Gluck Fellows of University of California, Riverside

Gluck fellow Sofia Valiente's program at Sherman Indian High School in 2023

Gluck Fellows Program inspires Sherman students The Gluck Fellows Program o

Gluck Fellow Sofia Valiente had an ASK Residency with the film students at Sherman Indian High School, and they published a book of their work.

We wish to thank the community who looked through their cupboards and donated their unneeded film cameras for this project - Tracy Cleary, Trina Elerts, Diane Eskritt, Dale Whitney Heron, David and Christine Leapman, Judy Lehr and Rusty Russell, Parthena Rosahl, Cheryl Scarano, Adlyn Strelecki, William and Tedra Trimm, and Laura Norberto Williams. And also Victoria Ross, Dawn Pia and Sonja Sekely-Rowland for their support in spreading the word about the project and helping us gather these cameras.

We extend our greatest appreciation to Monica Royalty, art teacher at Sherman Indian High School, and tremendous advocate for bringing Gluck fellow opportunities to her students, for hosting Gluck fellow Sofia Valiente.

Kimberly Guerrero (Colville, Salish-Kootenai, Cherokee) is a native Oklahoman and a graduate from UCLA and UCR. She is a legacy Gluck Fellow and is currently a theatre professor at UCR CHASS.

As a Gluck Fellow, Kimberly taught a workshop called "Who's the Hero: Storytelling Native American Style" and was the lead for our Improvology Theatre Troupe. Kimberly has worked with at-risk youth in Native American communities delivering motivational speeches, substance abuse prevention workshops and trainings that utilize filmmaking as a tool to promote personal and community development. Kimberly was selected as a Fellow for the Sundance Writer’s Lab, was a finalist for the Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship and the ABC/Disney Writing Fellowship and has won several awards for acting including Best Actress at the 2014 Red Nation Film Festival for her portrayal of the inspirational Cherokee chief, Wilma Mankiller. Most recently, Kimberly was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in recognition of her 30-year acting career! Congratulations! 🎉

Merideth Hillbrand was a M.F.A. candidate in Visual Art at UCR. She received her B.F.A. from Tufts University in partnership with The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2010. She received the Edward Cinotti Prize in Video, 1st Place in Photography from Yosuf Karsh Prize, the Deans Discretionary Fund Travel Grant, and four years standing of the SMFA Merit Based Scholarship all from SMFA. Merideth lives and works between Los Angeles and Riverside where she focuses on her own sculpture and video based practice exploring how objects inform and influence our relationships to physical and psychological spaces. She recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's McDermott Learning Center (https://www.wildflower.org/pressroom/artist-in-residence-merideth-hillbrands-work-on-display-through-september-2020)

As a Gluck Fellow, Merideth was a part of the GluckTV team of fellows that created an award-winning film about water called "Getting to Know H2O" (which you can find still on Gluck TV), and she taught a workshop called, "Be You Thing! An Exploration in Form From a 2D Shape to a 3D Object". This hands-on workshop led students in exploring and distinguishing geometric and biomorphic forms by transitioning a 2D line drawing they create into a three-dimensional shape with pipe cleaners. You can find resources for this workshop in our Gluck Creative Classroom in the Visual Art section under "Make It Activities" 🎨
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Estefania Sanchez is a UCR graduate earning her M.A. in Art History with a focus on Latin American art. She previously completed her B.A. in Art History with a minor in Anthropology at Bowdoin College in Maine. While she was at Bowdoin College, she interned and volunteered for two years at Bowdoin College’s Museum of Art as a tour guide for school fieldtrips. After graduating with her B.A. and moving back to California, Estefania worked for two years at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, as a gallery attendant where she received training on how to analyze art and spark conversations with visitors. Estefania is looking forward to working at a museum’s education department to help in making art accessible to the public.

As a Gluck Fellow, Estefania Sanchez taught a workshop called, “Murals: Our Talking Walls”. Students got to learn a brief history about murals and specifically the mural work of Diego Rivera. They also got to learn more about Diego Rivera through his Pan American Unity mural. This was a guide that students got to use to then create their own personal mural about themselves. Find resources for this workshop in our Creative Classroom on the History of Art page. 🖼
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JT Lachausse is a M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at UCR. He earned a B.A. in Fiction from Columbia College Chicago, and he was the editor for The Matador Review. His literary work has been published both online and in print, in publications such as Hair Trigger, pioneertown, and The Adirondack Review.

