Vanko-Tomaszewski played a key role as the GK Elite leotards to be worn by Simone Biles, Suni Lee, and the rest of Team USA in Paris were recently unveiled on NBC’s TODAY Show. It drew major media coverage, including a story in the New York Times that said: “GK Elite on Wednesday unveiled the eight Olympic leotards for the women’s team — loaded with Swarovski crystals in a patriotic color palette. The wardrobe, which drew inspiration from American iconography, French art and even old Hollywood, is ultimately about more than aesthetics. Gymnasts have long used leotards to add an extra layer of personality and to gain a confidence boost while on the competition floor. And each of the leotards they’ll pack for Paris has its own story.”

Despite a lot of moving parts, the campaign launch was a resounding success.

“We seamlessly launched all these updates as the leotards were revealed live on the TODAY Show,” Vanko-Tomaszewski said. “I am happy to report that the collection launch was flawless, with no significant challenges, thanks to our meticulous planning and preparation.”

The Summer Olympics are set to officially open July 26 in Paris, running through Aug. 11. Look for women’s gymnastics to take center stage from July 28 to Aug. 5. Vanko-Tomaszewski, a diver on Lawrence’s swimming and diving team who studied studio art and theatre arts during his undergrad days, will be watching closely.

He said Lawrence gave him the opportunity to challenge himself creatively and push his limits. Between working with the Rabbit Gallery in downtown Appleton and creating his own pop-up art gallery on campus, he said he learned valuable skills about preparation, planning, and strategy for large projects. He thanked his former advisor, Rob Neilson, Frederick R. Layton Professor of Studio Art and professor of art, for encouraging him to push his boundaries.

“What I loved most about Lawrence was that anything was possible,” Vanko-Tomaszewski said. “At Lawrence, you weren’t identified by your interests or area of study; you were seen as a person with the potential to make a lasting impact on the world. I attribute my determination and dedication to delivering at the highest level of execution to my experiences at Lawrence.”

GK Elite has had a longstanding partnership with USA Gymnastics. While in previous Olympics other brand names have adorned the leotards, GK has always been the manufacturer who has created those leotards. GK was the official national team apparel provider for the Tokyo Olympics and is honored again to be the logo on the apparel that the team will wear in Paris.

Vanko-Tomaszewski said a marketing position with Elite Sportswear was a natural choice for him. He has been involved in gymnastics and cheerleading for 17 years, including being a coach and owning his own cheer gym.

“Given my extensive background in gymnastics, cheerleading, and diving, joining Elite Sportswear felt like the perfect fit,” he said. “My deep understanding of these sports and my passion for sportswear and marketing make this role a seamless match for my skills and interests.”

Vanko-Tomaszewski manages marketing initiatives for all three of the company’s divisions, and it’s his responsibility to maintain their websites and digital presence. He also manages their advertising strategies.

“By working cross-functionally with our Brand Marketing Department, Product Line Team, and Product Development Teams, we ensure cohesive branding and optimal product positioning to drive sales and enhance our online presence,” he said.

Rolling out this collection was a huge project for everyone involved, spanning two years. Vanko-Tomaszewski’s team was more heavily involved in the past year, working to redesign certain website pages, create new video and image assets for advertising, and prepare for a surge in site traffic.

Watson Fellows are selected from 41 private colleges and universities across the United States that partner with the Watson Foundation. More than 3,000 Watson Fellows have been named since the inaugural class in 1969.

The Watson Foundation dates back to 1961, created as a charitable trust in the name of Thomas J. Watson Sr., best known for building IBM. It works with students to develop personal, professional, and cultural opportunities that build their confidence and perspective to be more humane and effective leaders with a world view.

This year’s class comes from 20 states and four countries and exhibits a broad range of academic specialties, socio-economic backgrounds, and project diversity. They will travel to 54 countries pursuing topics ranging from climate refugees to pediatric cancer; from contemporary African art to disability care innovation; from entrepreneurial inclusion to urban animals; from coastal resilience to modern opera.

Q&A with Charlie Wetzel

We talked with Wetzel about the year ahead:

Q: What sort of connections and collaborative work are you looking to do as you travel the world?

