Category: Stories In Focus

Imagine a room where light speaks, shadows whisper, and introspection reigns supreme. For artist Charles Ritchie, this atmosphere creates an inspirational context for his life and for his artwork. Ritchie arrived on campus last Friday to present his show in the Ortlip gallery. The characteristically colorful room filled with large pieces of art was stripped down to its core displaying small, detailed prints, drawings, and journals. They primarily depict scenes from inside and around his home in Silver Springs, Maryland. Senior Amanda Irwin, a gallery assistant, commented, “There is something very personal about the work that I find to be intimate in size and subject matter.” Ritchie invites the viewer to step into his world through visual art. Professor of art, John Rhett commented, “The respect for the individual response is paramount in a show like this. It’s quiet, and it rewards meditative, introspective thinking.”

In his artist’s statement, Ritchie describes his small-scale presentation “as an invitation to the viewer to crawl into an intimate yet immense universe.” The set up of the gallery challenges the viewer to experience the same intense introspection that Ritchie finds important in the process of creating his work. The white walls are neatly adorned with frames that invite the viewer to step in closer. He challenges the viewer to detach him or herself from the corporate world and prompts an invitation into his own simple, yet profound existence. In response to Ritchie’s invitational objective, Rhett said, “Important artists give us visual vocabularies. We learn to see through their eyes.”

Ritchie works from a chair in his home, slowly creating a layered representation of the metaphysical world using watercolor, graphite, pen, and ink as his tools. He attributes his unique style of creating to rebellion. Rebellion against the way he was brought up. He moved a lot as a child, and he finds the stability of his home liberating. However, he does not settle for stagnancy. He described how he enjoys  “getting to know the world in a profound way through limited experience.” He compared this process to the life of a musician. A musician practices scales every day and listens to the rhythms and musicality of the notes. Ritchie described how he wants to be a receptor of the beautiful art that proceeds from his study of the observable world.

He sees his methods as a skill that takes time and patience to acquire. “Training the eye and hand has helped me isolate what is important,” he mentioned. His impeccable knowledge of color value is one of the important tools that he uses to create this isolation. Because he primarily works in black and white, Ritchie described how he must use the full range of color that these two colors offer. In a value class that Rhett taught, he used Ritchie’s work as an example of exceptional use of value. Rhett encourages his students to observe contrast between colors in their work instead of framing every section of color with lines.

Along with contrast in value, Ritchie studies time as a crucial element in his work. He finds immense importance in the stillness of time and the movement of time. Without the movement of time, he would not be able to capture the changing shadows on the wall, yet without the stability of time, he would not be able to document the reverently still environment. Both are crucial elements in his work and his observance of the world. He strives for moments that become “iconic rather than fleeting.” For example, Ritchie explained that he is currently working on a project that will take many years. He is observing the growth of an oak tree as it slowly adds layers to its core across a wide span of time, mastering the art of transitions.

Humility translates through his work because he realizes that he may not be alive to finish some of his projects as he believes, “no decision is final.” His work constantly evolves, creating an accurate representation of how his “inner voice” evolves with his work. Laurissa Widrick, a senior art major, observed this evolutionary aspect of his work and marveled at how, “his process is a lifelong commitment.”

Because his personal life connects so closely to his work, Ritchie’s own voice is the primary one that translates into his work. His inner voice, “the dream voice” as he calls it, captures the “train of consciousness” that goes through his mind during his early morning meditation times. These dedicated early morning reflection times are essential to the consistent patience that he exercises in his work, Rhett remarked. Ritchie finds solitude extremely important in the spiritual act of studying the inner voice and the psychology of self. He concluded that, “I think in a way, one’s spiritual world depends on those things.” This spiritual element permeates through his work turning small-scale pieces into scenes portraying vast universes that are easy to miss in a quick glance.

Even if you missed the gallery opening last Friday, the gallery is open during the day and welcomes students, faculty, staff, and community members. The invitational quality of Ritchie’s work, according to professor Rhett, can be attributed to the “non sequential” form of the work. Because of the open-ended nature of the show, viewers can continue coming back multiple times to glean new reflections about the work and about the self.

