Glass Without Borders
“There are so many things you can do in glass,” says artist Kellmis Fernandez, AS’84. “You can blow it, shape it, paint over it, sculpt it.”
All this is clear from the vibrant whorls and elegant lines of the sculptures the Caracas, Venezuela, native creates and displays in his Englewood, Florida, studio and gallery.
Like the best art, Fernandez’s sculptures draw on his diverse life experiences. They are inspired by international myths and legends. Their forms and hues mimic nature. “There are echoes of the biology and astronomy classes I took in college in my work,” he says. “The strong colors of the tropics I grew up in are also very much present.”
Making the objects is tricky. “Glass blowing is very unforgiving,” Fernandez says. For one, you have to keep the blazing liquid in motion. The master craftsman melts silica granules in a furnace heated to 2180 degrees Fahrenheit, then blends, colors, and shapes the molten mass. He continuously turns the hot, honeylike substance on a blowpipe, keeping it above the floor—and away from his feet.
Fernandez eschews any protective gear, donning shorts, a T-shirt, and dark glasses to work. Studio visitors are advised to heed the “No Open-Toed Shoes” sign (though Fernandez admits to wearing sandals on occasion). It’s not an art form for the fragile. Withstanding heat is a requisite skill, as are good coordination, an artistic eye, and scientific acumen.
After majoring in art history at Northeastern, Fernandez earned a BFA at MassArt in glass blowing and photography, and, three years later, added an MFA in glass blowing and sculpture. He taught in MassArt’s glass department until 1999, when he and his wife, Maria Mayz de Fernandez, AS’85, moved to Florida.
These days, Fernandez’s works enjoy global recognition. They’ve been displayed at the Art Museum of the Americas, in Washington D.C., among many other museums and galleries in Latin America, North America, and Europe. In addition, Fernandez has taught students at MIT, the University of Wisconsin, and the Rhode Island School of Art and Design.
“Glass is a unique medium,” says Fernandez, who names his pieces after a culturally varied array of sprites and deities—Venus, Bamapana, Mab, Ahurani. “The process is the same as it was two thousand years ago. We just have better equipment now.”
— Katy Kramer, MA’00
A commitment to global dimensions is one of five defining themes in Northeastern’s new Academic Initiative.
Microbe Probe
Like people, microorganisms need optimal surroundings to thrive.
Especially when they have important work to do, such as gobbling up hazardous contaminants. April Gu, ME’97, an assistant professor in the civil and environmental engineering department, is figuring out ways to marshal the mighty mites to clean polluted water in an environmentally friendly way.
It’s a hot form of bioremediation. In layman’s terms, Gu is looking for bugs that eat other bugs, thereby improving water quality and wastewater treatment.
“We enrich and manipulate multiple types of microorganisms, all of which do different jobs,” she says. “And we try to understand their personalities, so we can make them happy and they can do their jobs well.”
According to Gu, certain microorganisms can remove nitrogen or phosphorus from wastewater, thereby preventing the overgrowth of algae in rivers or lakes that catch wastewater discharge. But, like employees, microorganisms have their eccentricities. “They are not always predictable, reliable, or cost-effective,” Gu says. So she’s exploring how to make them more dependable.
Gu started observing the idiosyncrasies of the natural world as a youngster. “I’ve always liked anything related to nature,” she says. “In high school, I’d just sit beneath a tree and observe everything around me.”
She obtained her undergraduate degree in sanitary and environmental engineering from Beijing’s TsingHua University, the top engineering and technology university in China. After earning her master’s at Northeastern, she traveled west to the University of Washington for her doctorate, then worked in the private sector.
But Gu, who now lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, had determined what her optimal surroundings would be. She explains, “I remember saying years ago, when I left Northeastern, that if there were a chance I could come back and teach, that would be awesome.”
The sophistication of Northeastern’s research facilities made such a return especially appealing. Today Gu is heading up the university’s new environmental biotechnology lab. Its research, she says, will lead to efficient, effective biological treatments for contaminated rivers, lakes, and groundwater around the world.
— Katy Kramer, MA’00
A commitment to fundamental and translational research is one of five defining themes in Northeastern’s new Academic Initiative.
Urban Renewal
Sometimes climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is the only way to gain perspective.
“I was really unhappy with everything going on in my life,” says Sharon Levine, AS’01. But volunteering and working out, she knew, were two things that gave her satisfaction.
“About then,” she says, “I went to visit an old teacher of mine, who read us his journals about traveling to Kilimanjaro, and over the next year I planned my own trek. When I got back, I was completely shocked at how unhealthy people were in the U.S.”
Fourteen months later, her nonprofit, Concrete Safaris, was born. The adventure-fitness program, aimed at helping city youth between ten and fourteen years of age enjoy the outdoors, get more exercise, and make healthy choices, is housed at Frederick Douglass Academy II, in New York City’s Central Harlem—an especially disadvantaged community. Levine herself lives in East Harlem.
Creating the organization made climbing Kilimanjaro look easy. “During the year and two months of preparation,” Levine says, “in addition to putting together the legal end of the business, I spent an enormous amount of time assembling a team: seeking fitness coaches, adventure mentors, a school, and a board.”
