Despite its young age, Cinema has a rich history. Now in its eleventh year, the program has distinguished itself with team projects that call on each student’s individual talents, the skills of faculty who work and learn alongside them, and a shared devotion to the craft of filmmaking. Students and faculty have worked with Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, shot on location in Norway and expanded the scope of the program into screenwriting. In 2017, MovieMaker counted VCUarts Cinema among the top film schools in the U.S. and Canada for outstanding cinematography training. There’s a lot to celebrate!

The Cinema program hit the ground running in 2007, when award-winning filmmaker Rob Tregenza was hired as its first program director. Anne Chapman, professor and casting director, joined the faculty soon after.

In 2008, French writer/director and then-president of La Femis film school Claude Miller became Cinema’s distinguished director-in-residence. Students worked on his film Marching Band and collaborated with La Femis students to create multiple short films. Arthur Eng joined the faculty that year, with Marching Band premiering in 2009.

The first class of Cinema students graduated in 2010. At the same time, the annual Cinematheque film series had its inaugural season, and Kirk Kjeldsen joined as assistant professor, teaching screenwriting.  

Steven Spielberg took his production of Lincoln to Richmond in 2011, taking on nine alumni and 13 current Cinema students as interns and full-time crew members. The following year, Cinema’s film “Laila” was screened at the 20th Annual French Film Festival, 19th Annual James River Film Festival and the Salento Film Festival in Italy.

During the fourth annual Cinematheque, world-renowned New York Times film critic Dave Kehr visited as guest speaker. 2013 brought another major production to Richmond, with Turn: Washington’s Spies employing 20 Cinema alumni, current students and faculty during filming. That year, film critic, author and Nonfiction Editor of New England Review at Middlebury College JM Tyree joined the faculty. Editor Jochen Kunstler joined the following year.

Director Sara Driver (When Pigs Fly) was the inaugural special guest at the fifth annual Cinematheque, and Cinema became an official member of CILECT, the International Association of Film and Television schools, in 2014.  

Angus Macfadyen (Turn, Braveheart) became the program’s artist-in-residence in 2015, leading students in shooting an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Macbeth: Unhinged premiered at the 70th Edinburgh International Film Festival the following year.

Cinema students working at their summer intensive, where they produce most of their films for the year.

A slew of professional development opportunities opened around the same time. Two more major film productions arrived in Richmond in 2015: Loving employed 10 Cinema alumni and current students, and Imperium employed five alumni and current students. And alumni Spike Scarberry (BA ’10) and Allie Palmore (BA ’15) debuted digital internships for students at Bad Hat Harry and Josephson Entertainment, respectively.

In 2017, Homeland began filming in Richmond, employing 22 Cinema alumni and current students. That year also brought on independent producer Virginia Bertholet and alumna Yossera Bouchtia (BA ’11; BS ’11) to the faculty.

Most recently, Gavagai, a feature film that Tregenza and professors Kjeldsen and Eng shot in Norway, has received rave reviews from The New Yorker and Slant. It was ultimately placed in the top ten films of 2018 by Metacritic.

2018 marks 90 years of creative daring at VCU School of the Arts. To mark this occasion, VCUarts is spending this school year reflecting on our shared history and envisioning how we can continue to pave the way for creative practice in the 21st century and beyond. Visit the VCUarts 90th Anniversary website to learn more about the many stories that have shaped our school, and to share memories of your own.

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For Bridget Stadelmyer, earning her art education degree comes with a mandate. Teaching entrusts her with the responsibility to be a leader for her students, and to demonstrate how the arts can help them grow.

“I believe it is crucial that our society dedicates itself to the holistic care and development of its youth,” she says, “and that I can best contribute to that mission through art education.”

A psychology minor, Stadelmyer is interested in the way artmaking changes our outlook on life, empowers us and affects our health. Art can allow someone to contemplate their place in the world—how they fit into a community, how they see themselves and how they communicate with different generations.

Stadelmyer says she wants to use art to teach students to take an active role in society and in their personal lives.

“I so admire the ways art turns a consumer into a producer,” she says. “It seems to me that our current education system has asked our youth to be consumers, but I want to teach so I can encourage them to create art and respond to or influence their own personal and generational contexts.”

Artwork by Bridget Stadelmyer.

Over the course of her time at VCUarts, Stadelmyer has had many opportunities to help students grow. At a retreat center in Pennsylvania, she worked with a New York-based mission group for two summers, counseling and teaching art to inner-city children. In the Art Education department, she taught in an exceptional education class, where she and a classmate worked with a non-verbal preschool student. Together, they built up his vocabulary and self-assuredness in speaking until he began to speak unprompted.

“I was so excited to see him confidently speak on his own that I nearly cried,” she says.

This month marks her finals weeks of class before she transitions to student teaching. In preparation, she’s been learning more about printmaking and ceramics to expand her art practice. She’s also been engaging more with her spirituality as a campus ministry leader and through Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at VCU.

After graduation, Stadelmyer says that she would love to continue collaborating with other professionals to teach young students. She looks forward to working in a school, community center or art therapy ministry that serves a multiethnic community, develops leadership among students, and values the benefit that art has on society.

“I have no idea what the future looks like,” she says, “but that’s because I keep finding all kinds of new doors I could choose to go through.”

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Suzanne A. Silitch, APR
Director of Communications, VCU School of the Arts
(804) 828-6819
sasilitch@vcu.edu

VCU School of the Arts awards more than $50,000 in Faculty Research Grants
Faculty to conduct research in dance, animation, sculpture, music and more

RICHMOND, Va. (December 6, 2018)—Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Dean Shawn Brixey has awarded $54,529 in Dean’s Grants for the 2018–19 academic year. This year, the program provides $14,911 in funding for exploratory grants, and $40,118 in funding for research grants.

