As fashion trends come and go, many articles of clothing are left by the wayside. But that doesn’t mean that yesterday’s trendy garment can’t transform into today’s new look. Craft alumna Misti Nolen (BFA ’16), through her business Recycled Yarn, breaks down discarded clothing into its raw components. A red sweater turns back into a crimson skein of yarn, ready to create something new.

WCVE interviewed Nolan for the Virginia Currents story “Sustainable Entrepreneurship: Women Start Eco-friendly Businesses in Richmond.”

After graduating from VCU’s art school, Nolen couldn’t find sustainably sourced yarn around the City.

Nolen: “I did a little experiment and found a men’s extra large chunky L.L. Bean wool sweater, took it home, unraveled it, and ended up with like one or 2000 yards of yarn.”

Through trial and error, Nolen learned what to look for in both handmade and industrially made garments, and how to unravel them efficiently.

Nolen: “I think of it as kind of like rescuing a piece from the vicious cycle of fast fashion.”

Nolen recycles garments made of plant and animal fibers, including flax, linen, cotton, and wool. She also works with rare fibers like silk, camel hair, angora and alpaca.

Nolen: “It’s a responsible practice for fiber artists. It’s respectful to the animals and plants these fibers came from and it’s a good use of earth’s resources.”

Read more at the Idea Stations website.

Lead image: Nolen with a skein of recycled wool. Photo by Yasmine Jumaa for WCVE.

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Photos of musical duo April + VISTA look as if they’re set in a dream. Their faces are obscured or backlit, with eyes drawn beyond the frame of the picture, arrested in private contemplation. It perfectly matches their music, which is a lush and mysterious collage of skittering hip-hop beats and swooning vocals.

Daniel Diasgranados, a senior in the Photography + Film program, took these photos over the course of a year for the duo’s album You Are Here. It’s the work that he’s most proud of, a thoughtful distillation of another artist’s world. It’s a reflection of both the duo’s personality and his own, in how it casts young artists of color in a new light.

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Clik here to view.Matt Vista, by Daniel Diasgranados.

“I pride myself in both expanding the narrative language of how people of color can look and see themselves,” says Diasgranados, “and truly desire to bridge gaps between those who don’t have access to high-production studios.”

Diasgranados got his start making mixtape covers for local rappers in the DMV (the metro area that encompasses Washington, D.C., Maryland and northern Virginia). After a year of studying communications at the University of Tampa, he transferred to VCUarts to devote himself to his passion for photography and narrative work. Over the years, he’s worked with the label NON Worldwide—which is run by musician, artist and VCUarts graphic design graduate student Chino Amobi—handled visual production for electronic artist P Morris and rap group Theyhatechange, and worked on a scrapped project for Drake’s OVO Records.

“Many of the commissioned productions I work on aim to expand this narrative [language] by deep research of photo history, music history and art history,” says Diasgranados. “I wouldn’t have truly been able to realize what is possible without meeting students and alumni like Travis Brothers and Chino Amobi. Both of them inspire me every day, and VCUarts has given me that chance to understand myself within a larger cultural and photo narrative.”

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Clik here to view.April George, by Daniel Diasgranados.

In addition to his work with recording artists, Diasgranados has also secured commissioned projects from Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal. But as a photographer of color, he finds it most important to explore and expand the stories that he can share through his work.

“I don’t have immediate plans after I graduate, but I’m very excited. I’m doing the things I told myself I would do four years ago,” he says. “I feel more privileged than anything, being a first-generation college graduate and the first in the family to pursue anything creative in any capacity. It holds a ton of cultural weight on my end.”

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Hundreds joined VCUarts Qatar’s fashion students in April for the 2019 edition of the “EDGE” Fashion Show, held on the Ooredoo Stage at the Mall of Qatar. This was the 20th “EDGE” event in Doha, a show organized by VCUarts Qatar, the Qatar Foundation and the Mall of Qatar.

The annual show featured collections from a variety of students, including sophomore, junior and senior fashion designers. Maryam Al Darwish (BFA ’15), VCUarts Qatar fashion alumna, was the evening’s guest designer.

The fashion event was sponsored by the Mall of Qatar, Salam International, HEYA, and partnered with Tajmeel Qatar International Beauty Academy, Trinity Talent Qatar, and MARTIANS.

A number of awards were given on the night. The Salam International Award went to Ayesha Rafiq for her collection titled, “Apocalypse Now.”

The award for Most Outstanding Sophomore (Academic) went to Safa Al Hadithi; the award for Most Outstanding Sophomore Collection went to E J Pagdangana; the award for Most Outstanding Junior (Academic) went to Roudha A Al Mazroei; the award for Most Outstanding Junior Collection went to Jude Zahran; the award for Most Outstanding Senior (Academic) went to Heidi Rashad; and the award for Most Outstanding Senior Collection went to Heidi Rashad

Read more about the “EDGE” Fashion Show at The Peninsula.

