Close Up
Many interests keep Bouquard busy
Mike Bouquard (right) teaches an intermediate video class as part of his duties in the Department of Media Study. Photo: NANCY J. PARISI
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“I started out as a TA in fall 2001 and I’ve been teaching every semester since then.”
“It makes me nervous to talk about myself,” says Mike Bouquard, a new-media technician and adjunct instructor in the Department of Media Study. “I quietly do what I do.” Between his days spent working at UB and his other life as a snowboarding instructor and member of a nationally known indie rock band, the reticent Bouquard doesn’t have much time for idle talk.
Bouquard began his career at UB in a field drastically different than where he is now. “I was an engineering major, but I decided that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go,” he says. He switched majors, earning dual bachelor’s degrees in history and media study.
Once he graduated from UB, Bouquard moved to Colorado and became a snow bum. Working as a janitor for a ski resort, he was able to spend his downtime on the slopes as part of the perks of his job. A former skateboarder, he took up snowboarding without much instruction. After moving back to Buffalo in the late 90s, he was offered a job at Kissing Bridge as a snowboarding instructor after he was spotted on the slopes by an employee. “At that time, there weren’t a lot of people snowboarding or people who could make turns,” Bouquard explains. Still teaching at Kissing Bridge on evenings and weekends, he instructs everyone from beginners to more advanced students who want to learn snowboarding tricks and stunts.
When Bouquard isn’t teaching on the slopes, he’s in the classroom at UB. Coming back to UB in 2001 to pursue a MFA, he explains, “I started out as a TA in fall 2001 and I’ve been teaching every semester since then.” He currently teaches an intermediate video class and is scheduled to teach “Video and Sound Design” this summer. He also maintains the media study labs, helps out students and faculty, and works closely with UB professor and filmmaker Elliot Caplan. Outside the UB media lab, Bouquard also helped with the scoring, post-production and mixing of a local independent documentary about Buffalo’s student refugee population and their struggles, titled “Refugees: Buffalo’s Next Generation.”
A self-taught guitar player, Bouquard is a member of the national indie rock band Odiorne. Founded by an original member of the internationally acclaimed rock group Mercury Rev, Bouquard joined the group as a bassist in 2002 and has toured the country playing music festivals and venues with headliners like the Flaming Lips and the UK-based band Mogwai. Now, he also brings his multimedia skills to the group, sampling field recordings and sound bites to add to the music, and filming the video backdrops that run behind the band during performances.
If teaching, snowboarding and playing music didn’t keep him busy enough, Bouquard also is a married father of two who is trying to pass on his interests to his young daughters, ages 7 and 2. He’s already taught his eldest how to skateboard and has started teaching her how to snowboard. And he’s already involved them in his music. “I let them chat into microphones and record that,” he says, “and then I’ll sample them sometimes. Who knows, it could end up on the new record.”
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