The Dean’s Faculty Exploratory Grant supports research at the developmental stage, allowing faculty to conduct new research, explore new media, or collaborate in experimental ways. Exploratory grants assist faculty in developing research that could lead to successful applications for Faculty Research Grants and/or external funding opportunities.

Three exploratory grant recipients were awarded. Josh Rodenberg, Kinetic Imaging instructor, will prototype an augmented reality musical instrument. Justin Alexander and Tabatha Easley, assistant professors of music, will explore how flute percussive traditions in indigenous communities in southern Colombia can inform musical practice and pedagogy. Finally, Emily Smith and Sara Reed, both assistant professors of interior design, will partner to study pattern in Virginia’s built environment and communicate stories of migration, social status and accessibility.

The Dean’s Faculty Research Grant program supports the final stages of research for which venues for dissemination have been determined. Research grants are awarded for specific activities that have been invited or endorsed by peer review. Research grants typically support faculty exhibition, demonstration, activity, publication, or performance in national and international contexts.

Sample research projects include Kinetic Imaging faculty Orla McHardy’s Nitefeedz, which uses animation to explore caregiving and reproductive labour, and the interrupted time of motherhood. Craft/Material Studies faculty Aaron McIntosh will exhibit Invasive Queer Kudzu, a project with a growing accumulation of 4,200+ LGBTQ story leaves, throughout the South.  Dance faculty Eric Rivera will present original choreography at an international dance festival in San Juan. Rivera’s new work will explore “Bomba,” a music and dance tradition shaped by Puerto Rico’s African heritage.  Additional recipients include John Freyer, associate professor of photography and film; Michael Jones McKean, assistant professor of sculpture and extended media; Corin Hewitt, associate professor of sculpture and extended media; Karen Kropyanski, assistant professor of theatre; and Nicole Killian, assistant professor of graphic design. A diverse range of partners are involved in these projects, including Ballet Nacional Dominicano, the Center for Archaeology and Society, El Paso Art Museum, the Irish Film Council, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. 

“At VCUarts, we’re providing a new model for the arts, one that ignites collaborations within VCUarts and with our partners in the fields of science, engineering, technology and business,” Brixey says. “Our faculty research and exploratory grants demonstrate our commitment to  advance creative knowledge and fueling new discoveries in the arts and design. I’m excited to see how some of our most daring creatives respond to some of the world’s most vexing problems.”

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About Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts
VCUarts has been the top-ranked public university visual arts and design program in the country for more than 10 years, according to U.S. News & World Report. Undergraduate and graduate classes in the school’s 16 departments and programs are taught by a distinguished faculty of professional artists, designers, and scholars. VCUarts is part of a vibrant, arts-centered community with global influence. The School is part of a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research and a deep commitment to diversity, community, discovery, and innovation.

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We are pleased to announce that Gavagai, developed by VCUarts Cinema professor Kirk Kjeldsen and Rob Tregenza, program director, as well as Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable, created by Photography + Film chair Sasha Waters Freyer, have been placed in Richard Brody’s Best Movies of 2018 by The New Yorker. Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable is one of only eleven documentaries on the list.

Gavagai is described as a ‘visually virtuosic ghost story, set in Norway, about grief, poetry, landscape, and emotional recovery.’

Read the full list of The Best Movies of 2018 by The New Yorker.

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Morgan Yacoe (BFA ’11) is a VCUarts Sculpture alumna who combines her artistic practice with medical science to investigate the relationship between art and medicine. VCU Alumni took a closer look at her recent projects including casting a woman’s torso.

Yacoe took a casting of the torso of a woman who had undergone a unilateral mastectomy, meaning she’d had one of her breasts removed because of cancer. Yacoe’s sculptural training shows in the curves and folds of the representation of the woman’s body, in an appearance of softness that suggests life beyond a frozen moment.

But this sculpture also has a medical application because Yacoe used it to teach a workshop at Virginia Commonwealth University to medical residents practicing breast reconstructive surgery. She presented the class with castings of the sculpture and guided them as they sculpted the missing breast into place.

In the end, art and medicine are too aligned to be separated. Yacoe describes the breast as “a difficult form with lots of subtleties.” In the context of helping a patient recovering from breast cancer, mastering the art and aesthetics of the situation becomes a key part of providing healing.

Read the full article by VCU Alumni.

Image: Morgan Yacoe, left, displays an alginate casting she took of Tapia conjoined twins, which she used to build a surgical model that her collaborator, Jennifer Rhodes, M.D., could use to prepare for her role in the separation surgery. Photo by VCU staff, courtesy of Morgan Yacoe. Credit via VCU Alumni. 

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On November 30, VCU hosted the “VCU 50: Commemorating History” symposium, reflecting on the many challenges and opportunities the university has faced since its founding half a century ago. During the session “History of Art and Place at VCU,” art history alumnus Richard DiCicco (BA ’14)—the Arts Writer for the VCUarts Communications Office—presented his research on the Masonic Temple. In the 1970s and ’80s, the building provided studios to more than 50 VCUarts professors and alumni before they were evicted by the city. Below, he offers an abridged version of his symposium presentation.

Designed by Baltimore architect Jackson C. Gott and completed in 1893, the lavish Masonic Temple at the corner of Broad and Adams was the designated meeting place for Richmond’s Freemasons for eighty years. And from 1973 to 1982, the building was home to prolific award-winning artists—until they were kicked out by the city in an effort to found a new arts district.

Most of these artists were VCUarts professors and graduates who had a strong relationship with the Anderson Gallery, and their eviction was well-documented in the city’s papers. But during my research into our school’s 90th anniversary, I found that the Temple’s story remained a mystery to many in our community. Despite the building’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register, neither resource provides any information on the site’s history after 1971. It’s time we updated our records.