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The annual VCUarts fashion show, entitled “SHIMMER,” marks 50 years of the program’s spectacular student showcase. Fashion design and merchandising majors will take the Train Shed at Main Street Station again on Wednesday, May 8. In addition to the many students and excited onlookers in attendance, special guest Richard Haines (BFA ’73),  alumnus and fashion illustrator, will be flying in from New York to see the runway show.

Sydney Lake writes for RVAmag:

Of the approximately 125 designs to be shown, most junior and senior design students will be represented, along with the expertise of merchandising students. The show will feature women’s sportswear, dresses, menswear, denim, embellishment/luxury, and surface design, all created by hand or with the assistance of industry-standard machinery, Casey Prentice of The Hodges Partnership said.

The VCUarts Fashion Show is juried, and garments are selected by a group of local fashion businesses and influencers, Prentice said. A mix of fashion industry people and retailers including Ledbury, Alton Lane, Frances Kahn, and Pam Reynolds are just a few members of the 12-person jury who will be judging the show. Working with their assessments, they will come down to final number of pieces for the show.

Not only is the show juried by local fashion icons, but it is also locally sponsored.

“The community is really supportive of our show,” said Patricia Brown, chair of fashion. “We’re so thankful. We have a lot of gratitude for their support.”

Read the full preview at RVAmag.

Get your tickets for “SHIMMER” now.

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Ephraim “Ed” Steinberg (BFA ’86) had his most recent solo exhibition in 2016 at the age of 96. At the Weinstein Jewish Community Center, his paintings, prints and photos were celebrated by the local press, and he even sold 12 original works. It was affirmation that the art community he’d once beckoned to his little laundromat still appreciated how important he was to Richmond.

“The money is nice, but it is the acceptance,” said Steinberg. “The fact that someone wanted your painting. Something you created.”

Steinberg came to Richmond for good in the 1950s, after getting his chemistry degree from the University of Richmond, serving during WWII, and making a living in Baltimore as a paint chemist. In Richmond, he worked part-time as a chemist while running Meadow Automatic Laundry on the corner of N Harrison and Grace St. But Steinberg’s business wasn’t listed as a laundromat; it appeared in the papers far more frequently as a venue for up-and-coming artists.

The laundromat was located at the heart of Richmond’s counterculture. The RPI art students who frequented Grace St’s theater and eclectic restaurants would also do their laundry at Meadow Automatic. So by the summer of 1955, Steinberg decided to give students an affordable space to hang their artwork.

He repainted the interior, installed new moulding to hang canvases, and even arranged sales and publicity for each show.

“He told RPI art students they could display their paintings on the walls of his laundry,” reported the Richmond Times-Dispatch in March 1957. “The exhibitions have sold—with no commission to Steinberg—more than $1,000 worth of paintings.” That’s more than $9,000 today.

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Clik here to view.Prints by Ed Steinberg: “Roof Tops, Israel” (top), “Woman on Bike, China” (bottom).

Students at RPI were immensely grateful, even writing in to the Times-Dispatch to thank the business owner publicly. Artists James Drinard, Richard Carlyon and James Bumgardner wrote in July 1956, “In a city which boasts of its cultural achievements, this laundromat is practically the only public outlet for young painting talents.”

Maintaining such a close proximity to working artists influenced him to pursue a career in the arts himself. He enrolled in night classes at the RPI School of Art in the late 1950s—but he wouldn’t earn his degree for many years. Dubbed a “modest impresario” by the Times-Dispatch, he soon became an important and much-talked-about figure at the center of Richmond’s growing art scene.

Over the decades, Steinberg organized art shows at venues around Richmond, exhibited his own work at the Valentine and VMFA, opened the popular women’s boutique A Sunny Day in the Fan, and traveled around the world taking photographs. All the while, he continued his studies at RPI and VCU intermittently, at a pace that followed his personal curiosity and interests rather than a set curriculum.

By 1986, he’d finally taken enough classes to graduate.

“One day I looked and I saw I had enough credits,” Steinberg told RVAmag in 2016, “I said ‘okay, I’ll take my degree’.”

Steinberg eventually joined the VCUarts faculty, teaching screen printing for about 10 years.

When CBS 6 interviewed the 96-year-old artist and collector in 2016, they discovered that his home was packed to the brim with paintings, prints and photographs created and collected over decades of devotion to the arts. He hardly had any wall space left to display it all.

“I guess It’s another way of keeping me off the streets,” he said.

Lead image: Ed Steinberg, taken by WTVR, CBS 6.

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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Guadalupe Maravilla, assistant professor of sculpture, and Nontsikelelo Mutiti, assistant professor of graphic design, are two of 11 cohorts selected by the Open Society Foundations to receive funding from the Soros Arts Fellowship. The fellowship provides individual $80,000 stipends to artists, curators, researchers and filmmakers who are “working at the intersection of migration, public space and the arts.”

The monetary support provided by the fellowship will be used to realize several 18-month projects. Maravilla plans to work with young Central American and Latinx immigrants in New York, organizing workshops, mental health resources and performance classes to heal the trauma they’ve sustained through migration. Mutiti will utilize field work, archiving, design and publishing to explore how African hair braiding practices can be a subject or metaphor for interwoven streams of content.

