Making that final college decision can be confusing and difficult. We asked a few students why they chose VCUarts to help you through the decision making process.

Kim Peters, Junior, Graphic Design
Reason: Community and Affordability
“I love the community that VCUarts provides, it really felt like home even though I was really far away. Also, in comparison to other private art colleges, this was more affordable for me as an out-of-state student.”

Bridget Manown, Senior, Sculpture + Extended Media
Reason: Diversity
“I wanted to go to a diverse school that was in a city, that had a good art program but where I could also study outside of the arts.”

Maddie Bryant, Senior, Fashion Merchandising
Reason: The University Experience
“I chose VCUarts because I wanted to go to an art school or a fashion school but I still wanted to be a part of a university. I love that I have both an art school experience and a university experience. I was able to join a sorority and go to basketball games while still going to an art school.”

Morgan Barnett, Junior, Communication Arts
Reason: Experienced Faculty 
“I chose VCUarts because the professors have current connections to the industries and fields I’m interested in, and can teach me industry-standard practices at an affordable price in comparison to private institutes.”

We hope that you’ll choose VCUarts too! Learn more about us by visiting our website or following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
If you’ve already been accepted, check out ugradaccepted.vcu.edu for all the next steps.

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James Bumgardner (BFA 1958) began teaching at Richmond Professional Institute, a predecessor to Virginia Commonwealth University, after graduating from the Commercial Art Department. When RPI transition to VCU, Bumgardner transferred to the Painting + Printmaking Department, where he stayed until his retirement in 1996 as Professor Emeritus. He had a reputation for being a charismatic teacher whose lectures and critiques received enthusiastic audiences. He continued painting and won several awards, including a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, until his death in 2015.

A retrospective of Bumgardner’s work will be on view at Longwood Center for the Arts from April 14–May 16, 2018, with an opening reception on April 14 from 5–8 pm.

Image: Work by James Bumgardner via Longwood Center for the Arts.

The post VCUarts Alumnus Retrospective at Longwood appeared first on VCUarts.

VCUarts has so many great majors to offer, some of which you might not even know about. VCU News is giving you a glimpse into Communication Arts and Product Innovation, offered by the DaVinci Center.

“Communication arts is focused not just on creating the work, but getting it out to the world,” she said. “They teach us about client relations and how to have a professional presence. We are taught a lot of business principles.”

Communication arts graduates are “illustrators, artists and designers that function a great deal like a service dedicated to adding value to the projects of others,” said TyRuben Ellingson, assistant professor and department chair.

Students from diverse academic and professional backgrounds come to the da Vinci Center to refine product and service development skills, said Garret Westlake, Ph.D., director of the da Vinci Center, a collaboration of VCU’s schools of the Arts, Business and Engineering and the College of Humanities and Sciences.

“The MPI program is designed to provide an applied educational experience in product innovation from multiple perspectives,” Westlake said. “The program is particularly valuable to entrepreneurs looking to validate their ideas and move them into the market. It is also designed for returning professionals to build on their corporate innovation experience to develop the next generation of product and project managers, and designers.”

Read the full article in VCU News.

See a full list of VCUarts majors here.

Image: Hilton Bennett, Chris Brady and Michael Mahoney, Master of Product Innovation students in the VCU da Vinci Center, are working together to explore the commercial potential of an air pump attachment that effectively doubles the volume of air supplied and cuts in half the time required to inflate objects such as rafts, air mattresses and bounce castles. Photo by Kevin Morley, University Marketing, for VCU News.

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Tucked away in Virginia’s Northern Neck, just 55 miles east of Richmond, is Menokin: the withered grounds once tread by a native tribe, an 18th century revolutionary, and countless Black slaves.

The land is expansive and almost barren, save for the crumbling husk of a plantation house once owned by Francis Lightfoot Lee, a state politician and signatory of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1995, the Menokin Foundation was established to preserve and interpret the historic home. Since then, the organization has recovered countless stories lying dormant on these grounds, from the Rappahannock tribe’s centuries-old heritage to the lives of the powerful Lee family.