When the Freemasons vacated the building in the early ’70s, the Temple was purchased by Dr. John Russell Good, who offered up its cavernous rooms as cheap artist’s studios. Though more than 50 artists would come to work at the Temple over the next decade, the inaugural group included VCUarts professors Morris Yarowsky, Jim Bumgardner (BFA ’58), José Puig, Sal Federico (BFA ’66) and Myron Helfgott, along with Jeff Davis (BFA ’70) and Bruce Behrman (BFA ’70).

Tragedy struck the artists instantly. On November 15th, 1973, during move-in preparations, Puig forced open an elevator shaft and fell to his death.

But they pressed on.

For the near-decade that the Masonic Temple was in active operation as a kind of artist’s commune, it maintained a bohemian character. The third floor was host to a boxing ring, where residents slung punches on Wednesday nights. Shattered windows drew in pigeons as dead ones tumbled to the ballroom floor. The toilets clogged, a pay phone rang on and on like a shuddering heartbeat, and drifters lingered on the front steps.

Despite the derelict aesthetic of the Temple, it was absolutely beloved by artists for its expansive work spaces and unique atmosphere. Someone was always around, day or night.

It wasn’t long before the city began envisioning a unified arts district on Broad St with the Temple at its center. In the early ’80s, the mayor called on the nonprofit Richmond Federated Arts Council to develop the project. By 1982, and after much deliberation with the local arts community, the city purchased the Masonic Temple with a federal grant of $175,000. With no plans to allow the artists to stay in such cheap studios, the Arts Council let the group know that they would have to leave.

Cover of the “Alumni of the Masonic Temple” catalog, 1983.

In June 1983, the Anderson Gallery mounted a mournful exhibition titled “Alumni of the Masonic Temple,” featuring the work of many evicted artists. That September, in a turn of bitter irony, the Arts Council ceased raising the millions needed to build the arts district. Richmond had elected a new mayor, and the incoming administration had no interest in continuing the previous mayor’s costly urban development project. By 1984, the city sold the Masonic Temple.

Of course, there is much more to this story. But even in brief, what happened at the Masonic Temple is worth commemorating because it’s the truest and most naked example of the push and pull between those in the community who create and those who organize. When it comes to making art in urban spaces, that conflict will always emerge as we weigh the value of artistic authenticity versus commercial viability, and personal integrity versus community service. As VCUarts grows, what can we do as an organization to manage that balance—if there is one?

The Masonic Temple provides us with a case study. If the Richmond Federated Arts Council listened to the artists honestly and accommodated them, perhaps more people would know about the Temple’s astonishing history.

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December 2018 Commencement Speaker Jason Butler Harner (BFA ’92) was interviewed by Sifter about his experience at VCUarts and his work on stage and screen.

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When Richmond’s Gallery 5 approached Katie McBride (BFA ’04) about curating an exhibition, she saw an opportunity to showcase talented local illustrators—particularly women and non-binary people.

“I thought of recent conversations I’ve had about male artists getting hired for illustration jobs that spoke specifically to women’s social issues, and often creating work that did not conceptually resonate with actual women,” she says. “The explanation often tossed around was that editorial requires quick turns, and people hire who they know and can think of.”

“That sounded ridiculous to me. I could make a list in 20 minutes, and fill a room with phenomenal illustration by women, even local women. And then I realized I had that room.”

“Gold for a Silver Situation” opened in January with work from 12 Richmond artists. McBride looked for a variety of backgrounds to show the breadth of what illustration and narrative art can be, and how diverse personal experiences can inform those stories and images.

“These are artists who work as tenure track professors, have work in museum collections, clients like the New York Times or Random House publishing, and have had their work seen by tens of thousands of people,” McBride says. “If someone is seeking an artist to create work around women’s lived experiences—or anything else for that matter—there are plenty of qualified women.”

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It was the first American campus in Doha’s Education City, part of an initiative to reinvigorate the arts in the Persian Gulf. This year, VCUarts Qatar turns 20.

The campus in the Middle East was born of a partnership between Virginia Commonwealth University and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser invited the university to develop the first design curriculum in the region, and chart a new landscape of global integration, with the arts and design at its center.

“Initially, it was a school that was really only for women,” said VCUarts Dean Emeritus Richard Toscan, “because Her Highness wanted to give women a professional credential where they could start an industry in Qatar.”

Today, VCUarts Qatar is the premier design program in the Middle East, having earned a global reputation for excellence reflected in the student body’s makeup of more than 40 different nationalities. Over the course of 20 years, the campus has begun three new programs, provided opportunities for graduate studies, and pioneered international arts and design conferences like Tasmeem.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary, a gala was held at the Sheraton Grand Doha Resort and Convention Hotel on May 7, coinciding with the spring commencement ceremony.

In his commencement address, VCUarts Dean Shawn Brixey challenged graduates to pioneer new discoveries. “Harness the creative daring to make the world a more verdant, imaginative, and better home to all of us,” he said.

The gala was a capstone event, concluding a year of anniversary celebrations. In fall 2017, VCUarts Qatar opened “20/20/20,” curated by Ahmad Oustwani (BFA ’12) and Maryam Yousuf Al-Homaid (MFA ’14) and celebrating the design work of 20 alumni.

“VCUarts Qatar has been a steady source of innovation and alternative ways of looking at the world and at ourselves,” said Donald N. Baker, executive dean of VCUarts Qatar. “We continue to be excited about the opportunities to cultivate a dynamic intercultural environment of research, learning and community engagement.”

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Actor, writer and producer Jason Butler Harner (BFA ’92) delivered the 2018 VCUarts December Commencement address on December 8. Read what he had to say to the Class of 2018, or watch the video below.

