News: January
• 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.
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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!
• First Lady Michelle Obama's
outfit choice for the Presidential Inauguration was designed by Isabel Toledo, the 2008 commencement speaker at VCU School of the Arts in Qatar.
Toldeo hired interns from VCUQatar to work with her last summer.
In addition, Vice president Joe Biden's wife Jill wore a dress to the Inaugural Ball designed by Reem Acra, the speaker at the 2002 VCU Qatar commencement festivities.
• Ra Jang, a senior fashion design student, and Shannon Kesler, a junior fashion design student, were selected as two of the three North American finalists for the REMIX 2009 International Fur Trade Federation’s (IFTF) 2009 International Fur Design Competition. Jang and Kesler are among hundreds of design students from 21 countries who have participated in this annual competition since its inception in 2003. The final produced garments will be presented in Milan, Italy in March of 2009 for a runway showing.
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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. Read recent article here.
• Kinetic Imaging assistant professor Stephen Vitiello's exhibition Four Color Sound and Kara Hearn: A Problem of Courageat Diverse Works has been recognized by the Houston Chronicle as one of the top 10 commercial gallery/non-profit art-space shows of 2008.
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Rex Richardson, VCU Music associate professor, has been named The Brass Herald Personality of the Year 2008.
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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.
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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
• Hyun Kyung Yoon, Craft/Material Studies MFA, has a solo exhibit, "Indeterminate Lines," at the Delaware Center of Contemporary Art.
• Aaron McIntosh, Craft/Material Studies MFA candidate, and Andrea Donnelly, MFA candidate, were selected as graduate assistants for the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design (CCCD) conference "Inspired Design" held in North Carolina in January.
• Gabriel Craig, Craft/Material Studies MFA candidate, was reviewed in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for his work in "Laughingstock," an exhibition at Luke and Eloy Gallery in Lawrenceville, PA. Gabriel is also featured in "Decorative Resurgence" at the Rowan University Art Gallery in Glassboro, NJ this spring.
• Jackie Brown, Craft/Material Studies MFA, has been accepted to the 23rd International Juried Show at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, opening in February. The juror is Adelina Vlas, Assistant Curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
• Kazue Taguchi, Craft/Material Studies MFA, was part of the group exhibit "Ethnography of No Place" at the Rosenberg Gallery at Goucher College in Baltimore. The exhibit was listed as one of the Top Ten of the year in the Baltimore City Paper.
• Katie Hudnall, Craft/Material Studies MFA, will have three of her works published in a book by Schiffer Publishing, loosely titled 100 Great Wood Artists. Hudnall will also present at the 2009 Furniture Society Conference this summer as part of a panel that she organized on emerging artists.
• Megan Biddle, Craft/Material Studies MFA, is on a 2 month residency at the prestigious MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.
• Senior Sculpture student Tim Rusterholz appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch for being chosen to display one of his sculptures at the 2009 NCAA Convention in Washington. Rusterholz is one of twenty student-athletes from across the country chosen to display work at the convention. His work also will appear in the NCAA's Champion magazine.
• Lisa Magee and Mary Rossetti, junior fashion design students took high honors at the 2008 Fashion Group International Foundation, Inc. Design Competition in New York City. Magee was awarded honorable mention in the Menswear category, for which she received a scholarship in the amount of $750. Rossetti was awarded 1st prize in the Evening Wear/Special Occasion category which included a scholarship in the amount of $2,000 and a three week internship at the prestigious bridal design house Kleinfeld’s.
• 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 professor and Director of Jazz Studies 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.
• 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's 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
• Craft/Material Studies assistant professor Susie Ganch's work is included in the exhibit "Soul's Journey: Inside the Creative Process : 22 Contemporary Object Makers from the Southeast" at the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design (CCCD) in Hendersonville, North Carolina. The exhibit runs January 23 - April 25. A two-hour documentary of the artists and their work is included.
• Craft/Material Studies' Jason Hackett is featured in "Endangered," and exhibit taking place in February at the Gloria Kennedy Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.
• Craft/Material Studies chair and associate professor Sonya Clark's solo exhibit "Loose Strands, Tight Knots" at the Walter's Museum in Baltimore, MD was listed as one of the Top Ten exhibits of the year by the Baltimore City Paper. Clark's exhibit "Second Lives" at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City has been so well received that the museum has chosen to extend its run through April 2009. In addition, "Second Lives" has been spotlighted by Channel 13/WNET in NYC and Ralph Caplan's article in AIGA's Voice magazine.
• Music professor 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.
• Music professor 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.
• Assistant professor of music 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.
• Music's 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. Professor 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.
