Lucas Littlejohn, one of our current Art majors, was a recipient of a Rembrandt Club Summer Research Grant. As part of his summer research Lucas assisted LA-based artist Emily Mast, who works at the intersection of performance, experimental theater, sculpture, and drawing. Much of the time was spent between two projects, The Cage is a Stage and B!RDBRA!N. The Cage is a Stage was a multi-compositional, evening length performance examining the relationship between "human nature" and animal behavior and the politics of animalistic representation. In his first month with Emily, they prepared for the performance’s showing at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto in late June, with an accompanying gallery exhibition at The Power Plant. Lucas had a wide variety of tasks, from scribing rehearsals, preparing scripts, and making props to sewing busted costumes and figuring out how to dye newspapers pink. The piece was also shown at REDCAT in downtown LA in mid-July as a part of the annual New Original Works Festival. For this iteration, Lucas agreed to be a stagehand and joined the crew of performers for a dizzying three weeks. In addition, starting in late June, he began (re)fabricating a set of 43 sculptures from Emily's 2012 piece B!RDBRA!N, a performance about the intricacies and follies of language. Her performance work often reflects and embodies a constellation of ideas which includes sculptures, drawings, paintings, prints, writing, and research; for B!RDBRA!N, these objects existed as both stage props and a gallery installation. This summer they recreated them—painted cardboard boxes, FedEx tubes, athletic balls, and Quikrete cylinders as the work was acquired by the Kadist Foundation in San Francisco. The final days of August were spent preparing the sculptures to be shipped, as well as brainstorming ideas for installing The Cage is a Stage at Emily's upcoming gallery shows in Vienna, Austria and Nice, France next year.