Thank you for those kind words. Very generous of you. Thank you. Dean Brixey, Theatre VCU Chairwoman Ott, distinguished School of the Arts faculty, select Burning Man survivors (I see you Sculpture Department), supportive parents and families, chosen families and friends, and most importantly, graduates. Graduates. I feel like we should all say that word. Graduates of the class of 2018. Welcome. It is my profound honor to be here with you this afternoon. I commend you on this tremendous achievement of earning your degree and I thank you for allowing me to both share this milestone with you, as well as welcome you to the select community of VCUarts alumni. I, and this whole room, congratulate you on this December 8th, 2018 day.

I think we should all actually congratulate them. Yes, out loud. Voice is energy. Energy is power. Unity of voice, energy, and power opens the door to the possible. So, congratulations on 3. 1..2..3…congratulations!

Now I feel like it’s unbalanced. So, graduates, indulge me please, while you’re here in this moment, thinking of all the hard work you have done to be here, thinking of anyone who helped you: teacher, parent, mentor, whether they’re in your mind or in this room, think of all that and, on 3, I want you to say ‘thank you!’ 1..2..3, thank you!

Wonderful, perfect. We made room, in the room, for something more. Look at us creating. Communicating. Collaborating. Artists that we are. You know, it has been often said and sung and written that, “you can never go home again.” And I know what those creative voices mean “Home can never be the same,” but I also know that right now, it feels so full for me to be back at VCU, a home where I spent four years of my life, to be revisiting this vibrant school which has grown so much, gotten seen by so many more. It’s good to be back in the city of Richmond, rich in it’s history: nuanced, complex, requiring us to hold past and present in our heads at the same time as we do; with its future so much brighter today than yesterday.

Especially so as I stand here looking at you, and for me to be back in this very building in which I walked 30 years ago (how did that happen?). 30 years ago, I walked into “The Mosque” as it was called then, I was a late admission so I had to enroll in person for the required first year curriculum of a BFA acting major. I hadn’t planned on coming to VCU, no. April in my senior year arrived at T.C. Williams, rejection letters from half-assed applications were in this hand and the freshly opened, previously neglected, acceptance letter from TheatreVCU was in this hand. So, an opportunity was offered, a plan unfolded, I accepted and I had no idea at the time but a salvation was put into play.

It’s not hyperbole. My life was literally saved by the theatre. And therefore by this school, it’s teachers, and me daring to do it. Okay, cut to me in the ballroom downstairs, well, first cut to the montage of me living at MCV, taking that bus every day, just me and Larena Muhammed, freezing on that bus. We came in here and registered for our then required first-year courses which included art history. I was so curious, so excited, but also so insecure, so skeptical, so side-eyed, so sucked teeth before I knew sucked teeth about this art history requirement.

I was an acting major thank you very much, I had zero training, didn’t know what it was, and here today in the Altria Theatre on December 8th, 2018, I can tell you still what Giotto blue is, what Rubens achieved with candle light on flesh, and how I used the works of Lucian Freud, Franz Kline and Richard Serra as formative inspiration when I played Hamlet in Dallas in 2003. Thank you Sue Ann Messmer, formative VCU Art History teacher that you are.

BFA 1992. Thank you. I’m out. Confession of youth, when I graduated, I taped on my hat, “BFA – BFD.” So dumb. But not wrong. It is a “BFD.” So wrong line interpretation. So, you have an education now and, you don’t know. You don’t know exactly where you are going to be, what you are going to do. How you will pay off those loans. (It will be OK.) It may be understandably overwhelming but, “To be or not to be that is the question.” And I want you to be. I want you to live, to choose to live, to choose to be bigger than you think possible even now. It isn’t going to happen on its own. You’re going to have to do more than think, excel as you have done here, past a comfort zone. But I am standing here, with the flashlight, as someone who has pushed and struggled, sobbed and rejoiced in a life that continues to be so much bigger than I imagined when I sat in your seat staring at someone talking too long as I am now.

Trust me enough to say, it’s going to be hard, you’re going to have to work, but you have a foundation and it can be done. My money is on you. Your unique success can be achieved. And, “Success isn’t a pie. No one’s gonna steal your piece.” You have to decide on the pie and make it. And “80% of life is showing up, 20% is following up.” But you have a responsibility to yourself to make that pie. That’s what education offers—responsibility to self. And you have a responsibility to support each other in whatever life success pie your friends make. So, honor this time and each of your journeys by encouraging each other in this “Grande Bakery of Life.”

This week has been fascinating and I am so moved by you. I really am. 100%. Not least of all because it’s a December graduation, and that means some of you overachievers earned your degree in three and a half years and some of you did it a little longer, however you did it, that’s your success, even you 12th year seniors. You did it! Mazel Tov. Go Rams!

Genuinely though, you are right where you are supposed to be. You are. We all always are, truthfully. We have to learn to say it to ourselves throughout life. I am where I am supposed to be. In this moment. It took me too many years to say it. Ok, it took the time it took. I am where I am supposed to be. You know we say that because otherwise if we succumb to worry, to dread, it stunts, it wastes time. It’s a false endeavor. There is no solace. Worrying is a meditation. It’s a negative mediation. Why fill yourself with negative thinking when the positive one, however challenging to dare to do offers the better fruit, the better ride, the better head space, and frankly, is so much easier for the rest of us to be around?

So yes, I did my first play here and then many years, many plays and grad school at NYU later, I got my Equity card in a production of Macbeth in New York. With a bunch of fancy folks. Very sexy. Alec Baldwin, Angela Bassett. Liev Schreiber, then unknown actors like Zach Braff and Michael C. Hall. So there’s a lot of dudes in that play and we would all hang out, and I remember Alec and Liev, who were very kind to me and we’re still acquaintances now, but I remember them talking to Mike, who I knew from grad school, in a way that they just didn’t talk to me. As I said, we’re friends, they were fun, but they were prepping him for the success that they could see was coming for him. For whatever reason, his skill, his voice, his looks, maybe because he was a guy’s guy like them and so they knew what was coming, but I remember also it not feeling so great as I smiled on the sidelines, heart collapsing, breath tightening, playing the jester as I used to do then and don’t do now. And I remember thinking, as a teacher had said to both Mike and I, and now I say to you, “Tolerate Yourself.”

