DIGITAL AND PRINT ASSISTANT

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Every artist has a motivation, and for Joshua Gutierrez, his is to save the world. But like any great actor, Gutierrez’s grandest aspirations stem from very humble roots: his family. In his second year of community college, his parents were hit with a major financial setback, a reality that profoundly changed how he looked at his career.

“[My parents] had to sell our house and nearly everything we had and move back to New York to live in my aunt’s basement,” says Gutierrez.

He finished community college while living at a friend’s house, eventually moving to Richmond to join the theatre program at VCUarts. But a visit back home over Thanksgiving break hammered home how much financial burdens had affected his family.

“To see how worse it got so fast changed my view on why I want to act,” he says. “The whole thing is way bigger than me. I want to save my family and give back.”

Gutierrez’s home life was integral in shaping him as an actor. He was first driven to drama in his childhood. “I would watch TV and movies and want to be like the people in them. I just always thought it was the coolest thing in the world.” At home, his oldest brother would also lend funny voices to written dialogue in video games as they played. “The idea of giving these characters voices was amazing because I thought they deserved to have voices, and being able to give them one was awesome. So when I learned how to read, I would do the same when I played games.”

By the time he reached high school, Gutierrez was devoted to his craft and competitive in auditions for school plays. At VCUarts, he’s been cast in unconventional shows such as 2015’s Junta High, where he and around 10 other performers took the stage one at a time for monologues that lasted 15 minutes. This year, he joined the production of Grand Concourse at Richmond’s TheatreLAB, where his performance as Oscar was described by the Richmond Times-Dispatch as “expertly [balancing] macho good cheer with sober fidelity to his character’s girlfriend.”

Gutierrez has maintained a great working relationship with his classmates, saying, “I am so happy I could spend my time here at VCU with this group of students. … I can’t wait for all of us to go out into the world and leave our marks.”

After graduation, Gutierrez will be staying in Richmond through the spring before pursuing training and career opportunities in the film industry. But in the longterm, he has his sights set on giving back to his family, helping his friends overcome debt and addiction, donating money to churches, hospitals and schools, and even building facilities for communities in need. 

“I’ve always wanted to be a superhero,” says Gutierrez, “and acting is my superpower to save the world.”

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Thomas Tonapi is graduating this semester from the Department of Graphic Design and is appreciative of the unique experiences VCU provided.

One of Tonapi’s proudest moments at VCU was working on a Capital One project to make call center agents’ work less stressful and tedious. He was ecstatic to have a real, measurable impact on improving everyday lives.

Pursuing the da Vinci Center’s Product of Innovation certificate was equally amazing, he said.

“I cannot stress enough how great this course was. What made it so unique and memorable was the ardent commitment of each student in the program and the level of cross-disciplinary collaboration,” Tonapi said. “The program taught me how to better work in a team, problem solve and time manage challenging projects. I’m so glad VCU pushes programs that break departmental barriers and allow the university to feel like one big family.”

Read the full article in VCU News.

Image by Allen Jones for VCU News.

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Virginia has always been a beautiful place to make a movie, and now it’s offering great opportunities for Cinema students to work on bonafide Hollywood productions. The Cinema program, which this year marks its tenth anniversary, has twenty-three alumni and current students working on Showtime’s Homeland, filming now in Richmond.

Over the past decade, Cinema students have gained professional experience on film sets across the country. In the last few years major Hollywood projects have landed in the Commonwealth—with Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln filming in Richmond in 2011 and AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies following in 2013. Both times, the Cinema program called on its students, faculty and alumni to serve as production talent, with Homeland being the latest project to hire help from VCUarts.

“There might have been film productions pre-‘Lincoln,’ but basically, since ‘Lincoln,’ cinema students have been on set while they are undergraduates continually on every major production that has come to town,” Chapman said.

One of those students, Adriel Velazquez, is a production assistant on the latest significant project to film in Richmond: season seven of Showtime’s “Homeland.” A third-year cinema student, Velazquez has already worked on the pilot, “Home on the Strange,” created by Mike Henry of “The Cleveland Show” fame, and the aforementioned “Turn.”

“A big part of getting into the movie business is who you know,” Velazquez said. “I was actually recommended by some friends of mine for each big production I’ve worked on. Once I get to know the higher ups on set, I’m then asked back for more days, but there isn’t really a typical application and interview process.”

Read more about VCUarts and Homeland in VCU News.

Image: A production crew — including several VCU alumni — prepares to shoot a scene for “Homeland” season seven at the Compass on VCU’s Monroe Park Campus. Photo by Kevin Morley, University Marketing. Credit via VCU News.

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VCUarts Associate Professor Sasha Waters Freyer, chair of the school’s Department of Photography and Film, has been awarded $35,000 from the Derek Freese Film Foundation to complete her documentary “Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable.” The film will have its broadcast premiere on PBS’s “American Masters” series during the 2018–19 season, and will start touring film festivals in early 2018.

 Watch the film trailer now on Vimeo.

Waters Freyer’s film explores the life and work of prolific New York-based street photographer Garry Winogrand (1928–1984). Winogrand’s images of Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer, and the turbulent 1960s and ’70s are among the most famous and provocative pictures of the 20th century. The film is endorsed by the Winogrand estate and supported by an Art Works: Media Arts grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

 “I am honored to have the support of the Derek Freese Documentary Fund to advance the completion of this intimate portrait of Garry Winogrand,” says Waters Freyer. “The film both considers the most ubiquitous medium of our time through the eyes of one of its great practitioners, and makes a timely contribution to the contemporary conversation around how we tell the stories about—and grapple with the artistic legacies of—complicated male artists.”

 This feature-length documentary film, produced and directed by Waters Freyer, is the first documentary about Winogrand’s photography. It is produced in association with PBS’s “American Masters” and co-produced by Submarine Entertainment, N.Y.

 “We are thrilled that the Derek Freese Film Foundation recognizes the deep inquiry, research and creative ambition that VCUarts Professor Waters Freyer has invested into her work,” says Dean of VCUarts Shawn Brixey. “This generous award will ensure that Professor Waters Freyer can continue making valuable and educational contributions to the fields of photography and documentary film.”

Waters Freyer had extensive access to the artist’s archives through the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. She also worked with the curator of the 2013–15 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art traveling show, Yale and Columbia University faculty who curated previous MoMA Winogrand exhibitions, and MoMA’s emeritus curator of photography. Other partners include Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and the Winogrand estate.

 The Derek Freese Documentary Fund is a biennial award given to a single filmmaker “with a strong vision” to support the production of a documentary with a “powerful story to tell.”

Image: Still from trailer of “Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable”

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Thank you for such a warm welcome. It is truly one of the greatest honors of my life to stand in front of you today.

First of all—congratulations, graduates! You’ve spent years working for this day and you should be incredibly proud of what you have accomplished. It was not that long ago that I was sitting exactly where you are and I know the literal blood, sweat, and tears it takes to get here. I’m sure you are thrilled to have made it and excited for the future. But I assume that you are also scared out of your minds. And you should be. It’s scary. There’s this huge cliff awaiting you: life after college. You’re leaving this challenging place that is also regular and secure and known. And you’re heading out into the unknown.

In preparing these remarks, I kept coming back to the same thought . . . “What the hell do I know?” I’m 32. I regularly forget to buy food. Just this week I bought new underwear rather than do my own laundry. What can I possibly say to this incredible group that you don’t already know?

I started thinking about how I was feeling at my graduation 10 years ago. I was terrified. I had finally found this place of constant challenge, of close and continuous human contact, of community and of meaning. And I wasn’t ready to give it up. I had found something I loved and I suddenly realized that, as soon as I stood up from that chair and walked across this stage, I might not have it anymore.

So, I did what any good VCUarts student would do. I hustled and I made something.

The something I made is called Studio Two Three. Studio Two Three is my life’s greatest work (except, of course, for my two beautiful children). We started Studio Two Three in 2008—less than 3 months out of undergrad. The idea was just to create a place where we could continue making prints outside of VCUarts, because no such place existed in Richmond at the time. We rented a small studio, Studio #23 (hence the name) at Plant Zero art center. We borrowed an etching press, tended bar to pay the rent, and put every spare moment, thought and dime into starting this little artist’s collective.

In the 9 years since we began, Studio Two Three has evolved into a non-profit community organization that gives over 100 artists 24/7 studio access, teaches thousands of people art-making and business skills, and has become an anchor in the Richmond arts community.
So, even though I can’t manage to wash my own clothes, I realize there are definitely a few things I do know now that I didn’t know 10 years ago. I am going to share with you four things I now know as a result of being an artist and making an organization.

FIRST, IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ON THIS PLANET TO DO, THEN DO THAT THING.

I’m borrowing a bit from Neil Gaiman here. He suggests we picture “the thing” – your goal, your calling, your must – as a mountain. A distant mountain. And make sure every step you’re taking, every choice you’re making in where you spend your energy and your time, is moving you closer to that mountain. If you know what you are on this planet to do, do that thing.

