VCUarts alumna Tara Donovan is a recipient of the 2008 MacArthur "genius” award. She joins two other VCUarts alumnae in receiving this honor - Teresita Fernándezin 2005 and Daisy Youngblood in 2003.

Donovan will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. “The MacArthur Fellows Program celebrates extraordinarily creative individuals who inspire new heights in human achievement,” said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton. “With their boldness, courage, and uncommon energy, this new group of Fellows, men and women of all ages in diverse fields, exemplifies the boundless nature of the human mind and spirit.” The new Fellows work across a broad spectrum of endeavors and include a neurobiologist, a saxophonist, a critical care physician, an urban farmer, an optical physicist, a sculptor, a geriatrician, a historian of medicine, and an inventor of musical instruments. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.

Donovan's work uses everyday manufactured materials such as scotch tape, styrofoam cups, and drinking straws to create large scale sculptures that often have a biomorphic quality. For her 2003 installation entitled “Haze,” Donovan stacked over two million clear plastic drinking straws against a 42-foot-long gallery wall. The resulting effect, with its shifts in color, form, light, and surface, was that of a fog bank or a diaphanous cloud, providing the viewer with a compelling, perceptually transformative experience. In a 2007 untitled work, Donovan created a 50x60-foot installation using over three million seven-ounce plastic drinking cups in rows of different heights, resembling a serene, iridescent ice field. Donovan received her MFA from VCUarts in 1999 and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Donovan’s work is currently in a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston from October 10, 2008 – January 4, 2009. Click here for more information.

Click here for a recent article in the New York Times.

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, an exhibition co-organized by The Menil Collection that brings together a multigenerational group of North, South, and Central American artists who address the value of ritual in the artistic process and the wider implications of spirituality in contemporary art.

VCUarts assistant professor Sanford Biggers of the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media is among the featured artists. A native of Los Angeles, California, Biggers creates multi-disciplinary artworks that integrate film/video installation, sculpture, music and performance. Influenced by his experiences living throughout the United States, Europe and Japan, and by Buddhism, hip-hop and urban culture, Biggers’ work is known for its combination of meditative rigor and improvisatory edge.

His installations, videos, and performances have appeared in venues worldwide including the Tate Modern, London, Whitney Museum, New York, Studio Museum, Harlem, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, as well as institutions in China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland and Russia. He has had solo exhibitions at Grand Arts, Kansas City, Mary Goldman Gallery, Los Angeles, Triple Candie, New York, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Matrix/University of Berkeley Museum, Berkeley, and Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw. He is the recipient of awards and grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, New York Percent for the Arts, Lambent Fellowship in the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Tanne Foundation, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, among others.

Including some 50 works of sculpture, photography, assemblage, video, performance, and other media, NeoHooDoo asserts that the drive towards a spiritual practice is as relevant today in our burgeoning global society as it has ever been. Artists have long engaged with ritualism to enrich their work, drawing on the traditions of shamans, griots, and oral historians. NeoHooDoo “grew out of a desire to explore the multiple meanings of spirituality in contemporary art,” states P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor and Menil Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Franklin Sirmans.

Challenging conceptions of “insider” and “outsider” art, the artists in the exhibition frequently create work using everyday objects that resonate both within the confines of a gallery or museum and among their own localized audiences who may or may not visit art institutions. Situating their work in a vernacular aesthetic, the meaning of the work fluctuates according to its context. Items such as light bulbs, wine bottles, artificial flowers, piano keys are repositioned in assemblages confronting themes of exploitation, genocide, and poverty. The 53 pieces of discarded waste paper comprising Jimmy Durham’s A Street-level Treatise on Money and Work are brought to the center of a dialogue on the destruction of native cultures and Dario Robleto addresses American notions of manifest destiny in Deep Down I Don’t Believe in Hymns by taking a military-issued blanket and “infesting” it with hand-ground dust made from vinyl recordings of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” and Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.”

Other artists include Terry Adkins, Janine Antoni, Radcliffe Bailey, José Bedia, Rebecca Belmore, Tania Bruguera, James Lee Byars, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, William Cordova, Jimmie Durham, Regina José Galindo, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Hammons, Michael Joo, Brian Jungen, Kcho, Marepe, Ana Mendieta, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Pepón Osorio, Adrian Piper, Ernesto Pujol, Dario Robleto, Betye Saar, Gary Simmons, George Smith, Michael Tracy, Nari Ward

The exhibition runs from October 19, 2008 - January 26, 2009 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, NY.

Click here for more information on Sanford Biggers.

Click here for more information on P.S.1 and the exhibition.

Flag, Reni Gower, 2006, encaustic and collage on panel 15 x 18 ½ inches, courtesy of the artist

The Anderson Gallery is pleased to present The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic from September 19 – December 7, 2008. This exhibition features the work of eight artists who explore the formal, technical, and conceptual aspects of encaustic, infusing this ancient medium with new vitality. Their paintings incorporate the seductive surfaces, luminous colors, and layered images that uniquely result from mixing pigment in translucent wax. The sensual physicality of these works is further enhanced by a range of techniques that include scraping, burning, burnishing, stamping, incising, dipping, and pouring, and by elements adopted from other processes like printmaking, drawing, collage, and installation. “By exploiting the physicality of their medium,” notes catalogue essayist Virginia Spivey, “they force the viewer to look deeper – past the transparent surface, past the represented image – in order to reinforce a material awareness of self and of place.”