Tolerate yourself as you have learned to do when you are in the process of creating, when you have an idea or no idea, and you want to get there without having to live through here. Tolerate yourself on the journey. You’ll find something new on the way. I promise you, you will. Hold yourself accountable, yes, but tolerate yourself. I found resilience that time and empowerment. He wasn’t my story. “Comparison is the thief of joy,’”right? This time here, all your training, has helped you find your viewpoint, your voice, helped make it fuller, richer, emboldened it with knowledge and it will support you as you tolerate yourself, as you discover, do, make, be and speak your truth. Little by little, not big by big. So: clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose.

In that same production was this guy Anil Kumar. We were all playing small roles, as you do, so he had this servant role that said something like “The king, my lord, is beyond the palace gate,” or something. And we are in tech, it’s slow, lotta smoke and mud, leather, fur, strobe lights, drums, and Anil made a choice, he signed his work, to enter kind of like a rabid squirrel. He was all “The king, my lord, is beyond the palace gate.” It was a lot given for a little ask. So much is happening around the servant, to y’know Macbeth, which is, as you can imagine, more important. So, there’s this pause. And, over the God mic, from the darkness, you hear George C. Wolfe, amazing director and iconic force, say “Anil, great choice. Don’t ever do it again.” And a pause. And then Anil started laughing. And George laughed. We all laughed. And space was made for a company to be more, for humor but also for a respect of failure—a respect for Anil’s endeavor. You have to respect failure, not be afraid of it. You have to leap. Failure offers information. Growth. Courage. Knowledge. Less time failing in that way, the next time, to then be able to do more. I also believe, as an artist with a degree, you have to encourage a creative space that values failure. Not asking questions, not risking offers complacency, offers stagnation, offers unhappiness, offers resentment. Re: feeling of things, dead can only lead to anger and depression. Value failure.

I’m asked all the time about VCU, why VCU? How VCU? And I think I’ve reached a cohesive observation. A VCUarts grad has a certain tenacity, a scrappiness, an ingenuity, a quirkiness to rise to the occasion and solve the challenge uniquely. We have that because, in addition to the quality of education, we are in Richmond, not New York City, time and space are
handled differently, and though we are, without a doubt, a great school, we aren’t an Ivy League school, and people like me who hadn’t planned but had talent and drive can be here with the opportunity given, the hand extended, to then choose to be more. Or not. We dare. In other words, things that may seem like qualifiers in one lens, are actually identifiers and builders in another. Choose your lens. And though there’s a little smoke and mirrors in all of what we do, getting to the true sense of confidence can be the real challenge for us. I’m not talking about the clichéd, outdated American Dream ideas like “Fake it til you make it.” Not the posturing, sweating yourself, faux swagger, but actually being confident. I do swagger sparingly, I do, but I’m after true confidence which requires knowledge of self and security of ego. Who am I? A question artists are not afraid to ask. And, as words are my raw materials, I know that confidence actually means “with faith.” So, my wish for you and my younger self is proceed with faith. Proceed with a faith in yourself. Build on that simple belief. Faith in your talents, your discipline, your drive, your ability to tolerate yourself, to grow, to apologize, your faith in the value of your time and the value of what we creative
folks do. And what you and only you do.

Which, by the way, is the thing we up here and around you really want and need for you to be. We want you to be happy, to be engaged in your life and we need all these artistic, communicative skills of yours to especially do one of the things which they inherently do, encourage compassion. We need it. The arts have always been the gift of engagement with another. Of reflection. To be present in the same space with another person, we need that because this world, now, more than any time in a long while, needs compassion. We’re forgetting how. “Co-Passion.” Feeling with another, experiencing and encouraging humanity with another is what the world needs and we offer. So, I implore you to do some portion of your work in service to others. It is in service to something beyond ourselves that we continue the discovery of the self
and also encourage compassion, humanity, discourse, which are the fruits of our very personal labor.

As you segue from student to professional, as you ponder the very personal challenge of balancing art and commerce, I offer one last thought (Thank goodness): be kind. It is important. You can be firm and be kind. You can have a point of view and be kind. You can trash a hotel room in slo-mo, throwing a mini-fridge through a window and be kind. It was season 1. So not a spoiler. Be kind. With a sense of humor. It just reflects better on you and allows you a sense of humility and joy. And respect for others. All of which I have right now. You are the dreamers and the makers. You can hold two opposing thoughts at the same time and create from them. Which benefits us all. The world awaits you. And you are ready for the world. I, for one, cannot wait to see what you do.

Thank you.

About Jason Butler Harner (BFA ’92)

Jason Butler Harner is an actor, writer and producer who began his training in the VCUarts Theatre department. Harner was born in a small town in New York, raised in Alexandria, Virginia, and now lives in New York City and Los Angeles.

He is the second member of his family to earn a bachelor’s degree and the first to earn a master’s degree, which he received from the Graduate Acting Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Harner has appeared in theaters across the U.S., on London’s West End, and frequently on and off-Broadway. He recently completed the Broadway premiere of Bernhardt/Hamlet in November. He has an Obie Award, two Drama Desk nominations, multiple city and festival awards, and a beloved Phoebe Award from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Harner currently plays Agent Roy Petty in the Netflix hit Ozark, while his big screen appearances range from the Oscar-nominated Changeling to the indie hits The Family Fang and The Green. His early career includes turns in Dogwood Dell’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, Shadowcast Theatre’s groundbreaking Psycho Beach Party, and the role of Headless in the never-to-be seen-again Ripped: A Rock Mythical at the Hodges Theatre. More recently, Harner has appeared on Scandal, Ray Donovan, Homeland, Alcatraz, Blacklist and Law and Order.

