautiful calligraphy, and we have the Korean Student Association as well as AIGA, which is a student graphic design organization. And then, of course, our School of Art outreach and recruitment is also here representing.
Alice J. Lee: I was born here in the States, but I'm a second-generation Korean American. So my parents immigrated here from South Korea. And my parents both have lunar birthdays because that was how, back in the day, they tracked birthdays and tracked time when my parents were growing up. And so for me, I really love this idea of how different cultures create systems of organization. And I also love that the Lunar New Year is kind of this confluence of so many cultures and religions. So it's Fat Tuesday, right? And it's also going to be Ramadan tonight. And the Lunar New Year. So I just — I think there's actually quite a lot of connection that happens around the Lunar New Year. And so for me personally, it comes from my culture. But I think I realized through this planning that, wow, like, this is something that actually connects quite a lot of groups of people across the world.
That was Alice J. Lee, University of Arkansas School of Art endowed associate professor of graphic design, speaking at Lunar New Year Fest, which took place yesterday.
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