National radio show to feature Funderburk
Professor Brent Funderburk works in his home studio. PHOTO: Megan Bean | University Relations
Mary Beth Lodge, psychologist and host of the Voice of America Variety Channel's radio program "What Matters," will interview Brent Funderburk on Sept. 5.
The national Internet broadcast, airing at 8 a.m and 8 p.m., will focus on the haiku form as a visual and verbal meditation as explored by Funderburk and his art students at Mississippi State.
“Haiku,” said Funderburk, a professor in the College of Architecture, Art and Design since 1982, “was originally a dynamic form of improvisational creation in Japanese courts and gatherings, and is now practiced over the world, mostly by individual writers. As a way of calming and centering the multitasked-out mind, whether solitary, or by a group, the simple, three-line poem game of spontaneous composition offers the reward of a simple and surprising truth.”
The artist/professor has found that the triadic structure lends itself well to the triptych format of visual art and that his students readily make connections between the haiku word picture becoming a pictured word. Funderburk has also experimented with cross-sensory visual music forms with his students.
The Department of Art professor was also interviewed by Lodge on May 9 on the Voice of America Variety Channel in an initial program titled "Creating Beauty: An Interview with Brent Funderburk."
