“I can’t breathe, it’s just so beautiful,” said a passerby to guitarist Rafael Padrón after the guitar festival performance on Friday, Nov. 7.  

The Keene State College Guitar Orchestra played a three-song prelude at the event and solo guitarist Rafael Padrón headlined.

Hannah Sundell / Equinox Staff

Professor of Music and Director of the guitar studies program at KSC, Jose Lezcano, organized the event.  He teaches courses on guitar orchestra and Latin American music.  Regarding the night’s performance, he said, “It was brilliant. Gorgeous.”

Lezcano described the benefit that concerts like this one have for students, “Our students get to hear a top-notch player like Rafael play material that they’re working on, but they get to see it at this incredible level and it inspires them to go out and practice more. To think about phrasing and color, beauty and tone.  That’s the best thing about it — is that someone like Rafael can inspire students and offer a different point of view than what I might offer.  It’s all good; it’s wonderful,” Lezcano said.

Originally from Cuba, Padrón said he is the program director of Classical Guitar at the Miami School of Music.  He said he attended the National School of Art in Havana and has won many top prizes in international and national competitions, according to the event’s playbill. He described the night’s performance as, “beautiful.” When he performs on stage, Padrón said he draws inspiration from story-telling, “I try to tell a story to the audience when I play.  I try to communicate that to the audience.”

He enjoyed the experience of coming to Keene and playing in smaller towns and cities like this one.  “I love the silence, the intimate sounds that in the big cities it is impossible to get,” Padrón said.

He continued, “Instead of going to the club — that’s good too, but this is something that is priceless that you can get here.  Often when you go to the big cities you get scared with so many people in the audience, but here it’s like you are one of the family and it’s very nice for me,” Padrón said.

Music performance major and member of the Keene State Guitar Orchestra, Mark McCarthy shared his take on seeing Padrón play, “A crazy performance, I have no words honestly.  The amount of skill and time he has put into it over the years is truly amazing,” said McCarthy. Lezcano described the music department at KSC as, “One of the leading, if not the leading cultural institutions in the Monadnock Region with quality and just in the number of concerts that we have,” Lezcano said.

The department holds a number of events, faculty concerts, ensemble concerts and more. Lezcano looked disappointedly at the empty Recital Hall after the few audience members had already cleared out.

“I just wish that more people knew about this and came over to this side of the campus to attend these events because they’re just wonderful,” Lezcano said.

Lezcano continued, “I wish this place had been full to hear this magnificent recital tonight.” To further the outreach for the music department, Lezcano said they plan to utilize more social media and mailing lists.

“We all have an educational mission here to let people know that there’s beautiful music and it’s something that can have a healing power in a very crazy world, a very stressed out world. What a beautiful moment. Many, many beautiful moments,” Lezcano said.

Hannah Sundell can be contacted at hsundell@keene-equinox.com

The mayor is wearing a backwards baseball cap and a sports jersey and there are people skateboarding around the room — this is not a typical city council meeting. Herberton Hall in  the Keene Public Library on Wednesday, Oct. 29 was a full house for the mock production of City Council Meeting.  

The City Council Meeting production was created by Mallory Catlett, Jim Findlay and Aaron Landsman. The production is referred to as performed participatory democracy, a performance created locally and involving audience participation.

The first performance of City Council Meeting was in Houston, Texas in 2012 and since then it has been taken all over the country.

Members of the community, in this case the community of Keene, sit in the audience and can choose which role they want in the performance.

Contributed Photo / Aaron Landsman

The audience members can choose to be bystanders, supporters or speakers. Speakers become city council members and sit on stage while supporters speak at the podium on certain issues and bystanders are able to watch the performance without speaking.

The performance began asking for audience volunteers to be speakers and supporters, while the bystanders left the room.

The meeting started with an instructional video, including actual council members Terry M. Clark representing Ward 3 and Emily P. Hague from the Planning, Licenses and Development Committee.

Co-creator and director Mallory Catlett described the meeting as a, “task-based performance, in that it is based on a series of tasks that are in a series of instructions.  So no one really has a script — the mayor has pieces of a script, but each of the council members has a staffer who instructs them, feeds them lines or tells them what to do at certain points.  People in the audience have testimonies that were given somewhere in the United States within the last three years, so they’re just reading transcripts,” Catlett said.

