• Many recent accolades from the Department of Craft/Material Studies:

Undergraduate student news:
Kathleen Kennedy has been selected as a National Niche Award Finalist

Graduate Student news:
Keith Mendak has been selected as a National Niche Award Finalist

Alumni news:
Travis Townsend received a third place National Young Sculptors Competition. Travis has also been accepted into a two-person exhibit at Second Street gallery in October 2008 and a solo show at the Southwest School of Art and Craft in San Antonio. 

Faculty news:
Jack Wax's work, Surviving on the Quality of Listening, was chosen from over 300 projects submitted by designers and artists from 35 countries as one of the finalists in the Bombay Sapphire Prize 2008, the world's largest annual award for artists, designers and architects working with glass.

Arthur Hash has his work featured in the advertisement for the Sienna Gallery in the new American Craft magazine. He also has three pieces that will be featured in Lark Books 500 Brooches. Hash is currently exhibiting at the Society of Arts and Crafts Boston exhibit called From Minimal to Bling: Contemporary Studio Jewelry and has an upcoming solo show slated at the Shelbourne Museum in June/July.

Natalya Pinchuk has her Felted fruit wearable work at Quirk Gallery's Vault Project Space.  She also has an image of her work in Fabulous Felted Scarves by Lark Books, 2007.  One of her brooches was exhibited in the exhibit of the permanent collection of Mint Museum of Craft + Design at SOFA Chicago.  Her work has gained international exposure as it was included in the Custard Factory in December, Birmingham, England and ten pieces are at “Collect: The International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects” to take place at Victoria and Albert Museum, London (where she is represented by Galerie Rob Koudijs) in January, 2008. Rob Koudijs has also offered her a solo show for August 2008. 

Bill Hammersley  will be in an exhibition with his illustrious former students at Quirk Gallery in Richmond.  It is slated to open in late February/early March.

Susie Ganch  will have her work included in the Japan Jewelry Biennial. This is the first year that the exhibition has included American artists.

Department Chair,  Sonya Clark, has two openings in January. In Philadelphia,  a few works and the collaborative project , Beaded Prayers, are included in the Icebox Project Space  group exhibit "Taboo to Icon." In Brooklyn at  Danny Simmons' Gallery (brother of Russell Simmons), she will be in a two-person exhibit at the Corridor Gallery  called "transformers." She is also curator of "Familiar Faces" which will open at VCUarts Anderson Gallery in January.

• Recent good news from the Department of Photography and Film:

Assistant Professor Sonali Gulati's latest film "24 frames per day" has been accepted at the highly competitive Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah and will be screening on Jan 20th and 23rd 2008. The festival shows only 65 shorts from 2500 entries, 11 films in each genre. Also Gulati's film "Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night" has been accepted by a television news station in India, NDTV 24x7 (it's the #1 English news channel in the country).

Adjunct Professor and alumnus Dan Currier was interviewed on National Public Radio with David Brancaccio about Dan's MFA 07 thesis film "Labeled," which focuses on the North Carolina Eugenics program of the 50's. Also, Dan's film has been screened at festivals in Wilmington, NC and Anchorage, Alaska.

Currently, photo-paintings by Tracie Taylor, Program Coordinator and MFA alumna, are part of the exhibition "Works on Paper from the Permanent Collection" at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland. In addition, one of Tracie's photographs is now in the permanent collection of the Albin O. Kuhn Library at the University of Maryland.

This fall, films by Assistant Professor Sonali Gulati were screened at major international film festivals in Washington, DC, Buenos Aires, Paris, Tampa, Boulder, and Charlottesville, Virginia. One of her films was reviewed in Feminist Voices, and she was one of eleven recipients of the coveted Theresa Pollak Award from Richmond Magazine.

Recently, Richmond's Style Magazine named Visiting Graduate Professor Heide Trepanier as one of the regions top 25 young artists. This month her paintings are included in an exhibition at the Westport (CT) Arts Center.

Currently, a solo exhibition of photographs by Department of Photography and Film MFA alumnus Vance Gellert is being shown at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.

In October and November a solo exhibition of photographs by MFA alumnus Samuel Worthington was shown at the Schmidt Dean Gallery in Philadelphia.

Adjunct Professor and MFA alumnus Todd Raviotta's film At the River has been selected to be part of the prestigious Outfest Film Festival 25th Anniversary Program.

A photograph by junior, Megan Wagner, has been selected as a winning entry in the "Colors of Life" International Photo Contest. From a pool of thousands of images submitted by artists from around the world, only 50 images were awarded. Megan's photograph is one of the last of the thumbnails displayed on the competition website.


• Many recent accolades from the Department of Communication Arts:

Two faculty members have been honored by the New York Society of Illustrators in 2007 for Editorial Illustration. This is the most competitive and most coveted prize in American Illustration. Tyler Darden was awarded the Gold Medal for Art Direction. Sterling Hundley has won two gold medals to be awarded by the New York Society of Illustrators in 2008 - one is for Editorial Illustration and the other is for Advertising/ Institutional. In addition, Tyler Darden won a Gold Medal for Art Direction to be awarded by the New York Society of Illustrators in 2008. There are only 6 gold medals awarded each year, so we are extremely proud of Sterling and Tyler.

Assistant Professor Matt Wallin has returned to Virginia having finished work on the new digital animated movie Beowulf. The movie opens nationally Friday November, 16, 2007. Beowulf tells the oldest epic tale in the English language with the most modern digital technology. It is directed by Academy Award winning director Robert Zemeckis and is featured in the November 12 issue of Time Magazine as part of the Entertainment category section of "Best Inventions of the Year." http://www.beowulfmovie.com/

Assistant Professor Jorge Benitez will deliver a paper about drawing in the digital age at the International Arts and Humanities Conference in Hawaii in January 2008.

A painting by Communication Arts senior Teresa Palmer won First Place in Oils at the Richeson 75:Figure/Portrait International Competition and was reproduced in American Artist in its October 2007 issue.

Works by Teresa and Assistant Professor Alex Bostic were also reproduced in the catalog which accompanied the Exhibition.

Alumna Nicole Gomez had an exhibition of her work at Galeria Glazagdansk in Gdansk, Poland.