As a young dancer fresh out of art school, Martha Curtis had followed Pauline Koner and her dance company to New York City, where she taught performance at Brooklyn College. But when Koner’s company foundered in 1982, Curtis had to look for other work.

That’s how, by the mid-1980s, Curtis landed on the opposite coast. She had taken a new teaching job at University of California Santa Cruz, just 90 minutes from San Francisco.

It was in California that she met filmmaker Bruce Berryhill, who took an interest in her performance work. Eager to show off her choreography, she dug out a VHS tape she made at Ohio State University and played it for him.

But Berryhill was disappointed. The way the video was shot, he couldn’t see a thing.

“In those times,” says Curtis, “with a locked down camera in the back of the house and theater lighting, it just looked like Pillsbury Doughboys bouncing around in the space. You really couldn’t see the dance.”

Curtis was initially afraid that Berryhill didn’t like her work. Instead, the filmmaker was determined to help her shoot her performances better. They began to collaborate, exploring the complementary elements of dance and filmmaking with superimposed imagery, intimate camerawork and cycloramic set designs. Their working partnership eventually led to marriage, and the two moved to Richmond in 1988.

Bruce Berryhill (left) and Martha Curtis (right), in a behind-the-scenes still from 1991’s Three Dances by Martha Curtis.

Their work continued at VCUarts, where the pair to established and taught a new course: the Video/Choreography Workshop. It became a staple of the Dance + Choreography curriculum when Curtis was the department chair from 1996 to 2006.

“Video/Choreography Workshop is not necessarily about learning how to film a dance and make it look good,” says Curtis. “Although that can be part of it, it’s really about what can happen when people collaborate and make something that is either for dance or for the camera.”

Since Curtis and Berryhill’s earliest works—such as Three Dances by Martha Curtis, which debuted on PBS in 1991—the interdisciplinary art of video dance has matured at VCUarts. Most recently, the 2018 Dance on Camera film screening was the first event of the 2018–19 season, featuring short films of dances paired with landscapes; a “docu-dance” on racial profiling; stop-motion animation; and a choreography written in computer code.

After Curtis retired in 2017, Kate Sicchio, a hybrid professor in the departments of dance and Kinetic Imaging, has taken on the mantle of video dance innovator. In addition to curating the Dance on Camera festival, Sicchio has continued to explore the intersection of choreography and new technology like wearables and live coding. Using a coding environment called tidal cycles, Sicchio is able to interpret computer-generated patterns as movement on a stage.

More than 30 years later, the concept of bringing technology and dance together continues to yield new and exciting answers.

“The marriage is a happy one,” says Curtis, “and it’s also a really challenging one.”

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.

Lead image: “Soft Cell,” by Kate Sicchio.

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Dear VCUarts students,

Welcome back for the start of the spring semester. VCUarts continues to excel because of the collaborative and innovative work you pursue every day—the VCUarts story is, in fact, your story. You make VCUarts a dynamic and engaging place. Your commitment to your education and to your practice helps move our school forward and is crucial to the culture of research and innovation that we are building within the School of the Arts, at VCU, in our community, and abroad.

As a community, we look forward to helping you achieve your goals, supporting your work, and celebrating your successes. This semester, I’m very pleased to announce the winners of the Undergraduate Research and Innovation Grants and the James R. Gregory Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship—please join me in congratulating your peers. I am also looking forward to this March, when five Richmond students (Rama Duwaji, Addie Johnson, Emily Kuchenbecker, Ivy Li, and Fiona Penn) will travel to VCUarts Qatar to host workshops at the biennial Tasmeem Doha conference. Here in Richmond, we have the undergraduate juried exhibition, Home Sweet Home, to look forward to in March, as well as the MFA Thesis Exhibitions (Round 1 and Round 2) in April. May will be just as exciting, beginning with the 50th anniversary of the fashion show. We’ll also welcome American artist, sculptor, and MacArthur Fellow Elizabeth Turk as our May commencement speaker. You can keep up-to-date on everything happening at VCUarts on our events calendar.

I will continue to host lunches with the dean this year, and I hope you’ll sign up to join me in these informal conversations. They give me an opportunity to learn more about your experiences at VCUarts and, I hope, are a chance for you to get to know me better.

Warm wishes for the coming semester and let’s work to make 2019 the best year yet for VCUarts.

