Senior in film and English wins 2004-05 Murray award

By Franklin Crawford

Sarah Ruth-Jacobs, a Cornell senior in film and English in the College of Arts and Sciences, is the 2004-05 recipient of the Edward M. Murray Committee on the Arts Scholarship.

The award is administered by the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) and the Cornell Council's Committee on the Arts (COA). Recipients are chosen by faculty members within their own colleges and departments. The scholarship provides financial assistance for artists showing exceptional promise in their fields.

"I'm delighted to have been chosen for the award this year and am always surprised at the kindness and generosity shown by such benefactors as Edward Murray to arts students," said Ruth-Jacobs. "The CCA is a vital organization on campus because it encourages and supports student projects in the arts that are conceived and created outside of classroom assignments."

The Murray Committee Scholarship is presented annually to undergraduate majors in arts and culture-related programs. Murray, who died in 2000, was a Cornell professor of music theory as well as a conductor, composer and pianist.

"We were proud to nominate her for the Murray award," said Marilyn Rivchin, a faculty member in the Cornell Department of Theatre, Film and Dance. "As her filmmaking teacher, I can speak to Sarah's bold style -- in her current film (and senior thesis) 'The Hole,' she constructs a daring and stunning personal narrative about the moral and environmental decay of three people on an island in Maine."

The film will be shown Sunday, Dec. 12, at the Willard Straight Theatre. Ruth-Jacobs received an Individual Artist Award from the COA in May 2004 to create the "The Hole," which is shot in black and white with nonsynchronous sound on location, with original poetry and music.

Ruth-Jacobs has utilized dark subject matter in three experimental shorts produced at Cornell, and her first chapbook of poetry, Valence, is coming out this fall from Flarestack Press, U.K. She plans to work in publishing and to pursue an M.F.A. in poetry after graduation.

The COA established the Murray award in 2000, through the guidance of its former chair, Sidney Goldstein '52; alumnus James Byrnes '63, MBA '64, CEO of Tompkins Trust Co.; and Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings.