American University hosted part of Tenleytown Main Street’s annual Art All Night with live shows and art exhibits on Sept. 28 in Katzen Arts Center.
The Shaw Main Streets established Art All Night in 2011 and is a two-day public festival that highlights local art, entertainment and business in all eight wards of D.C.
Tenleytown’s Art All Night 2024 lineup featured 15 walkable and shuttle-accessible venues around Wisconsin Avenue and surrounding AU’s campus, including local businesses, restaurants and AU’s Katzen Arts Center.
The night started with a sold-out American University Gospel Choir concert, which celebrated their conductor Sylstea Sledge’s 25-year tenure.
Featuring excerpts of scripture, call-and-response songs and spotlights on the AU Gospel Choir alumni network, the group’s warmth and faithful spirit under Sledge’s guidance was on vibrant display in the Abramson Family Recital Hall.
Audiences and patrons explored the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center’s variety of traditional and contemporary art exhibits after the concert, including the Corcoran Legacy Collection’s serene “A Sight to Behold,” curated by Carolyn Kinder Carr, and Ralph Steadman’s striking “And Another Thing” collection.
“Jamming: Art and Music” by Group 93 was also on display in the Katzen rotunda. The collection of visual art pieces celebrates the group’s 25th anniversary and observes practices of communicating through the intersection of visual display and music theory.
The group of artists behind the exhibit explores AU’s own Professor Emeritus Luciano Penay’s methods of artistic critique. Each work featured corresponds to a song on an Apple Music playlist created by Claudia Vess.
The second floor of Katzen, home to American University’s Studio Arts MFA Program, hosted an open studio walkthrough, which allowed attendees to view current students’ works while hearing from each student about their personal connections to the pieces they created.
Lexie Moser, a first-year student in the program, showcased a painting of dinosaur fossils in multiple stages of creation, a process that she found herself “obsessed with.” The main inspiration behind her work is an examination of the intersection between paleontology and visual art, and the intricacy of fossils that they have been fascinated with since they were a child.
First-year MFA student Austin Remetta’s motivation behind his work was similar. However, his photography drew mostly from his experiences growing up in a small town in Connecticut to relocating to D.C. Working with mostly self-portraiture, Remetta’s pieces examine the isolating stillness amidst the chaos of transitioning between stages of life and education.
Identity and its influence on artwork also manifested itself in the multimodal works of first-year MFA student Julia Fouser, who invited guests into her studio with a kaleidoscope she created from pill containers sourced from friends in the program.
Fouser’s work pays tribute to the medications she takes and her fascination with the sterility of stock images in medical textbooks versus the experiences she has had as a patient.
AU actors in the freshman class of 2028 concluded the night with a performance of Overture 2024 in the Katzen Studio Theater. The production, directed by faculty member Nancy Bannon, explores themes of young adulthood, growing into an identity and adapting to a changing society through song, movement and dialogue.
Art All Night continued along Wisconsin Avenue in Tenleytown with local groups showcasing live music, dance performances and visual art displays highlighting the vibrant arts culture unique to D.C. and the community.
This article was edited by Sydney Hemmer, Marina Zaczkiewicz and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Ariana Kavoossi and Charlie Mennuti.