But the legacy of slavery is an open wound at Menokin. In its commitment to tell the property’s full story, the Foundation turned to Camden Whitehead, associate professor of interior design. He recruited a team of 12 interior design students from middle Of broad, VCUarts’ design and innovation lab, to draft potential interpretations of the slave experience at the historic landmark.

In the photos below, mOb students share their designs and speak about the research process and objectives of the months-long project.

The post This Old House: mOb Proposes Slave Memorials to Menokin appeared first on VCUarts.

At just 11 years old, Morgan Senter had an existential crisis.

A back injury left her questioning her future as a gymnast. When a teammate suggested she try Irish step dancing—a style characterized by the theatrical production Riverdance—Senter reluctantly gave it a shot.

Her first year was full of angst and bitterness at giving up gymnastic, but in the decade since, she’s competed as a step dancer on the national and international stages. Eventually, she realized she had developed a passion for the dance form.

Once at VCU, Senter started to look for ways to combine her love of dance with her interest in physical therapy. She settled on a major in health, physical education and exercise science with a minor in dance, thinking she’d eventually focus her practice on training and treating dancers.

Just a few weeks into her freshman year, Senter discovered a new possibility.

She was taking an honors class designed to introduce first-year students to graduate level research practices. She settled on a project exploring the cultural evolution of Irish step dancing.

“It was the first time I had ever examined dance in an academic context,” she says.

In her research, she came across a series of articles about a study at the University of Limerick in Ireland exploring the benefits of Irish set dancing for Parkinson’s patients.

While step and set dancing might sound similar, stylistically, they couldn’t be more different. Step dancing is known for its short, intense bursts of energy and the dancer’s rigid upper body, their hands locked to their sides. Set dancing, however, is informal and social, more akin to square dancing and line dancing.

“In set dancing, you can keep going for a longer period of time,” she says. “This is important in exercise physiology, especially when considering chronic disease populations. Set dancing is also more conducive to adherence because they’re having a good time, so they want to stick with the program.”

As she read about the study, Senter noticed one missing piece: the researchers didn’t include any details about the choreography of the dance classes. That’s when she started to connect the dots between her dance experience and her exercise science knowledge.

“Their program worked for that specific population, but if I’m looking to target a different population, there may be different physiological goals,” she says. “How I choreograph a class matters, because that determines which energy systems patients use and how I target outcome goals.”

“And that’s what really fascinates me, especially as a dancer.”

Set dancing isn’t widely available in the U.S. To better understand the form and choreography, Senter is heading to the University of Limerick after graduation. For the next year, she’ll study not only Irish set dancing, but other global dance forms like African dance and flamenco. She’ll also be researching the cultural aspects of dance, what keeps participants coming back, and how to document choreography.

“I’ll have the maximum movement vocabulary as I go on to physical therapy studies,” she says. “I’ll have all these dance styles under my belt that I can work with.”

It’s a natural next step after four years of research—including a few undergraduate research grants, presenting at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, and serving as editor-in-chief of the undergraduate research journal Artis—that led her to a surprising passion.

“I didn’t expect that I would be more interested in what dance can do for the general population,” she says. “I’ve learned just how much it benefits your quality of life. There’s so much unexplored research and it’s so exciting to me.”

The post The Art and Science of Dance: Morgan Senter appeared first on VCUarts.

Assistant professor Bohyun Yoon facilitated a collaboration between craft, sculpture and music students where they developed glass instruments and performed at the April 6 opening of the National Liberty Museum show Sound + Vision in Philadelphia, Pa.

Come see a live performance on the glass instruments at the VCU Percussion Ensemble concert, “Collaborations,” Monday, April 16 at 8 p.m. in the Sonic Vlahcevic Concert Hall. The performance will feature dance students, jazz professor Antonio García (trombone), the Harrisonburg High School Percussion Ensemble and members of the Craft + Material Studies Department.

The post In Philly, VCUarts Students Make Glass Instruments Sing appeared first on VCUarts.

Megan James (BFA ’17) has attended the annual Small Press Expo among others to promote her comic book series, “Innsmouth.”

“Typically, someone will walk up to my booth, and I can see that they want to ask what the comic is about, so I try my best to connect with them and tell them a bit about the series. The premise of the story is pretty funny, so I usually get some laughs explaining it. At that point, if they’re into it, they’ll usually pick up an issue or two.”

A successful comic obviously requires eye-catching visuals, but it also relies on a compelling storyline. James credits her VCU education with helping her develop both parts of her craft.

Read the full article in VCU News.

Image: School of the Arts alumna Megan James, standing next to copies of her comic book series, “Innsmouth.” Credit via VCU News.

The post Communication Arts Alumna Develops Comic Book Series appeared first on VCUarts.

Sumaat Khan, student in the Department of Kinetic Imaging, recently created a digital illustration in honor of the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs’ Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

“I think a lot of people, when they hear about an Asian heritage month, they don’t think about South Asians in their definition,” Khan said. “Places like India and Bangladesh and Pakistan, they’re often not included in it, just considered subcontinental despite the fact that they’re in Asia.”

Khan — whose family is from Bangladesh — has experienced this.

“[People] would be like, ‘What do you mean you’re Asian?’ and expect something else or think I was Middle Eastern,” Khan said.

Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander people also face a lack of representation in Asian narratives, Khan said. East Asia, consisting of nations like North and South Korea, Japan and China, tends to be overrepresented in comparison to other cultures.

“We only see this one type,” Khan said. “I think with the lack of representation, people assume that there isn’t anything to be celebrated about these cultures, even though they’re really rich and beautiful,” Khan said.

OMSA will host a career roundtable at their office on April 20, from 7-9 p.m. The event, co-hosted by APSA and will bring together Asian and Pacific Islander students of different majors to discuss their careers. Other OMSA events include a public art show in Cabell Library between April 9 and 13; a zine workshop hosted by APSA at Cabell Library at 6:30 p.m. on April 16 and Hump Day Dialogues in the OMSA office on Asian American history and Asian “minority myths” on April 18 from 2 to 3 p.m. and April 25 from noon to 1 p.m., respectively.

Read the full article in the Commonwealth Times.

Image: Illustration provided by Sumaat Khan for the Commonwealth Times. 

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Christine Wyatt, a student in the Department of Dance + Choreography, used VCU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program to attend the Summer Leadership Institute of the Urban Bush Women dance company last summer and continues to investigate how dance can combat racial inequalities in her daily practices.

Christine Wyatt, a senior who majors in dance and choreography in the School of the Arts, employs the art form to improve dialogue about race and class and how the concepts inform American society and art. Wyatt includes Africanist-influenced movements in her work. She brings attention to the fact that Eurocentric approaches often dominate formal dance education in the U.S., even though dances of Africa and enslaved Africans in the Americas also have shaped the art form in this country.

Wyatt calls this investigative process “decolonizing dance.” In her eyes, dance education in the United States could help bring greater inclusivity to art and society. Decolonizing can be an abstract term that entails “undoing racial and class structures” within dance and society, Wyatt said.

“Decolonizing through dance is about undoing colonization in my daily life,” she said. “Colonization represents the concept of power struggles and dynamics that come up in dance. I found that when you’ve recognized there is an injustice, whether it’s in an entire education system or in a dance class, you have to recognize that it is flawed.”

Read the full article in VCU News.

Image: Christine Wyatt featured in VCU’s 2018 Research Weeks.

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Toni-Leslie James, associate professor of theatre, is the recipient of the 2018 Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration.

The Michael Merritt Awards and Endowment Fund honors the memory of a brilliant designer and inspirational teacher. This national award, unique in its emphasis on excellence in both design and collaboration, has been presented annually since 1994 to outstanding professional theatrical designers. The Endowment Fund recognizes and encourages the work of young professionals and students through a national design exposition and prizes to promising theatrical design students.

