Culture

Students Help Curate New Benton Exhibition

Faculty Cherene Sherrard-Johnson and J Finley in front of the recent exhibit

Faculty Cherene Sherrard-Johnson and J Finley in front of the recent exhibit

As a teaching institution, the Benton Museum of Art strives to cultivate rigorous collaboration with the Pomona community—a philosophy borne out by this spring’s exhibit on “Black Ecologies in Contemporary American Art.”

The show explores relationships among Black people, land and the environment, and features a variety of student contributions curated by J Finley, associate professor of Africana studies; Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities and chair of the English Department; and Victoria Sancho Lobis, the Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Benton Museum of Art and associate professor of art history.

As longtime collaborators with the Benton, Finley and Sherrard-Johnson often bring their classes for showings curated specifically for them. Sancho Lobis had the idea in 2023 to create this latest exhibition, inspired by Sherrard-Johnson’s Black Ecologies course.

“[The class] is very much about the body within the environment and the kind of porous boundaries between the two,” says Sherrard-Johnson. “It’s about how the social and political, as well as climate change, impact the health and flourishing of bodies in those spaces.”

This past fall, Finley’s class—Unruly Bodies: Black Womanhood in Popular Culture—explored images of Black women across popular culture, while Sherrard-Johnson’s course—Race, Gender, and the Environment (co-taught with Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies)—took an intersectional approach to environmental studies.

Students from both classes visited the Benton vaults to help select works for the exhibition that spanned a range of mediums, including photographs, paintings and sculptures.

Reflecting on the experience, Amirah Lockett ’28 says, “I was able to combine my love for art with what I learned from the course and the artworks themselves: appreciating the artists’ different experiences and how they represent those experiences through their work.”

Onlookers admire Firelei Baéz’s Atabey (or change the body that destroys me). Photo credit Carrie Rosema

In addition to being part of the curatorial process, the students created most of the object labels—texts that provide information about the objects on display. Both Finley and Sherrard-Johnson assigned label writing assignments in their classes, and Finley also organized a workshop on label writing by Brittany Webb, a curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

“My main objective was to create a narrative that I felt truly conveyed the history, emotions and culture of the Black experience,” says Taylor Parks ’27. Isaiah Dawson ’26 adds, “Co-writing a label for one of the pieces in the exhibit deepened my engagement with the historical themes of the artworks.”

After months of preparation, Sherrard-Johnson says she was “very emotional” seeing the show for the first time. Finley also was appreciative of the opportunity to curate an exhibit with her students.

“One thing I really like to do in my classes is have a creative component,” says Finley. “But I had never done something like involving them in the creation of an exhibition. I always tell the class, ‘We’re not just consuming the knowledge.’ This was an opportunity for us to put that into action.”

Amped by the Sun: Musician Alums Charge Ahead with Annual Solar Fest

Skylar Funk ’10

Skylar Funk ’10

Rock festivals like Coachella require massive resources and, thus, end up with enormous carbon footprints. Coachella’s 600,000 daily attendees translate into an estimated net total of 700,000 gallons of diesel over two weekends—or enough gas to power 1,250 cars for an entire year.

Merritt Graves ’20 and Skylar Funk ’10 have spent the better part of a decade trying to play a role in minimizing concerts’ environmental impacts: 2026 will mark the 10th anniversary of their Sunstock Solar Festival, a California-based nonprofit indie-rock festival powered by multiple solar generators. The festival has drawn major rock bands like Ra Ra Riot and Wavves, as well as cumulative crowds of thousands over the years at locations such as Los Angeles and University of California at Berkeley.

Skylar Funk ’10 and Merritt Graves ’20

Skylar Funk ’10 and Merritt Graves ’20

Graves, who was in Funk’s class year but officially graduated 10 years later, met Funk in Pomona’s environmental analysis program. The duo spent much of their college years participating in climate activism and playing music, including in their band Trapdoor Social, which toured with The B-52s and just signed their first record deal.

In 2013, they used crowdfunding proceeds to put solar panels on the roof of the L.A. nonprofit Homeboy Industries, which works with former gang members and ex-convicts. Two years later, they invested in a solar-paneled touring trailer outfitted with a 3.5-kilowatt inverter to power their subwoofers, speakers, amps, instruments and LED lights—which set the stage for not just Sunstock Solar Festival, but participation in environmental rallies like Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles.

This spring, Funk graduated with a master’s degree in popular music teaching and learning from the USC Thornton School of Music. During his time at USC, Funk found his way into its Student Sustainability Committee, and in his second year, worked as its graduate co-chair.

