News: December
• 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 "Genius" 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 Department of Photography and Film is pleased to announce that Graduate student Richard Robinson's film "The Beekeepers" will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival in the Frontier Shorts section.
•
Rex Richardson, VCU Music associate professor, has been named The Brass Herald Personality of the Year 2008.
•
Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan Bloom, Hamid bin Khalif Endowed Chair in Islamic Art for VCUarts, attended the inauguration of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar on November 22. They also presented papers at the conference "Beyond Boundaries" held as part of the opening week celebrations.
•
Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar celebrated 10 Years of Excellence in Design Education in November 2008 with a gala dinner held at the Diplomatic Club in Doha, Qatar. The gala guests included the VCUQatar faculty, staff, alumna and very special guests from Qatar and the United States. To read more about the 10th anniversary gala visit: http://www.qatar.vcu.edu/output/page440.asp
Students and Alumni
• Heather Capps '10, a junior in violin and student of Susanna Klein, performed Vivaldi's "Autumn" with the Williamsburg Youth Symphony in November.
• Music Education major Nathaniel Lee '10 and Performance major Jeremy Loudon '10 placed 1st and 2nd at the Music Teachers' National Association (MTNA) competition.
• Jazz Studies majors Karl Morse '10, Jon Gibson '10, David Ashby '09, and Dean Christesen '09 traveled with director of Jazz Studies Prof. Anotnio García to Doha, Qatar to teach and perform in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the VCUarts-Qatar campus.
• Greg Loewer, BM '08 performed with CalArts Percussion Ensemble at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in November.
• Caroline Gore, MFA, showed her work at SOFA Chicago in November with Ornamentum Gallery. She also presented a lecture at SOFA as part of the SNAG Emerging Artists Series.
• Kazue Taguchi, MFA, has been selected as the Artist in Residence at Corning Glass Museum in New York for March 2009.
• Keith Mendak, MFA candidate, had hisglass teeth included in Fine Contemporary Crafts Exhibition at Artspace in Raleigh, North Carolina.
• Ryan Gothrup's, MFA candidate, “Feverlöscher,” has been chosen as a finalist in the category of Glass: Sculptural in the 2009 NICHE Student Awards competition
• John Sutter, MFA candidate, wrote areview of the Furniture Society Conference that was recently published in their Newsletter. This is the third published conference review Jon has written for the Furniture Society.
• Emily Henry, MFA,won the Award of Excellence for works on paper in the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art under the name Sayward Henry. Emily also has work at Inner Noise, Caladan Gallery in Cambridge, MA and the annual juried show at Second Stage Studio in Rhode Island. Emily will be showing her work internationally at the Blutenweiss Nomad Art Project, on view in Berlin.
• The work of Cynthia Myron, MFA and adjunct faculty, will be included in the James Renwick Alliance Craft Weekendheld at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC in April 2009.
• Susana Almuina, MFA candidate, will be showing her work at the upcoming exhibit, New Waves 2009, at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia.
• Susan Glasser, doctoral candidate in Art History, has published two articles in Museum, the professional journal of the American Association of Museums. Her article "The Forgotten Audience," which appeared in the May/June 2008 issue, was awarded the Brooking Prize, AAM's annual writing competition, which honors new ways of thinking about the museum field.
• Dawn Kasper, Sculpture MFA '00, was mentioned in the New York Times for her participation in "A Machine Project’s Field Guide to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art," an event staged by the L.A. arts collective Machine Project, that included a range of installations, performances, and workshops. Kasper and her partner Jessica Hutchins staged a 26-clue murder mystery for the event. Read the New York Times article in full here.
• Graphic Design students Eric Gilkey '09, Sarah Keane '09, Jeff Lane '09, and Mark Luetke '10 and VCU Brand Center student Jeff Green recently founded the website howirichmond.com, a site created to help Richmonders solve the puzzle of public and alternative transportation. The website began as a project for Noah Scalin’s Design Rebels class. To learn more visit http://designrebels.org/.
• The Drip program, curated this year by Lissa Gibbs, Associate Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, featured numerous outstanding entries from VCUarts Kinetic Imaging students. Winning entries included: Emily Wormly's The Anti-Story Machine, Eric Neff's Glimpse, Joe Reckley's Emotional Displacements..., Joseph Ryan's Abraham and Empire Down, Mauricio Escamilla's Eyes or Ears, David Crooks' Unbread, Antoine Allen's Black Noise, Rinny Wilson's The Day Ferguson Fell, and Kirk Zamieroski's Eisenhower.
Faculty
• Sonia Vlahcevic has been chosen to give a lecture recital at the International Conference of the College Music Society in Zagreb, Croatia in June of 2009. Prof. Vlahcevic will present on the solo piano music of Andrzej Dutliewicz, composer and Director of Contemporary Music at the Chopin Institute in Warsaw, Poland.
• Charles West is the compiler and lead author for Woodwind Players Cookbook: Creative Recipies for a Successful Performance, published by Meredith Music Publication. The book includes articles by VCU faculty members West, Bruce Hammel, and Albert Regni, as well as by Victor Goines, VCU Master of Music alumnus.
• Kris Keeton has been awarded a Dean's Exploratory Research Grant to study ragtime xylophone music with Bob Becker, the foremost practitioner in the field.
• Percussion instructor Michael Schutz presented a clinic at the Percussive Arts Society's International Convention in Austin, Texas.
• Darryl Harper toured the Western Caribbean Sea with the Regina Carter Quintet and led his own "Onus Trio" on a tour to Madison, Wisconsin in November. Prof. Harper is completing a film score for a documentary to be released in 2009 on the anthropologist Melville Herskovits.
• Rex Richardson gave a solo performance in Chicago's Millennium Park and a master class at the Manhattan School of Music this fall. Prof. Richardson will be featured in the upcoming issues of Yamaha United Kingdom, The Brass Herald (Cambridge, England), and International Musician.
• Jack Wax’s work is included in the new 250 page full color book, Contemporary Glass Sculptures and Panels.
• The newly published full color catalog for the Japan Jewelry Biennial includes the work of Susie Ganch.
• Susan Iverson’s work was recently published in the Craft Report online review of Fiber Philadelphia and the International Fiber Biennial.
• Sonya Clark had her work, Madam CJ Walker, highlighted on the Fiji TV News in Japan and the December/January issue of American Craft Magazine. Sonya also has her work highlighted in a twelve page spread in the new 150 page full-color book, Manufractured, published by Chronicle Books in conjunction with an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR.