Read the full announcement in Broadway World.

Feature image by Olivia Walthall (BFA ’16). 

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The stalker’s room is bathed in crimson light. Shadows creep along the walls. Boxes and crates and film canisters pile up around his frameless mattress. Suspended wall-to-wall by clothespin and string are dozens of photographs of a single actress. The stalker is perched at the edge of his bed, stroking his victim’s hair. He is obsessed.

This scene was one of many in “Nate Loves Sarah” where Cinema major Hajr Avant was empowered to use the set to develop a character. The film was produced as part of the Cinema program’s Summer Intensive, an independent study course that brings students together to work on a series of short films.

Avant served as production designer, which placed her in charge of the project’s entire aesthetic. Avant aimed to create scenes that used light, shadow and props to make Nate feel like a real person with a genuine obsession.

For the scenes in Nate’s makeshift darkroom, she wanted to convey the character’s intensity to the audience and build dramatic tension. She tapped into Nate’s motivations with a suitably haphazard set.

“He’d moved in recently and hadn’t really unpacked his stuff,” explains Avant. “And he’d just moved there for Sarah. So his room is almost completely barren.”

Caption: Nate’s darkroom from the production of “Nate Loves Sarah.”

She and her team also worked with the electric department to rig the distinct red lighting and cast swooping shadows around the set.

“[Nate] develops his own film,” she says. “So we got a table for his development station, we got a bunch of old film, we got canisters.”

For Avant, creating these scenes was part artistic skill, part human understanding—a combination that played perfectly with her double major in Sociology. Knowing how people think and move through society has proven to be an essential tool for her as a filmmaker.

“Because we study large populations,” she says, “we look at society and how different infrastructures affect a person. I think that definitely informs storytelling.”

Avant also considers her second major to be a communication aid while working with a diverse team. She’s often employees her sociology experiences, such as when served as a line producer on “El Oso,” overseeing the crew and department heads.

In VCUarts Cinema, Avant has built quite a resumé, snagging credits on additional department projects “Care” and “Limbo,” and making the Dean’s List three times. She’s also worked on a Super Bowl Union Bank commercial, several indie films shot in Richmond, a promo for Girls Rock RVA, a VCU police ad and Showtime’s Homeland.

Playing the showbiz game of “who you know” can seem intimidating, but Avant’s opportunities came about largely by striking up conversations during shoots.

Plus, plenty of Cinema alumni work on sets and are quick to recommend students and graduates join a production, knowing that they share a common work ethic.

“The film industry is so niche; it’s like a huge family,” she says.

Like her fellow Cinema seniors, Avant has one more summer of filmmaking to go before graduating. After that, she has her heart set on joining the Peace Corps before taking on a full-time career. With her skillset, her options seem limitless.

“In a perfect world,” she says, “I would get a job on some kind of documentary crew that’s going abroad. So I would get to travel, I’d get to volunteer, and I’d get to use the skills that I’ve learned in school.”

“If that were to happen? Wow. That’d be a good time for me.”

The post The Art of People-Watching: Hajr Avant appeared first on VCUarts.

Paul Rucker, an iCubed Visiting Arts Fellow and TED fellow, discussed ways to fight racial discrimination as part of the 2018 TED conference, which was covered by NPR.

Rucker began his practice as an artist when he was working as a janitor at the Seattle Art Museum. By experimenting with found and discarded objects, he started to develop his approach to making art.

“I have probably one of the biggest collections of pro-slavery books in this country.”

We’re on a hundred year cycle. There are multiple parts. One is called Shelter in the Time of Storm — that’s going to be at the ICA at VCU, the first time it will be shown in this form [Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University’s inaugural exhibition opens April 21].

This will have 52 never-before-seen robes. It’s to bring attention to the fact that the policies the Klan wanted in place 100 years ago are in place today: anti-immigration laws, segregated neighborhoods, workplaces, schools. That’s what the Klan wanted. And we’ve done that.