Catlett explained that most of the meeting was based on actual transcripts from city council meetings, except for writing that Landsman added.   Also during the performance there were two monitors on either side of the stage giving instructions to the audience, along with live video footage. Messages occasionally scrolled across the screens as well, including questions like, “Are you even here or are you just represented?” Catlett thought the performance went “great.”  She continued, “Every place we do it is very distinct and New Hampshire is beautiful.”

Keene State College Alumnus and Staffer with the City Council Meeting production Jon Adams was on stage during the production and also played a role in the beginning of the first act.

Adams explained, “City Council Meeting is basically a mock-city council meeting, but instead of having actors we have audience participation play the role of the council members.”

As a staffer, Adams “gave the city council members information that they needed,” Adams said.

“I didn’t find out exactly what this was until today, ten minutes before the show started,” Adams said.

The second half of the performance consisted of council members Hague and Clark playing guitar and singing some old folk songs mixed with other genres.

Simultaneously, two young men skateboarded around the room.

Adams explained one reason for this was the recent discussions of building a new skate park in Keene.

Writer of the City Council Meeting script, Aaron Landsman, said there were two messages he was trying to convey with the second act.  “The message is, what are rules for,” Landsman said.

He continued, “How you find your tribe, how you find your people when you’re younger because I know I didn’t skateboard so I was interested in hearing from those guys what it was like. I grew up in kind of an alternative music scene in the Midwest in the 80s and that was where I found my tribe.  So I’m always interested in how people find the people who help them get through life.”

The second message was “People who might be political adversaries — your council members and the skaters — can sometimes seem to be at odds,” he said.

“To just have them on stage together is really the message in a way; that’s the message to kind of embody that spirit. In each city where we do this project we have some kind of combination of people that might have to argue about something at a council meeting and then be on stage together,” Landsman continued.

Adams explained the most important aspect of a show like this for him is, “Bringing to light information that people would not normally think about, like I would not normally go to a city council meeting because they’re kinda boring, to be so blunt,” Adams said.

Hannah Sundell can be contacted at hsundell@keene-equinox.com

Relying on the kindness of strangers: that was the premise of the journey Sarah Sellman and Greg Grano took in their film “American Bear.”  They went to thirty states in sixty days and to five towns named Bear.

Grano was talking in his sleep when he said, “We need to go to Bear, Colorado.”  That inspired the destinations the couple went to.  It turned out that Bear, Colorado, does not actually exist, but they found five towns in the continental United States named Bear.  The two went all over the U.S. in their four-door orange Honda, relying on strangers for a place to say.

The documentary explores their sojourn in small towns and big cities and the strangers who put them up for a night.  According to the film, Grano and Sellman talked to a total of 711 strangers, seven percent of whom actually gave them a place to stay for the night.  They spent a couple nights in hotels and one night in their car parked in the Walmart parking lot.

They met people from all walks of life: a Vietnam veteran, a foster family, a family living on a Cheyenne Reservation and a paratrooper.  They went to towns like Lame Deer, Montana; Atlanta, Georgia and Oberlin, Ohio.

Tim Smith / Equinox Staff

Grano said he takes a lot from the experiences they had while filming, “I really didn’t think I liked documentaries until I made one, but I now feel so grateful that I did that and it was based on people’s real stories and getting to explore that was something that I think will impact any kind of filmmaking opportunity from here on out,” Grano explained.

He said he learned a lot from the telling of different strangers’ life stories.  “I couldn’t have written those,” Grano said.

He continued, “I’m so grateful that I did that and got to hear those stories.”

Grano said one of the families that impacted him the most was a family that lived on a Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana.  They encountered the family through a woman named Jolene who they met in a grocery store.  “Our movie demonstrates a lot of what it means to be polite in America and a lot of the privileges that the two of us had, and the fact that a lot of the people we stayed with mirrored some of our identities I think reflects that.  Staying with Jolene felt really special because I think in some ways she was taking risks that other hosts of ours did not have to,” Grano said.

The journey highlighted societal issues like race and gender. With Jolene’s family they discovered the breaking down of stereotypes and other people’s preconceptions. Grano explained that towns outside the Northern Cheyenne Reservation warned the couple of stories and stereotypes of the people who lived there.

This trip also taught Grano and Sellman a lot about filmmaking.  “The whole project was a risk because of the actual social experiment aspect of it,” Sellman said.