I knew that I must make things and serve people. I knew that that was it and it was that simple. I loved the community of VCUarts, the camaraderie of the print shop, the inspiration of working in the studio alongside other artists. I knew in my heart that was something I wanted to create outside of the university. I knew I must make artwork but also make something bigger than myself, a place that helped others do what I wanted to do – build careers in art and live creative lives.

You have to constantly and consistently choose to live a creative life. Distractions will get in the way. Failures and struggle to pay the bills may be your reality for a short time or a long time. I almost threw in the towel many times while building Studio Two Three because it was a lot of hard work for no money. Instead, I chose to bartend at night to keep my days free to build printing tables, write grants and host workshops. I chose to stick with it because I knew that Studio Two Three must be. Those years of struggle have paid off richly – I am living a life that I love.

You are here, graduating from this prestigious program, because something in your heart or in your gut said “I make things. I create. Deep down, what I know to be true, is that I must make art.” In your time here, you have learned to create something from nothing. That isn’t a common experience. That is something that artists do. That mothers do. That makers of futures and societies do. That is your power.

The second thing I know is:
YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN PATH

In the arts, there is no “one path” and that’s what’s interesting, isn’t it? In making art, we make something from nothing. I took what I learned at VCUarts and I pivoted. I was an artist who needed to create an organization in order to continue making art. So, that’s what I did. And over the past 10 years, organization-building has become my art.

You can forge a path for yourself. I created an organization where there wasn’t one before. It was a direct result of learning how to make art and how to think about making art. All of those skills translated immediately into the process of organization building. Describe, analyze, interpret, judge. Every step of making Studio Two Three and choosing what programs we offer and how we are serving the community involves these phases of critique.

I work every day alongside scores of other artists who are making their own paths. Some of them are your professors and your deans, coming in after a day of teaching you to make art of their own. Some of them are your peers, who just graduated and are now building careers and reputations as freelance artists and designers. They are all creating their own paths and experiencing the exhilaration of success and the disappointment of failure. And then they are critiquing, and moving on, and doing it better the next time. You can make your own path.

The third thing I know:
ALWAYS HUSTLE

I’ve already said it once, but it bears repeating — we must choose to live creative lives. That choice entails sacrifice and challenge and constant hustle. And it means that you will always love what you do. That is your power, and your tool for changing the world.

I was lamenting to my good friend Jackie – a published author with a fine arts degree – how humbled I felt in being asked to speak in front of you today. She asked if I had a metaphor. I replied “nope.” So, Jackie loaned me a metaphor (which she partially stole from a Sarah Silverman joke) for the purposes of this speech. Actually, “loan” is generous – she charged me $5 for it. Anyway, the metaphor is:

The average lifespan of the Grey squirrel is 11-12 months. They are the most anxious animals I’ve ever seen. They spend most of their day burying nuts for the future, and then they only find 20% of the nuts that they bury. This is the life of a crazy person.

It’s also a life of passion, one that makes a difference. It’s a life of creativity, without even knowing it. Because the 80% of nuts the Grey squirrel doesn’t find? That’s how we get new trees. New forests.

What you do all of your life – because it feels as if it will sustain you – the thing that you just have to do, or you’ll die — that’s how you’ll change the world.

This is a ridiculous metaphor. But it comes back to the hustle. Rely on your network – your teachers, your peers, the people you meet along the way. Use the contacts you’ve made here, and make more because those connections will make great things possible. When I was trying to rent Joe Seipel’s building on Main Street, I wrote a “Name Drop List” of people at VCU that would vouch for us. I scribbled it on a piece of notebook paper at the bar where I work and handed it to the owner, who happened to be a friend of Joe’s. I thought maybe he’d call Joe and mention the names, but instead he simply handed him my hot mess of a piece of paper that probably had beer on it. And it worked. Joe took a chance and rented his building to a scrappy group of punk rock kids because of that name drop list. The move to Main Street transformed Studio Two Three.

Sure, when you’re just starting out, say yes to everything, maybe do things for “exposure.” But know that your efforts, your time, your labor, your hustle – they are worth something. Your brain is different. As clichéd as it is to say “college taught me not what to think but how to think” – it’s true. You have just learned design thinking, critical making, and how to choose what you spend your time thinking about. These skills are in demand in every sector – with the right hustle and the right network, you will be successful.

THE LAST THING I KNOW IS THAT YOU HAVE A POWER THAT YOU HAVE ONLY BEGUN TO REALIZE.

You make something from nothing.
You make existing things better.
You make the quotidian extraordinary.
You don’t just gild the lily, you cast it from gold.