As a Gluck Fellow, JT taught a workshop that was called "Building Spaces: Using Memory to Write the Senses", which provided a space for students to identify environments that are special to them, write about those places, and share their stories with their fellow classmates. These spaces and places that are special to each student are attached to their identities, so by sharing their stories about these special spaces, they are sharing their cultures and identities by bringing them to life with pencil and paper for others to hear about.
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Talia Mason is a dancer and choreographer interested in the intersections of kinesthetic and verbal language. She grew up dancing at the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and at the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company. Talia choreographs because she believes wholeheartedly that ordinary bodies can do extraordinary things and that anyone can dance and that everyone should dance.

As a Gluck Fellow, Talia taught a workshop called "Finding Flow through Movement", which gave students an opportunity to learn movement games and yoga fundamentals. Prior to moving to Riverside, Talia taught Movement full-time to Pre-school through Kindergartners at Greene Towne Montessori School in Philadelphia. Talia graduated magna cm laude, phi beta kappa with a B.A. in Dance and Francophone Studies and Education from Bates College and a post-baccalaureate in performance from Headlong Performance Institute. Talia’s work has been presented at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Movement Research’s Open Performance and at Fringearts’s Scratch Night. Talia is now graduating with an M.F.A. in Experimental Choreography from UCR.
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As a Gluck Fellow, Rebekkah Hart taught a workshop she created called "Becoming Visually Literate: Reading and Writing an Aztec Codex", which introduced students to the Aztec culture and focused on Aztec pictorial writing while building visual literacy and visual communication skills. Check out our Gluck Creative Classroom to find the syllabus and workbook for Rebekkah's workshop! 💻

Rebekkah Hart is a M.A. student at UC Riverside in the History of Art department with an emphasis on the devotional art of late medieval and early Renaissance England. Rebekkah was awarded a research grant to study medieval English alabasters at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where she had previously spent a semester studying. She has also spent several months in Siena, Italy where she studied medieval Tuscan art. She previously graduated in 2019 from Brigham Young University with a B.A. in Art History & Curatorial Studies. Rebekkah hopes to pursue a Ph.D. and become a university professor of art history.
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Maribel Apuya is currently pursuing a M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts focusing on Screenwriting at the UC Riverside, where she was granted the Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship Award. She is a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she was both a Presidential Scholar and a National Science Foundation Scholar. She attended the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, a two-year acting conservatory, and worked with renowned theater companies such as SITI Theater, Shakespeare & Company, the Linklater Center, and others. She is an alumnus of UCLA’s Professional Program in Screenwriting.

As a Gluck Fellow, Maribel taught a workshop called "Have a Blast with Animation Using Stop Motion", which introduced students to the basic concept of animation and how to create their own animation using the popular and free app, Stop Motion. Students engaged in a fun group activity where they worked together to create an animation frame-by-frame by drawing the images on a white board. Animation is a powerful tool to engage students’ creativity and connect them to the world of visual storytelling. Stop Motion is a simple easy-to-use app where students can bring their animation projects to life.

She is also an award-winning Filipino-American filmmaker. Maribel produced, directed, and narrated The Sakada Series, three documentary shorts highlighting the life stories of the Sakadas – Filipino contract workers who worked as laborers on Hawaii’s sugar and pineapple plantations between 1906 and 1946. The Sakada Series won an Award of Merit from Impact DOCS Awards (2018), Best Documentary Short from the Honolulu Film Awards (2018), and Silver Award from Spotlight Documentary Film Awards (2018). Find these shorts on Gluck TV! 🎥
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Next in our spotlight is a graduating Ph.D. candidate in Critical Dance Studies, Kelly Bowker!

As a seasoned Gluck Fellow, Kelly has taught several dance programs, such as "Dance Your Numbers", which taught students how movement can be synchronized in a dance through the practice of counting the music, and "Your Body is Your Instrument”, which taught students how to warm up their bodies and the use of different body parts. She has also created videos as a fellow, which you can find on GluckTV 💃

Kelly previously earned a M.A. in Choreography from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and a B.F.A. in Dance from University of Michigan. Kelly’s choreography has been seen on the stages of the Garage, Union Square, CounterPULSE and ODC in San Francisco as well as the Menomonee Club and Chicago Art and Design Center in Chicago. She has been teaching movement to students ranging in age from three to eighty-five for over a decade and is a certified Pilates instructor. She has also taught dance in public schools through SFArtsEd, Leap, and Montgomery County Council for Arts and Humanities.
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Alexandra Henry is a graduate student studying Art History. She received her bachelor’s in art history and classics & archeology from Loyola Marymount University, where she was on the Dean’s List and graduated cm laude. Having worked as a Getty Multicultural Intern for two summers at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, she understands the importance of incorporating diversity into an educational setting. She aspires to challenge museums to become more culturally diverse and accurate by becoming a museum curator one day.