“Sky takes a collaborative, open-minded approach in his interactions with stakeholders, which ensures the students’ perspective is heard,” Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple recently told USC Today. “He also leads students to propose well-researched solutions rather than taking the simpler route of voicing concerns. Through this added value, along with demonstrating persistence, Sky helps the students earn respect and accomplish their long-term sustainability goals.”

Graves is now a fiction writer, while Funk hopes to continue to integrate sustainability themes into his music teaching. As he told USC Today, “I’m in search of kernels of wisdom and knowledge that we can use to find that magical recipe for [climate] action.”

SageChat: Favorite On-Campus Concerts

The column where we talk to the flock on the Pomona College Alumni Facebook group and share a few responses. Make sure to join the group if you haven’t already.


What’s the best concert you ever saw at Pomona?

Jessica Sitton and Pamela Keene with Gordon Lightfoot

Jessica Sitton ’85 and Pamela Keene ’85 with Gordon Lightfoot (photo credit Diane Ung ’85)

“Gordon Lightfoot at Big Bridges in 1984!”

-Jessica Sitton ’85 (see photo on right)

“When Michael [Mahler ’74] asked me out for our first date, I said ‘yes’ before I even knew where we were going to go. We went to Big Bridges to see the J. Geils Band and the Eagles—and then saw the Eagles again for our anniversary in 2014. This year we are celebrating our 47th anniversary!”

—Vicki Paterno ’75


“The Ramones in 1979 at Garrison Theater [technically at Scripps]. The music scene was changing in good and exciting ways, at least for this Midwest boy. The punk and new wave scene was just busting out in a big way. KSPC was leading the way.”

—Paul Martin ’83


“I saw Maroon 5 opening for Guster in about 2001. Now Guster opens for them!”

—Stephanie Lawton ’03


“Seeing Ozomatli freshman year at Harwood Halloween was incredible, but it’s hard to beat 1999 with Digital Underground, which predictably got shut down, leading to their rapper Shock G leading a mob of us through Lyon [Residence Hall].”

—Adam Boardman ’01


“In 1992 Soundgarden performed in front of about 200 of us right before the release of Badmotorfinger [their first top-40 album]. They were about to go on tour with Guns N’ Roses. It was insanely good music!”

­—Ben Johns ’95


“At Scripps in 1998[ish] Michelle Malone played a small show at the Motley with a young opening act named John Mayer. I remember liking his songs ‘Neon’ and ‘Comfortable.’ A couple years later he played at Big Bridges with Norah Jones, before she’d won all her Grammys.”

Brian Daniel Schwartz ’01

We’ll Do It Live! A Timeline of Some of Pomona’s Most Memorable Concerts

Big Bridges stage, Taylor Swift concert, 2012Kurt Vonnegut, 1986

OK, this one’s only tangentially music-related, but besides speaking at Big Bridges, Slaughterhouse-Five author Kurt Vonnegut has an unusual Pomona connection. In 1997 he was incorrectly attributed to be the author of one of the first pieces of viral content: a commencement speech sometimes referred to as “Wear Sunscreen,” which later became the “lyrics” of a top-40 hit released by Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann. The actual author? Mary Schmich ’75, who wrote its words for a Chicago Tribune column, and later turned it into a book.

No Doubt, 1990

Gwen Stefani

2015 photo of Gwen Stefani by Lorie Shaull

Gwen Stefani’s ska-punk band played at least five shows at Pomona in their early gigging along the Southern California concert circuit, including a May 1990 show that pre-dated their signing with Interscope Records. Three decades later, the group has released six studio albums that sold 33 million copies globally, while Stefani became a popular solo artist (and voice judge) worth an estimated $160 million. ’90s alums, relive the glory with this fan-captured video from 1994.

Rage Against the Machine, 1992

When Mike Lin ’94 paid the newly formed four-piece rap-metal outfit $325 to play Harwood Courtyard, they hadn’t even released their debut album yet. Lin remembers lead singer Zack de la Rocha eagerly passing out cassette tapes beforehand, as well as receiving a thoughtful “thank you” note from guitarist Tom Morello afterward. They’ve since sold 16 million records and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.

Bright Eyes, 2000

Indie band Bright Eyes

Indie band Bright Eyes playing Walker Lounge in 2000

When the campus radio station KSPC brought Conor Oberst and his Omaha indie-rock outfit to play a show in one of the Smith Campus Center’s social rooms, station advisor Erica Tyron said that she paid them $800 in cash. Just a few years later, the Associated Students of Pomona College tried to bring them back, but opted against after learning that their booking cost had ballooned to $50,000.