Read the full interview on NPR.

Image: Robes featured in Paul Rucker’s work, “Shelter in the Time of Storm,” which will be on display as part of the VCU Institute for Contemporary Art’s inaugural exhibition, “Declaration.” Courtesy of Paul Rucker for NPR.

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Distinguished VCUarts Professor Sonya Clark, who was named one of ’16 Women Pushing Design Forward in the United States’ by Artsy in 2017, will be lecturing at the Smithsonian as part of the James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Educators Symposium on Saturday, April 28, from 10 a.m.–12 p.m. The program features a panel of renowned advocates for contemporary craft in a lively discussion about the state of craft in America as part of the Smithsonian’s Spring Craft Weekend. Speaking along with Clark will be Helen Drutt English, Andrea and John Gill, and Albert LeCoff. 

Find more information about the symposium on the Smithsonian Calendar.

Image: Portrait of Sonya Clark by Diego Valdez.

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VCUarts Qatar welcomes Artist in Residence Leekyung Kang to present an exhibition titled ‘Transition in Unknown Territory; Panic Architecture’ at the Art 29 Gallery, W Doha Hotel, on April 17.

Kang, who is originally from South Korea, focuses on pictorial elements in her work, usually in an architectural context with a linear perspective, with the gradual transformation of three-dimensional forms that challenge the perception of space.

She has participated in several residencies in the US, Middle East and South Korea and her work has been exhibited in New York, Providence, and Boston.

Kang, a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, has been navigating the structural framework and ‘bone/skeleton’ of infrastructure in urban landscapes since 2014. By exploring spatial surfaces, such as construction sites and scaffolding structures, Kang leverages architectural imagery with mixed media. She has recently been seeking to uncover the unseen space, which is present, but never fully revealed.

Kang says her work “is about creating the illusion of dimensions by capturing the unseen space that exists between the second and third dimensions in architecture through traditional mediums and digital installations.”

Read the full article in Gulf Times.

Image: Leekyung Kang. Credit via Gulf Times.

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The Institute for Contemporary Art‘s inaugural exhibition, Declaration, will open on April 21 and run through September 9. This exhibition features many VCUarts faculty including Distinguished VCUarts Professor Sonya Clark (Craft/Material Studies), Stephen Vitiello (Kinetic Imaging) and Hope Ginsburg (Art Foundation).

VCU professor Sonya Clark’s Edifice and Mortar (2018) also sheds light on the disenfranchised. From afar, the work looks like a brick wall, but when viewers approach, they realize that the mortar is made from human hair.

“Someone might walk past” without noticing, Clark says. “That’s also part of the work because of how much we walk past the old brick buildings that have been built in Richmond, and we don’t consider who laid those bricks and who made those bricks.”

VCU’s kinetic imaging professor Stephen Vitiello created a sound piece that blares lines from Jorge Luis Borges’s story The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) in Chinese, English, German, and Spanish. The short story, which explores the theme of infinite possibilities, also inspired [architect Steven] Holl’s design of the museum and neighboring meditative garden.

“It brings people together. There are lots of concepts here, and people are in a space where they can talk about whatever their feelings are about anything,” says VCU president Michael Rao. “This becomes a great place to convene people, who might come from a wide range of views and perspectives, and give them the opportunity to really talk to each other in a civil way.”

Read the full article on artnet.

Image: Exterior view of the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Photo: Iwan Baan for artnet.

The post VCUarts Professors Contribute to New Conversations at the ICA appeared first on VCUarts.

VCU has teamed up with the city of Richmond, Richmond Symphony, Commonwealth Public Broadcasting (WCVE), and the University of Richmond to bring the 2020 Menuhin Competition to Richmond, Va.

The 2020 Menuhin Competition, billed as the world’s leading international competition for young violinists, will be held in Richmond on May 14-24, 2020.

