Recent News from the Department of Craft/Material Studies:

• Craft/Material Studies students will be at the American Craft Council Craft Show at the Baltimore Convention Center 2/22-2/25.
  
  
• Graduate student Ann Walsh has two chairs that will be included in the forthcoming Lark Books publication, 500 Chairs.
  
  
• Alumna Rebecca Summerour is working on the conservation of several 17th century tapestries at the at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC. 

• Professor Susan Iverson was juried into seventh American Tapestry Biennial.  It will open in Tampa this summer and then travel

• Assistant Professor Natalya Pinchuk has two page images of her work in two different articles of this month's  Metalsmith Magazine.  Also, while was exhibiting with Rob Koudijs at Collect in London, three of her pieces sold to the Stedelijk Museum's Hertogenbosch in Netherlands.

• Robert Hobbs, Art History professor and Eminent Scholar, has written the catalogue essay for the Richard Pousette-Dart exhibit and Knoedler & Company in New York.

• The conceptual framework for the Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art exhibition at the High Museum of Art Atlanta is based on a manuscript by Dr. Babatunde Lawal, Art History professor and specialist in Yoruba art and culture.

• Kinetic Imaging Assistant Professor Semi Ryu's animation projects will will be a part of Streaming Museum, to be screened at Federation Square in Sydney, Australia (curated by Chelsea Arts Museum, NYC).

• Kinetic Imaging Assistant Professor Stephen Vitiello will be part of a group show at Monya Rowe Gallery NYC through February 16.

• Three graduate students in the Department of Painting and Printmaking were accepted to the
New American Paintings, No. 75 Juried Exhibition-in-print. Leah Beeferman, Jessica Langley, and Carmen McLeod are winners of the Mid-Atlantic competition and the book should be out the second week of April

• Color photographs by Department of Photography and Film second year MFA student, Sarah Kaufman, are being shown in Investigating the Corporeal at the Flander's Gallery in Raleigh, NC. The show runs until March 7.

• DT&G:Design, Type & Graphics Magazine in conjunction with The Design & Publishing Center, The Designers' Bookshelf and the Graphic-Design Network have unanimously selected Meggs: Making Graphic Design History as Book of the Year in 2007 for the visual communications fields. The book is edited by Rob Carter and Sandra Wheeler (both Graphic Design faculty) and Libby Meggs.

• The Student Screen Printing Awards Competition, held at SGIA ’07 in Orlando, Florida, has announced its 2007 winners. In the category of Serigraph, an Award of Excellence went to student Ryan Bennett. His professor was Ed Steinberg from the Department of Painting and Printmaking.

Recent News from the Department of Craft/Material Studies:

Craft Alumni:

Kiara Pelissier (MFA) is being fully represented by Reynolds Gallery. She just started working on a 2nd large commission for Markel Corporation. Both Kiara Pelissier (MFA) and Sarah Mizer (MFA) are in the current issue of Richmond Home and Garden (February 2008) called "Art at Home."

Nanda Soderberg (MFA) will be in a four person exhibit in Brooklyn, NY at Urban Glass at the Robert Lehman Gallery.  The show opens on Jan. 25 and closes in March. Nanda also will be included in the Architectural Digest Show at the Piers in NYC.

Lizzie Perkins (MFA) is included in the hillbilly savants blog. Lizzie  has also been accepted to do a Corning Glass Museum Residency that will take place this October.  

Carolne Gore  just launched her new website of site specific and jewelry work: carolinegore.com

Katie Hudnall (MFA) has been chosen for publication in the magazine Fine Woodworking.  She also received the purchase award for her work in the Toys Designed by Artist Exhibition at Arkansas Art Center.  

Kazue Taguchi (MFA) will be in Ethnography of no pla?e 3/24-5/2 at Rosenberg Gallery/Goucher College, Baltimore, MD and has a solo show at the Alcorcon City Glass Museum in Madrid 5/15-9/9.

Rebecca Murtaugh (MFA) has a solo show at The Red House in Syracuse, NY, a mixed media installation titled The Sweetest Battle. In September she will be in Richmond to present her large scale installation, Seductions, in a two person show at 1708 Gallery.

Rebecca and Fiona Ross  (MFA) are in a show that runs February-March 2008 at The Brew House: Space 101, Pittsburgh, PA, Ceramic Invitational in conjunction with NCECA.

Also in conjunction with NCECA four of our MFA alumni (Hyun Yoon, Jeff Vick, Jim Kearns, Debbie Quick) and one current graduate students (Akiko Jackson) are included in a n exhibit at the FE Gallery in Pittsburgh.