Harner ties his ability to create a character and the success of his career back to the foundation he received at VCUarts at a pivotal moment in his life.

The post Jason Butler Harner’s December 2018 Commencement Address appeared first on VCUarts.

When Alice Simon (BFA ’71, MIS ’01) finished her art education degree, she went straight to the classroom in Hanover County. She spent decades there, teaching future artists and art educators—many of whom followed her footsteps and attended VCUarts.

But one in particular stood out—her son, Nate Simon (BFA ’04). He had tinkered with computers as a child and dabbled in studying business, but never really found his fit. That changed when he realized that maybe there was something there, in his mom’s classroom.

He applied to VCUarts and enrolled in the Communications Arts and Design Department. At the same time, Alice was returning to VCU, where she pursued a master’s in interdisciplinary studies.

Now, as VCUarts celebrates 90 years of educating artists, performers and scholars, Alice and Nate reflect on two generations—and many shared memories—of their own VCUarts experiences.

Tell me about your own teacher-student relationship.

Alice: I had him in high school. And he was a really good student.

Nate: Art was really the only subject I thrived in. It was the one subject where I knew my stuff. And that’s because she dragged me to all of the art museums, all my life.

Alice: I didn’t know that he had a sincere interest in VCUarts. While I was away in Savannah with my daughter, he submitted an application and they accepted him. And after I saw his portfolio, I knew he had found himself.

What stands out about VCU now, versus then?

Alice: Coming in today, nothing is the same. We were in classes in houses and basements and anywhere we could find a space. I had English on the corner of Lombardy and Main, in that big school building there. That was painful to walk all the way over there through all the alleys. I was driving a Volkswagen, bright yellow, and I would have these huge canvases, huge paintings tied on. It was up like a sail the whole way in. And I would be 10 blocks out and have to carry that baby to school.

Who were some of your mentors?

Nate: I had Ben Day, Philip Meggs, Patrick Power, David Colley and Sandy Wheeler as my teachers. They were amazing. Philip Meggs showing the intro scenes to movies like The Birds and Vertigo—just classics that made me see things that I never paid attention to before. He put it into a whole new light for me. It gives me chills just thinking about his class. I did not know how important he was until years later, and I’m still finding out how amazing he was. I still reference his History of Graphic Design book, on a monthly, if not a weekly, basis.

Alice: I had great professors as well. William Bevilaqua—I started with him in design. And then Bernard Martin. Jewett Campbell, I didn’t realize how important he was. I just looked him up and was so impressed with his work. Jewett Campbell liked my work. And I was really pleased that Bernard Martin wanted to put my stuff in a show, but I got there too late with the painting. I blew my shot, because I was a senior and I was out of there.

Where did your careers take you?

Nate: When I first came to the School of the Arts, I knew that the only path that I was going to take was graphic design. I worked so hard to get there. When it was time to have your portfolios reviewed to get into the major, I don’t even [remember being interested in] any other department.

Nate: As soon as I graduated in December 2004, I had a job lined up as a graphic designer down in Shockoe Bottom at an agency. I worked there for five years and I was art director when I left. My now-wife wanted me to work for her and I thought there was no better opportunity, at the time, than to do that. So, we joined forces in 2010 and Big Tree was born. It’s been an amazing road. We have clients from small local businesses to Fortune 500 companies.

Alice: I went to Virginia Art Institute in Charlottesville and, as part of my scholarship there, I was a teacher’s assistant for a group of students who were painting. I ended up coaching them as much as anything, and I loved it. After that I was hooked. So I decided I was going to go on to school from art school and earn a teaching certificate so that I could work in education.

Alice: Since I graduated in ’71 I’ve been employed by Hanover schools. My best years were at Atlee High school. I had wonderful students. Most of them came here, and I think many of them are in the field. Many of them became art teachers.

Image: Nate Simon and Alice Simon in front of Franklin Terrace, where both took classes as students at VCUarts. 

The post Intergenerational studies appeared first on VCUarts.

On December 12, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts announced the acquisition of 250 works for their permanent collection, including Paul Rucker’s installation Storm in a Time of Shelter. The iCubed fellow’s piece was recently featured in the Institute for Contemporary Art’s inaugural exhibition Declaration.

In addition to Rucker’s work, the VMFA also purchased the 1975 painting Passage to India by fellow faculty member Richard Carlyon. Carlyon passed away in 2006.

Read the full press release at the VMFA website.

The post VMFA acquires work by Paul Rucker appeared first on VCUarts.

Movement images of VCUarts Dance student Marissa Forbes that Kinetic Imaging professor Kate Sicchio captured for a performance.

Can someone read your emotions just by the way you look at your phone? Kate Sicchio, assistant professor of dance and Kinetic Imaging, thinks so. On December 12, she appeared on a recording of Freakonomics Radio Live, where journalist Stephen Dubner asked her how, exactly, she could derive emotions from the flick of a finger.

DUBNER: So you observe their movements, and because you’re a dance professor you can tell how they’re feeling?

SICCHIO: Yeah.

DUBNER: Oh, okay. Bingo.

SICCHIO: So in choreography, we have different tools of analysis. And in particular there’s this thing called the Laban Effort Graph. And what it does is, it allows you to look at movement in three different categories. One is time: is the movement sudden or sustained? One is space: is the movement direct or indirect? And another is force: is it strong or light? And when you combine these three things you start to get gestures — so a strong, sudden, direct movement is a punch. Right? […] So one of the things we do a lot on our phone is, we do things like mindless surfing. Well, that gesture is what we call a flick. So it’s indirect and light and sudden, right? And that means that yeah, you’re not really being conscientious, you’re not paying that much attention, you might be bored.