The White Stripes, 2001

Jack and Meg White—the mysterious red-and-white-adorned garage-rock duo who eventually filled stadiums with arena classics like “Seven Nation Army”—hadn’t yet exploded on the indie scene when they performed that spring on Walker Beach. KSPC still has the original flyer from that fateful concert in their office in Thatcher Music Building.

Taylor Swift, 2012

Taylor SwiftTouring behind her fourth album Red, Swift launched an online voting competition promising to perform at the college that got the most votes proportional to their size—spurring some crafty Harvey Mudd kids to organize on social media to get Claremont Colleges students to vote for Swift to come to the smallest of the 5Cs (though she ultimately performed at Big Bridges). For the record, Mudd’s student body president claimed that they didn’t engage in any “illegitimate activity” like bot voting. We plead the fifth!

Big Acts at Big Bridges

Since its ribbon-cutting in 1931, Bridges Auditorium—also known as “Big Bridges,” to distinguish it from Bridges Hall of Music (“Little Bridges”)—has been home to hundreds of concerts, speeches and events. Here’s our unofficial tally of the musicians who’ve performed most frequently at the 2,200-seat venue.*

Ella Fitzgerald performing at Downbeat

Ella Fitzgerald performing at Downbeat, New York in 1947 (Dizzy Gillespie looking on). Photo by William Gottlieb.

Six Times:
Singer-songwriter Ben Harper

Five Times:
Folk singer Judy Collins
Folk group the Irish Rovers

Four Times:
Singer-songwriter Johnny Cash
Violinist Isaac Stern

Three Times:
Country singer Willie Nelson
Pianist Arthur Rubinstein
Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald
Pop/standards singer Johnny Mathis
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Other return performers include jazz legends Nat “King” Cole, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, as well as folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Mime Marcel Marceau also performed here six times!

Big Bridges has been the home to 90 performances from Inland Pacific Ballet, 86 performances by the L.A. Philharmonic, and at least 50 Claremont High School commencements.

Others who’ve spoken here: Bono, Amelia Earhart, Winston Churchill and the Dalai Lama.


*based on records taken from the Bridges Auditorium archive, in conjunction with the crowd-sourced concert repository website setlist.fm.

Ignacio López Day in the City of Pomona

Mural by Thundr One. Photograph courtesy of López Urban Farm

Mural by Thundr One. Photograph courtesy of López Urban Farm

March 19 was Ignacio López Day in the city of Pomona by proclamation of the city council.

The date marked the 116th anniversary of the birth of the late journalist and civil rights champion Ignacio López ’31, who fought discrimination against Latinos in the region for decades, publishing his influential El Espectador newspaper in Pomona from 1933 to 1960.

His name lives on through both Pomona’s Ignacio López Elementary School and the López Urban Farm, a partnership between the local nonprofit Community Partners 4 Innovation and Pomona Unified School District. The farm provides people in the community with access to locally grown food and also educates youth on sustainable agriculture practices. Among the murals at the farm is one depicting López.

KSPC Radio Rocks On

DJ Comet and DJ Moon were a natural fit for KSPC 88.7 FM, the station of The Claremont Colleges, which celebrated 68 years on the FM airwaves in February. (KSPC was preceded at Pomona by the AM station KPCR.)

DJ Comet was supposed to be a placeholder name until Anaelle Roc ’24 found another. But the moniker—a play on her last name and love of space—fit perfectly at the station often known as The Space. Pomona classmate Emily Gibbons ’24 christened herself DJ Moon on the same theme.

Roc and Gibbons represent a senior class whose introduction to college came via Zoom during the early months of the pandemic. While remote in 2020, Gibbons worked as a music director at KSPC, reviewing albums and music. Roc became a production director, learning how to edit shows and write promotions and community messages. Once they were on campus as sophomores, KSPC’s secluded headquarters awed them both.

“The Space is a time capsule,” Roc says. “There are posters there from the ’80s, photos there from the ’50s when it became an FM station. I was instantly hooked.

“People ask, ‘Why do radio? Radio is dead,’” Roc says. “We have Spotify, the internet, AI DJs who can find you the perfect song. But people are really attracted to The Space. It’s a beautiful space with all this history. We want to be part of that legacy.”

Gibbons, a philosophy major and host of In the Clouds with DJ Moon, plans to attend law school, with dreams of becoming an attorney for a band or music label.

“I would love to get involved in the radio station of whatever law school I go to if they would have me,” she says.

Roc, a physics major, is so invested in mastering the craft she says she only applied to astrophysics graduate programs with established radio programs either on campus or in the community.

“Live music is something I can’t live without,” the host of cathartic destruction says. “I’m tied on a soul level to radio now.”

