News: October
• The 2009 US News & World Report Visual Arts and Design rankings have been released and VCUarts is once again ranked as the #1 public university school of arts and design in the country. Click here for all our ranking information.
• Tara Donovan (1999 VCUarts MFA) has been awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "Genuis" award. Read about her in the New York Times. Ms. Donovan is the third VCUarts graduate in five years to receive this prestigious award. The others are Teresita Fernandez (2005) and Daisy Youngblood (2003). Congratulations!
• The 11th Annual Theresa Prizes for Excellence in the Arts have been announced and those with VCUarts connections came home with 10 of the 12 awards. They include: Cindy Neuschwander lifetime achievement award, (along with Jay Barrows); Pam Fox, Photography; Terri Murphy Simpson, Vocalist; Susie Ganch, Fine Arts; Scott Putnam/Amaranth Contemporary Dance, Dance; David Bridgewater, Theater; Ann Swanson, Film; Virginia Samsel, Emering Artist; No BS Brass, Ensemble (most members are students, were students, or now teach in VCUMusic); Danny Finney, Applied Arts.
• "For Africa," a benefit that raised about $50,000 to aid children in Ghana, received Virginia Commonwealth University's first Currents of Change award. The project was a collaborative effort of the VCU School of Social Work, School of the Arts (Chris Burnside in particular), Peacework Inc. and artists in the Richmond community. It included three nights of performances, a silent auction and an African market. The money raised was used for a library and a child development center.
• Rex Richardson, associate professor in the Department of Music and Yamaha trumpet artist, will be appearing on Yamaha posters across the country and will be part of a new Carl Fischer Publications book created for trumpet students.
• VCU Dance alumus Jason Somma is the first American to ever receive the Rolex Award from the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, which is a $50,000 two-year grant to the protege. Somma is one of only 6 recipients of the Rolex Award this year, selected from an international pool.
• Student and faculty news from the Department of Craft/Material Studies
Virginia Griswold is one of the first artists to be included in Open Studios at the Museum of Arts and Design space at Columbus Circle.
Hyun Kyun Yoon has had her work pictured in several magazines of late including: Ceramics Monthly, American Style, and House and Design.
Gabriel Craig just received a $3500 graduate research grant from the Center for Craft Creativity and Design to continue his research on ironwork.
Alissa Davis has published her first review in Whitehot Magazine.
Josh Rodenberg was just awarded a solo show at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art in Indiana for the summer of '09.
Sayaka Suzuki will be presenting a talk "Material as Alphabets; encouraging a flexible grammar" at a panel discussion at Mid America College Art Association held at Herron School of Art and Design at Indianapolis, IN. Sayaka also got accepted to teach a workshop next summer at The Pittsburgh Glass Center.
Gillian Maniscalco is interning at Anthropologie in the Art & Color department doing fabric design.
Metals graduate student, Younseal Eum, will have her robot design featured on the cover of Servo magazine, the leading magazine in the robot field.
Tina Boy
is part of the Core Exhibit at Penland Gallery.
Susan Iverson will give a lecture at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft in conjunction with the travelling American Tapestry Alliance Biennial 7 exhibition on October 25 at 1pm in Louisville, KY.
Susie Ganch and Natalya Pinchuk will have work at the Content in Contemporary Jewelry Design & Metalsmithing exhibit at Texas Tech in Lubbock October 18- December 13.
Susie Ganch received a huge donation from Susan Cummins and Hoover and Strong for the Radical Jewelry Makeover in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Natalya Pinchuk is in Girls Play Games exhibit at Facere Gallery in Seattle from October 1-25 and will be featured in the jewelry book, Adorn, published by Laurence King, coming out this fall as well as Mixed Media Jewellery published by A&C Black, coming out in 2009.
Sonya Clark will head to Portland, Oregon to give a lecture and workshop in conjunction with the Manuf®actured exhibit she is part of, at the Museum of Contemporary Craft.
• Faculty news from the Department of Communication Arts
Danny Lambdin attended the Toronto International Film Festival where the film The Narrows was screened. Mr. Lambdin created part of the visual effects work used in the film.
Matt Wallin was a Sequence Lead - Senior Compositor with MPC (Moving Picture Company), a British visual effects company, to work on Warner Brothers new Zack Snyder (director of "300") film called The Watchmen.
Jorge Benitez presented papers at numerous international conferences including those in Hawaii, Chicago, Istanbul, Berlin, and Birmingham, England.
Sterling Hundley has eight individual portrait illustrations for Rolling Stone's Greatest Guitars issue in addition to “Black Crowes,” in February, 2008. He was also part of IC14, National Juried Exhibition: The Illustrators Club of Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Communication Arts faculty and alumni were represented by 39 works in the exhibition winning major awards including Best in Show and 3 Gold medals.