Warmly,
Shawn Brixey

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Morgan Yacoe (BFA ’11), a sculpture alumna, recently taught a workshop to medical residents at VCU to aid in the practice of breast reconstructive surgery. As a teaching tool, Yacoe created a cast from the torso of a woman who had undergone a mastectomy.

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

Yacoe’s longtime collaborator, Jennifer Rhodes, M.D., associate professor in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in the VCU School of Medicine, who taught the workshop alongside Yacoe, stresses the importance of teaching this way rather than reading about breast aesthetics in a book.

By designing the models so people can step inside them, Rhodes said, she and Yacoe showed workshop participants, especially the men, what women see when they look down at their bodies.

“That’s one of the most important perspectives to get right, and it was just totally missing from their current education,” Rhodes said. “As a patient advocate and an educator, I felt it was a really important thing to try to get through to them.”

Read about Yacoe’s other medical sculptures at VCU News.

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Taylor Barnett (MM ’04), assistant professor of music and jazz trumpeter, was interviewed by WCVE PBS on his new album Loose Ends. While every track was recorded with live musicians in one room, the album spans two sessions: one from 2005, and another from 2008.

They just have never gotten released for various reasons, so I figured it was time to clear the queue and get these out into the world. But now that such an amount of time has passed, it’s interesting to listen back and hear where I was creatively, and also where all these Richmond music artists were. So many of them are still here, but yet have gone on to bigger and better things, in some ways.

Listen to the interview with Peter Solomon.

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When Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s Monument Avenue Commission submitted its recommendations for the future of the city’s Confederate statues, it noted a program initiated by the VCUarts mObstudiO and Storefront for Community Design. The community partners received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to imagine possibilities for the 5.4-mile street, and are currently hosting an international competition, Monument Avenue: General Demotion/General Devotion, to generate ideas from architects, planners, designers, independent artists and individuals.

Participants are challenged to consider Monument Avenue’s role as a historic boulevard; its viability as an interurban connector; its presence as Richmond evolves into a diverse and progressive city; and its significance in the current debate about public Confederate monuments. Judges will select 20 finalists, whose proposals will be printed and displayed at the Valentine in an exhibition opening Feb. 14, 2019. A concurrent youth competition will invite students in the Richmond region to create proposals for the street’s next monument, with winning entries displayed in a special exhibition at the Branch Museum of Architecture and Design.

“Design has a unique role to play in the consideration and reconsideration of our urban landscape,” says Camden Whitehead, associate professor of interior design and mOb faculty member. “Design and architecture have the capacity to introduce nuance and subtlety into a complex public dialogue that often reverts to polarization. One of the responsibilities of an urban university like VCU is to raise these difficult issues and lead a constructive, inclusive discussion about how our environment and our art express our values and beliefs.”

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Heidi Hooper (BFA ’81) was working and teaching as an award-winning metalsmith in Boston when a cancerous tumor in her right arm destroyed her ability to work. Hammering metal was out of the question, and even sculpting clay was too painful. But when a laundry accident produced a large volume of dryer lint, Hooper decided to try working with an unorthodox material. Today, her dryer link artwork appears in museums around the work, and sells to galleries for thousands of dollars. VCU Alumni reached out to her to learn more about her artistic process and what inspires her.

Hooper credits her time at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts with giving her the skills she needed to make her new medium work. “The sculpture department goes out of their way to try and have you learn every possible technique, even if you’re doing it for only one day, just to get the feel of different stuff,” she says. “That’s what I pulled on.”

Gradually, Hooper shaped the process she uses today. She draws a sketch of what she wants to create, takes a photo of the sketch for reference and covers it with archival tacky. She then layers colored lint on top of the glue until it’s a half-inch to an inch thick. She photographs the piece at this point so she can make prints. After that, she covers it permanently with glass for protection.

Read more about Heidi Hooper at the VCU Alumni news page.

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Guadalupe Maravilla, professor of sculpture, will be a featured guest at the annual College Art Association of America Conference in New York City. Maravilla will be interviewed by author Sheila Maldonado for the 2019 CAA Distinguished Artist Interviews, a free and public event on Friday, February 15, 2019.

Maravilla has performed and presented his work across the United States and Latin America, at the Whitney Museum, the New Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, the Caribbean Museum in Colombia and MARTE Museum in El Salvador. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant, a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship and a Dedalus Foundation Fellowship.

