The arts are everywhere you look on campus this week. There’s experimental music, a string quartet, photos about food, a health-minded art walk, student exhibits and the combined talents of the Dance Program and School of Drama present the annual MFA Dance Concert.
Also, the English department welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Kay Ryan for the 50th annual Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading. Over the years, this has featured such greats as Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Penn Warren, Carolyn Kizer, Gary Snyder, W.S. Merwin, Seamus Heaney and Archibald MacLeish, plus the 91±¬ÁÏ’s own Heather McHugh and Colleen McElroy. As one staff member aptly put it, “I’m sure Roethke’s ghost is grinning somewhere.”
“Dreamlogs: Artists’ Books by Genie Shenk,” through Sept. 27. Shenk records her dreams in visual form, from circular prints and collaged paper to adaptations of illustrations found in antique atlases and dictionaries. This , highlights Shenk’s extensive career. Allen Library south basement and north first floor bacony.
Photography: “Foodland Security,” through June 3. An by Ottawa-based photographer Barry Pottle about the challenge of Inuit in urban settings gaining access to “country food,” or food from the land. In the Allen Library’s north lobby. Presented by the Jackson School’s .
Music of Today, 7:30 p.m., May 9. An evening of improvised experimental music in Meany Hall by School of Music faculty members Luke Bergman (bass), Richard Karpen (piano), Juan Pampin (electronics) and Cuong Vu (trumpet), with special guests Matt Ingalls (clarinet) and Greg Sinibaldi (saxophone). Presented by the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media. are $20 ($12 for students and seniors). 206-543-4880.
Oceana Quartet, 7:30 p.m., May 11. Members of the School of Music’s scholarship string quartet for 2012-13 are Emily Choi and Rochelle Nguyen (violins), Romaric Pokorny (viola) and Sonja Myklebust (cello). The quartet will works by Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven and Greg Sinibaldi, 91±¬ÁÏ graduate student in jazz studies. Tickets are $5, cash or check at the door. 206-543-4880.
Faculty Recital: Carole Terry, organ, 2 p.m., May 12. The 91±¬ÁÏ organ professor will perform works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Sweelinck, Franck, and Widor in on the , 1245 10th Avenue E., in Seattle. The Flentrop Organ, as perhaps you know, contains 3,944 pipes ranging in size from less than 1 inch to 32 feet.Tickets are $15, cash or check at the door.
Hall Health Art Walk, 5:30-7 p.m., May 13. A public art walk showing 100-some works by 91±¬ÁÏ students, alumni, faculty and staff. Some artists will be on hand to discuss their work. “It’s much more than just making our newly remodeled building look nice,” said Mark Shaw, director of health promotion. “It has been shown that art in a clinic can promote patient healing.” In fact, he’ll speak on that subject at 6 p.m. in the center’s ground floor conference room. To learn more, contact Shaw at 206-616-8476 or mshaw@uw.edu.
- Hall Health call for art: Any size and media of work by 91±¬ÁÏ students or employees will be considered with a limit of two digital submissions per artist to hhpccweb@uw.edu by June 14. $100 cash prizes for the top three juried works, to be hung in the 2013-14 school year.
Art by Jacob Johns, May 13 – July 12. Paintings, drawings and sculptures by Johns, a Native American artist, will be exhibited in the first floor gallery at the School of Social Work. There will be a reception from 12:30 to 2 p.m. May 15, in the gallery. Both show and reception are open to the public.
School of Art graduation exhibits, through May 23.
- Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media students receiving bachelor of fine arts degrees in the May 14-23. Reception 4-7 p.m., May 14.
- Three Dimensional Forum master’s of fine arts student Stephanie Klausing at the May 14-18. Reception 6 p.m., May 14.
- Several School of Art will participate in the , 11 a.m.-5:45 p.m. May 17, in . Free and open to the public.
MFA Dance Concert 2013, 7:30 p.m., May 15-19. The 91±¬ÁÏ Dance Program’s annual event, in the Meany Studio Theater with choreography by seven master’s of fine arts candidates, in collaboration with masters students from the School of Drama and professional artists from the community. Advanced undergraduate dancers peform. Learn more . are $10-$16, $2 more if purchased at the door. 206-543-4880.

Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading: Kay Ryan, 8 p.m., May 16. This will be in 130 Kane Hall, the Roethke Auditorium. Ryan has written several poetry collections, including “The Best of It: New and Selected Poems,” which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Yale Review and many other journals and anthologies. Yale Review editor J.D. McClatchy called her poems “compact, exhilarating affairs” and Ryan “an anomaly in today’s literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.” Free. Doors open at 7 p.m.