“We are proud to support visionary artists and cultural producers exploring the aesthetic and political realities of migration from personal, familial, historical, and conceptual perspectives,” said Rashida Bumbray, senior program manager of Open Society’s Arts Exchange. “Across the globe, the political environment is increasingly characterized by polarizing and reductive notions about people who migrate. That’s why this work to broaden understandings of migration, share self-determined narratives, stimulate critical discourse, and create momentum for change is so urgent.”

Working in diverse artistic forms and global contexts, the fellows will pursue projects of their own design, including a theatrical version of the film ‘The Infiltrators’ to raise awareness around for-profit detention centers, the politics of deportation, and strategies of resistance developed by undocumented immigrants in the United States; a series of healing workshops, mental health resources, and performance classes for young immigrant communities dealing with traumas of migration; and an installation along Lebanon’s northern border with Syria that will broach essential questions of love, refuge, and survival.

Read more about the Soros Arts Fellowship.

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Rebecca Gates’ band The Spinanes broke into the mainstream music scene in the early ’90s, when a tidal wave of punk bands from the West Coast flooded the airwaves. Alongside Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Green Day was The Spinanes, who signed with indie label Sub Pop and released three records. She’s since pursued a solo career, but when Stephen Vitiello became chair of Kinetic Imaging, he needed someone talented and reputable to teach his classes. His colleague Gates seemed like the perfect match.

VCU News spoke with Gates to learn more about her punk rock career, and how her approach to teaching helps students see their work in a new way.

Since the last Spinanes album dropped, Gates has enjoyed a solo career as well as gigs as a curator, consultant and activist. At VCU, she is teaching Sound Communications I and II and co-teaching a graduate class with associate professor Pamela Turner.

“One of the things that I offer—and I’m not the only one—is that I do have really multifaceted things that I’ve done in my life,” Gates said. “And so being able to really try and think about what I can bring from that to [the students] … I’m conscious that I want them to hit marks that they need to hit, but I also have an elasticity to my practice. And I think that just reminding them that there can be an elasticity, even to a project.”

Read more about Rebecca Gates in VCU News,

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In the Painting + Printmaking program, three young artists are drawing from their own personal narratives to investigate how heritage, culture and environment guide their lives. Claudia Vincent, LaRissa Rogers and Zifan Wang each create striking images on canvas and paper that in turn confront the power dynamics of gender, the biracial experience, and the social repercussions of crime.

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Claudia Vincent has focused her senior work on what she describes as the “intergenerational traumas that women share with each other.” Her oil paintings map landscapes both geographic and biological that can be sources or recipients of trauma passed down over time.

“My area of focus with this theme has found itself in Italy,” Vincent says, “because that is the terrain of my mother’s lineage and a place of sensitive history in her family. I have paired this atmosphere with landscapes of imagined representations of my own innards, using my inner abdomen as its own location as a storage for trauma that has been carried through my body, as well as through the women before me. Piling layers of oil paint on top of each other to create finalized renderings of anatomically incorrect organs reinforce this theme of accumulated layers of abject experiences of womanhood.”

During art school, Vincent has been inspired by feminist literature and the art of Ana Mendieta, Doreen Garner, Marcel Dumas, Käthe Kollwitz and Jenny Saville. Her artistic approach has transformed over the years; she found that bridging new ideas with her personal experience allowed her to translate abstract concepts into brushstrokes.

“I have found a way to visually convey these ideas best through growing on concepts and expanding on them,” she says. “Sometimes I repeat certain visual effects to make through lines in my practice that mimic the through lines I’m discussing conceptually.”

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LaRissa Rogers deconstructs her identity as a biracial woman by creating personas that embody the tension between how she sees herself and what society expects of her.

“Being African-American and Korean has created a two-ness,” Rogers says, “that is always conflicting and pulling at one another for cultural recognition and unified understanding. What does it mean to be black, brown, Asian and a woman in today’s society? My work intends to challenge these questions in relation to home, heritage, exile, culture, gender, race and color politics through the use of media, installation work, objects and costume.”

In her prints, she engages identity politics through photography that recalls the familiar visual language of advertising and incorporates audio captured from conversations at home. During her studies at VCUarts, creating art became a process of self-discovery as she worked to confront biases and stereotypes and reveal the nuance of black and biracial experiences.

“I didn’t grow up learning about either of my cultures,” Rogers says. “College and art school became the place for me to understand and explore who I was and that began taking form in sculpture and performance classes freshman year. Over the years, as I learned more about my culture and came to understand and be comfortable with who I am as an Afro-Asian artist, I felt more comfortable exploring personal themes that have affected me.”

Rogers is also majoring in fashion merchandising with an interest in international fashion buying, and has dual minors in art history and business. These disciplines, she says, along with the work of artists like Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker, inspired her to use photography, objects and performance in her practice.

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Zifan Wang investigates the service industry crimes occurring in China, and asks who or which institution is responsible for these tragic events. When someone becomes a victim of violence after using a ride-sharing service, who is at fault? How does the public respond to these crimes, and how can they take action to prevent them? Wang believes that artists have the power to lead these crucial conversations.