"The Color of Ancient Greece" is a program that Henry created and taught as a Gluck fellow, and it aimed to expose students to the archeological and historical aspects of Ancient Greek statuary. Students got to be archeologists for the day by finding "broken fragments" and putting them back together. Once the statues are "restored", students then had the opportunity to learn about the history of how ancient statues were once colored, and they got to see other possible careers relating to the arts.
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As a Gluck fellow, Josh taught a workshop called "Printed Matter and Zine Workshop". It was a one-hour workshop where students got a taste of the exciting world of printed matter by exploring the many avenues that a personal mini-magazine or a zine has to offer.

In 2014, Josh co-founded a small publishing company called The Fulcrum Press that is committed to exploring the interplay between photography and other artistic media. They recently have launched books with a few other Gluck fellows, like Olivia Leiter, and there is more to come! He also runs their space called The Fulcrum located in Los Angeles. (https://thefulcrumpress.com/)

Josh has also previously taught a publication class for 3 years at Mt. San Antonio College. He has worked on projects with David Campany, with Clint Woodside, and a monograph of his personal work called “Conversations with my Father” with the publisher, Deadbeat Club.
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It's ! ⭐️ In addition to teaching students through programs, performances, and workshops, most of our Gluck fellows are actually also students pursuing their degrees to continue on as educators after graduating, like our Gluck fellow, Hermann Hudde 🎶

Hermann Hudde is a veteran Gluck fellow, who has done several performances and taught music workshops. One of them was called "Musical Travel Through Latin America with Classical Guitar". During this interactive performance presentation, Hermann used the classical guitar to bring students to a variety of places and cultures within Latin America.

Hermann is a classical guitarist and a Ph.D. candidate in the music department at UCR. As a performer, Hermann Hudde has played concerts internationally. In addition to being a performer and teaching as a Gluck fellow, Hermann is also a teacher of music in higher education. Hermann has also taught a course entitled Latin American Classical Traditions at the New England Conservatory School of Continuing Education, he has published several articles and reviews, and he has been an invited speaker at several conferences. Hermann has also received honors in Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship Award and Humanities Graduate Student Research Grant from the Center for Ideas and Society at UCR.
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Did you know that today is International Dance Day? This day was founded with the intention to celebrate dance, revel in the universality of this art form, cross all political, cultural, and ethnic barriers, and bring people together with a common language - dance. Gluck fellows bring dance to students in the classroom and participants in the community through workshops and performances. 💃

✨ In celebration, we are spotlighting one of our seasoned dance fellows, Xiomara Forbez✨ She is a Ph.D. student in Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside, and her research interests include the intersections of dance and identity with particular focus on transmission of dance forms to nonprofessional dancers. She studies hula, taiko drumming, social dancing, Graham and Horton modern techniques, and ballet. Click through to check out some more photos from a workshop she led titled "Dancing Hands: Use Your Hands to Dance and Speak Hawaiian Language and ASL" 🌺
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The month of April is also National Move More Month! This national month was created by the American Heart Association to encourage Americans to get more active and improve their health 🤸

For over a decade now, our fellows have shared this sentiment by leading dance workshops for our own MoveMore program that began as a project that took a positive approach to address childhood obesity. It has kept going and growing with our fellows continuing to lead fun dance sessions and introduce students to healthy life habits in a fun and relaxed environment. We hope that by introducing children to healthy lifestyle habits in a fun way that brings them joy will inspire them to continue including these habits in their everyday lives and into their future.

Check out these photos from a session led by our Gluck fellow, Rosalia Lerner, as well as several other fellows that have led workshops for our MoveMore program! ✨
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Jessica Herring was a graduate student within the Critical Dance Studies Department at UC Riverside. In 2007, she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Skidmore College with a double major in Dance and Psychology. Following graduation, Herring moved to New York City where she worked as a freelance dancer, art administrator, artist, choreographer, and Pilates instructor for various organizations including Dance New Amsterdam, Ballet Tech, and Baryshnikov Arts Center.

As a graduate fellow, Jessica taught a dance workshop called "An exploration of (Auto)Biography", which helped students to see that anyone could dance and that anything could be used as inspiration. Jessica was also a part of our MoveMore program.

