Breeder Susan Bennington ’78, owner of MoonLit Labradors, made history when one of her 10-month-old puppies won Winner’s Dog, the highest honor given by the Labrador Retriever Club of the Potomac at the club’s annual show. “Ringo” was the youngest ever dog to win the honor. In this interview, Ms. Bennington talks about that win, how she became a breeder, and her favorite teacher.
What were you doing before you became a breeder?
I went to school, got degrees, and then landed in the corporate world. Originally, I was working for a segment of Estee Lauder and then for a very large duty free organization. I traveled the world, which was an education beyond anything, but as wonderful as it was, I’m just not one to work for other people.
The work of Kinda Hibrawi ’96 was recently featured in The Postcolonialist, an alternative online publication. The piece described how the Syrian-American painter has sought to highlight the complexity of the conflict in Syria through a series of portraits that also feature posts from Twitter. The article described Ms. Hibrawi’s work as “carefully crafted visages of real children residing in refugee camps. Each canvas recalls the site of a particular massacre (Ghouta, Houla) and overlays words with the face of a child gazing directly at the viewer.” According to the piece, Ms. Hibrawi, who is also co-founder of the Zeitouna Program for Displaced Syrian Children, is currently working on her next Twitter portrait, based on the Qubeir Massacre. Read the full piece here.
Starting today Maya Freelon Asante ’01 will be the artist in residence at The Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland College Park. According to a press release by the gallery, VOLUME, the title of Ms. Asante’s exhibit, “will transform the gallery space into a colorful explosion of kinetic tissue paper art.”
Ms. Asante is the first artist to participate in the University’s new artist in residence program, AIR @ Stamp Gallery.
VOLUME is open to the public February 6th though March 7th from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. There will be a closing reception and performance on Thursday, March 6th, also from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Country music singer Ashley Gearing ’09 has a new single, “Boomerang,” and you can listen to it here. She said the single will be available on iTunes in March and a new album will follow later this year.
March 14 Update: The single is now out on iTunes and you can find it here: http://bit.ly/ag1bm
The single also is on Amazon and Google Play and has a lyric video: http://youtu.be/Gjz2bp-SCk4
“Rich Hill,” a documentary about the inhabitants of a small Missouri town, has won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Jim Hession ’99 is listed as one of the film’s editors. This is the 30th anniversary of the annual film festival.
This is the second Sundance award for a Williston alumnus this year. The short film “Gregory Go Boom” also recently won a jury award at the festival with Mickey Meyer ’03 listed as an executive producer.
Breeder Susan Bennington ’78, owner of MoonLit Labradors, made history when one of her 10-month-old puppies won Winner’s Dog, the highest honor given by the Labrador Retriever Club of the Potomac at the club’s annual show. “Ringo” was the youngest ever dog to win the honor. In this interview, Ms. Bennington talks about that win, how she became a breeder, and her favorite teacher.