“As an art student who receives energy from, and is rooted deeply in, my unique cultural background and social environment,” she says, “I look at myself carefully to see the role I play in my society. I observe society through social events or personal experiences and perspectives. Then I keep thinking and asking myself, ‘What could I do to point out the problems I’m observing in my society and demonstrate the serious concerns people have?’”

Wang discovered the social justice potential of her work at VCUarts when she was challenged by painting faculty to critically evaluate the relationship between herself and her aesthetic concepts, which materials she chooses, and how audiences interact with her art. As she learned more about art history, gender, race and culture, she began to form a new artistic identity. She also drew inspiration from the bold creative outspokenness of young Beijing-based artist Zhang Zipaio.

“When my artworks face the public,” Wang says, “I become one of the culture producers. I am responsible for every piece of information in my artwork. I should consider more and keep asking myself, ‘Why do I want to do this? Is my concept cohesive to my life?’ VCUarts encourages students to talk to themselves and understand themselves more.”

Lead image (left to right): Claudia Vincent, LaRissa Rogers and Zifan Wang.

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Nine decades have passed since the first year of art classes at Richmond Professional Institute concluded. From the seeds of a single painting class, founder Theresa Pollak and the faculty members she invited to campus grew a small program into a leading southern art school. In the half-century since her retirement, VCUarts has expanded its curriculum into every major creative field and become the top ranked public art school in the nation. VCUarts alumni have changed the world, faculty and staff members have become local legends, and students have proved to the city of Richmond that artists are essential and powerful members of our community.

Together, over the course of this yearlong retrospective, we’ve celebrated Theresa Pollak’s pioneering leadership and the suffragettes who inspired her, Nell Blaine (BFA ’42) thriving as a polio survivor, Judith Godwin (BFA ’52) challenging the 1950s dress code, the unprecedented BANG Arts Festival of the 1960s, the birth of GWAR in the 1980s, how Dean Murry DePillars brought the city together through art, the first modern art gallery in Richmond, the comic book heroes among our alumni, the creation of the cinema program, decades of student publications, the first video dance class, the discovery of a Van Gogh etching on campus, and many more incredible moments.

We’ve loved reading about our alumni’s memories of VCUarts and RPI on our social media channels, and listening to the recollections of faculty members who have devoted their lives to this school.

The 90th anniversary campaign would have been impossible to execute without the generous work of our contributors and partners.

VCUarts would like to especially thank Sarah Kleinman (MA ’16), art history PhD candidate, whose research illuminated our understanding of Theresa Pollak’s life and the earliest years of our school. We also extend our deepest gratitude to Ray Bonis, Yuki Hibben and Cindy Jackson of VCU Libraries Special Collections and Archives for their assistance and expertise in locating original texts and photos.

The 90th anniversary of VCU School of the Arts has allowed our community to reflect on our shared history and envision how we can continue to pave the way for creative practice in the 21st century and beyond. Our legacy has made us who we are today—one of the top-ranked arts and design schools in the nation. But our past also reinforces how we value and celebrate diverse perspectives, life experiences, cultural backgrounds and social identities, and how we continue to embrace the arts as a catalyst for discovering new knowledge.

The future is bright for VCUarts. Stretching toward the horizon are ongoing initiatives led by groundbreaking research and innovation, life-changing collaborations between the arts and medicine, and the next generation of talented students who are transforming how we see each other and the world around us. The possibilities are endless.

Thank you for joining us in this celebration. We look forward to meeting the pioneers, innovators and masterful creators who will walk these halls over the next 90 years.

You can revisit all of these stories on the 90th Anniversary web page, as well as the VCUarts Facebook and Instagram.

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When Kyle Artone applied to VCUarts’ costume design program, he wasn’t a theater novice. He had performed as an actor, and helped with prop and scene design. But during his senior year of high school, he decided to try something new: costume design.

“I had no budget, and I was sewing up until the last possible minute,” he says. “But I had so much fun. I just loved the craziness of it.”

Artone says he didn’t know much about professional costume design when he applied to the theatre department at VCUarts. And he didn’t know anything about Toni-Leslie James—a three-time Tony Award nominee and head of costume design at VCUarts—when he interviewed with her for admission into the program.

Still, Artone was admitted and almost immediately started designing costumes for theatre productions. He now knows the ins and outs of the process—from figure drawing and patternmaking, to paperwork and material sourcing—and considers James a mentor.

“My first projects that I presented didn’t feel right, because I was thinking too much about what Toni wanted to see versus what the project needed to be,” Artone says. “I took her critiques and thought about how I could show my best ability to design a show the right way. I have a massive amount of respect for her as a designer, and knew that working hard, improving after each project, and bringing her the best work I could do would benefit me as a designer, and make her proud.”

Four years later, Artone has designed costumes for a range of theatre productions including, most recently, Little Shop of Horrors and The Three Musketeers. This semester, for his senior project, he also designed head-to-toe costumes for the 10 leads and 50 ensemble characters that make up the cast of The Wiz.

