News: April
Click here to read the Spring 2009 Virginia Living Magazine article about VCUarts.
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• 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 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!
• Sculpture students Nataliya Slinko and Ian McMahon have each been awarded a prestigious Javits Fellowship, two out of only six total arts fellowships awarded nationally for the coming year! VCUarts Sculpture currently has three additional Javits awardees in the process of completing their fellowships, as well: Angie White, John Blatter, and Sami Ben Larbi. Our congratulations to Nataliya and Ian!
• The annual awards for the Anderson Gallery's Juried Student Fine Arts Exhibition have been announced. Juror David McFadden chose the following pieces from the 82 student works included in the exhibition:
Dean's Award: Timothy Rusterholz for his work entitled Machokos Kenya
Craft/Material Studies: Jill Rich, for 3 pieces from her Introductions Series
Painting & Printmaking: Marshall Hawthorne for two works entitled Josh and Jeremy
Photography and Film: Jacob Cunningham for Fear, Anxiety, Trauma
Sculpture + Extended Media: Beth Hertzler for Puppy Calendar
• 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
• 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. "The Beekeepers" will also appear in the Experimental Shorts category of the 2009 Atlanta Film Festival in April.
• Sculpture Chair, Amy Hauft was recently hailed "Queen of the Hill" in a
Richmond Times-Dispatch article celebrating the accomplishments of VCUart's Department of Sculpture + Extended Media.
Students and Alumni
• Patrick Storey, Sculpture BFA 1996, is Production Designer on film "HERE," by Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. "HERE" has been officially selected to screen at the prestigious 41st Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs) at the Cannes Film Festival this May 2009.
The film will premiere in Cannes between May 14-24. It will be screened at The Picturehouse in Singapore in late June.
• Art Education MFA student Samantha Nolte placed in VCU's 12th Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium and Exhibit for her work on comics and Hindu art.
• Works by Communication Arts students Guy Parkhomenko, Geary Day, and Stanley Rayfield have been selected for inclusion in volumen 43 of CMYK Magazine under the category of illustration.
• Two works by Communication Arts student Geary Day have been selected by jury to be exhibited at the Salon International 2009, a project of the International Museum of Contemporary Masters of Fine Art, at the Greenhouse Gallery of Fine Art in San Antonio, Texas.
• Music's Heather Capps '10 and Katie Wooldridge '11 have been accepted into Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in New York. Kristen Presley '11 has just been accepted at Brevard Music Festival for the summer.
• Hornist Tom McFadden '09 auditioned for and was accepted into the United States Marine Band Program. McFadden is a student of Dr. Patrick Smith.
• The VCU Horn Choir will be recording a Christmas album later this spring featuring arrangements by David Baptist, horn player and arranger from Arizona.
• Music student Benjamin Faught '12 has been selected to perform in a French Horn Masterclass with renowned horn artist, Lowell Greer in April at the University of Virginia.
• Allyson Keyser, Music alumna, is pursuing a DMA at UNC Greenville and placed in the semi-finals at the National Trumpet Competition.
• Music alumnus John Mlynczak, trumpet, is living in Baton Rouge and maintains a busy schedule as a teacher and as one of the busiest freelancers in southern Lousiana, regularly subbing with the Lousiana Philharmonic in New Orleans, the Baton Rouge Symphony and various show orchestras.
• Music alumnus Anthony Deldonna is on the faculty at Georgetown University in musicology, where he specializes in eighteenth-centuray Italian music with an emphasis on opera.
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Students from Communication Arts had award winning entries in the Society of Illustrators 2009 Scholarship Competition in New York. From May 6 - June 6, 2009, work by Communication Arts students will be on display at the Museum of American Illustration. Selected by a celebrated jury, this exhibit features the most mature, sophisticated and well-crafted illustrations of the year from top-level college illustration students around the country.
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Works by Communication Arts students have been accepted into the Society of Illustrators LA West 47 Exhibition at Gallery Nucleus, Alhambra, California.
• Communication Arts student Stanley Rayfield is a Semi finalist in the National Portrait Gallery National Competition.
• Kent Perdue, Craft/Material Studies BFA candidate, is the first VCU undergraduate student to have won a prestigious Windgate Fellowship Award in the amount of $15,000.
• Craft/Material Studies MFA candidates, Keith Mendak, Akiko Jackson, and Ryan Gothrup were all awarded Thesis Assistantships through the Graduate School at VCU.
• Maureen Elswick and Roberto Celis, Craft/Material Studies BFA candidates, each received a $1,000 Dean's International Study Grant from VCUarts.
