» EXPRESS: What exactly do you do?
» MUTU: I take what seems like an image that is one particular way, and I switch it around and give it a new life. I use images from National Geographic, which still have a very colonial underpinning, and I turn them into, sort of, fantastical, titillating, critical subject matter. And I do that with bits and pieces from glossy magazines, fashion magazines, hunting magazines, motorbike magazines. … I guess I’m an image optimist.

» EXPRESS: You have an MFA in sculpture. How does that training affect your work?
» MUTU: I did sculpture because painting felt very limited, and it lacked the space for investigation that I needed. I am not a believer in the religion of paint. … Painting schools tend to be very conservative. You could challenge a sculpture or challenge a work in the critiques in a way you couldn’t with paint.

I don’t believe in that well-protected, guarded [place] where you can’t question something — sculpture, to me, was a safe zone where you’re constantly arguing and critiquing and reinventing the field.

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Britney Spears is at it again: The pop princess has been videotaped “numerous times” in the last few weeks using a British accent, reports People.com. She sounds like a Brit even when angry; on a shopping trip earlier this month, the star used the accent while screaming at paparazzi.

“She could simply be behaving this way for attention, for sympathy, or any other reason,” said psychologist Renee A. Cohen, who is not treating Spears. Without a formal evaluation, a diagnosis would be “foolish,” but the psychologist did wonder: “When Britney uses the British accent, or appears to take on another identity, does she know she’s Britney Spears?”

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All the world may be a stage, but these kids aren’t merely players.

There was acting, yes, but also the trying on of costumes, running amok in the theater, attending workshops and, at one point, drumming on the floor to illustrate Shakespearean meter.

It’s all part of the free ShakeXperience program, a new three-week “summer camp” at Gannon University that combined acting workshops with rehearsals of “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” The workshops end today, but the play continues through Saturday as part of Gannon’s Shakespeare Summer Nights festival.

And don’t worry, there are no men in tights here — the play’s been reimagined to take place in the 1950s, a suggestion from two of the students.

Organized by theater professors and Gannon graduates, ShakeXperience was conceived as a “page to stage” idea, looking at Shakespeare as a playwright, not as just a great wordsmith.

“I don’t mean to sound too noble, but it’s our passion,” Shawn Clerkin, Gannon theater director, said. “We’re committed to the notion of theater having the ability to change lives.”

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The spirited 18-year-old was unsure how to pronounce “Henri Cartier-Bresson, ” one of the fathers of modern photography, but she knew she liked his work.

And the work of her parents, Barb and Mike Priestap, of Photogenesis Photography on West 26th Street.

And the work of photojournalists, including the Erie Times-News’ Janet B. Campbell.

With inspiration like this, Sarah Priestap can hardly be anything but successful. She already has multiple awards to her name and a spot at the Erie Art Museum’s 84th Annual Spring Show, which ended Sunday. She will study photography this fall as a member of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s class of 2011.

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