…

DUBNER: Are there practical applications of this observation?

SICCHIO: Yeah, I think that you could make things more direct and more sustained so people would think about it more. Maybe we want news apps to be more like that, so people are actually careful about what they’re reading and thinking about what they’re digesting in terms of the content.

Head to the Freakonomics site to hear the full conversation or read the transcript.

The post Kate Sicchio guests on Freakonomics Radio Live appeared first on VCUarts.

“The idea of making a drawing and not having to have it be checked by a merchandiser or edited— just putting it out on the internet—was really incredibly profound and exciting.”

– Richard Haines (BFA ’73), speaking to VCUarts fashion students in May.

Haines, a graduate of the Communication Arts and Design program, designed for Calvin Klein, Perry Ellis and Bill Blass before achieving renewed success sharing his fashion illustrations on his blog and Instagram, @richard_haines.

The post Liberation in illustration appeared first on VCUarts.

Jayanta Jenkins (BFA ’94) always wanted to be a creative problem solver, to manage the nuts and bolts of a commercial art space. Since earning his degree in fashion design at VCUarts, Jenkins has undertaken an industry-defying journey. His résumé is a tour de force, a who’s-who of the most eminent consumer brands of the 21st century: Apple, Beats by Dre, Nike, Gatorade and Powerade. Then, in 2016, he landed the highest creative role at Twitter.

When he became the social media company’s first-ever Global Group Creative Director, he told AdAge, “It’s an extremely exciting opportunity to go from a successful advertising career into a new type of leadership role. … For me, this was exclusively about challenging myself and looking to do something that completely disrupted my approach.”

Jenkins’ steady rise to Twitter all began at VCUarts. That’s where he took an advertising class with Jerry Torchia, who was also a creative director at the Martin Agency. Torchia was instrumental in setting the young fashion student on his career path. In 1996, just two years after graduating, Jenkins took his first job at the Martin Agency, where he worked for several years as an art director before taking a job with famed Portland ad agency Wieden+Kennedy.

Working at W+K—what Jenkins calls the “mecca of advertising,” with clients including Nike, Samsung, Coca-Cola and Airbnb—opened up his ideas of what was possible. After more than a decade working exclusively with agencies—including a seven-year stint with TBWA\Chiat\Day—Jenkins was eager to expand his oeuvre. Building off of his award-winning portfolio, he rose to Apple as the Global Creative Director of Advertising for the Beats by Dre brand, and finally joined Twitter.

Jenkins worked closely with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to shape the platform’s brand presence and persona. Last year, Twitter won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the biggest ad festival in the world, for an out-of-home campaign Jenkins directed for the 2016 election season.

Through it all, Jenkins says that it was VCUarts that helped him resist looking at himself as an “other,” and instead as someone who could contribute to any creative sector and project.

“Being from the South and being an African-American, what I took away from my time in Richmond was a great sense of self,” Jenkins said in an interview with Richmond Magazine. “Richmond was a great place to create a strong identity, and that became my anchor to look at the world in an interesting way.”

The post Rising to the top appeared first on VCUarts.

The performing arts have been a staple at the School of the Arts since its inception. According to H.H. Hibbs, the first director of Richmond Professional Institute, the earliest recorded music teacher was Helen Fill Rhodes, who joined in 1930. Rhodes was a professor of voice, and was known as “a sort of welcoming committee” by RPI students. At the beginning of each semester, she would greet students by the front door and inquire with each one about music lessons.

Faculty member L. Wayne Batty’s passion for opera coalesced in the founding of the school’s opera program in 1950. RPI’s first opera was staged in 1952, launching Virginia’s longest running tradition of annual full-scale productions. The city soon followed suit, becoming such a hub for operatic performance that the Metropolitan Opera would regularly tour south to Richmond. A colleague of Batty’s once remarked that “Wayne pretty much brought opera to Richmond on a regular basis.”

In more recent years, faculty members have made great strides in pioneering other new programs and avenues of study, such as the renowned Jazz Studies program, which was founded by Doug Richards in 1980.

In the early years of RPI’s School of Art, many faculty members took up grassroots campaigns to enroll students in their programs. In the theatre program, that meant Raymond Hodges, the first chair of theatre, was the sole faculty member in a program with only one student. The Department of Theatre was ostensibly founded in 1940 when the Anton Chekhov comedy A Marriage Proposal, directed by Hodges, was one of the first stage productions held at RPI.

For many years, theatre staged its productions at the Shafer Street Playhouse, a converted gymnasium. Hodges was outspoken in his belief that the theatre department needed an appropriate venue in order to compete with similar schools across the nation. In 1985, a dedicated theater inside the newly built W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts was named in his honor.

It was around that time that the Department of Dance + Choreography also came into being. Before the program began offering BFA degrees in 1981, dance was housed under the physical education department at VCU. Faculty member Frances Wessells was instrumental in moving dance to the arts school, and the growth of the department over the 1980s was bolstered by Dean Murry DePillars’ support.

Today, the departments of music, theatre and dance comprise a vibrant community of performers, educators and scholars who are shaping the future of the performing arts. The theatre department stages four full-scale productions every year, while music hosts more than 250 concerts and recitals. Next year, music and theatre will stage their first collaborative production: a retrospective of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s work. Meanwhile, the pre-professional nature of the dance program provides students with numerous opportunities for individual artistic growth in a diverse setting that cultivates innovation and collaboration.

The post VCUarts on stage appeared first on VCUarts.

Whether you graduated last week, last year, or it’s been too many years to count, VCUarts is here to support of your success—for life.

