News: February
• 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!
• The 2009-10
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Awards have been announced; 20 of the 33 recipients have ties to VCUarts! Congratulations to the departments of Photography and Film (6 connections), Painting and Printmaking (5 connections), and all individual Fellowship recipients on this tremendous honor!
Fellowship Award recipients in the VCUarts community include:
Professional Awards:
Sonali Gulati, film/video
Heather Harvey, sculpture
Paul Ryan, painting
Heide Trepanier, painting
Hilary Wilder, painting
Graduate Awards:
Sam Hunter, mixed media
Carolyn Porter, art history
Lana Waldrep, painting
Undergraduate Awards:
Joshua Bennett, sculpture
Shane Butler, photography
Ashleigh Hobson, photography
Meagan Jenigen, sculpture
Grace Johnston, sculpture
MyungSun Lee, drawing
Patrick Phillips, photography
Charles A. Ponticello, sculpture
Melanie Seeger, crafts
Arlie Trowbridge, photography
Rachael Wheeler, mixed media
Janpim Wolf, photography
• 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 VCUQatar commencement festivities.
• 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.
Students and Alumni
• VCU Dance alumna Leslie Kraus (BFA 2003) was chosen in January as one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" for the coming year. Her image recently appeared on the cover of the New York City Center's "Fall for Dance" festival program, as well. Kraus dances with Kate Weare Company.
• Undergraduate Photography and Film students Sara D'Eugenio and Marion Glass are finalists, chosen from thousands of applicants, in the MyArtSpace Undergraduate competition.
• Keith Menkak, MFA candidate in Glass (Department of Craft/Material Studies), and his colorful alters are featured throughout the February 4th Midseason Arts Issue of Style Weekly.
• Undergraduate Photography and Film student Jake Cunningham's photo-essay "The Clash," which featured images of protestors and police at the 2008 Republication National Convention, was published in the December 2008 issue of Ink.
• Photography and Film undergraduate students Marion Glass, Arlie Trowbridge, and Megan E. Wagner have been selected as finalists in the Photographer's Forum 29th Annual College Photography contest.
• Undergraduate Photography and Film students Marion Glass and Arlie Trowbridge have photographs featured in the 2008 volume of Studio Visit. One of Trowbridge's pictures is featured on the back cover as well.
•
Jason Horowitz, Photography and Film graduate alum, received an Individual Photographer's Fellowship from the Aaron Siskind Foundation. The Foundation offers a limited number of fellowship grants of up to $7,000 each for individual artists working in still photography and photo-based art.
• Michelle Van Parys, Photography and Film MFA alumna, will have her book, The Way Out West published in March 2009 (University of Chicago Press, distributed for the Center for American Places, Columbia College Chicago). Michelle's work will also be featured at VCUarts Anderson Gallery this summer.
• Art History's Samantha Best (BA '08) has published a review of two exhibits in London in the upcoming issue of the Royal Academy of Arts Magazine, available on news stands in March 2009.
• Craft/Material Studies faculty member, Natalya Pinchuk, has organized a VCUarts booth at the American Craft Council Show in Baltimore, the premier craft exhibit in the nation. The VCUarts booth will include work by current students and recent alumni: Olivia DeSoria, Keaton Freeman, Holly Clark, Danielle Stevens, Nathalie David, Carol Sauer, Amy Weiks, Kent Perdue, Brenna Rondeau, Cari Freno, Marisa Barbara, Keith Mendak, Younseal Eum, Andrea Donnelly, Meg Roberts, Mary Fray, Hiromi Takizawa, Jeremy Dunn, Gabriel Craig, Amanda Costello, Carlene Bermann, Britanny Felter, and Devin Trom. Nanda Soderberg, MFA, will have glass work featured in the special Searchlight Section of ACC-Baltimore, as well.
• Craft/Material Studies MFA candidiates, Aaron McIntosh, Hiromi Takizawa, and Andrea Donnelly are presenting their work at 1708 Gallery in Richmond in February for the Fourth Annual Graduate Art Student Forum. The event will feature presentations of new art by 8 MFA candidates from UVA and VCU.
• Cynthia Myron, Craft/Material Studies MFA, will have her work included in "Decorative Resurgence" at Rowan University during the annual Society of North American Goldsmiths Conference (April 20 - May 28, 2009). Cynthia and her work graced the cover of the James Renwick Alliance's Quarterly Magazine.
• Sheal Eum, Craft/Material Studies MFA candidate, will show her work at the New York Toy Fair in NYC February 15-18 at the Javits Convention Center. This is the largest toy fair in the Western Hemisphere.
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Craft/Material Studies students Susana Almuina, MFA candidate, and Nicole Bauman, MFA, have work included in "New Waves 2009" at the The Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (CAC) in Virginia Beach. The exhibit will be at the CAC through March 15 and has been juried by Josée Bienvenu, founder and director of Josée Bienvenu Gallery in Chelsea, New York and Brian Holcombe, founder and director of Saltworks Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia.
• Hiromi Takizawa, Craft/Material Studies MFA candidate, has work at See Line Gallery in Santa Monica, CA through February 28. Hiromi is a NICHE 2009 student award Finalists in Glass. His work can be found at California State University, Fullerton's Grand Central Art Center 10th Anniversary Exhibition though April 11, and is also featured in Glass Review 31, published by the Corning Museum of Glass in NY.
• The work of
Virginia Griswold, Craft/Material Studies MFA, is included in Next Iconoclasts at Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, though February 22. The exhibit is juried by Gail Brown.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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/.
• Graphic Design alum Justin Dickinson has been invited to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon beginning in the June 2009. He will be teaching computer literacy skills to high school students.
• 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
• Photography and Film assistant professor Jake Dodd's film Nunna Mia e la Barca has been selected for competition and screening at the 31st Big Muddy Film Festival in Carbondale, Illinois. The festival runs from February 19 to March 01, 2009.
• The work of
Craft/Material Studies faculty member Natalya Pinchuk is included in Next Iconoclasts at Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland through February 22. The exhibit is juried by Gail Brown.
• Craft/Material Studies faculty members Susie Ganch, Jack Wax and Sonya Clark were mentioned along with alumni, Kiara Pelissier and Hyun Kyung Yoon in the article "We Learned About Craft Education in Richmond" in the James Renwick Alliance's Quarterly Magazine. Images of Susie Ganch's and MFA Kazue Taguchi's work were highlighted as well.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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,
2008's Brass Herald Personality of the Year, 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.
• 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
