Graduation art exhibit celebrates milestones

In a one-woman show at the Alfa Art Gallery in downtown New Brunswick this past Thursday, Pandora Scooter addressed an issue many University seniors have been thinking about for the last four years: graduation.
At her art exhibition titled “Graduation/Diploma Schmipoma,” Scooter discussed the importance of the graduations in life.
The exhibition is part of a septology of audience-integrated shows about the milestones in life, Scooter said.
These include significant events like birth, graduation, marriage, divorce, birthdays and retirement, presented in chronological order by Scooter. The shows will be held over the next four months, with the last show ending on April 30, 2009.
The show was accompanied by paintings and 3D art forms in the gallery, which is on display until Nov. 25 and includes artists such as Ariana Barat, Alexander B. Canner, Olivia Kaufman-Riviva and Matthew West.
Each show features only Scooter, who has been writing and performing her own shows for the past six years.
The audience, a crowd of about 10 people, gave their own opinions about graduations.
Scooter opened the show with a recount of her kindergarten graduation, laced with sarcasm, attacking the speeches presented to the tiny graduates.
“Dare I say the hopes of all Americans are in your hands now,” Scooter said.
She asked the audience to recall their high school, college and graduate school graduations, and she gave theatrical reenactments of her own graduation ceremonies.
“When we graduate, we are commencing on a new stage of life,” Scooter said. “But at the ceremony did I feel like this? No.”
She said ceremony practices where one is handed a piece of paper and then sent to the other side of the room inevitably understate the importance of the ceremony itself.
“[Graduations] are such a big deal that it deserves much more thought than it is given today,” Scooter said.
Later she asked the audience to make up their own versions of the ideal graduation ceremony.
Scooter, who said graduations must be made to be fun again, gave her final insight.
“We need to transform,” Scooter said. “We must move to be moved.”
Scooter’s next show, “I Do...WHAT?” will be held on Dec. 11 at 10 p.m. and will address the issues of marriage and commitment, according to the Alfa Art Gallery Web site.

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