Take these career-building and learning opportunities offered by VCU and VCUarts:

• HireVCURams features a job board, document manager and career-related programs, as well as online research and preparation tools. Within your first year after graduation, you can also schedule career advising appointments.
• The VCU National Scholarship Office provides information sessions and essay-writing workshops for alumni applying for scholarships and fellowships, such as the Fulbright program.
• VCU Alumni’s ELEVATE Tour is a 23-city international tour that showcases the diverse array of programs and engagement initiatives created for alumni. A Networking Night specifically for alumni in the arts and design industries will take place on Jan. 10, at Richmond’s Well Art Gallery.

You can also check out these opportunities in Richmond and beyond:

• The Visual Arts Center of Richmond offers a free one-year membership to all new VCUarts grads. Visit visarts.org/vcuarts to register. Members get discounted tuition on art classes (many taught by VCUarts alumni) and event tickets, as well as early class registration and access to studio work space.
• The Adobe Creative Residency is a year-long program that allows new artists and recent grads to spend a year focusing on building their dream career through a personal passion project. The application launches Jan. 7. Each resident is supported with a full salary, health benefits, mentorship, access to Adobe software, speaking opportunities, and other project-specific support to make their vision a reality. (Plus, you might cross paths with Carita Marrow (BFA ’07), Adobe’s Diversity + Inclusion Talent Program Manager, who works with the talent acquisition team to build diverse recruiting strategies.)

And remember: No matter where the future leads, you can always stay connected with VCUarts:

• Create a profile and find out what your fellow alumni are doing.
• Sign up to receive our e-newsletter and Studio, our alumni magazine.
• Follow @vcuarts on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and join our LinkedIn alumni group.
• Join regional alumni chapters in cities across the country.

Welcome to our talented group of artists, scholars and visionaries who are engaging with the arts around the world. Be proud of your accomplishments and keep up your lifelong connection to this vital, creative community.

The post You graduated! What’s next? appeared first on VCUarts.

In the entranceway of the Anderson stands a 50-pound table—a slab made from a blend of concrete and paper, erasers, pens and junk food. Scattered across its surface, you’ll see birthday candles, clementines, leaflets, paper plates and headphone wires embedded in small sculptures.  

This is Caroline Meyers’ vision of office life: a funny and eclectic hodgepodge of ideas. But Meyers reinterprets it as stage for dramatic change and collaboration, framed by the life of a titanic art historian.

A sculpture and art history major, Meyers is fascinated with the late scholar and prolific author Marilyn Stokstad. Stokstad published many survey textbooks and guides on medieval and Spanish art during her career. Anyone who has taken an art history class has likely read her work.

Stokstad’s reputation as a pioneer in her field spurred Meyers to investigate further. In the fall of 2017, Meyers applied for and received a VCU Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship Summer Fellowship, with the intent to conduct original research on the historian’s life. She also received a Dean’s International Study Grant to take a summer mosaic workshop in Ravenna, Italy, giving her further opportunity to explore Stokstad’s expertise in medieval mosaic art. The intersection of biographical research and artistic creation became central to her yearlong adventure.

“I’m really interested in art history in the expanded fields,” says Meyers, “and ways that you can practice art history beyond writing a paper. You can make history or examine history in real time or with objects, and then alternatively view more traditional research as part of a studio practice.”

With her fellowship, Meyers traveled to the University of Kansas, where Stokstad worked for 44 years. There, she reviewed the professor’s personal papers and interviewed colleagues.

She discovered a portrait of a woman who was both an accomplished historian and something of an academic activist. While Stokstad never considered herself a feminist, she lobbied for the university’s women throughout her career. Most famously, she and the February Sisters, a group of about 20 women, occupied an art history building in 1972 to protest gender inequality.

“She was really committed to fighting for concrete advances for women within the sphere of academia,” says Meyers.

Last fall, Meyers had yet another chance to continue her work after securing an Anderson Publishing Grant, which funded portions of her exhibition work at the gallery.

Now at VCUarts, her year of travel and research has coalesced into a tangible collection of objects. The mixed cement forms a foundation of office work, which in a university can become a battleground in a war of ideas. Etchings, headphones, torn paper, food and the shapes of blenders allude to the mechanisms and byproducts of planning and making. A framed mosaic lies on the table, miniature zines reproduce archival photos of Stokstad in her youth, and a large printout of an office memoir runs onto the floor, reflecting Meyers’ experience working in a library. Through her own words, the artist conflates her life with Stokstad’s.

“This is a way for all of this history to touch and be rooted in one place,” she says, “in a more intermixed and more public way than it would be in the actual archives.”

Meyers’ work is on display at the Anderson through January 18.

The post Chasing Stokstad appeared first on VCUarts.

Congratulations for your inclusion on the VCUarts Fall 2018 Dean’s List! This special recognition is given to students taking 12 or more credits, who earn a minimum GPA of 3.5 for the semester wth no grade below C.

The post Fall 2018 Dean’s List appeared first on VCUarts.

Making that final college decision can be confusing and difficult. To help you with the decision-making process, we asked a few students why they chose VCUarts.

Drewe Goldstein, sophomore, Theatre
Reasons: Opportunities and affordability
“There are incredible artistic opportunities throughout Richmond, plus a relatively low cost of living. VCUarts is everything an artist and student could ever want.”

Morgan Barnett, senior, 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.”

Ellen Shelly, junior, Interior Design
Reason: Location
“Richmond is a wonderful stepping stone city to adjust to college. The flexibility and diversity of the accessible city landscape is really appealing.”

Zoe Hall, junior, Communication Arts
Reason: Community
“At VCUarts, I feel the most at home. The community here is a perfect combination of laid back and determined to make good things.”

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 your next steps.

The post Why I Chose VCUarts appeared first on VCUarts.