News: November
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.
• Tara Donovan (1999 VCUarts MFA) has been awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" award. 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).
• Sculpture + Extended Media alumna Diana Al-Hadid (MFA 2005) received a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship Award. This year, NYFA's fellowship grants award a total of $917,000 in unrestricted funding to 134 artists recognized for excellence in their given disciplines.
• 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!
• VCUarts Locker 50b was recently featured in the Education Life section of the New York Times.
Students and Alumni
• Cinema junior Nate King was one of the winners of the Virginia Screenwriting Competition this year with his script BEST. King has also had a slide selected in Slide Slam at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
• Communication Arts student Stanley Rayfield is a shortlisted artist in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009.
• Craft/Material Studies alumni Dave and Roberta Williamson (both received an MFA in 1976) appear in the new PBS documentary, Craft In America. The pair recently received a 2009 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship for $5000 and a $1000 Award of Excellence from THE BEST OF 2009 EXHIBITION, Ohio Designer Craftsmen, The Ohio Crafts Museum and Traveling.
• Recent Craft/Material Studies MFA recipients, Gabriel Craig and Jon Sutter will present sessions on ironwork and furniture, respectively, at The 17th Symposium on Architectural History and the Decorative Arts in November. Two of this fall’s eight speakers come from the Department of Craft/Material Studies at VCUarts.
• Hiromi Takizawa, Craft/Material Studies MFA candidate, will have a solo exhibition in NYC at the Heller Gallery opening October 29. Hiromi will also be in a group show, Young & Loving (Ung og Lovende), in Bergen, Norway in September.
• The cover article of October's American Craft magazine, The Transgressions of Lauren Kalman, was written by Gabriel Craig (Craft/Material Studies MFA alum). Nanda Sodeberg's (MFA alum) company, Solos Glass was also featured.
• Akiko Jackson (Craft/Material Studies MFA) led a group discussion on "The Need for Camaraderie in Community and Public Involvement in the Arts" at Sydney College of the Arts in Australia in October. Akiko will also be in The Object: Found, Multiplied, Manipulated at the Ridderhof Martin Gallery, University of Mary Washington, from October 23 - December 4, 2009.
• Aaron McIntosh, Craft/Material Studies MFA candidate, was recently accepted into the Punch Gallery International Juried exhibition in Seattle. He is 1 of 9 artists selected from over 300 who applied. The show was juried by Marisa C. Sánchez, curator of Contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum. McIntosh and fellow MFA candidate Andrea Donnelly have been selected by the editors of Fiberarts magazine to appear in the annual Student Showcase feature for the November/December 2009 issue.
• Andrew Crockett, Fashion Design senior, was selected as the winner of the ATEXINC Award for Excellence in Marketable Textile Design at the annual ITAA (International Textile and Apparel Association) conference in Seattle, Washington at the end of October. A total of 102 pieces were juried into the 2009 ITAA design competition of 380 items submitted representing a 27% acceptance rate. There were two undergraduate design awards, and 41 undergraduates competed from universities throughout the world.
• Graphic Design alums John O'Neill and Bizhan Khodabandeh are in Style Weekly's latest "Top 40 Under 40" issue.
• Kinetic Imaging student Brian Bear has been selected by Fox as a potential finalist in the Fox/Aniboom Holiday Animation Competition for his animation submission "Survival of the Fetish." The top 5 finalists, to be selected in November, will win $5,000 and the
Grand Prize Winner will receive an additional $10,000 and an opportunity for a development deal at FOX.
• Jazz student and blogger Dean Christesen (B.M. '10) contributed an article on the Richmond jazz scene to Patrick Jarenwattananon's Jazz Now project for National Public Radio; click here to read the article. See the VCU Guitar Ensemble and the VCU Community Guitar Ensemble on You Tube.
• Melanie Payne Bolas (B.M. '01), music teacher at Chancellor Elementary School in Fredericksburg, VA, was awarded a $2,000 grant for her third grade students to attend the National Symphony's "Sounds Historic" Young People's Concert, which fosters connections between music and history.
• Photography and Film alumnus Chris Winton-Stahle is featured in the October issue of Shutterbug Magazine (p 44-56). The article discusses new business practices for photographers and the use of social networking mediums in marketing.
• 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.
• Photography and Film's Jamie Delgrosso (BFA Spring 2009) is a finalist in the FilmGo.net First Short Film Festival.
• Sculpture's Tara Donovan (MFA 1999) will have an exhibition at The Indianapolis Museum of Art from April 4 to August 1, 2010 featuring a number of Donovan’s sculptural installations and drawings, including a newly commissioned work that will fill an entire room of the gallery. This will be the first major museum exhibition to present Donovan’s sculptures and drawings together—offering the most complete view of her artistic practices to date.To learn more about Tara Donovan: Untitled click here.