The competition, for violinists under the age of 22, was founded in 1983 by Yehudi Menuhin, an American-born violinist and conductor who spent most of his career in the United Kingdom and is considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.

Since 1998, it has been held biennially in different cities around the world. Past host cities include London, Beijing and Oslo. At this year’s competition in Geneva, the 44 violinists represented 17 nationalities.

Several Richmond venues will be used for the competition, which will include recitals, chamber concerts and showcase performances with the Richmond Symphony. Venues will include the Carpenter Theatre at the Dominion Energy Center for the Performing Arts, VCU’s W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, and UR’s Modlin Center for the Arts. Commonwealth Public Broadcasting is expected to stream the competition worldwide and will pursue other broadcast opportunities.

Read the full article in Richmond Times Dispatch.

Image: Christina Hairston (left) with the Richmond Symphony [and VCUarts 2017 Alumna] and Angel Clarke with Bank of America clap dollowingthe announcement on Sunday, april 22, 2018, that Richmond has won the bid to host the 2020 Menuhin Competition. The competition has been described as the Olympics for violin players and Richmond was competing against London and Melbourne for the spot. Credit via Richmond Times Dispatch. 

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As a painting and printmaking major, Melissa Lesh (BFA 13) spent her days painting scenes from wildlife. But come summer, she’d pack up her brushes and canvases, and set out for remote refuges like Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp and the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge in Maine, where she worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

She was living dual lives—one as an artist and one as a wildlife conservationist. Eventually she thought to herself, “I’ve got to figure out how to combine this.”

Lesh found that combination in an unexpected place: a documentary film class she signed up for as an elective. In the course, she teamed up with Anne Wright from the VCU Department of Biology and the university’s Rice Rivers Center to produce a film documenting Atlantic sturgeon.

“I heard the sturgeon were spawning in the James River,” she says. “I thought, ‘This is amazing. Why isn’t anyone filming this?’”

The film turned into a series Lesh and Wright called “Science in the Park.” Lesh filmed the flora and fauna found around the city—the ecosystems in our own backyards.

She soon realized that documentary filmmaking allowed her to explore conservation in a way that painting couldn’t.

“I realized that painting wasn’t the most effective way for me to convey what I wanted to convey, or to work on what I wanted to work on,” she says. “Film seemed to be the perfect medium because I could be out in these places and talking to real scientists and working with animals.”

Since those pieces came together, Lesh has worked on a number of films focusing on conservation, natural history and sustainability. Her first documentary featured India’s first private wildlife sanctuary and the people working to protect it. She and her partner, Trevor Frost, have also worked on a few projects for National Geographic, including a story on crocodiles and filming gelada monkeys in Ethiopia.

Lesh says coming from an arts background has given her a different perspective in a field often dominated by scientists.

“A lot of scientists go into photography because they’re doing research and realize they need to communicate to the public,” she says. “For me, it was the opposite. But as a storyteller, it’s good to not be an expert. Coming from a place of non-understanding is a good way to break down in-depth science.”

For one of her most recent projects, Lesh helped distill nearly 10 years of scientific research—and 14 terabytes of video footage from researchers, field assistants and photographers—into a 17-minute film. “Person of the Forest” captures orangutan cultural behaviors and their similarities to human culture.

The film was selected for the Mountainfilm festival in Telluride in 2017. Lesh is now making her way through the festival circuit, with stops in D.C., Richmond, San Francisco, the Yale Environmental Film Festival and more. On Earth Day 2018, Vimeo featured “Person of the Forest” as a Staff Pick.

Lesh hopes the film will raise awareness about the human link to orangutans and help viewers understand how deforestation continues to threaten the critically endangered species—and maybe they’ll begin to look at the impact of their own behaviors.

“The second you bring people into the lives of animals that are so similar and so intelligent and so complex, that gives them the opportunity to connect in ways that text and research don’t,” Lesh says.

“If I can tell a good story, it doesn’t feel like you’re being told or taught. It just feels like you’re being pulled through this experience and you come out feeling moved to do something, to live in a different way.”