Sellman explained they had everyone they interviewed sign a waiver in order for it to be included in the film and as a personal touch they left a stuffed teddy bear and a card with every host they stayed with as a thank-you.

Grano and Sellman started the project as film students at New York University in their early twenties.  Today, three years later, they are touring their film across the country, similar to the journey they started out with. They hope to have screenings in major theaters across the country soon.

On their website americanbearfilm.com, Sellman detailed their account and how it affected her as a human being and a filmmaker.

“I don’t think I’ve stopped experiencing our adventure and I don’t think I’ll realize how important was for a long time,” Sellman wrote, “The biggest thing for me is the memories, or the way that anything anybody says reminds me of our time on the road, reminds me of one of our amazing hosts, reminds me of an encounter or a place or a time.”

The “American Bear”  website also includes interviews Grano and Sellman conducted with professors across the country in a segment called BEAR Bones.  The interviews discuss the neuroscience, gender studies, race relations and sociology behind the “American Bear” journey. Adjunct Professor and Advisor to the KSC Film Society Peter Condon said he thought the film was, “Incredible.  Some moments I was very moved.”

For him, the family who fosters  five children touched him the most.

He described them as a family willing to provide those kids with a, “happy and loving life.”

He also mentioned that even though he had just met them tonight, Grano and Stillman were staying at his place for the night.

Hannah Sundell can be contacted at hsundell@keene-equinox.com

The Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery is currently displaying the artistic endeavors of Keene State College and the surrounding community.  

The exhibit “Passionate Pursuits” asked the KSC community to provide a visual representation of something they are passionate about.

The exhibit started about 10 to 15 years ago, according to Director of Thorne Art Gallery Maureen Ahern.

Ahern said the focus of the show is to provide KSC and the Keene community, “a place to share their interests.”

On display are a variety of visual and artistic representations of interests and passions people have in the Keene area.

Different forms of artistic expression, for example, pottery and literal representations of hobbies, are displayed. This presentation in particular, “doesn’t limit to visual arts,” Ahern said.

“It’s a wonderful experience, every exhibit is different. You get new ideas and new students coming in all the time,” Ahern said.

Ahern also announced she is stepping down as director of Thorne Art Gallery, a position she has held since 1981. She said that her experience as director has been a lot of fun.

Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication Mark Timney decided to display what he thought was a nontraditional passion of his in the exhibit.

On display is his firearm and bow-and-arrow.  “Usually in a museum or an exhibit of some sort, it’s things that people made, but this one is ‘What is it you like to do?’” Timney said.

He continued, “For me, competitive shooting both with firearms and archery is something I’ve done my entire life and most people don’t know much about that. I thought, and the museum curator agreed, that this might be a very different sort of thing to put on display,” Timney said.

For Timney, competitive shooting is more than a hobby—it is a passion.

“It takes you outside yourself, it teaches you to be disciplined.  To enter what sports-people often call ‘the zone,’ you know to be able to do without thinking.  To find this peace of mind, of thought, of will and I think all successful artists experience this, as do all people,” Timney said.

Timney also helped do graphic design, computer and web layout for another exhibit currently at the Thorne-Sagendorph called “Intersection: Art, Culture and Identity.”

He explained that “Passionate Pursuits” is his second foray into the art world.

“Journalism, while it has many artistic aspects—the art of writing, video images, sound and so forth—it’s not typically seen as an artistic expression.  So it’s been fun for me to break outside the traditional boundary of journalism or mass communications,” Timney said.

Kyle Bailey / Photo Editor

Gallery Moniter at the Thorne and a Studio Art and Psychology Major Jessica Boushie said her favorite piece in the exhibit was “Here is Looking at You, Fourth Dimension.”

She explained that she liked the concept behind the piece.

“I’m an artist so I know how hard it is at times to come up with kind of creative ideas and just the fact that they can make something so pretty out of something that’s just household objects and kind of just using the resources around you, which is really important as an artist,” Boushie said.

Boushie said she also liked the piece, “Passionate about Planarians.”

“I like this piece because it wasn’t just about the photography of it or the art, it was actually about the scientific aspect. It reminded me that science and art in the past kind of went hand-in-hand and they still kind of do and nobody really acknowledges that anymore,” Boushie said.

She continued, “Taking something that is just ordinary objects that people wouldn’t look at in that way and creating something out of it,” Boushie said.