Visit the CAA website for more information on the event, Professor Maravilla and Sheila Maldonado.

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Tech company HP has tapped fashion design alumnus Jayanta Jenkins (BFA ’94) to fill a new corporate role as Executive Creative Director. With HP’s chief communications officer, Jenkins will work across the company’s various divisions and product lines to further develop a unified international brand.

Formerly the first-ever Global Group Creative Director at Twitter, Jenkins’ move to HP is the latest update to an already impressive résumé. With the Martin Agency, Wieden+Kennedy, and TBWA\Chiat\Day, he developed advertising campaigns for Nike, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Gatorade and Airbnb. His award-winning work helped him move to Apple as the Global Creative Director of Advertising for the Beats by Dre brand.

HP is the largest seller of personal computers in the world, and Jenkins says that he was drawn to their storytelling and sincere culture of inclusion. At HP, he says, diversity and inclusion are “built in.”

“There’s no box-checking,” he told AdWeek. “It’s an approach and behavior.”

“I think organizationally [in Silicon Valley], there are still a lot of challenges that are very well alive when it comes to embracing inclusion and diversity,” he noted. “But the good news is that it comes down to the output of the work and then being able to show up and demonstrate. I’ve been able to see some things, informed some discussion, raise bars and open doors in a wonderful way.”

Read more about Jenkins’ new role at AdWeek.

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For five years, the VCUarts Department of Music has held a jazz concert with an unlikely partner: the Greater Richmond Bar Foundation.

The annual concert is part of Jazz4Justice, a program that pairs university jazz programs with local legal entities for a joint benefit concert. This year’s event, to be held on Feb. 8, will feature the VCU Jazz Orchestra I and Jazz Orchestra II ensembles, past Jazz4Justice scholarship recipients, and the Vox Concordia choral ensemble. Attendees are also invited to bring their instruments for a jam session following the concert.

All told, the night will showcase the talents of more than 60 student performers and hundreds of community enthusiasts.

The first Jazz4Justice concert was held in 2002, when attorney Edward L. Weiner brought together the Fairfax Bar Association and Jim Carroll, the founder of the jazz studies program at George Mason University. Since then, the program has grown to include seven universities and legal partners in Virginia, and has raised more than $400,000.

“Jazz improvisation is about freedom, the ability and right to express yourself on equal footing with those around you while hearing and commenting on their viewpoints as well,” says Antonio Garcia, director of Jazz Studies at VCUarts. “Legal representation affords people the same: equal footing to put your voice forward among others and dialogue on any topic.”

A guest conductor is an annual highlight at the concert, with past guests including Anne Holton, then-Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia; Mark Herring, Virginia’s attorney general; Andrew Freiden, a meteorologist for NBC12; and Michael Herring, Richmond commonwealth’s attorney.

This year, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney will pick up the baton as guest conductor.

“I know that Mayor Stoney and the band and audience will have a blast,” Garcia says. “One year we also had a special collaboration between our jazz students and Justice John Charles Thomas, formerly of the Virginia Supreme Court, who is a most articulate poet. Their spontaneous performance of jazz poetry together was phenomenal.”

Still the concert isn’t just a celebration of collaboration. It’s a fundraiser for both jazz scholarships and pro bono legal counsel for people—particularly veterans—in the Richmond community. Last year the concert netted $19,325, with more than $11,500 going to the GRBF, and $7,730 supporting VCU jazz scholarships.

At a Jazz Orchestra concert later that year, Garcia presented partial scholarships to George Maddox, Jimmy Trussell, Bryan Connolly, DeSean Gault and Michael Bradley.

“Paying for my education has always been a burden for my family and me, and there have been times that my attendance at the university was questionable because of that,” says Gault, a drummer. “Receiving awards from the school like this really does help the situation tremendously, and I’m forever grateful for the department having faith in my abilities. I’m also starting to see the fruits of my hard work and dedication towards my craft. All the hours spent practicing, performing, writing, and enduring have not gone unnoticed by the department, and I greatly appreciate them for that.”

The 2019 Jazz4Justice concert will be held on Friday, Feb. 8, at 8 p.m., at the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts.