• Gabriel Craig, Craft/Material Studies MFA candidate, published a full color 5 page article on his work in the April/May issue of American Craft Magazine.
• Craft/Material Studies BFA candidate Olivia de Soria's Gumball necklace was featured in the Style section of the March issue ofVirginia Living Magazine
• Mary Andrews, Craft/Material Studies alumna, is the director of merchandising for Etsy.com. Mary and Etsy were featured recently on CBS Sunday Morning in an interview with Mo Rocca. Mary was also featured as a contributing editor in N.E.E.T Magazine's March issue.
• Craft/Material Studies MFA Matthew Isaacson has a solo exhibit from April 3 - April 24 at Columbus State University's University Hall Experimental Theatre.
• Craft/Material Studies MFA, Katie Hudnall's work was included in Design Book Eight, just released by Taunton Press.
• Lindsey Jochets, Craft/Material Studies BFA, was just accepted into the graduate program for an MA at Parsons/Cooper Hewitt in the History of Decorative Arts and Design.
• Jackie Walther, Craft/Material Studies BFA candidate, received a scholarship to attend Haystack Mountain School of Crafts this summer.
• The 2009 Theatre VCU senior class presented their annual acting showcase in NYC in March. Agents and casting directors showed immediate interest, sending a number of students out for film, TV and theatre auditions.
• Theatre's Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates along with a number of Theatre Performance majors received excellent reviews for the presentation of Uncle Tom Deconstructed at the New Orlean's Fringe Festival.
• Theatre Performance student Charlie Raintree received the 1st place award and $1,000 at the regional competition for the National Society of Arts and Letters. He will compete at the national competition in Washington, DCon May 15th.
• Alumnus Jason Butler Harner (BFA, Theatre Performance) recently starred in the smash hit The Changeling with Angelina Jolie. Harner will also share the screen with Denzel Washington and John Travolta in the upcoming film The Taking of Pelham.
• Theatre alumnus Court Watson received rave reviews for his scenic design of The Foreigner at the John Engeman Theatre in Northport, New York. He also served as the Assistant Costume designer for the 2008 Tony Award winning Broadway musical South Pacific. Watson is the assistant scenic designer for Elton John's Austrian production of AIDA and Frank Wildhorn's production of Jekyll and Hyde in Germany, as well.
• Theatre alumnus Gerold Solomon is in the acting ensemble of the 2008 Tony Award winning Broadway musical South Pacific, now entering it's second year.
• Theatre's Justin Scribner (BFA Stage Management, 2004) is currently stage managing the Broadway play The American Plan.
• Theatre alumnus Andrew Wallace has been accepted into Yale School of Drama's MFA program in scenic design. Alumnus Justin King has been accepted into the MFA program in lighting design at New York University.
• Theatre's Vanessa Leuck (BFA, 2006) is designing costumes for Disney's national ice capades production.
• Theatre alumna Alanna Wilson (BFA, 2004) is currently shooting a film directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
• Art History undergraduate students Isabella Jost, Kelly Cloutier, Jessica Ferey, and Varia Degtiarenko spoke to an audience at the Virginia Association of Museums during association's session "The Future of Museums: What Does the Next Generation Want in a Museum?" They were invited to participate based on outstanding papers they wrote for Professor Margaret Lindauer's class, "Museums in the 21st Century."
• Art Education students spent spring break in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala with the Richmond nonprofit, Highland Support Project and their sister organization in Guatemala, the Asociacion de las Mujeres del Altiplano (The Women's Association of the Highlands) to perform arts based service-learning. Students worked alongside a Mayan teacher and provided her with culturally sensitive and unique art lessons that will become part of an ambulatory arts education program serving five additional schools. Time was also spent on a school beautification project and artistic exchange.
• Communication Arts alum
Philip McKenney was featured in the Richmond Times Dispatch for his collection of sports-inspired art. McKenny's work will be on display at Jarret Thor Gallery in Colonial Beach on March 13.
• Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar students have been chosen by
the Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club
to design trophies for the Qatar Prix de l’ Arc de Triomphe and the Qatar Arabian World Cup, two of the Club's most
prestigious
events. The creators of winning designs will receive certificates of recognition and will be promoted through event material.
VCUQatar will be awarded scholarship from QREC for designing the trophies as well.
• Diana Al-Hadid, Sculpture + Extended Media alumna (MFA 2005), will be featured in the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City. The exhbition runs from March 12-April 5, 2009. Al-Hadid was recently named an Artist to Watch in ART News.
• 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.
• 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.
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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.