She said that she plans on submitting a piece later this year for a showcase, but being a sophomore, she cannot submit pieces for other shows because only seniors have that ability.

Ahern said that having the gallery on campus has a positive impact on the campus and the community of Keene.

“I think it really enriches the campus.  Artists are able to express through art, the mind and the body,” Ahern said.

Timney explained the importance of having a passionate pursuit in life.

“I think it’s critical that everyone have at least one thing like this in their life that compels them to explore, to be curious, to create, to understand and sometimes we can do that through work or relationships, but other times it takes something completely external like this.  Whether you’re doing it with a paint brush or a bow-and-arrow, I don’t think it matters, as long as you find whatever it is,” Timney said.

The exhibit “Passionate Pursuits” is on display until September 18.

Hannah Sundell can be contacted at hsundell@keene-equinox.com

Oranges, a wolf mask, sounds of a busy city and music from the band Nine Inch Nails, were some of the elements used in this year’s Evening of Dance collaborative.  

Students and professors were able to showcase their choreography skills at the Main Theatre in the Keene State College Redfern Arts Center from April 23, through April 26.

Wednesday night, the Redfern Main Theatre opened to a half-full room with a crowd of enthusiastic friends and family. Kourtney Suliveras, a student at Merrimack College said she enjoyed the performance.  “It was really great and very different,” Suliveras said.  Her favorite piece was Where Empty Fills, choreographed by her friend and KSC senior Gabriella Pacheco.

Another audience member,  Becky Yankowitz, a design and technical theater and occupational health and safety major, expressed her enthusiasm about the performance.  “I loved it.  I am beyond impressed,” she said.

Yankowitz said her favorite piece was City, choreographed by KSC alumnus and choreographer for the Redfern Arts Center,  Rebecca Stenn.

“Something about the choreography is different than I would have expected; outside the box,” Stenn said.

City had dancers wearing collared shirts, moving in a way that mimicked a city street.  Car horns, murmuring voices and cars whooshing by were audible in order to represent a city.

Dancer Lara Underkoffler, a junior and dance major, danced in pieces titled,  Tooth and Nail, and, December Morning.

She said she loves dance because, “It’s a great way to express myself and it’s fun to dance with friends.”

Michael Portrie / Contributed Photo:
Tooth and Nail, choreographed by Guest Artist Cynthia McLaughlin, is performed above. Alex Davis (in air) and Lukas Irizarry dance across the stage.

Underkoffler said she  thought the performances went well and her favorite pieces were December Morning and Tooth and Nail.

Tooth and Nail  included elements from the old music piece Peter and the Wolf, but with a twist of modern elements, including an almost cartoon-like wolf in a suit, creating a roar of laughter in the audience.

Choreographer and Theatre and Dance Professor Marcia Murdock helped choreograph a piece with KSC professor William Seigh called, Poulenc.

Murdock explained she was very pleased with the  performance.

“I was thrilled with how many people were here,” said Murdock,  “I think they did beautifully and I think the audience responded.”

She continued, “These students are dancers and they really are professional. The performance ran like a professional ensemble and I am very proud of them.”

The piece included live piano, played by Music Professor Maura Glennon. “When you have live music — what a gift, a rarity these days,” Murdock said.

Murdock expressed appreciation for everything that goes into a show like this and mentioned, “The generosity and spontaneity of the live performance is not like a trained performance.”

She said she is thankful for all involved.

Senior and theatre and dance major Alex Davis choreographed his own piece for the performance called, Slight Displacement.

He explained his positive reaction to the night’s performance and said, “I am really impressed and pleased that we have three more days to continue to feed off an audience and create more buzz around campus.”

Davis said he likes choreographing pieces because,  “It allows me to speak through movement, explore and problem solve.  I really enjoy the rehearsal process — working, reciting and reworking.”

Hannah Sundell can be contacted at  hsundell@keene-equinox.com

Social Activities Council Coffee House concert brings L.A. artist to Keene, N.H. 

Kazoos, a ukulele and a song about pi were some of what musician Alfa shared with Keene State College students last Saturday in the Night Owl Cafe.  

Alfa Garcia, known by her stage name Alfa, performed at the Social Activities Council’s Annual Coffee House event.  She flew in from Los Angeles, California, just the day before. It was Alfa’s second time visiting New Hampshire and her first time in Keene.