Photos: VCU Jazz Orchestra I. Jazz4Justice scholarship winners George Maddox, Jimmy Trussell, Bryan Connolly, DeSean Gault, and Michael Bradley celebrate the $,7730 check from the Greater Richmond Bar Foundation with VCUarts Director of Jazz Studies Antonio Garcia. Both by John DiJulio.

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The interior design students gather at 4 a.m. outside a darkened Pollak Building. October’s storm had knocked the power out overnight; the only sources of light are Pollak’s backup fluorescents and the headlights of a charter bus waiting on Harrison St.

The James River bus waits outside Pollak.

By 5 a.m., they’ve hit the road, en route to rural Pennsylvania. Their destination: Fallingwater, one of the most famous architectural sites in America. There, they would have the opportunity to explore the work of Frank Lloyd Wright first-hand.

About 30 students are packed into the bus. Seated up front is Camden Whitehead, associate professor of interior design, who turns back to tell his students about the semi-annual trip. “We took a break in the late ’90s, and early 2000s,” he says, “but this is my 18th year going to Fallingwater.”

At 8 a.m., they stop for breakfast (and a bathroom break) at McDonald’s.

Camden Whitehead addresses the group.

The bus arrives at Fallingwater at 11:45 a.m. After spending some time at the gift shop, café and gallery, the group splits up to take guided tours of the premises. For some students, this is their first encounter with a Frank Lloyd Wright building.

The group listens to a tour guide talk about Fallingwater.

Completed in 1939, Fallingwater remains one of Wright’s most iconic—and most expensive—masterpieces. The weekend getaway, designed for the prominent Kaufmann family, embraces the foliage and natural landscape, and sits over a 30-foot waterfall. Wright designed every element of the residence, down to the interior furnishings.

At 3 p.m., the group spreads out across the grounds and sketches the house from various angles.

A student sketches Fallingwater through the trees.

Laurie Marcott, a graduate student, brought a sketchbook and various pencils and pens. “I think I’m going to use graphite for the majority of my sketching today,” says Marcott, “and maybe a little bit of ink.”

Students gathered in different areas to capture Fallingwater in their sketchbooks.

Professor Sarah Reed, who teaches the history and theory of interior environments, says seeing Fallingwater in person was an emotional experience. “I’ve been talking about this building for so long, but this is the first time I’ve been here,” Reed says. “There’s so many details that I never would have had the opportunity to see.”

“If I could live here, that would be my dream,” she says with a laugh.

A student sketches from the balcony of Fallingwater.

Fallingwater is known for its low ceilings and intimate rooms, as well as the rush of water that can be heard throughout the grounds. Students remark on the aesthetic influences evident at the house, such as Japanese woodblock prints.

Whitehead renders Fallingwater in watercolors.

By 5 p.m., it’s time to go. It takes more than six hours to drive back to Richmond, but at 8:30 they stop for food at a Maryland mall. When they arrive at 11:30 p.m., the VCU campus is as dark as when they left.

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Ruthie Edwards (BFA ‘10) is an experience designer and animator who’s dedicated herself to developing more accessible digital interfaces and experiences for disabled users. In her spare time, she’s also an enthusiastic video game designer who’s led panels on accessibility at VCU and MAGfest, the Music And Gaming Festival. In May, she’ll graduate from the VCU Brandcenter with a master’s degree in Experience Design.

To learn more about her work, VCUarts reached out to her with a few questions.

What led you to VCU’s Brandcenter, and to the Experience Design track?

After graduating Kinetic Imaging in the midst of a recession, I was frustrated with the lack of upward mobility I was finding. I was hopping laterally from job to job, but I never felt like I had a career. I taught college classes, I designed marketing for a gift store, I did animation and illustration for a startup, and I did freelance motion graphics on the side, but none of these felt like I was advancing. The Brandcenter has given me so much optimism about my career. The Experience Design track—like Kinetic Imaging—is multidisciplinary, so I get to apply my entire skillset to projects. So, whether I’m designing user flows for service design, thinking about the customer experience in a museum, or designing multi-platform interfaces for apps, I see where each of the myriad creative skills I’ve accumulated can be applied.

When did you become more interested in accessibility within video game design?

I became interested in accessibility by accident, really. In 2017 I did a game jam (a 48-hour hackathon for games) and challenged myself to make a one-button game just for fun. When I put it online, one of the leading accessibility advocates got interested. He put it on a website full of other one-button games that is really important to people with limited mobility, because it gives them a range of games that they can play with just one finger, foot, elbow, etc.