You have the power to change our world – in every sense. You have the power to streamline organizations. The power to create beauty. The power to advocate for change. The power to change minds. The power to change landscapes. The power to change taste and culture and communities.

Take that power. Go out there with vigor. Stand at the edge of the cliff, leap off, and fly with it. Create something from nothing, because that is what you do.

And if you know one thing, know that you will always make art.

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On December 1, 18 Graphic Design seniors launched their senior showcase in a pair of colorful, spacious galleries at the Graphic Design Center on West Broad St. Each of the exhibiting students were December graduates and have all chosen to go out with a bang. The show, overseen by Associate Professor of Graphic Design Sandy Wheeler, celebrated some extraordinary intersections between hand-built technology and keen-eyed design. From an immersive installation about the journey of immigrants to richly colorful graphics for the Atlanta Falcons, each idea was transposed and transformed through traditional and digital mediums.

Thomas Tonapi wanted to visualize a concept for a new country in developing his work United Martian Territories. Not content with inventing a new country here on Earth, Tonapi imagined what living in a future Martian colony would be like. In the gallery, his project looked like an imposing black box. But if visitors unzipped the door, they’d discover a vision of the future inside. It was a foil-lined pod replete with space suits, a flag, passports, the lyrics to the national anthem, schematics for interplanetary transport, a book of high-resolution images of the planet’s surface, and various other Martian “paraphernalia”—all designed by Tonapi.

“Essentially, you enter what I call a Planetary Immigration Embassy,” says Tonapi. The idea is that someone could go here to “get a taste of what Mars life would be like, and what it would be like to travel to Mars.”

Once inside, visitors were closed off to the world. “I want you to be immersed in the space, and really separate yourself outside of everybody else’s project.”

Visiting Hours, by Bex, was an installation that featured a digital clock, printed text and two motorized turntables fitted with laser cut Plexiglass. The multiple sheets of glass, etched with images of male and female torsos at various points of life, converged with every turn to create a rapid-fire slideshow.

Bex says that the project was designed to evoke and consider the “temporal space” that exists in the process of reproduction. “What does it mean to share your body?” she says. “I wanted to isolate an experience that gets washed away: the psychosis of what it means to make another human, and what it does to you.”

Standing in the center, with a light flashing through the glass, Bex’s idea took shape. “It’s kind of a play on a zoetrope, right? Two entities meeting to make one image.”

Some students demonstrated the immediate practicality of their work, and how it affects their career. Kevin Keane’s project Patent Pending was driven by his three years of graphic design work with the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation in Richmond. Working so closely with law enforcement inspired him to design a better body camera—one that won’t be obscured or need to be manually powered on.

“I came up with an idea to … have a drone mounted on the roof of a police car,” says Keane, “that automatically deploys when the officer responds to a call. It autonomously follows and films the officer from above, showing the full picture.”

The drone can also be used as a tool by the officer for searching for missing persons, or analyzing traffic and crime scenes. Keane worked with retired police officers to patent the work, which inspired the name of his contribution to the show.

Image: Thomas Tonapi, United Martian Territories, 2017, installation view.

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Dance + Choreography Associate Chair Lea Marshall wrote “Op-Ed: In the #MeToo Era, Every Word Matters. Including ‘Fuzzy.'” which was recently featured in Dance Magazine.

The New York Times broke a story about ballet that was quickly picked up by other national and international news outlets. Peter Martins, longtime ballet master in chief of New York City Ballet and head of the faculty of the School of American Ballet, has been accused of sexual harassment in an anonymous letter. The dance world may or may not have been surprised by this.

I certainly didn’t feel surprise at the news. Writing this on the day that Time magazine has named “The Silence Breakers” of #MeToo “Person of the Year,” this story seems of a piece with the many others we’ve watched in recent weeks with a mixture of horror, relief and vindication as men begin to face consequences for their disregard for the personhood of the women around them.

But the way this news was delivered by The New York Times angered me even more than the news itself, and it stands out among all the other coverage I have seen of the Martins accusations. The article gives glimpses into ballet company culture which reveal a legacy of profound dysfunction and misogyny, but the writer doesn’t actually call out or examine this legacy and thus ends up perpetuating it.

Read the full article in Dance Magazine.

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Michael Jones McKean is the recipient of the 2017 Harker Award for Interdisciplinary Studies. McKean, an associate professor in Sculpture + Extended Media, is in residence at the San Francisco Art Institute preparing for a large solo project in January. Administered by the San Francisco Foundation, the Harker Award supports artists-in-residence at the San Francisco Arts Institute and is granted to only one artist per year. At $100,000, it is one of the single largest grants given to an individual artist in the country.