Wetzel: Over my Watson year, I am hoping to make sculptures, photographs, and body-art pieces with other transgender artists around the world. I am starting my fellowship in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, which is a rural town of around 700 people located on the eastern edge of the country. While the town is small, it has an internationally recognized art scene and there are multiple queer artist residencies in the region. During my time there, I plan on collaborating with other trans women artists to make polaroid and alternate process photographs. I will also visit with and interview artists from the Heima art collective, a small group of makers who are located in east Iceland, about how their art practices have been shaped by gender identity and Icelandic public policy.

Next, I will visit Bengaluru, India, where I will volunteer with the Aravani Art Project and work on murals and large-scale paintings. The Aravani Art Project is a public art collective run by trans and queer women across India. The project brings together people from the transgender community who paint murals inspired by their lives and experiences. In Berlin, Mexico City, and Amsterdam, I will work on similar collaborations with other queer art organizations and meet with artists who are making work about trans ontology.

During my Watson year, I will also explore what gender-affirming health care looks like around the world, with the goal of understanding how different care settings can impact art about transgender life. While I am in Chonburi, Thailand, I am hoping to meet with surgeons and health care workers who provide gender-affirming bottom surgeries. Chonburi is an international hub for gender-affirming surgery, and while I am there, I will live in a hotel used by patients who are recovering from gender-affirming vaginoplasty. Early during my transition, I looked into having surgery in Chonburi, so this stop will have special significance to me. I will also work with one of my contacts who is a body and performance artist to make a collaborative piece about altering the gendered body.

Q: Why is this work and exploration important to you?

Wetzel: My art practice is the single most important thing to me. I spend all of my free time making art, and when I am not able to be in the Wriston Art Center or the Maker Space physically working on a project, I am reading, talking, learning, and thinking about art. I am totally obsessed. All of my work centers around trans ontology—it is all about how and why trans people exist, and it celebrates the beauty of trans life. One of my goals in life is to advance the rights of queer and transgender people. We are routinely denied access to basic health care and are increasingly being used as political scapegoats. My activist art practice is what I use to gain some sense of control over these narratives, and this project will let me spend an entire year making work about, and advocating for, trans identity on an international scale. The Watson Fellowship is, literally, a dream come true.

Q: How has your time at Lawrence prepared you for this next adventure?

Wetzel: I came to Lawrence undecided with a vague idea that I wanted to eventually go to law school. But then, I took Intro to 3D Art with professor Rob Neilson. I had some background in photography when I applied to Lawrence, but I did not think I would pursue art at any serious level. That class, and the sculpture classes I took my sophomore year, totally changed me—Professor Neilson taught me how to think with art. He showed me how pieces of wire, chunks of wood, and lumps of metal can communicate profound ideas, and he encouraged me to think of myself as an artist. Additionally, the classes and conversations I had early on with professors Elizabeth Carlson and John Shimon showed me that artists and visual scholars can have a profound impact on the world, and they helped me realize that a life as an artist can be as, if not more, impactful as a life as a lawyer.

Q: How about experiences outside the classroom?

Wetzel: Lawrence has granted me dozens of opportunities that have prepared me for my Watson. Over the last two summers, I stayed on campus to produce a few different bodies of work. In 2021, I made an installation piece and a large body of photographic self-portraits and in 2022 I spent my days between the Maker Space and the Wriston working on a series of 3D printed sculptures. All that work turned into three separate solo shows in the Mudd Gallery, one solo show at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a residency at the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, where I got the opportunity to run interactive art workshops. All of that prepared me incredibly well for the Watson—both the application process and the project itself—and none of it would have been possible without the support of Lawrence facilities, faculty, and staff. Sometimes I have these moments where I realize just how lucky I am to have this community. I am a Pell Grant recipient who has never left the country, and it makes no logical sense that this is happening to me. Thanks to this wacky little school called Lawrence, though, it is, and now I get to travel the world making queer art.

“Marifé’s passion for the project shone through the energy she displayed on stage,” said Vaughan. “I believe Marifé’s pitch was the best that day and that is why she was one of the students awarded funds to complete her project.”