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Every production, he says, begins with a conversation with the director about their vision. With Little Shop of Horrors, Artone and director Kikau Alvaro agreed on an early-1960s setting, full of pencil skirts and pinup sweaters, as well as glittering sequin dresses reminiscent of the Supremes.

“The Audrey character has a scene where she’s dreaming about suburban life,” Artone says. “In the movie, there’s a dream sequence where she has five different dresses in a two-minute song. So, we gave her a bodice and a pencil skirt, and when she starts dreaming, the girls bring her the matching full skirt. She spins around and dances, and then the girls take it away.”

“That was a fun moment to create on stage.”

Artone was well-equipped with an extensive portfolio when he applied for graduate schools in the fall. But one collection in particular was a point of conversation during his interview with the Yale School of Drama.

In 2018, he submitted a design for competition at the Southeastern Theatre Conference. One of the judges was Jane Greenwood, who has been designing on Broadway for more than 50 years. In her feedback, Greenwood suggested that Artone didn’t know how to make the suit that he had drawn.

“She asked me to promise that I would go back and redraw the suit with a full understanding of its construction,” he says. “Ever since then, I’ve made sure that everything I draw I know how to build, inside and out.”

When Artone arrived for his admission interview this spring, Greenwood—who is also a design professor at Yale—was on the panel. The first thing he showed them was a new drawing of the suit, and how he took Greenwood’s advice to heart.

The extra effort paid off. Yale offered him a position on the spot, and Artone will be heading to New Haven, Connecticut this fall.

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Sculpture alumna Diana Al-Hadid (MFA ’05) appears as one of 36 inspiring Americans in the new children’s book First Generation: 36 Trailblazing Immigrants and Refugees Who Make America Great. Written by Sandra Neil and Rich Wallace, with illustrations by Agata Nowicka, First Generation highlights Al-Hadid’s monumental sculptures in addition to her traditional Syrian upbringing.

Diana’s family left Aleppo, Syria, in 1986, when she was five years old. She spoke only Arabic when the Al-Hadids arrived in Ohio, and she quickly had to learn English. “I remember rehearsing saying ‘I’m not from here, I’m from Syria,’ but people didn’t realize where Syria was.” Though she fit in pretty well in her new neighborhood, Diana said her parents maintained strict traditions at home. “I wasn’t allowed to go to prom,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend!” But she was free to pursue her love of art, and by the time she turned eleven, she was determined to be an artist.

Check with your favorite bookseller for copies of First Generation, available through Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Lead image by Sarah Trigg.

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The annual VCUarts fashion show is a titanic collaborative exercise, a project that calls on the talents of fashion juniors and seniors in design and merchandising to succeed. It’s a tradition that’s persisted for 50 years, but the effort and passion students pour into the event has only grown in caliber. In Style Weekly‘s latest cover story, the periodical profiled students Taylor Virgil, Mercedes Miller and Levi Haskins, whose labor and love of fashion helped make the 2019 runway show “Shimmer” a marquee event.

Early on in class, Hawa Stwodah, assistant chairwoman of fashion, says you can tell which students are designers and which are merchandisers. And she knew Taylor Virgil was a design student right away.

“It was immediately in my class that she began to ask a lot of questions,” Stwodah says. “She didn’t just ask how, but why. I knew I had a true designer on my hands.”

Virgil’s Mom, Romaine Johnson, says her daughter has always been drawing since she was younger. “I draw and paint myself and decorate,” Johnson says. “When it came time for college, she came to us and said ‘I want to go to art school.'”

Virgil also says that her aunt, who is a fashion designer, helped turn her imagination toward fashion.

“I knew I wanted to do fashion design, I knew that since I was a little girl,” Virgil says. “My aunt … does accessories, upcycling, revamping, personalizing different items that she finds like designer bags.”

Read more about the 2019 fashion show in Style Weekly.

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Toni-Leslie James has earned a third Tony Award nomination for her Broadway costume designs. Her work on the play Bernhardt/Hamlet will be considered for Best Costume Design of a Play at the 2019 Tony Awards alongside The Ferryman, Torch Song, To Kill a Mockingbird and Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. James, associate professor and head of design for the theatre program, was previously nominated for her work on Jitney in 2017 and Jelly’s Last Jam in 1992.

“Bernhardt/Hamlet” stars Janet McTeer as Sarah Bernhardt, an internationally renowned theatrical performer who sets out to play the role of Hamlet in 1897. The play, written by Theresa Rebeck, also earned a Tony nomination for McTeer. James said the production offered compelling costume design challenges.

“The play takes place in 1898 and the characters required 19th-century day clothes, formalwear, rehearsal costumes for ‘Hamlet,’ and performance costumes for ‘Hamlet’ and the premiere of ‘Cyrano de Bergerac,’” James said. “The looks were specific to the time with 19th-century photographs of the named characters available online. All had to be created on an extremely tight budget along with a full set of understudy costumes. We built most of the women’s costumes, men’s suits, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Cyrano’ costumes. We rented costumes from VCU, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Guthrie Theater, Goodspeed Musicals, and borrowed costumes from Lincoln Center and the Public Theater to make this happen.

