Arts and Culture

    A temporary labyrinth has taken shape on the UC Merced campus.

    The labyrinth, which is an ancient pattern people walk to reflect, was
    built by master designer Lars Howlett. Marked by spray paint now,
    once the final design is determined, the path will be delineated by river
    rocks and decomposed granite.

Film festivals across the world continue to reach out to filmmaker and Professor Yehuda Sharim to invite him to screen his latest films "El Ojo Comienza En La Mano" (translated to "The Eye Begins in the Hand") and "Letters2Maybe." Central Valley residents do not have to travel far to enjoy either of them because both are also being showcased in Merced.

The new film by filmmaker Yehuda Sharim, "El Ojo Comienza En La Mano" ("The Eye Begins in the Hand"), features the life work of Central Valley artist and muralist Rubén A. Sánchez.

Sharim, a professor in the Global Arts Studies Program, will be in conversation with Sánchez in the coming months as a way to premiere the work where it originated and needs to be shown first: Merced and other nearby locations.

Yosemite National Park is once again serving as the backdrop for a loose adaptation of one of Shakespeare's comedies. Shakespeare in Yosemite's "Love's Labor's Lost" will finally hit the stage at the Curry Village Amphitheater later this month. The show was initially planned for 2020 but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Professor Yehuda Sharim is sharing his experiences in cinema and community engagement with students at universities across the country and the globe.

Preparations are underway for this year's production of Shakespeare in Yosemite, and the show promises to be groovy.

After a monthslong collaboration between dozens of UC Merced students, professional artists, National Park Service staff and Merced community members, Shakespeare in Yosemite's first feature-length film, "Imogen in the Wild," celebrated its premiere in November on YouTube.

This time around, what happened in Las Vegas will not stay there — at least for Cathryn Flores. The fourth-year undergraduate, who's working on a major in English and minor in writing, reached yet another milestone in her music career as she attended a major Latin music awards show recently to be part of a social media team.

When the UC Merced Library acquired the Ernest Lowe collection of photographs last year, along with it came intimate portraits of labor leader, community organizer, businessman and Latino American civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.

Shakespeare can feel stuffy and difficult to understand. Native English speakers often struggle with decoding the Bard’s works, so imagine how difficult it would be to appreciate Shakespeare if you spoke another language.

This is the challenge UC Merced’s students and faculty took on with their bilingual production of “Ricardo El Segundo,” or “Richard II.”