Jackie Brown received a $5000 Graduate School Thesis Assistantship and she just returned from China where she gave a talk on her work at Shihezi University in the Xinjiang Province.

Gabriel Craig will be in the upcoming show Cresting which is the student digital image show that is held at the Society of North American Goldsmith's conference, this March.

Craft Faculty:

Lydia Thompson's solo exhibit, "Sculpture and Works on Paper," January 13-February 16, will be held at the Somerhill Gallery in Chapel Hill, NC. Lydia is also completing work for a solo exhibition scheduled for March at Pittsburg State University.

Jack Wax is on Research Leave this semester and will have a solo show that opens at the Rochester Contemporary in Rochester, NY that opens February 1. 

Bill Hammersley will have a show of his work in conjunction with seven of his illustrious alumni at Quirk Gallery in Richmond in March.  

Susie Ganch's work received an honorable mention at the Cheongdu Craft Biennial in Korea.

Sonya Clark just returned from the opening of "Transformers" in Brooklyn at Danny Simmon's Corridor Gallery.  She's returning to Brooklyn on February 2 to give a talk and then it's back to NYC later in the month to give a presentation at the Museum of Art and Design, on her work in the exhibit, "Pricked: Extreme Embroidery" on February 21. She is included in a traveling exhibition that is at the Reading Museum in PA called "Hothouse" opening  February 16.

Recent News from the Department of Photography and Film:

The latest films by Department of Photography and Film faculty members and MFA alumni, Dan Currier and Jake Dodd, have been accepted into the 10th Washington DC Independent Film Festival, one of the most important film festivals in the nation. The festival is committed to providing the East Coast region with cutting-edge, provocative independent films that may not be seen elsewhere. The festival runs March 6-16.

In December, Hasted Hunt (Gallery) in New York City presented a solo show of Department of Photography and Film 2006 Distinguished Visiting Graduate Professor, LYNNE COHEN. The January 24th issue of The New Yorker Magazine described the show as follows:

"These black-and-white photographs of public and private interiors appear to be deadpan documents of the sort that you might find in a failing suburban real-estate office. They zero in on areas or objects that are, in Cohen?s words, ?incongruous or pathetic?: a crudely patched Naugahyde couch, a stack of televisions alongside a curved wall of glass bricks, a child?s chair and a Colonel Sanders figurine on checkerboard linoleum. This smartly edited selection of pictures from the past thirty years emphasizes Cohen?s starker, wittier work and suggests that she be seen in the company of such shrewd observers of the everyday as William Eggleston, Ed Ruscha, and Stephen Shore."

In December, a film about the national eugenics program of the 1950's and 60's by faculty member and MFA alumnus, Dan Currier, won Best Short Documentary Film at the Anchorage International Film Festival. This is the second year in a row that one of Dan's films won this award.

Also in December, Richmond's ADA Gallery presented Salon Selectives II, a show that included work by Department of Photography and Film MFA alumnus and faculty member Tom Condon and BFA alumnus Michael Seal.

The Valentine Museum, Richmond's History Center, is presenting Tell Me Where You're Marching, Tell Me Where You're Bound: Sites of the Richmond Slave Trade, a solo show of photographs created by Department of Photography and Film senior Shanna Merola. The show opens February 01.

A solo show of photographs by Department of Photography and Film BFA senior, Devon Johnson, will be presented at the Richmond Public Library, opening February 1. The photographs of Virginia architectural remains and historic landscapes were printed using 19th century photographic processes.

The on-line exhibition, Sametime 7:15, includes works by Department of Photography and Film MFA alumnus Michael Lease. The show presents a yearlong collaboration of pictures and words by six artists.

Recent News from the Department of Art Education:

Dr. Sara Wilson McKay was an invited speaker at Seton Hall's school leadership symposium with current and future national public school superintendents and principals. She spoke not only about the value of arts in public education but the ways that the study of art should be
at the center of learning for all students.

Students in Dr. Melanie Buffington's curriculum class will be working with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to evaluate the resources available to teachers through their ArtThink Web site.

Dr. Min Cho is beginning a 5+ yr service-learning relationship with Broadrock Elementary School, Art180, and the I Had A Dream Foundation (IHAD). This project follows current 3rd graders till they graduate from high school.

The January 2008 issue of the editorial of the journal Art Education featured the VCU Department of Art Education's virtual island, eLASTIC arts, on SecondLife.com.