“We were trying to create the right silhouette and balance for late-19th-century clothing and create a visible contrast between the clothing of the period and stage costumes of the period. We succeeded in that goal and fully supported the journey of the play.”

The 73rd annual Tony Awards ceremony will be broadcast by CBS from Radio City Music Hall in New York on June 9.

Read more about Toni-Leslie James at VCU News.

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Thomas Levine, a sophomore music major, was recently featured in an article by the VCU College of Engineering that highlighted his newfound passion for computer technology. Though Levine spends much of his time playing saxophone in local venues with fellow jazz students, joining the class Introduction to Computing made him just as interested in learning the language of programming and code. The course is part of a new Fundamentals of Computing specialization in engineering, designed to train students from any field in employable computer skills.

Going in, Levine knew the class would give him practical, career-focused skills. What surprised him were the creative inspiration and life skills he also gained while learning how to code.

“When I’m programming, it’s amazing to see how one piece of computer code can do a thousand different things,” he said. “It’s actually made me think about music differently. I’m now thinking about little pieces — musical cadences or key changes I can use in different ways. It has made me start thinking about resources in a more creative, ambitious way.”

It has also made him more conscious of details and decisions in everyday life. Learning how computers analyze and solve problems has fine-tuned Levine’s own ways of thinking.

“Understanding that computers solve problems in one of three ways has changed how I think about problems. I’m thinking more systematically about decisions I am making. ‘How am I using my time,’ for example? ‘What should I be doing? Why am I not?’ I’m not advanced in programming yet, but I can see using these concepts forever,” he said. “Whether it’s music or advertising, which I may double major in, the common denominator is creative problem solving, which is also what this class is about.”

Read more about Levine’s class and how you can apply.

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VCU News interviewed two communication arts professors who have illustrated pages upon pages of children’s books, and asked them how they translate difficult histories into images for younger audiences. Stephen Alcorn and Sterling Hundley (BFA ’88) shared their memories of how they first began drawing, and how they navigate topics such as racism and war in their art.

How did you become interested in illustration?

Alcorn: I was fortunate to have come of age as an artist in a culture that fostered a holistic, humanistic approach to art education. When I was 12, my family moved from the U.S to Florence, Italy, where I enrolled in the Istituto Statale d’Arte. My first drawing instructor, sculptor and painter Marco Lukolic, was a seminal influence for me. … I have come to value work that is at once modern, ancient, sophisticated and naïf — in short, that lends itself to being appreciated on multiple levels, and ranges from the organic to the clinical and the imaginative to the literal. Perhaps most importantly, I learned early on to value tradition and recognize tradition, not as nostalgia, but as knowledge passed from one generation to another. I am grateful that his example encouraged me to see my artistic development as a microcosm of the larger history of art with a sense of belonging to a larger whole.

Hundley: Even though I grew up in a creative home with a father who writes and collected Civil War and Native American artifacts and a mom who draws, writes, designs and illustrates, it wasn’t until my sophomore year as a Communication Arts and Design major at VCU that I truly understood what illustration was. It was the perfect pairing of drawing and problem solving that appealed to my creative and logical interests.

Read the full interview at VCU News.

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Ron Johnson’s Art and Athletics course is a unique collaborative opportunity that allows students from two different kinds of fields to learn from one another. It encourages student athletes to re-engage their latent creative skills, and allows artists to see how their work ethic can match the rigorous practice regimen of a devoted athlete. Johnson, assistant professor of painting and printmaking, has been teaching two sections of the class for more than two years, and organized an accompanying exhibition of student work in May.

In a recent Richmond Times-Dispatch article, athletes and artists from VCU talked about how the experience helped them appreciate one another’s passions.

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Artist Elizabeth Turk delivered the 2019 VCUarts May Commencement address on May 11. Read what she had to say to the Class of 2019, or watch the video below.

Thinking about this moment is humbling. The years, the resources, the commitment, the work expended by all of you to be here celebrating. What an achievement!

I kept wondering, how can my words do justice to your effort?

For the last several months, this has been my weight. My initial remedy: to Google every possible commencement address. This decision, of course, only made it worse. So, my second remedy: to ask friends to help brainstorm.

Their advice:
Stop.
Get out of it.
Be careful.

This was not going in a helpful or positive direction. But doesn’t it sound familiar? The third remedy: research. Reading the words of Teresa Pollak, the acknowledged founder of VCU’s Art Department. She said “Go ahead, [work] as you want to work, any way it comes…” Her words, nearly a century old, incited her student’s creativity and underscored the need for expression during what she defined as (and I quote) “our age of confusion, fear and uncertainty.”

Yes, these words remain inspirational, in fact, freeing. They are simple, direct, honest, powerful to us today in our age of confusion, fear and uncertainty. Her words reminded me to simply work, start, make a mark where there is nothing and set a direction. To work and stay vulnerable, is to be not perfectly packaged. That is ok, just see what happens. It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? But all of you creatives know the strength it takes to start. Finding expression at the pace of your own heartbeat, not from voices embedded in media, nor even those of treasured friends can seem impossible. Unplugging, setting perception and judgment aside to listen to what is valid in a singular voice, your own voice, isn’t this the essence of creation?

