MTSU Mondays: Borderless Arts project, female pilots soar in race

Here's the latest news from Middle Tennessee State University.

Borderless Arts project to be displayed at Frist Museum

Destruction and rehabilitation were themes of the recent three-day Borderless Arts Tennessee “Re-Pair” workshop led by two faculty members.

Communications master instructor Lori Kissinger and textiles, merchandising, and design professor Lauren Emery Rudd worked with students to create handcrafted designs interpreting the effects of Nashville’s 2010 flood and Christmas Day bombing in 2020.

“We are creating art that reflects what those things did to Nashville, and we are creating art of what happened afterward and the repair of that,” said Kissinger, director of Borderless Arts Tennessee, a statewide nonprofit that offers accessible arts programs for people with disabilities.

With Rudd at the helm, Borderless Arts students spent three days cutting, pasting, and sewing fabric in a lab at the Ned R. McWherter Learning Resources Center on the MTSU campus the first week of June.

Art from the “Re-Pair” project will become part of the Frist Art Museum exhibit, “The Power of Resilience,” which will be installed at the Nashville facility in August. It will be on display from Aug. 25 through April 1, 2024, highlighting the work of adult artists with disabilities.

Female flying aces earn their wings at Air Race Classic

Three female flying aces representing the Aerospace Department recently returned from a successful 2,400-mile cross-country trip that pilot Farilyn Hurt described as “empowering, exciting, moving, and stressful.”

“By the end, I felt I could literally do anything,” Hurt, 23, of Milledgeville, Georgia, and a May graduate, said of the all-women Air Race Classic 2023. The four-day flying event started on June 20 in Grand Fork, North Dakota, and ended in Homestead, Florida, on June 23.

Hurt, fellow graduate Briana “Bri” McDonald and junior Alyssa Smith of Collierville, Tennessee, finished 28th overall out of nearly 50 teams registered for the event which reinforces teamwork, endurance, and a bit of luck. Teams from Kent State and Southern Illinois universities finished first and second overall.

“It created a lot of experience and piloting skills that I can combine with what I learned at MTSU, enabling me to help teach others, and taking sound advice from the other women,” McDonald, 22, of Jackson, Tennessee, said. “I’m a younger gen (generation) and they inspire me.”

Their coach, Meredith Boardman, director of MTSU aerospace safety, organized the department’s return to the Air Race Classic for the first time since 2018. She said MTSU plans to enter a team in 2024 “with bigger, better goals. … It is a competition, and we will always continue developing our strategy, but I truly believe that participating in the ARC adds value to our department as a whole."

An all-woman ground crew — junior Hailey Harrison (social media and flight following), 2023 graduate Rachel Frankenberger (strategy and flight following), senior Katie Thayer (logistics and social media), and senior Denisa Pravotiakova (fundraising) — kept the flyers informed, safe and aware of weather situations.

Boardman said aerospace staff members Nate Tilton (flight training manager), Sean Logan (assistant flight training manager), and Matt Ivey (strategy), assisted throughout the process.

MTSU Mondays content is provided by submissions from MTSU News and Media Relations.

This article originally appeared on Murfreesboro Daily News Journal: MTSU Mondays: Borderless Arts project, female pilots soar in race