She said she started doing shows at other higher education schools while she attended college and refers to her music as folk-pop.  She plays the piano, guitar, violin and kazoo.

Alfa sold her CDs at the show and SAC provided food and drinks for students who attended the performance.

Alfa played a mixture of songs she wrote as well as acoustic covers of popular songs.

Bree Kraus / Equinox Staff:
Alfa performs at the Social Activities Council’s Annual Coffee House event on March 29, 2014 in the Night Owl Cafe. Inset: The Social Activities Council poses with Alfa and other Coffee House performers.

She played an acoustic version of Lorde’s chart topping song Royals, stating, “I don’t know if you know this next song or not, it’s a little esoteric.”

She also combined different songs together like Alex Clare’s Too Close, Brittany Spears’ Toxic and Justin Timberlake’s Cry Me a River.

Before she played her own songs, she gave some background as to why she wrote them.  Many of her tracks were about life experiences, like watching her friends get married and a song about the man she dated as a freshman in college. She promoted her most recent album release, World Go Blue.

She encouraged audience participation with singing along and by passing out kazoos.

She had audience members play kazoo along with her for her song titled Blue. She wrote Blue about her sister’s “love drama.”

Alfa seemed to win over audience member and first-time listener Mackenzie Correll, a freshman and dance major.  “She’s really talented.  I wasn’t expecting her to be so talented,” Correll said.

Erica LaFond, a freshman and elementary education major, agreed with her sentiment, “I thought she was really good.”  Correll and LaFond said they liked how Alfa played the ukulele, “because it’s different,” Correll said.

“It makes me want to go to Hawaii,” LaFond said.

Alfa  said she likes playing at colleges because, “it really is a different art, versus playing at a venue, which I love to do — but it’s like two different things.

“Something about playing at colleges — it’s a lot more about interacting, getting your audience sort of involved in the music.  It’s not just about being passive music in the background,” Alfa said.

Hannah Sundell can be contacted at hsundell@keene-equinox.com

Sculptors and potters comes from near and far to spread their love for art

The Carroll House Art Gallery is a space for local artists to inspire others with their work. 

The artist Edgar Degas once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” The Carroll House Art Gallery is showing two exhibits, “Daytime Television” by artist John Lloyd and “Imagined Space” by potter Aysha Peltz.

John Lloyd is the sculpture coordinator at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado, according to the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.

With his work, Lloyd tries, “capturing volume with as little as possible,” Lloyd said.  He uses light, volume, color and traditional crafts to capture the, “essence of volume,” as Lloyd put it.

His exhibit, “Daytime Television,” consists of his metal sculptural works. Lloyd likes displaying his work at the Carroll House because it is, “an opportunity to exhibit  my ideas and share them,” Lloyd said.

Brittany Ballantyne / Administrative Executive Editor:
Artist John Lloyd stands next to his artwork. At bottom left, Kerrianne Thomas examines one of Lloyd’s metal sculptural works.

The other exhibition on display showcases work of potter Aysha Peltz, who teaches ceramics at Bennington College in Bennington, Vt., according to the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.  Her show, “Imagined Space,” consists of a variety of her pieces. Peltz’s pottery is inspired by, “natural forms like those found in landscape and the human body,” Peltz said.

“I encourage the nature of clay to speak for itself through the making process—to allow cracks, ridges and pools to echo formations in the natural world,” Peltz explained.

Peltz chose to display her work at the Carroll House because it, “is a teaching gallery,” she said.

Kerrianne Thomas, a sophomore at KSC, said she really enjoyed the gallery. “When you’re just starting out in ceramics and see other’s work, it makes you want to be better,” Thomas said.

“When I heard that this gallery was available I was happy to be part of a show that students could easily visit,” Peltz said.

There was a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. last Thursday where the artists discussed their work and the public was able to ask questions.  The exhibits are on display through March.

Hannah Sundell can be reached at hsundell@keene-equinox.com

Half a century ago, four mop-top British musicians stumbled off an airplane onto American soil.  

As of Feb. 7, it has been 50 years since ‘Beatle Mania’ took over the U.S. with their arrival, preceded by hundreds of shrieking fans.

Two days after they came to the U.S., they famously appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was watched by 40 percent of the American population at the time or about 74 million people, according to the Ed Sullivan Show wesbsite.