Of, finding the new, over and over and over again? Of, discovering your extraordinary voice, which can give shape to the enormity of a new shared vision?

I think of the image of Freddie Mercury entering that stadium, arms raised, vulnerable, alone, quieting millions with only his voice and a piano key…alone with the sound of a single note to begin his work. All of you have proven your creativity and capabilities and now each of you will leave today to join a larger world daring it to stop, to make space and discover your singular voice, your first note.

We, the world, we need your voices. We need imagination. We need optimism. We need beautiful and brave creative spirits, which can turn barriers into bridges.

In the tradition of commencement speeches, this is where I’m to speak about the leap to create masterpieces, in defiance of fear. Or, the discovery of untapped strength and originality found at the depths of failure. But, having just Googled hours upon hours of commencement addresses, I urge you to listen to the many inspiring stories, as I skip over that part of the speech.

Instead, it is the inspiration found in being alone, being uncomfortable, being detached, away from a phone or the internet, to think, to listen and simply, to exist. This effort to be in the empty space where deeply unique and original thought resides, this is what is important as a creator. Addressing how to enter and remain in this ‘head-space’ without self-destructing and with the self-confidence to collaborate is a lifetime of difficulty. This is what I thought to share.

I love, love creating art. Maybe this desire borders on addiction. It is definitely obsessive. You artists, whether: designers, performers, scholars, musicians, or fine artists, you know exactly what I mean, because we, all of us artists, we create something new where there is nothing.

Ideas are thrilling and consistently give me a high. But it is in the Process of making art where I find refuge. In the face of life’s fragility and incoherence, it is IN the hands-on, dirty work that I find peace and feel safe. Don’t you? The focus required gives order to my thoughts and emotions, regardless of how fast they race. And, I can discover the pace of my own heartbeat.

At the start, the initial brainstorming, I don’t, in fact, I can’t listen to anyone, even the voices which mean the most to me. It is all distraction.

Nietzsche reflected: “One must have chaos within, to give birth to a dancing star.” His words are a reminder that framing psychological and philosophical depth is not new.

My messy passions mix with too many conflicting ideas, and if I speak of meaning too early, all vanishes. It’s like trying to take home an ocean wave by stuffing it in my pocket. Words confine and create their own change. Allowing internal turmoil to swirl and just work, not defining specifics allows layers of significance larger than a single concept to arise. This is the magic of extreme focus; the edges of my ‘self’ are lost, my physicality and my ideas merge, seamlessly. Even, if it is in laddering ideas with others.

Let me explain. I was really angry when I started making sculpture, carving marble. Everywhere was ugliness; divorce, a political job in DC, no money, did I say, no money? Knowing my life had fallen short of my expectations, by age 30 and it felt empty, this fact, gave me the courage to make art, to be vulnerable. I was looking for a passion, a comeback, and enough bravery to expose something deeply meaningful. It was in this fragility, that I found a strength.

In this period, hitting, smashing, cutting marble and drowning the world with noise was the only way I could work. My entire body needed to be focused in the same direction. Emotional energy was my tool. Even though I believed my intellectual concepts to be more significant. I overwhelmed my ‘self’ in the physicality, the ‘doing’, and this act left subconscious marks.

The sculptures created, endured an onslaught of such mental focus that they are so physically extreme, they defy the constraints inherent to their own materiality. Meaning they no longer appear, to be made of stone. And, the unintentional marks left behind convey the most significant insights. The deeply bruised marble crystals, these imperfections, they tell the story I can’t find words to tell, even today, so many years later. The physical work involved in production, healed me. A personal transformation was underway when I was buried in the thinking but loosing my body to the making.

James Baldwin reflected; “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” His words are a reminder that the cost of being vulnerable is impossibly high, but that it is a cost paid by so many. You are not alone.

Complex meaning resides in the space between well-worded explanations and feelings experienced deeply, irrevocably and often without reason. Art is a language addressing the paradox, the layers, the inconsistencies and the injustices in life. It is large enough to speak to the realities of simultaneous opposing truths. It is the intimate as the universal, the interior protecting the exterior, the line creating the plane, and so on, and so on. This is what makes art a powerful language, a language without boundaries. And it takes focus to synthesize the associations made between seemingly disconnected elements.

Frida Kahlo reflected, “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.” Her words are a reminder, no life is without change. And focus is not entered through the same doorway every time.

After 9/11, I left New York, as many did. Moving back to California, overwhelmed by the vengeful human noise of the world, I spent hours walking on the beach, alone. Engaging in the unknown is more important than describing, sometimes. For some reason, I would strap my delicate marble sculptures in the passenger side of my car and drive them down to the tide pools or the beach under Huntington Pier where I grew up. There, I’d video the ocean crashing around them. No explanation existed for why I would invite destruction, after years of the most patient work. But, this was the most significant act of creating for me. A description of why would have tied the process to a single theme and limited my actions. In not talking, not describing, I found anew the pace of my own heartbeat. Lucky for me, the artwork survived, and I could sell it to make more.