• 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 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
• Music's Darryl Harper has been selected as an Edenfred Resident Fellow for the summer. He will spend several weeks in residency working on recordings of his duo, "Into Something," and his trio, "The Onus," and will give a series of public concerts.
• Music professor Susanna Klein coached the All-Virginia Orchestra first violin section in early April.
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Department of Communication Arts faculty Jorge Benitez, Sterling Hundley, and department chair James Miller were in the April, 2009 edition of Virginia Living Magazine.
• Illustrations by Communication Arts faculty Sterling Hundley, Robert Meganck, Tin Salamunic, and alumni Timothy Cook were featured in Society of Illustrators 50th Annual of American Illustration and 3x3 Illustration Annual No5.
• Eight works by Communication Arts faculty Rob Meganck and Tyler Darden were selected for inclusion in the Greater Richmond Awards for Design Excellence, two of which were awarded top prizes for best in the categories of illustration and photography from the Association of International Graphic Artists, Richmond.
• Works by Communication Arts faculty Sterling Hundley and Robert Meganck were accepted into the Society of Illustrators 51st Annual Competition and were on display during the month of March at the Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration in New York.
• Craft/Material Studies' Natalya Pinchuk recently gave a lecture on her work at the Corcoran in Washington, DC. Pinchuk is part of a two person show at Jewelers' Werk Gallery March 27-April 16 in Washington, DC, as well.
• Craft/Material Studies professor Lydia Thompson has a six page full color article on her work in the March 2009 issue of Ceramics: Art and Perception.
• Craft/Materia Studies' Jason Hackett has work included in the exhibit Room For Eleven at RJP Nomadic Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona as part of the
National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference.
• Craft/Material Studies Chair, Sonya Clark has work in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art exhibit, Mami Wata, running April 1 - July 26. Her work is also featured in the Encyclopedia of African American Artists by Dele Jegede, published by Greenwood Press (Westport, Connecticut: 2009). Locally, Clark's work was featured in the March issue of Virginia Living Magazine.
• Theatre faculty member Toni Leslie James' costume designs will be featured in the musical Finian's Rainbow, playing now at Carnegie Hall. The Carnegie Hall musical series features productions that are
frontrunners for upcoming Broadway productions.
• Theatre Chairman David Leong is now in preproduction for the off-broadway play Things of Dry Hours, directed by Tony Award winner Ruben Santiago Hudsen and starring Delroy Lindo. Leong continues to maintain and supervise the fight choreography for the current smash hit Broadway musical Billy Elliott.
• Music's Rex Richardson recorded his newest album, Jazz Upstairs, Volume 2 , in Athens, Greece in mid-March. The
live recording took place at the Bar Guru Bar, the same venue used for Richardson's last live jazz release, Jazz
Upstairs: Live at The Bar Guru Bar (Summit; 2006). To see a video of Rex on Yamaha Winds, click here. For more information and current news on Rex Richardson visit ww.RexRichardson.net.
• 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.
• 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'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.
• Music faculty member
Dr. Patrick Smith has been invited to present a lecture/recital on the performance styles of jazz hornist Julius "Phantom" Watkins at the 41st International Horn Symposium at Western Illinois University in June. He will lead attendees through a guided lesson on the chorus of Watkins' original piece, Linda Delia, and will perform the work with the WIU Jazz Orchestra. Dr. Smith has also been named to the steering committee for the Seattle Julius Watkins festival, to be held in Seattle, WA in October 2009.
• The Department of Music's Dr. Alice Lindsay (viola) and Tom Lindsay (violin) will perform with pianist Philippe Entremont in the 9th annual Santo Domingo Music Festival in five concerts during the first two weeks in March.
• Director of Jazz Studies, Professor Antonio Garcia, boasts a number of recent accomplishments, including co-hosting the 62nd annual Midwest Clinic, a band and orchestra conference which attracts 14,000 visitors. He conducted the Kansas All-State Jazz Band, and the Missouri State University Jazz Band's 2008 CD release, "Tank!" features his composition "Cha Cha con Sabor." Garcia was also featured in recent editions of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Commonwealth Times, and Music Pro Magazine.
• On February 21st, VCU Strings hosted the first annual Cellopaloosa featuring internationally acclaimed cellist Bonnie Hampton from the Juilliard School of Music. Cellopaloosa was a gathering of cellists from across Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. – younger, older, professional, and amateur. Over 75 cellists attended the workshop and classes during the all-day event. This was the largest gathering of cellists on one stage in the state. Cellopaloosa was organized by cello instructor Dana McComb.