Photo courtesy of Michael Jones McKean.

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Artnet, the New York-based art market and news website, has released their complete guide to the “biggest, baddest, boldest” museum openings in 2018. Topping the list is the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, set to open to the public with a community block party on Saturday, April 21 at 10 a.m.

On the ICA, Artnet says:

Positioned at the entryway of VCU’s Monroe Park Campus in the middle of Richmond’s arts district, the new Institute for Contemporary Art is the largest privately funded arts project in the school’s history.

The museum cost an estimated $41 million to build and was designed by Steven Holl Architects, the same firm that was responsible for two other major recent college art projects: the Visual Arts Building at the University of Iowa in 2016 and the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton, which opened earlier this year. The ICA is set to open in April with “Declaration,” an exhibition bringing together 30 artists whose work addresses a variety of social issues.

Check out the rest of the list at Artnet, and learn more about the ICA’s opening exhibition “Declaration,” which features a number of VCUarts alumni and faculty, on the ICA website.

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VCUarts Music alumnus Gordy Haab (BM ’00) is an award-winning composer and orchestrator whose latest projects have included the scores for two installments in the Star Wars: Battlefront series of video games. His work as the lead composer for Star Wars: Battlefront II, released in November 2017, was the subject of an interview between Haab and The Audio Spotlight. In order to capture the tone and emotions of a galaxy far, far away, Haab said that he studied the sounds of Star Wars very closely.

From the musical side of things, I dug deep into the music of the ‘Star Wars’ universe and learned the “language”. So, when I began to write my own music, speaking this language was second nature. But it was equally as important to organize myself and my process. There is over two and a half hours of music in ‘Star Wars: Battlefront II’, and my schedule was relatively short for such a tall order. So I needed to schedule out exactly how much music I needed to write per day in order to hit the deadline.

…

I begin by conceiving all of my music while sitting at the piano with pencil and paper. It’s a bit old fashioned, but it forces me to develop musical ideas in my “mind’s ear”, without the luxury of trial and error. I feel the end result from music I compose this way always sounds more thoughtful and crafted.

…

Once I have a solid sketch, I pass it off to a team member to create a synthesized mockup. This is what is then passed along to EA, DICE, Lucasfilm, Disney, and…John Williams for approval. Once approved, then I jump onto the computer and finalize my orchestration – which is then passed on to a team of copyists and Black Ribbon who prepare all of the individual parts for the recording session.

In addition to Battlefront II, Haab has scored music for the games Halo Wars 2 (2017), Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011). Through his work, he’s earned five GDC Game Audio Network Guild Awards, including Music of the Year and Best Original Soundtrack, and a BAFTA nomination for Excellence in Audio Achievement.

Read the rest of Gordy Haab’s interview with The Audio Spotlight at their website.

Listen to a clip from Star Wars: Battlefront on SoundCloud below.

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This year, VCUarts Cinema alumna Autumn Dea (BA ’12) is one of 30 new Project Involve fellows at Film Independent, a Los Angeles-based non-profit that supports independent filmmakers. The nine-month intensive gives up-and-coming film professionals the opportunity to work with a mentor in their field, take part in masters workshops, produce short films and attend networking events. Fellows can have their work screened at the LA Film Festival and even Sundance.

Dea will be joining a diverse cohort of fellows from around the world who have entered the film industry as creative executives, producers, directors, writers, cinematographers and editors.

After graduating from VCUarts, Dea spent six years as an editor at MadBox, a Richmond-based media production company. In a Facebook post, MadBox said that Dea was an “impressive editor” and “an all around inspiration of creativity and goodness.”

Read more about Autumn Dea and the other 2018 Fellows here.

VCUarts Cinema is a great way to enter the film industry, and is one of 20 American film schools recognized by the International Association of Film and Television Schools (CILECT). It’s also one of the only film schools in the world shooting 35mm film at the undergraduate level. Learn more about earning a degree in film through the VCUarts Cinema Program.

Photo by David Muessig, courtesy of Autumn Dea.

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Virginia Commonwealth University announced today that Joseph H. Seipel, dean emeritus of the VCU School of the Arts, has agreed to serve as interim director of the university’s Institute for Contemporary Art.

Seipel will fill the role left vacant by Lisa Freiman, who announced last week that she was stepping down as director to focus on scholarly projects at VCU.

“I look forward to working with the energetic and highly professional members of the ICA staff who already are well on their way to opening this world-class institute,” Seipel said.

Read the full article in VCU News.

For more information, please contact

Pamela DiSalvo Lepley | Division of University Relations | pdlepley@vcu.edu | (804) 828-6057

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