Postmarked Art

Here’s one mailing list you might want to be on: Professor of Art Mark Allen turns personal cards and letters into things of beauty, embellishing the outer envelopes with all manner of designs and decorative flourishes. His exhibit From the Desk Of last fall in the Chan Gallery at Pomona’s Studio Art Hall featured prints, posters, zines, pop-ups and a wall of envelopes that once held missives to various friends, faculty, staff, students and alumni. Take a look.

Cards layup of different images Multiple cards layup

Pomona’s Piano Man

 

Hudson Colletti ’27 sitting next to a piano

While visiting Canada the summer before his first year of high school, Hudson Colletti ’27 sat down at a piano one day and began tickling the ivories.

In town with family for the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Pennsylvania teen wasn’t on stage playing for a capacity crowd inside a palatial concert hall or cozy auditorium.

He was on a street corner.

Within minutes, the sounds echoing through the neighborhood drew passersby, many quick to record the young pianist’s impromptu performance.

“I loved that,” Colletti says. “I thought [playing in public] was a really cool way for me to share something I love. I thought, ‘Why not bring that opportunity back home?’”

Colletti—a first-year student who plans to study economics and computer science, founded Free the Music at 14, not long after returning from Canada. In the years since, he has collected unwanted pianos and provided them to local visual artists as canvases. These customized pianos have found second homes in restaurants and apartment buildings, as well as on various street corners, around Colletti’s hometown of Sewickley, Pennsylvania—population 3,900.

“A lot of people want to learn how to play piano,” he says, “or know how to play but don’t have access to a piano because of how much space they take up or how hard they are to move into a house.”

One of the painted pianos donated to Free the Music.

By placing pianos in public, Free the Music is giving others a chance to fall in love too.

“One of the pianos we placed in town,” he says, “was originally given with nothing inside of the bench, and after four or five months over summer, the bench was filled with books and sheet music from people learning how to play and having lessons there.”

As successful as Free the Music’s initiative has been in his home state, Colletti sees no reason he can’t continue his work elsewhere.

“Music brings people together and brightens our mood,” he says. “It’s a great reminder after finishing a song when people gather around because they have a love of music.”

To see—and hear—Colletti playing one of the painted pianos, check out the video at pomona.edu/hudson-colletti-piano.

At Last, the Glee Club Goes Abroad Again

The Glee Club at Durham Cathedral in England, conducted by Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music. Photo by John Attle

The Glee Club at Durham Cathedral in England, conducted by Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music. Photo by John Attle

Going on tour has long been one of the high notes for the Glee Club. But the Gleeps, as they like to call themselves—think Glee People—had been grounded since 2020 before a giddy two-week tour to England and Scotland in May.

Photos via Instagram @gleeclub4747

Photos via Instagram @gleeclub4747

A planned trip to Europe in 2020 was canceled by the COVID-19 shutdown, and the next two years were limited to small outdoor performances in Claremont and a Southern California tour. When the Glee Club took flight again in May, even some alumni from the past few years joined in after missing their chance.

“For those of us in the Class of 2020, a trip to Spain was supposed to be the perfect ending to our already incredible experience in the ensemble,” says Matthew Cook ’20, a former Glee Club co-president and a second-generation Gleep: His mother, Melissa Cook ’90, also sang in the ensemble. “We didn’t even get the chance to sing a full concert in our last semester, let alone go on tour,” says Cook, who earned a master’s in vocal arts from USC in May. “To be able to sing with the 2023 Glee Club and go on an international tour that I lost out on as a student, I feel like I got some closure in that part of my life that was disrupted by the pandemic.”

Photos via Instagram @gleeclub4747

Photos via Instagram @gleeclub4747

After arriving in London, the Glee Club opened with a concert in St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, one of four benefit concerts for local charities. The choir also sang for a Eucharist service in Cambridge’s Trinity College Chapel, traveled to York for a concert in St. Michael le Belfrey and held another in Durham Cathedral (in Durham, of course). In Scotland, they performed in St. Andrews in a joint concert with the St. Andrews University Madrigal Group and closed their tour in Edinburgh with a concert at St. Giles’ Cathedral.

In more normal times, the Glee Club travels each year, with about one international trip for every three domestic tours to give each class an opportunity to go overseas. Other trips abroad have included Italy (2016), Poland (2012)and Germany (2006).

Besides alumni performers, there was an extra alumni assist on this one: Catherine John ’05, a violinist who works as a concert tour manager, helped plan the trip with Donna M. Di Grazia, the David J. Baldwin Professor of Music and conductor of the Glee Club and College Choir, and Elizabeth Champion, the Music Department’s concert production manager and tour manager. “The Glee Club sent me a very kind thank-you note, which I will cherish always,” John says.