Ruthie Edwards recently spoke on a panel about accessible game design at MAGFest in D.C.

Is there a recent game that you think shows how developers are positively approaching the challenge of accessible design?

I recently checked out Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End from the VCU library (yes, the library has a great games collection!) and was really impressed with how developer Naughty Dog balanced accessibility with difficulty. You can really fine-tune the options within the game to fit your playing style perfectly. Even as a non-disabled person, I found all these options helpful. Beyond basic necessities like subtitles and colorblind filters, they included features like auto-aim and the ability to turn button-mashing off, which makes it easier (and less annoying) for everyone to enjoy the lush environment and story.

How can other tech industries and fields learn from accessible game design?

On the web, there are already tons of accessibility standards that allow people with all kinds of disabilities to shop online, manage their banking, and anything else. It’s really sad that the games industry is lagging so far behind. This fall I met with the Association of Students with Disabilities and Chronic Conditions and I was surprised to see that despite how many accomodations VCU provides, there are still barriers like the awkward elevator placement at Shafer Court Dining Center.

Can you tell us more about this Pumputer piece on your website? Were you expecting that it’d get the attention that it did?

I built a computer inside of a pumpkin. It’s pretty straightforward. But I didn’t expect it to take off like that. One thing I did expect, though, were the people who asked me to play Doom on it (a first-person shooter from 1993). It’s a meme where people try to force the game onto incongruous hardware like thermostats, smartwatches or car entertainment systems. So I made another video of me playing Doom on the pumpkin, and that got a lot of retweets too.

How did your time at VCUarts in the Kinetic Imaging program shape your work and your practice today?

I came into Kinetic Imaging with animation and video editing skills already, but Kinetic Imaging taught me breadth. It introduced me to sound design and experimental media. It challenged me to learn art over craft. At first, it was frustrating, because I was expecting to learn more technical skills. But ultimately that sense of critical thinking has benefited me in all areas of my life, and I’ve taught myself the technical chops on the side.

Whether they’re funny, academic, time with friends or memories from the studio, are there any particularly memorable moments from your time in Kinetic Imaging?

I met my best friend Tyler Rhodes in Kinetic Imaging. Ten years later, we still hang out and make art all the time. I was a lab monitor in Kinetic Imaging so I saw a lot of shenanigans going on.

Edwards will help coordinate Global Game Jam for the fifth time this year in Richmond on January 25–27.  This year’s event will feature special guest, Halfcoordinated, a competitive video game speedrunner who plays with only one hand. You can keep up with Edwards’ work at ruthieswebsite.com.

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Jurors are reviewing project submissions for a competition that asks participants to reimagine Monument Avenue, and 20 finalists will have their work displayed at The Valentine museum throughout 2019.

“Monument Avenue: General Demotion/General Devotion”—a competition hosted by VCU’s mOb (Middle of Broad) Studio and the Storefront for Community Design—was made possible by a $30,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant.

The exhibition of the finalists’ work will open on Feb. 14. There is also a parallel youth competition, the results of which will be displayed in March at the Branch Museum of Architecture and Design on Monument Avenue. Camden Whitehead, an associate professor and mOb faculty member, hopes the competition and exhibition will reignite conversations that followed the mayor’s Monument Avenue Commission study.

After the competition—which aimed to attract a broad array of project teams encompassing artists, designers, urban planners, architects and others—Whitehead says he hopes that MoB will continue to find ways to facilitate conversations around race and the city’s history, legacy and future.

“Design just has [the] ability … to envision things that don’t exist,” he says, “and in some ways take risks with those things, to generate conversation that’s about design and about outcomes rather than about positions.”

Read more in Richmond magazine.

Image: Credit via Richmond magazine.

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Harold E. North (MFA ’67), who served as chair of the sculpture department for 30 years, has passed away at the age of 89. North became chair in 1968, overseeing the hire of beloved faculty members José Puig, Myron Helfgott, Chuck Henry, Lester Van Winkle and Joe Seipel, as well as department secretary Connie Brown. His leadership helped the newly titled VCU School of the Arts achieve national recognition.

“There was a sense that the students were the most important thing and that we were there to help students,” Seipel said. “The university and the department were there to be of assistance to the faculty, but the faculty were there for the students. That was the prevailing way of thinking across the entire department. I think that that kind of graciousness and openness to students was part and parcel of what made us a little bit unique and much of that had to do with Harold’s leadership.”