• Sculpture alumna Mia Feuer (MFA) is a fellow at The Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT until end of November.
• Three TheatreVCU alumni have been cast in the musical Peter and the Wolf that will open at Imagination Stage in Washington, DC in January 2010.
• TheatreVCU alumnus John DeBoer (MFA, 2007) is the winner of the 2009 VASTA Clyde Vinson Memorial Scholarship. John is a first year faculty member at the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of Montana.
• 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 alumna Alanna Wilson (BFA, 2004) is shooting a film directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
• The da Vinci Center for Innovation in Product Design and Development’s portable operating table for developing countries won in the category of “Greatest Potential for Patient Benefit” at the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology Innovation Congress in Boston in October.
The project involved VCU students Ana Cuison, Marketing;
Jennifer Farris, Interior Design;
Mike Garrett, Graphic Design;
Chris Johnson, Mechanical Engineering;
Jennifer Koch, Marketing;
Mike Mercier, Mechanical Engineering;
Lauren O'Neill, Graphic Design;
and Skylar Roebuck, Computer Engineering. For the innovation poster contest, Lauren O'Neill won with "Operation Simple: A Low-Cost, Collapsible Surgical Table for Developing Countries.”
Faculty
• Art Education's Dr. Pamela G. Taylor and her interdisciplinary research team, Dr. Joan Rhodes and Dr. Frances Smith (School of Education) and Jan Johnston (Department of Art Education) received notice that their proposal, “Research for eLASTIC: Electronic Learning and Assessment Tool for Interdisciplinary Connections among the Visual Arts, Reading, and Writing" has been awarded a $1,050,000 grant under the 2nd cycle of the Qatar National Priorities Research Program (NPRP). This proposal, along with 92 others from such prestigious institutions as Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, Ohio State, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, University of British Columbia, University of Malaysia, etc.), was selected from 482 international submissions with an approximate 20% success rate.
• Craft/Material Studies faculty member Jack Wax received a $9000 USD Ole Haslunds Kunstnerfond Grant from a private foundation in Kobenhavn, Denmark. Jack was honored for his work as a visiting artists at The Bornholm Skolan.
• Craft/Material Studies faculty member Natalya Pinchuk is in Arts Santa Monica in Barcelona, Spain from December 15 through January 10. Natalya's project, Ugly Objects: AMSTERDAM, will be up at Centrale Bibliotheek Amsterdam in the Netherlands in December and January as well.
• Craft/Material Studies’ Sonya Clark is featured in A Complex Weave at the Stedman Gallery at Rutgers University, Camden through December 12. She was invited to exhibit at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2009 in Cheongju, Korea and in Taking Time at the Birmingham Museum in England.
• James Frazier, Chair, Department of Dance and Choreography was voted President Elect at the Council of Dance Administrators Conference this fall. The select membership includes 23 degree granting institutions from across the nation. Frazier was mentioned in an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch for his work as a
new choreographer with the Richmond Ballet.
• Interior Design professor emeritus Buie Harwood along with co-authors Bridget May and Curt Sherman received the 2009 Joel Polsky Prize for their book Architecture and Interior Design, from the 19th Century: An Integrated History. The prestigious award is given annually to recognize authors who have made significant contributions to design research and literature. The authors also were invited to join Sigma Pi Kappa, the honor society of Historic Preservation. Induction will take place in April 2010 at the University of Georgia.
• Kinetic Imaging assistant professor Stephen Vitiello and alumna Molly Berg will release their CD, The Gorilla Variations in October 2009 with Smallfish Records.
• Music's Bryan Hooten has recently released his CD Framing the Void by his quartet "Ombak," which features VCU faculty member Brian Jones (drums), VCU alumnus Trey Pollard (guitar), and former VCU student Cameron Ralston (bass).
• Music's Darryl Harper recently released the recorded debut of The C3 Project, his ensemble for four clarinets, a voice and rhythm section.
• Photography and Film's Sonali Gulati has been awarded a fellowship by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the Graduate Center at City University of New York, in partnership with the Robert Giard Foundation for her documentary Out & About. The film examines what parents do when they find out their child is gay. Gulati is the first winner of this $7,500 fellowship supporting young artists working in photographic media, video or short film.
• Theatre Chairman David Leong has been elected to the National Theatre Conference, a cooperative association of distinguished leaders in American theatre.
• Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar's Professor of Mathematics Dr. John Schmeelk was honored with the 2009 Distinguished Educator and Service Award from the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE).