Entenza-Sierra will use the prize money to purchase quality supplies for her portrait project, which is already under way.

Her Senior Experience project, Neither Here nor There: The Known and the Unknown, is a comparative portrait series that will feature members of the Appleton community alongside citizens of Sierra Leone. Having traveled to the West African country with KidsGive for a humanitarian relief project, Entenza-Sierra was excited to return in December for her capstone work.

The first half of the portraits feature Lawrence students, faculty, and employees here in Appleton. She traveled to Sierra Leone for 10 days during winter break, where she explored Freetown, Bo, and Mattru Jong and found subjects for the second half of the exhibit’s paintings. Entenza-Sierra seeks to reflect the lifetimes of people in her portraits by taking the time to speak with her subjects.     

“People are important to talk to, people are important to get to know,” said Entenza-Sierra. “You never know how that will circle back to you.”

Entenza-Sierra wants to shine a light on the lives of Sierra Leoneans, both personal and political. She hopes her exhibit will encourage viewers to learn more about the frequently overshadowed socio-political strife in Sierra Leone. The exhibit aims to diversify its viewers’ perspectives by exposing people to new faces, cultures, and ideas. Entenza-Sierra plans to display each community’s portraits on opposite sides of the exhibit and allow people to question and evaluate the separation between Appleton and Sierra Leone.  

Entenza-Sierra has carefully considered every aspect of her capstone, all the way down to the medium itself. The acrylic paint she is using will not only dry quicker, making it easier to capture details live, but is also independent from the dark and often oppressive history of oil paint. Entenza-Sierra wants to show the Lawrence-Appleton community unfamiliar faces of the lively and relatively unknown country of Sierra Leone. Neither Here nor There: The Known and the Unknown will be presented in the Wriston Art Center this spring.

Entenza-Sierra said she plans to attend graduate school for her Master of Fine Arts or a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies. Regardless of her path, she plans to bring her love of art with her.

Additionally, Neilson will be a visiting artist with the sculpture program at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design-Jerusalem.

“As an artist working with site-specific sculpture, I am most interested in the importance of place; how the physical, historical, and cultural character permeates into a location,” Neilson said. “Israel can be seen as the birthplace of the West’s spiritual life and it continues to be seen as the omphalos of the world by the three major Abrahamic religions. I am thrilled by the opportunity to scrutinize the particular artistic connotations of this site, this location, this country through my creative research while in Israel and after I return.”

Neilson is one of 35 participants selected to travel to Israel on the . The visits will take place between Dec. 26 and Jan. 8.

Through the support of Jewish National Fund-USA’s Boruchin Fund and individual donors, the tour is a fully paid intensive program to Israel for full-time U.S.-based academics from recognized universities/learning institutions.

During the trip, the participants will meet Israelis from all walks of life and will hear from a variety of speakers. They will also be exposed to contemporary Israeli society, culture, historical sites, and the way of life in Israel. The academics will meet with professionals and experts in government, education, media, and other sectors.

Neilson, on the Lawrence faculty since 2003, has exhibited his sculpture, installations, and drawings at galleries, museums, and alternative spaces nationally and internationally and has created public art commissions throughout the United States, including projects in California, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Emma Goodman, a junior pursuing a double major in studio art and art history, first heard about Lawrence through a friend, but was ultimately drawn in due to the supportive interpersonal relationships between students and professors.

Goodman knew that she would be majoring in studio art when she came to Lawrence. She has always been passionate about using art to experiment and express herself and wanted to continue that exploration in college. Then, during her first term at Lawrence, she took Intro to Art History and was immediately hooked.

“I love taking art history classes because they allow me to trace the patterns and changes in a society across time into the present by examining art from different cultures, which also informs the way I think about my own art,” Goodman said.

Goodman is grateful for the academic opportunities that she has experienced so far; for example, working as a head writing tutor and designing a Wriston Art Gallery exhibition.

She is optimistic and excited about her future.

“I don’t have very concrete plans for life after Lawrence, but I think I would enjoy working at an art museum or gallery, always continuing to make my own art,” Goodman said.