Since graduating from UCR with a Masters in Critical Dance Studies, Jessica went on to dance as a guest artist with Hannah Kahn for a year and is currently a yoga teacher and teacher trainer.
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"Dancing with Respect" was a program designed for students to use their imagination and creativity in an expressive and healthy way. Students were guided through four pre-recorded songs: Freeze Dance, Walk-Hop-Run, Late Last Night, and The Glue Game. Students learned to take up space while being respectful of each other’s personal space by having big energy, happy attitudes, and open eyes. In a fun, safe, and explorative atmosphere, this program allowed students to harness their imagination and learn to embrace each other’s differences.

As a Gluck fellow, Maggie Sniffen was a M.F.A. student in Experimental Choreography at UC Riverside. Sniffen is a graduate from San Diego State University with her B.F.A. in Dance. While at SDSU she was a member of the University Dance Company, and following her graduation was selected to tour abroad as a founding member of the Plymouth University Graduate Touring Company. Sniffen has trained with a wide array of professionals from around the world. She has contracted as a dance teacher and choreographer in the Stanislaus County with the Juline Foundation for Children, Gallo Center for the Performing Arts, Modesto Junior College Community Education, MJC Choir, Casa de Cultural Tradiciones, and with local elementary after school programs in order to bring dance to Modesto’s youth. She also has worked closely with the MJC Dance Department, performing with and setting work on the Off-Balance Dance Company. Sniffen is the choreographer for DEG Record’s new pop artist Lucien Dante, choreographing for his record release concert and upcoming music video.

✨ Congratulations to our legacy fellow, Kate Bolton Bonnici, for winning the 2020 Colorado Prize for Poetry for her book, Night Burial ✨📖

Kate grew up in Alabama and graduate from Harvard University and New York University School of Law. Her poetry and essays have previously appeared in the Southern Humanities Review, NANO Fiction, B O D Y, The Examined Life Journal, Kudzu Review, VOX MOM, and elsewhere.

As a Gluck fellow, Kate was an MFA candidate in Poetry at UCR. "I Smell a Poem!" was an interactive presentation and workshop that she designed and taught. It engaged young students in a multi-sensorial approach to writing by teaching them more about how to use all their senses to write their own poems, stories, and essays. This workshop encouraged students to be more vibrant writers and observers of the world around them. 📝

Check out this article from the University of Georgia Press about our Gluck legacy fellow, Jasmine Elizabeth Smith, winning the 2020 Georgia Poetry Prize! ✨

Jasmine Elizabeth Smith Awarded the Georgia Poetry Prize Photot Credit: Michael Patrick Lentz The University of Georgia Press is pleased to announce Jasmine Elizabeth Smith as winner of the 2020 Georgia Poetry Prize. In partnership with the Georgia Insti…

Congratulation to our Gluck legacy fellow, Jasmine Smith, for winning the 2020 Georgia Poetry Prize! ✨

At UCR, Jasmine was an MFA candidate in Poetry, and she had earned her BA in English Education with a minor in Creative Studies from the University of Central Oklahoma. She has previously taught English and Creative Writing to young students ranging from 6th to 10th grade. 📝

As a Gluck fellow, Jasmine taught an interactive poetry workshop called, "iDetective". Students first got to act as detectives in working with Jasmine to solve a case of a missing hamster by looking through evidence bags and engaging in a class discussion about their observations. With their notes from their observations of the various clues, students then wrote their own poems with these details to solve the case.

Resources to try Jasmine's workshop for yourself are currently available in our Creative Classroom in the Creative Writing page under the Poetry section. Check it out! 💻

Bingyang Liu is a Los Angeles based artist from China. He previously received the Allan Sekula Social Documentary Fund in 2015. He then earned his BFA from the photo and media program at CalArts in 2017, and he studies at UC Riverside as a MFA student in visual art area.

As a Gluck fellow, Bingyang taught a program called "Behind the Self-Portrait", which helped students learn more about self-portraits from an art history perspective. By looking through artists’ paintings and photography self-portrait works, students got to engaged in a class discussion about how the background of the work supports or informs the subject matter in the work. After the discussion, students got to draw their own backgrounds on a piece of paper that had an outline of a portrait. By changing the background of the drawing, the student turned it into their own self-portrait. 🖼

Most recently in February 2020, he showed a solo exhibition at the Phyllis Gill Gallery in Riverside, CA called, “Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden” Chapter 6: Lotus. Check out more about his work on his website, http://bingyangliu.com/
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Another ensemble that is a part of our program is called the Contemporary Dance Ensemble ✨