Artists represented in this exhibition are Kristy Deetz (DePere, Wisconsin); Peter Dykhuis (Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada); Lorraine Glessner (Rockledge, Pennsylvania); Cheryl Goldsleger (Athens, Georgia); Reni Gower (Mechanicsville, Virginia); Heather Harvey (Big Stone Gap, Virginia); Jeffrey S. Hirst (Minneapolis, Minnesota); and Timothy McDowell (West Mystic, Connecticut). At the Anderson Gallery, the exhibition will also include a site-specific installation by Heather Harvey.

Since 1971, VCUarts Anderson Gallery has become one of the most significant venues for contemporary art in the Southeast. Well known for presenting the work of nationally and internationally renowned artists, emerging figures, and regional names, the Anderson Gallery mounts exhibitions that explore currents in contemporary art and design. The gallery, located at 907 ½ West Franklin Street, is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Click here for more information on the gallery and this exhibition.

The premiere production of Shadow Play is a unique and inspiring archetypal journey through the mysterious realm of light and dark that reveals the heart of human experience. A disillusioned young artist wanders into a gallery of found objects and discovers renewed inspiration with the help of inhabitants from the shadow world. Shadow Play, a synthesis of physicality, music and magic, puppetry, video animation, photography, and sculpture, creates a beautiful and imaginative event. It speaks to a broad range of age groups and cultural backgrounds while investigating the lights and shadows of love and the nuances of life.

After six workshop productions and four years in development, Shadow Play opens at VCU in November. Similar in spirit to Stomp, Blue Man Group and Mummenshchanz, Shadow Play uses no spoken words while allowing the storyline to emerge through the physicality of the characters.

Shadow Play is the brainchild of Broadway veteran and Theatre VCU chairman David S. Leong who assembled a high-powered team of artists/collaborators with over thirty Broadway and international shows under their wings: Gary C. Hopper, Theatre VCU assistant chair; Leland Faulkner, renowned shadowgrapher and illusionist; Toni-Leslie James, Broadway costume designer; Michael Keck, internationally-known composer and Tennessee Dixon and Gary Gillam, award-winning photography, video, 2D and 3D animation creators.

David Leong’s movement direction and fight choreography have been seen in over 75 productions in New York City during the past 20 years. His work is currently seen in the Broadway musical Billy Elliot. Other Broadway credits include Carousel, The Civil War, Company, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Hamlet, Macbeth, Solitary Confinement, Sex and Longing, A Delicate Balance and The Rainmaker. His work has also been seen on the stages of all major regional theatres across America including The Guthrie Theatre, Arena Stage, Goodman Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Lincoln Center Theatres and the Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival. He is the producer, writer and director for Shadow Play.

Gary Hopper has staged over 50 classical and contemporary plays for Theatre VCU. His creative work of late has been focused on developing new works for the stage. Hopper was awarded a National Endowment Grant for the Arts, four Sweet Briar fellowships and three VCU Grants-In-Aid to assist his various dramatic projects. Hopper is a writer and director for Shadow Play.

The production will run November 6–8, November 13–15 & November 20–22 at 7:30 p.m. and November 9, 16 & 23 at 3:00 p.m. at the Raymond Hodges Theatre of the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, 922 Park Avenue. Please call the Theatre VCU Box Office at 828-6026 or e-mail theatretix@vcu.edu for ticket information.

Click here for more information on the production and the creative team.

VCU alumnus David Russell (BM, ’90) continues his very successful career as a film scorer and composer for major films. Last year he scored and composed music for several films, including Contamination, Sleepwalking, Untraceable and The Uninvited. David also produced the score CD for Untraceable. He released his score to Wicked Spring on iTunes in April.

Click here for more information on David’s music and upcoming projects.

VCU alumnus Jason Butler Harner (BA, Acting ‘92) plays Gordon Northcott in the upcoming feature film The Changeling opposite Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich. The film, directed by Clint Eastwood, opens October 31.

Roger Ebert’s recent review stated, "The film's most riveting performance is by Jason Butler Harner as the murderous Gordon Northcott. The character could not be adequately described on the page. Harner's mesmerizing performance brings him to sinister life as a self-pitying weasel specializing in smarmy phony charm. He doesn't play a sick killer. He embodies one."

Harner appeared most recently in the premiere episode of J.J. Abram’s television series Fringe, on FOX, the HBO miniseries John Adams, opposite Paul Giamatti and in the action film Next, opposite Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore. Upcoming projects include the independent film New Orleans, Mon Amour, directed by Michael Almereyda and starring Christopher Eccleston, as well as Tony Scott’s remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which is based on Morton Freedgood’s thriller novel and stars John Travolta and Denzel Washington.

Click here for more information on Harner and the movie.

Matt Wallin, assistant professor in Communication Arts, was senior technical director on I am Legend starring Will Smith, senior compositor for The Watchman and worked on the animated movie Beowulf. He has worked on other feature films such as Star Wars: Episode I, The Mummy, Twister, Matrix: Revolutions, Hellboy and King Kong. Wallin served as visual effects supervisor on Matthew Barney's most recent feature film, Drawing Restraint 9 in Japan, New York City & San Francisco.

Click here for more information on Wallin and his work.

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