North equally loved his department and faculty, Seipel said.

“I think we were a rather unusual department in that there was such camaraderie,” Seipel said. “He was a real loyal, positive chair and in every moment I dealt with him was a most fair and honorable man both with students and with faculty. … There will be a lot of our alumni who will miss him dearly, as we will in the faculty.”

Read more about North’s life and influence at VCU News.

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Hajr Avant, Cinema student, talks about her VCUarts experience as a filmmaker.

myVCUarts is a series that captures the experiences of student at VCU School of the Arts in their own words. These short videos take a candid look at the technical and conceptual work that VCUarts students undertake every semester. Learn how our students devise innovative ways of making, discover new ideas in research, work through creative challenges and explain why they love doing what they do.

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Interior Design student, Camryn Carels, talks about her experience in the Art Foundation (AFO) program. AFO is a first-year program for all visual art students that provides an intellectually rigorous, studio-based experience in the fundamental issues of art and design.

myVCUarts is a series that captures the experiences of student at VCU School of the Arts in their own words. These short videos take a candid look at the technical and conceptual work that VCUarts students undertake every semester. Learn how our students devise innovative ways of making, discover new ideas in research, work through creative challenges and explain why they love doing what they do.

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Angelique Scott, Art Education and Craft/Material Studies student, talks about the importance of acknowledging cultural differences in art education.

myVCUarts is a series that captures the experiences of student at VCU School of the Arts in their own words. These short videos take a candid look at the technical and conceptual work that VCUarts students undertake every semester. Learn how our students devise innovative ways of making, discover new ideas in research, work through creative challenges and explain why they love doing what they do.

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Kim Peters, Graphic Design student, talks about her VCUarts experience in collaborating with Biology students.

myVCUarts is a series that captures the experiences of student at VCU School of the Arts in their own words. These short videos take a candid look at the technical and conceptual work that VCUarts students undertake every semester. Learn how our students devise innovative ways of making, discover new ideas in research, work through creative challenges and explain why they love doing what they do.

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Five students from the Department of Fashion Design + Merchandising have been awarded 2019 YMA/FSF scholarships. For the first time, a VCUarts student—Levi Haskins—earned a perfect score in the case study competition to win a $7,500 scholarship.

The winning students are pictured above, standing between Patricia Brown, department chair, and Deidra Arrington, assistant professor. From left to right, the students are: Kate O’Neal, a junior merchandising major; Celine Abello, a senior design major; Levi Haskins, a sophomore design major; and Kathy Schraf, a senior design major. Not pictured is Jane Terrell, a junior merchandising major, who is studying abroad.

The Young Men’s Association Fashion Scholarship Fund supports professionals at the outset of their careers. VCUarts is one of 64 member schools partnering with YMA, alongside Harvard, Cornell, FIT, Parsons, UCLA and other institutions with prestigious fashion programs. 2019 marks the fourth year of the fashion department’s eligibility in the scholarship competition.

Learn more about VCUarts Fashion Design + Merchandising.

Learn more about YMA/FSF.

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Think on This is a new series from Virginia Commonwealth University that offers a peek into the minds of the people who are inspiring our students every day: our faculty.

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BOMB magazine reached out to sculpture alum Savannah Knoop (MFA ’16) to learn about the inspiration behind their latest show, Screens: A Project About “Community.”

Interdisciplinary artist Clifford Owens visited Knoop’s Brooklyn apartment and studio space, where they discussed East Village bathhouses, privacy screens, using newsprint in art making, and Knoop’s alter ego JT LeRoy.

Newsprint is such a great material, and I do feel like it could be gone in the next thirty years. I pulled out a mix of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and all local papers in different languages I could get my hands on. Each paper has its own color palette. Weaving it is like a gesture toward manipulating an anxiety toward current events. You take the news and you slice it into sections; you roll it up into little straws, and you attach it to itself. You take the information, the slew of data, and you make it material in order to manipulate it into a new form. The process is a bit like sewing in that you can listen or talk as you do it. It’s also very physical. I have to stand while I’m doing it. I have to be able to flip it!

Knoop’s solo exhibition Screens is open through Feb. 3 at Essex Flowers, New York.

Read the full interview in BOMB magazine.

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