The Gluck Contemporary Dance Ensemble works intensely on an exciting original choreographic work that tours local schools and other public venues with the aim of bringing dance into the local community at no cost. It is a pre-professional opportunity for a select group of undergraduate students of dance to participate in one the of the Gluck Fellows Program’s most significant arts outreach effort, and an amazing opportunity for neighborhood schools, nonprofits, galleries, libraries, and other organizations in support of arts education to draw together public audiences of all ages and backgrounds to learn to see and appreciate dance. 💃
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Dr. Denise Machin earned her Ph.D. at UC Riverside, where she was also a Chancellor's distinguished fellow, the recipient of the Graduate Research Mentoring Program Award, and a Charles Redd Center for Western Studies scholar. As a Gluck Fellow, she taught dance workshops, where children got to apply movement to learning topics, like the alphabet, teamwork with their classmates, and dance improvisation when creating their own dances 🎶

Currently, Dr. Machin teaches physical education ranging from beginning ballroom dance to intermediate latin at Pomona College. She is also the first woman to serve as the Director of the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company, which has over 100 members! 💃
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As a Gluck fellow, Christina Leyva was a MFA student in Experimental Choreography at UC Riverside. She creates within the context of ecology, community, and ancestry. She also writes, directs and performs solo and ensemble work for dance, theater, and film with occasional poetry and the intent of transformation. She directed The Bee Dance Project, co-directed anthrocollagik sound + movement co., and graduated from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures.

📸 Photos are from a performance by graduate fellow, Cristina Leyva, called "Earth Body Future" at the Riverside Art Museum
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Dava Hernández was a Ph.D. student and a returning Gluck fellow. She holds an M.A. in Dance and a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from Texas Woman’s University.

She was a long-time member of the Guadalupe Dance Company, one of the nation’s leading professional folklórico and flamenco dance companies, and has been involved in various dance- theater productions throughout the U.S. Southwest. Hernández has also worked as a teaching dance artist with organizations such as the Carver Cultural Center, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, and the YWCA in San Antonio, Texas where she taught Mexican folklórico dance in various after-school program for over 10 years. Her artistic and scholarly work is based in Mexican Folklórico and the dance expressions of the US-Mexico borderlands.
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Kendall Loyer was a Ph.D. student and earned a MFA in dance at UCR. She is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and fitness instructor who has used her skills in studios and community programs as well as university classrooms. She aims to share the fun of physical fitness and dancing with students of all ages and abilities.

"Aside from the little notes and pictures I was gifted with every Tuesday, it felt amazing to get to talk about food, and eating which is a part of my research. It also was exciting to watch them figure out complex ideas for themselves through embodied exploration."
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As a Gluck fellow, Kirin McCrory did an ASK residency at Riverside Poly High School titled "Acting Shakespeare for Beginners to Intermediate", which offered two types of sessions with one being for beginning acting classes and the other with more intermediate workshops for students. 🎭

Kirin McCrory is currently a professor, playwright, and literary manager. Their plays, devised works, and performance texts have received awards, productions, and gallery exhibitions across the U.S. and internationally. They are currently the literary manager for VanguardRep, a theatre company devoted to nurturing new works and adaptations, co-founder of the Windmill Arts Center in East Point, GA, and Region 8 Co-Vice Chair for KCACTF’s National Playwriting Program. (Check out more on their website, http://kirinmccrory.com/)
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Colette Eloi, who was an MFA candidate at UC Riverside, has more than 15 years of experience as a resident artist in schools and community centers. She is a first generation Haitian on both sides and teaches the beautiful dances of her lineage. She is a practitioner of indigenous dance styles from the African Diaspora. She is a commissioned award-winning choreographer, and performer.

She has traveled to conduct dance research on the African Diaspora, studying singing, dancing and drumming in many styles and many places like Puerto Rico, Cuba, in Haiti, The Mississippi Delta, Ghana and Benin As a performer she has performed on every type of stage nationally and international. Including New York, France, Spain, Germany, and Hawaii. She deeply believes that if you can talk, you can sing, and if you can walk, you can dance.
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Family First Sundays and Slow Art Walk events at the Riverside Art Museum are a monthly series of creative play and exploration workshops that happen every first Sunday and first Thursday of the month starting from October to May. These workshops are open to the public and are for all ages. Each month, these workshops offer a creative project designed for families that encourage intergenerational engagement with art and culture on display at the museum 🎨

Due to the pandemic, First Sundays and First Thursdays are hosted online by UCR ARTSblock. Please keep an eye out for upcoming online events for First Sundays and First Thursdays!
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Photos are from First Sundays in 2019-2020 with Gluck fellows, Cara Rae Joven and Alexander Delepena

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