Michael Carpenter and friends perform in the Java Coffeehouse. Michael Carpenter, Annie Hassen, and Hunter Gregory perform a mock cover of Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars while holding ukuleles. Each song Carpenter played featured one or more of his friends.

For some people, hunting for “sport” implies frivolity—it’s killing for fun—but for participating students at Houghton College, it is a sacred experience that is widely misunderstood.

Hunters are perpetually accused of recklessly chasing adrenaline and intentionally using weaponry that brings animals cruel deaths. However, listening to some who participate in the sport reveals that it can be perceived as an art—an expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.

Beginning their day before light, hunters spend an extended period of time observing their prey’s behaviors, habits, and tracks. Sporting garb that blends them with their tree-stands, hunters sit in oneness with the woods to assure the animals that their habitat is safe and secure. Though it may take hours, applying this tact and developing strategy to outwit their game is half the enjoyment for hunters.

Additionally hunting is an investment—hobbyists pay to participate in this pastime. Each year, hunters must purchase hunting licenses and sometimes pay to hunt on the specific land they’d like to explore.

“There is much more to hunting than killing animals,” said senior Austin Groff, “Not only is it is beneficial for wildlife management, but it provides good food.” After hunting for almost 10 years, Groff described a feeling of satisfaction that came each time he worked to hunt and harvest an animal.

For Groff and others, hunting has also served as a way to experience the beauty of God’s creation. Sophomore Aaron Eisenhardt reminisced, “Bow hunting in the fall is awesome…sitting in the tree stand with the trees resembling the colors of fall all around me.”

Situated on the site of a former Caneadea Indian Reservation amidst 1,300 acres, Houghton College has delivered an ideal environment for hunting hobbyists. Having grown up close by in Fillmore, first year Jordan Mullen was eager to stay close to the land in which he grew up hunting. “Hunting is the way I take myself out of the busy world and experience nature in its true form,” he said. For Groff, “sitting in the woods in itself, for hours, is enjoyable.”

Mullen has been enjoying hunting with his dad since the age of seven. “I have shared some of the greatest bonds with my friends and family in the woods,” he said, “the perception is that it’s a savage and brutal time, but that’s false.” For Eisenhardt and senior Jordan Sloat, hunting was also shared as a father-son activity beginning at a very young age. “I grew up around it, my whole family hunts, I was born into it,” said Sloat.

“For someone who has never hunted before,” Eisenhardt explained,  “It is hard to describe the reason why I enjoy it.”  He encourages his peers to find an opportunity to get out and try it for themselves.

Personal Connection Lost, Responsibility Gained

Houghton has always emphasized making personal connections between its faculty and students. It isn’t unusual to see a professor sitting with a student at lunch or praying with a student in between classes. So does a student taking a class online through Houghton lose that personal relationship?

Houghton Online offers an increasing amount of online classes during the summer. Among the options are Literary Voices, Math in the Liberal Arts, Introduction to Psychology, and Biblical Literature. The majority of the classes offered are Integrative Study (IS) requirements, so instead of being crammed into a student’s semester schedule, the IS credits can be fulfilled during the less academically strenuous summer months.

Taking an online course through Houghton is an ideal option if a student is behind on credits, can’t attend Mayterm, or simply can’t balance certain classes with their schedule during the fall and spring semester

Sophomore Raisa Dibble said she missed the chance to learn from a professor and that it was a “big minus” of taking an online course. “I just think professors make it a little more personal and give moral support to learning,” said Dibble of traditional classroom learning. She continued to say she missed the “wall of support” that she usually gets on campus. “At Houghton, if I’m struggling with my beliefs, I have professors I can ask and talk to and classmates to bounce ideas off of. At home, I just have Google,” said Dibble.

Despite learning less from the professor, Dibble said, “I like online learning because I learn more about the subject.” Because online learning is generally self-taught, Dibble spent a lot of time reading. “When you take a class online, you have so much more time to devote to actual work rather than having to go to class,” she said as a benefit of taking Literary Voices and Biblical Literature through Houghton. “You definitely learn the material better.” She appreciated that online courses allowed her to go more indepth into the subject material because she had more time.