Concrete Safaris’ kids and mentors meet three days a week after school and two Saturdays each month. “We take two trips a month,” Levine says, “one around the city and another upstate,” to such nature spots as Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and Staten Island’s Clove Lakes Park.
“I’m much more appreciative of my degree now, six years later,” says Levine, who grew up in Orlando, Florida, and was a music industry major at Northeastern. “I’m able to talk to lawyers about basic things like trademarks, contracts, and handbooks. I thank my lucky stars every day.”
Her Kilimanjaro trip worked its magic, she says. “I live near the East River, nine blocks from Central Park, a twenty-minute walk from work. I have an enormous community of people who believe in our organization’s mission. I’m making a difference in someone’s life every day. I’ve never been happier in my whole life.”
— Katy Kramer, MA’00
A commitment to urban dimensions is one of five defining themes in Northeastern’s new Academic Initiative.
Prescription Strength
The formula seemed easy enough.
As a Sacred Heart High School sophomore from South Lawrence, Massachusetts, Susan Proulx went to Lawrence General Hospital for career day. “Hmm, pharmacy . . . I wonder how that is?” she remembers pondering.
“I talked with the hospital pharmacy director,” says Proulx. “He told me to go to Northeastern.” And what made Northeastern students so special? “They go to co-op,” the pharmacy head told Proulx.
So she pocketed the script, and came to Northeastern. “I did six quarters of co-op, split between two different places,” says Proulx. “The first three were at Bon Secours Hospital [now Caritas Holy Family Hospital] in Methuen, in the inpatient hospital pharmacy department. Then I tried retail pharmacy, at Birch Super Drug.
“I learned tons during co-op,” she says. “I really knew nothing about pharmacy until I went to work in these places.”
Today Proulx, PAH’80, PharmD’90, is a top name in the field, serving as the president of Medical Error Recognition and Revision Strategies (Med-E.R.R.S.), in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1997, this for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) evaluates pharmaceutical trademarks before they go on the market.
“We look at potential names for products, so they are not mixed up with others, and give our opinion as to whether a name is safe or not,” says Proulx. “We look at the packaging as well, to reduce the risk of error.” This means scrutinizing any look-alikes that could cause mix-ups with drugs already on the market.
Each year, Med-E.R.R.S. works with several dozen pharmaceutical and health-care companies to make sure a customer doesn’t mistakenly swap meds with similar-sounding names. What’s her recipe for a safe moniker? “Will we be able to sleep at night if we make this recommendation,” she says.
Proulx’s skills stem from a healthy dose of experience during college—and after. “First, I worked community pharmacy, and then I moved to Philadelphia to do a hospital pharmacy residency at the Veterans Hospital,” she says. She also provided training at big pharmaceutical companies.
ISMP hired Proulx as vice president of operations in July 1995. She took over Med-E.R.R.S. in March 2000.
“I love it,” she says. “We feel like we’re in the forefront, hearing about new therapies and classes of drugs. It makes a difference. We feel we can help save lives on a broader scale.”
— Katy Kramer, MA’00
A commitment to experiential learning is one of five defining themes in Northeastern’s new Academic Initiative.
Music for a Change
“I’ve always been a music freak—always planning and supporting music,” says Tim VanMetter, AS’88. Last year, this lifelong passion harmonized with VanMetter’s sense of social responsibility when he produced a benefit CD for an organization that supports survivors of sexual assault.
Proceeds from the sale of the seventeen-track album—featuring such top-drawer indie artists as the New Pornographers, Neko Case, and Motion City Soundtrack—go to the Voices and Faces Project. The organization, says VanMetter, is a nonprofit network of sexual-violence survivors that encourages “women, men, and children to come forward and tell their stories.”
To stop rape, project organizers believe, people have got to start talking. Survivors’ personal experiences are shared via a speakers bureau and a website. A documentary, a book, and a photography exhibition are currently in the works, too.
“Making the record was very rewarding,” says the South Salem, New York, native, who, along with a buddy from Chicago, spent a year of odd hours producing the CD, called The Voices and Faces Project, Vol. 1. “It was an awesome thing, working from its inception to the end. It taught me a lot.”
Actually, VanMetter has as much creative cred as the artists on his playlist. “I was in eight [theatrical] shows at NU,” he says. “Show after show. I kept acting through school and co-op.” Then came training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art; the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, in Waterford, Connecticut (“theater boot camp,” VanMetter says); and an internship at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
After a decade of acting and playing drums, the former English major stepped away from the bright lights. VanMetter moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, and joined Universal Studios Home Entertainment as a liaison between its creative-marketing and sales operations.
But his time championing the Windy City’s live-music scene wasn’t wasted. VanMetter’s review of the new CD? “The record is an excellent release,” he says.
Music fans can hear for themselves by previewing tracks at <myspace.com/thevoicesandfacesproject>. The CD is available on Amazon.com and at <www.voicesandfaces.org>.
— Katy Kramer, MA’00
A commitment to creative, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions is one of five defining themes in Northeastern’s new Academic Initiative.