In Brief

ROTC participates in Battle of the Bulls

Aspiring military officers will prove their mettle on Saturday when USF hosts the second annual Battle of the Bulls, a field meet for Junior Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets.

The event, which takes place in the intramural fields from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., will test cadets from 16 schools who have won regional competitions. The meet is divided into four disciplines: athletics, academics, military drills and personnel inspection.

“It’s kind of a round-robin thing,” said Lt. Gary Dubia, public affairs officer for the USF NROTC. “While one group is running relays, another will be doing drills. Everything will go on simultaneously.”

Individual winners will receive medals and the top teams will be awarded trophies and an opportunity to compete at the national level.

“There’s no monetary award,” Dubia said. “It’s mostly just for bragging rights. The winners could put it on their applications for ROTC scholarships.”

Last year’s Battle attracted over 1,000 attendees, and a similar turnout is expected this year.

Flyovers by two TH-57 helicopters and a twin-engine SH60B Seahawk are planned to punctuate the event. The helicopters will remain on display throughout the day.

Katz exhibit comes to a close

Today is the last day to see the Alex Katz exhibit in the USF Contemporary Art Museum.

The West Gallery, guest-curated by Michael Klein, features the cartoons and sketches Katz transposed into large-scale portraits. The East Gallery features paintings, silk-screens and linoleum prints.

Katz was born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Queens. He began his study of art at the Cooper Union School of Art and finished at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Katz was awarded the Guggenheim Grant fpr a painting in 1972.

The past 40 years have seen Katz’s signature style of modern realism displayed in galleries all over the world, from the Brooklyn Museum of Art to the Albertina Museum in Venice, Austria, according to the USFCAM.

“Katz’s portraits form a new and distinctive type of realism in American art which combines aspects of both abstractions and representation. His work is characterized by flatly painted, dramatically cropped, oversize heads that recall movies, advertising and billboards. Katz’s concern is not with an emotional narrative, but with a style of portraiture — with giving the traditional genre of posed portraits an expansive, contemporary look,” wrote Richard Marshall in Alex Katz: A Retrospective.

The USFCAM is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

Compiled by Nik Drellow