Louise Bourgeois reflected, “The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.” Her words are a reminder perseverance is strength.

Creating the most fragile, quiet sculptures and allowing nature to overwhelm my intention, my effort, this process worked. Was it rational? Absolutely, not. But, I couldn’t find dignity in human interaction during this period. Thinking alone and simply, working as Teresa Pollak suggests; “any way it comes”, I found a path through the not knowing, the uncomfortable, and thus, a voice back to a larger world.

Our world, where communities can be loud and confrontational and where it takes fortitude to launch collaborations. Embracing chaos is tricky. Many of you share this experience, already. To hear your own voice: clearly, authentically, and without distraction while simultaneously inspiring and coordinating a myriad of other creative voices is a balance of respect and emotional self-control. Creating large events, where the “art” is a platform for the engagement of others, tests my ability to stay vulnerable, open, and humble. Only when “WE” transplants “I”, selflessly, can a significant community work emerge. But a larger joy is embraced when it does, it’s amazing and so much bigger than oneself.

Today, you will share an anniversary. 500 years ago, this month, Leonardo da Vinci left us with a legacy of creativity which continues to frame questions and present new solutions. Through his work, you inherit proof of the expanse that curiosity and imagination can and do travel. This is the gift of original minds and courageous spirits. This is your possibility.

Take a moment to look around at those sitting next to you, surrounding you, and exhale, think, and in this stillness catch each other’s eyes. These are the people who pushed you to work “anyway it comes,” who helped to refine messy creative outbursts and who stretched you beyond what you imagined possible. Catch their eyes because they shared all the days culminating in this day. These are the relationships which will be remembered from this day forward and which will continue to refine your future best.

Congratulations, all of us here can’t wait to experience how you re-imagine our “confused, uncertain and fearful” world reinvigorating it with your power, your own heartbeats.

About Elizabeth Turk

A native Californian, Elizabeth Turk is an artist, primarily known for marble sculpture. In 2010, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and the Annalee & Barnett Newman Foundation award. Today, she splits time between Santa Ana, CA and NYC. Turk received her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Rinehart School of Sculpture in 1994, her BA from Scripps College, Claremont, CA in 1983. She has been represented by Hirschl & Adler, Modern since 2000, and continues to exhibit more experimental work in other venues. Turk’s work searches the boundaries of paradox: the contemporary in the traditional, the lightness in weight, the emptiness in mass, the fluidity of the solid, extended time in a moment. Reducing hundreds of pounds of stone to essential matrices of 5-25 lbs., her intricately carved sculptures defy gravity and make possible that which seems impossible. Inspired by the natural world, she references its myriad of elegant organic structures, yet her work is not complete until abandoned to larger environments, humbling the intensity of her creative focus. The artist’s studio is located in Santa Ana, CA.
elizabethturkstudios.com

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Pamela Lawton, associate professor of art education, will launch her new book Community-Based Art Education Across the Lifespan: Finding Common Ground on July 19. Co-written with Margaret A. Walker and Melissa Green, the book is an introduction to a form of art education that reaches beyond the classroom to foster broader community dialogues, understanding and collaboration.

Lawton spoke about her research in advance of her Tate Exchange partnership this July, saying that her intergenerational project Artstories was an important precedent to the book.

In what I call ‘community based art education,’ it’s about the learning that happens in the process of artmaking. It’s not like a social practice artist who may interact with the community to make their work. The process of making is where leadership development comes from, where self-empowerment comes from.

I’ve posited a theory of age-integrated arts learning. So part of this work [Artstories] continues to inform me as I continue to try to write it up for other people.

You can order or preview the book through Teachers College Press.

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VCUarts and the Anderson are pleased to announce that 14 artists have been accepted in the 2019 Summer Space Grants program. These artists will be afforded free studio space at the Anderson from June 4 to August 15.

Accepted artists include:

• Sayaka Suzuki (MFA ’05), academic advisor in Craft/Material Studies
• Christine Sloan Stoddard (BA ’12), author and artist based in Brooklyn, New York
• Brian Charles Patterson (MFA ’18), multimedia artist
• Katelyn Hood, undergraduate student in Sculpture + Extended Media
• Alice Babashak, undergraduate student in Fashion Design + Merchandising
• Chelsea Lee (MFA ’17), adjunct professor in Craft/Material Studies
• Braxton Congrove, Richmond-based artist
• Megan Goldfarb (BFA ’18), collections assistant at VCU Libraries
• Ellington Braun, undergraduate student in Sculpture + Extended Media
• Brian Barr, adjunct professor in Art Foundation
• Marta Finkelstein, adjunct professor in Kinetic Imaging
• Charlotte Haines, undergraduate student in Photography + Film
• Kyle Kogut, adjunct professor in Art Foundation
• Andy Lowrie, graduate student in Craft/Material Studies

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Congratulations for your inclusion on the VCUarts Spring 2019 Dean’s List! This special recognition is given to students earning a minimum GPA of 3.5 for the semester.

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