The post Painting and printmaking alum finds career in conservation and documentary film appeared first on VCUarts.

The Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Department of Fashion Design + Merchandising presents Momentum, a juried fashion show highlighting the school’s rising designers. The professional runway show and gala event is organized by fashion merchandising students and showcases knitwear, dresses, menswear, and denim collections from fashion design students.

Join us for “Momentum”
Thursday, May 10, 2018, 8 pm
Doors open at 7 pm, seating concludes promptly at 7:40 pm
Train Shed at Main Street Station
1500 East Main Street
Richmond, VA

Get your tickets now:
Tickets are $100 for front row seating; $75 for second row seating; and $40 for standing.

RSVP on our Facebook Event.
Don’t forget to use the hashtags #VCUarts and #Runway2018 on social!

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Naredeen Mikhaiel didn’t have much of a choice when she first went to college to study international business and economics.

She grew up in Egypt where a person’s college major and career path are customarily dictated by their performance in certain high school subjects. Though she found economics unexpectedly interesting, she just couldn’t fathom a future in the field.

When she and her family immigrated to Richmond in 2011, Mikhaiel had a chance to start fresh. She enrolled at a community college and set her sights on transferring to VCUarts to study interior design.

“When I was at community college, everyone said, ‘There’s no way you’re going to get into VCUarts because it’s pretty competitive. You should think about plan B,’” she says. “I said, ‘There is no plan B. It has to be plan A.’”

Proximity to her family and their new home was one reason for her commitment to VCUarts. Being an immigrant, she says, strengthens attachment among family members. Mikhaiel’s family members relied on one another to navigate a new country, customs and language.

Her experience as an asylee eventually inspired her interior design senior thesis project, designing a housing facility for refugees. When refugees land in the U.S., she says, they typically face a few challenges: finding permanent housing that accommodates an entire family, integrating into an unfamiliar neighborhood, and accessing public transportation.

Mikhaiel had these challenges in mind when she developed a design concept for a multi-family building that would house refugees from different countries.

“I think people look at interior design as just being decorative,” she says. “I look at interior design as something that solves problems.”

She pictured the building near VCU’s campus, with easy access to city bus lines and the Main Street Train Station. People would live in private spaces that could accommodate larger families. But the building’s layout would also encourage interactions among the different immigrant groups. Her design included a large kitchen that could draw people to share culturally significant foods over conversation, and a library that would help immigrants begin an education that could lead to better jobs.

“My concept is about roots,” she says. “When you move a tree, you need to be very delicate with its roots. You need to find the right soil, the right temperature, the right everything so that the tree can grow again.”

Mikhaiel had the chance to present her thesis at the Interior Design Educators Council in Boston during spring break. She was nervous about the 25-minute talk, particularly since she would be speaking in her second language. To prepare, she signed up for a public speaking class with Robert Ventura, assistant professor of interior design.

“He kept talking about how practice makes a difference,” she says. “I felt like he was talking just to me.”

“It gave me a lot of confidence that if I practice, I can do it. If I believe in my topic, I can do it.”

In the end, Mikhaiel’s presentation turned into a deeper conversation with her audience about the role of housing and interior design in meeting the needs of refugees. She was able to draw on her own life experience to answer questions about the challenges immigrants and refugees face when they arrive in a new country.

“I did not expect people to be that passionate about the topic,” she says. “It felt like people were actually understanding that this is a problem, and that it’s about time for us to act on it.”

The post Designing New Roots: Naredeen Mikhaiel appeared first on VCUarts.

Communication Arts Associate Professor Ying-Fang Shen used funding from the National Science Foundation to produce Humanexus, an animated short film about the history of human communication. This piece has won more than 30 awards and screened in more than 200 cities worldwide.

Humanexus (2014) – full movie from Ying-Fang Shen on Vimeo.

Image: Still from Humanexus by Ying-Fang Shen.

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