Online learning differs from the traditional classroom setting because it requires much more responsibility and not as much interaction. “I enjoy listening to lectures and reinforcing the information on my own, so teaching myself and being responsible for my own learning was a different experience,” said junior Casey Mauger, who took Medical Terminology this past summer. Mauger said although it was easier to focus all of her academic attention on one class, “if something was unclear it was harder to get clarity on the subject because you were basically teaching yourself.”

Junior Maisie Pipher also agreed that taking an online course demands more responsibility. “Online learning is entirely dependent on the individual,” she said, “You are in charge of learning for yourself.”

To most students, summer means warm weather, sun, and no classes. But for students who want to get ahead on credits or need the credits, summer means something a little different. Pipher relied on self-discipline to get her through Literary Voices and Medical Terminology. “Assignments crept up on me more easily during the summer when I was working and relaxing,” said Pipher. She wished the professors were more empathetic to the fact that it was summer and that she had other work to do besides academics. “There were days where I would have a long shift at work and have to come home late and finish an assignment because it was only available for 24 hours,” said Pipher, “It was like [the professors] forgot it was summer.” Mauger too thought is was difficult to balance “the business of the summer with a class.”

Dibble also contributed to the notion that it takes a lot of discipline to get through a summer course. “It’s hard to make yourself wake up and get to work,” she said, “You have to make sure to set aside time from the day to do the class.”

Writing Professor Laurie Dashnau said the challenge of online teaching comes “in terms of gauging where students are at in terms of start or middle of instructional units.” Finding the best resources to cover instructional material is also another challenge of Dashnau’s. Still, she finds online teaching to be rewarding. “One does not take conversations of face-to-face time for granted,” said Dashnau. Professors, not just students, value in-person interaction.

Although the student may miss out on an interactive relationship with their professor, they acquire skills such as self-discipline and responsibility along the way. Meeting deadlines and overcoming the distractions of summer challenge students to become more focused and more disciplined.

Kings and Kingdoms, a local, post-hardcore/metalcore band, will perform at The Waiting Room in Buffalo next month on December 2nd. The band is relatively new, having been formed in 2012 with Bobby Burke on hard vocals, Joey Galligan on melodic vocals and rhythm guitar, and Mike Adkins playing lead guitar.  Nate Floyd, a Houghton junior studying Music Industry, became the drummer of Kings and Kingdoms in the fall of 2013. Since then, bass player, Dave Thomas, has also joined the band making the final member count five. Kings and Kingdoms has been compared to bands such as Secrets and Crown The Empire.

Floyd said of being a part of the Buffalo music scene, “Many new bands come up then go away, they don’t understand that it’s a long haul.” He continued, “We’re dedicated. This is what we want to do so we’ve committed to it.” About three times a week Floyd makes the one and a half hour drive to Buffalo for band practice. For about a year now the band has been practicing and performing: writing music and playing at various venues around the city. Their hard work has proved fruitful. About a month ago they played at a music festival in Reading, Pennsylvania, making the five hour drive in order to fulfill a special invitation to perform. Kings and Kingdoms has gained a small following and is currently in the midst of signing a record deal.

The band only performs original music. Floyd explained, “In our genre it is really challenging to cover songs because in metal each band has a very specific sound that is difficult to capture.” The band places a large emphasis on songwriting. About half of their practices are dedicated to brainstorming new material and writing songs. Compositions are generally driven by Galligan and Floyd whose strengths are developing the skeleton of a piece, but each member is involved in the songwriting process. All five of them write their own instrument parts and give input on the subject and direction of the song.

Kings and Kingdoms write music about life. Hardships, the band’s single, is about exactly what it says: the hardships and sufferings of life. It grapples with the struggles that each individual of the band was going through at the time it was written. For them, writing is an outlet as well as a means to building bridges to help them get over the situations they write about. Kings and Kingdoms’ music centers on expression and connection. And through music they have certainly achieved both of those goals.