The four quickly became a global phenomenon—they influenced clothing styles, haircuts and music for multiple generations.

Their long-winded success from one generation to the next has political and social influence as well.

AP Photo
This Feb. 7, 1964 file photo shows The Beatles arriving in New York at JFK airport. 

The University of Pennsylvania Press conducted a study to explain their impressive following called the “Psychological Characteristics of Beatle Mania” by Evan Davies.

“The kind of support found with the Beatles is also remarkable.  Their public is a diverse one, composed not only of teenagers, but also of people who are within the older age groups,” Davies writes.

A fan from the beginning, professor of biology at Keene State College, Julia Imbarrato, recalls seeing them in concert in 1964 at Shea Stadium, with about 20 or 30 thousand fans, she approximated.

“The minute The Beatles stepped onto their little platform, so many people were screaming you couldn’t hear them play—you couldn’t hear anything,” Imbarrato said, “It was ‘Beatle Mania’—they couldn’t contain themselves, they were elated. It was upbeat, happy music and people were really excited about it,”  Imbarrato said.

The professor said her favorite song by them is With a Little Help From My Friends, from the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band album.

Fifty years later, people still understand The Beatles phenomena.

Kaitlin Richotte, a psychology major at KSC, could not name all four members off the top of her head, but said her favorite song is “All You Need is Love.”

She said she sees the influence from them in today’s rock music. She said, “They [The Beatles] and the Rolling Stones have had a huge influence.”

Lennon inspired posters still hang in residential hall rooms to the reappearance of their music in popular movies, The Beatles.

The iconic and peace-loving four have made their mark in the United States and continue to inspire not only today’s generation, as stated above, but could inspire many more to follow.

Hannah Sundell can be reached at hsundell@keene-equinox.com

Is J-Beebs letting down Beliebers?

Glossy-eyed with his trademark quaff unruffled, Justin Bieber smiles for his now-famous mug shot. Bieber was arrested for drag racing in Miami Beach last week, police allege he was under the influence of alcohol, marijuana and Xanax, according to the CNN report.

This is not Bieber’s first run-in with the law. On Jan. 9 of this year he was accused of felony vandalism. The security camera evidence shows him allegedly egging his neighbor’s home in L.A., causing an estimated $20,000 in damage, according to CNN.

The charges are currently under investigation. The question on many people’s minds asks: is Bieber spiraling out like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan before him?

Erin Hilow, a junior at Keene State College and secondary education and math major, said she thinks Bieber is getting out of control.

Hilow said, “This is what happened to Britney Spears too and she just lost all of her popularity.”

The junior continued, “[Spears] just got weird and that’s what Justin Bieber’s going do to.”

While some could care less, an empire of so-called Beliebers are strongly affected by this current spiral.

Hilow commented on Bieber’s concerned fans and said, “His fans are children and they’re not going to want to look up to some druggy who’s in jail right now, nor would parents want them to look up to him.”

Professor of Psychology at KSC, Lawrence Welkowitz said he believes that society gives celebrities like Bieber too much power.  “People like Justin Bieber have a lot of potential to do good,” Welkowitz said.

Welkowitz indicated that he believes  society takes celebrities too seriously. Welkowitz said, “the media loves a freak show.”

The influence celebrities have on society, especially today’s youth, is discussed in a journal article by Patrick F. Parnaby and Vincent F. Sacco featured in 2006 in the North American Journal of Psychology called “Fame And Strain: The Contributions Of Mertonian Deviance Theory To An Understanding Of The Relationship Between Celebrity And Deviant Behavior.”  The article states, “our cultural preoccupation with fame and celebrity has manifested itself even in the minutia of daily living.”

“He’s just being ridiculous and stupid, and he doesn’t realize that he might have money right now but this is how he’s blowing it, he’s blowing his reputation,” Hilow said.

Another celebrity with a similar level of fame status, Miley Cyrus, has been under somewhat similar scrutiny. Perhaps her recent personality change had less potential to hurt her image.

“I have no objection to anything that Miley Cyrus does,” Welkowitz said.

Cyrus’ image makeover has stirred up her fans as well, but “Miley Cyrus is doing really weird stuff like the Wrecking Ball video that seemed ridiculous at first, at least to me, but it had meaning behind it and Justin Bieber is just being stupid,” Hilowsaid.

Hannah Sundell can be contacted at hsundell@ksc.keene.edu