In 2013, a close friend of the band members took his own life. This heartbreaking event affected the Buffalo music scene deeply. The band’s response has been to write a song titled Shadows, to express remembrance and grief. The song deeply resonates with those who were touched by the tragedy. One man even had the lyrics of the chorus tattooed across his chest.  Floyd commented, “That song is about a man fighting demons that no one took the time to look at or see.”

The direction of the band was also influenced by that terrible event. Floyd said, “Some bands just hate people, but that’s not what we’re about–if someone comes up to us and wants to talk we sincerely want to talk to them and show them that we care. We try our best to listen and interact with our fans because you don’t know how much your words mean to somebody until something like that happens. We just want people to feel genuinely understood and overall that’s why we write. We want to connect with people.”

The band’s description page reads, “We hope to achieve something greater than any single member could alone and to pass on inspiration with music. To help others find a way in this world with our music”.

Kings and Kingdoms will be performing live at The Waiting Room on December 2nd. The show starts at 6 pm, costs $18 at the door, and is welcome to ages 16+ (with I.D). A lyric video and music video for Hardships can be found on their YouTube channel, Kings&Kingdoms, and a free download of Hardships can be found on their Facebook page, Facebook.com/KaKband.

In the back corner of the Neilsen Center, past mop buckets and parked industrial floor cleaners, a chicken-wire fence encloses the camp closet. Around two dozen grey, blue, and green hiking backpacks obscure the wall directly across from the closet door and, on the ground, lifejackets spill over the top of a variety of plastic bins. The walls to the left and right are equally hidden by sleeping bags rolled into fading red sacks; stacks of pots, pans, and bowls; and hard plastic coolers for drinks and food all organized into neat wooden shelves, some sagging beneath the weight. Students can rent the majority of the equipment stored in the closet for minimal daily fees.

While Houghton has had a camp closet since 1979 when Houghton began adventure programming, more recent policy changes have made the camp closet more student focused. This semester, Robert Smalley, assistant professor of recreation, took on responsibility for overseeing the camp closet, which was previously run by the Wilderness Adventure Program. According to Smalley, “A lot of this equipment was used by young kids all summer long,” when Houghton ran a youth program. These trips typically resulted in equipment damages making some gear unusable, so the end of this program should mean that “the quality of our equipment stays good for longer, and we don’t have to replace it as much.”

Regarding the current equipment, Smalley said he needs to “see what’s usable and what isn’t usable,” but some of it is relatively new. A few years ago a group of students were granted student government money to buy new equipment that “doesn’t go to outside groups at all – it’s just for Houghton students to use.” Additionally, when Houghton sold the Star Lake campus, equipment from their camp closet came here.

Smalley intends to improve renting coordination because some of Houghton’s outdoor recreation classes utilize the equipment. In the past, conflicts have arisen from schedule mismanagement; for example, “sometimes the [canoe] class would start and there’d be no canoes or not enough canoes for a class.”

Equipment is lent to Houghton programs “free of charge as long as they sign things out and then agree to return them in good condition.” Individual Houghton students and non-Houghton groups can also rent for low fees; for a 2-man tent and sleeping bag it costs two dollars per day and $0.50 per day for a sleeping pad. For now, Smalley has chosen not to offer canoes for individual rental and for liability reasons he never rents out climbing ropes, but usually he will lend canoes and trailers to Houghton programs. Junior Matthew Munkittrick said he borrowed “a backpack, tent, and stove for a weekend, and a pair of climbing shoes for a night.”

Smalley said he has been “a bit of a stickler” when it comes to safety but only because he wants to protect the students who use the camp closet gear; college groups need to have someone experienced with the equipment leading. “If the conditions aren’t going to be good, I will tell the people I think you ought to reconsider. Or I might even say I’m not going to give the stuff to you because I don’t want to be part of a dangerous thing…I just would feel terrible.”
Students can contact Smalley to make rental requests, but need to plan ahead as request forms are due at least three days before the desired pickup date. As the brisk autumn nights start to give way to wintry frosts and the fall camping season comes to an end, Smalley said he has had only a trickle of requests. Senior Sean Daigler who had never heard of the camp closet before said, “this is actually a really cool thing” supporting Smalley’s suspicion that “there’s a lot of potential here that hasn’t been tapped in regards to student use.”