Dr. Dmitri Shteinberg

VCU School of the Arts is pleased to welcome Dr. Dmitri Shteinberg as Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Piano at VCU Music. Steinberg holds Doctorate and Master of Music degrees in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Tel-Aviv Rubin Academy of Music. Among his teachers are Victor Derevianko and Nina Svetlanova, both students of Heinrich Neuhaus.  Before coming to Virginia Commonwealth University, Shteinberg taught piano at the Manhattan School of Music and was on the faculty of the Piano School of New York City.

Shteinberg has appeared across North America, Germany, England, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Bulgaria and Israel. His career includes solo performances with the Jerusalem Symphony, the Italian Philarmonica Marchetiana, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the Israel Camerata Orchestra and the Porto National Symphony. He was a guest artist at the Sarasota and Summit Music Festivals, the Music Festival of the Hamptons, the "Oleg Kagan" Festival in Germany and the Festival Aix-en-Provence in France, among others. He has recorded for the WQXR, WHMT radio stations, the Bavarian Radio and the Yamaha Disklavier; and collaborated with New York Philharmonic members and the cellist Natalia Gutman. Shteinberg is active as a performer of new music, having world premieres and commissioned works to his credit. He also performs on harpsichord and period pianos.

He is a prizewinner in 20 competitions worldwide, including the first prize in "Citta de Senigallia" International Competition in Italy. In the United States, he won the Naomi Foundation Competition, the Artists International Debut Award, the Manhattan School of Music Helen Cohn Award and received the Salon De Virtuosi Fellowship Grant.

Untitled (No. 5)

Paolo Arao, 1999 BFA in Painting & Printmaking, has recently been honored with a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Artists' Fellowships are $7,000 cash awards for unrestricted use made to individual artists living and working in the state of New York. Arao’s fellowship was awarded in the discipline of Printmaking/Drawing/Artists Books. After graduating from VCU, Arao was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2000.

His work has been included in exhibitions at The Drawing Center, NY; Sara Meltzer Gallery, NY; SculptureCenter, L.I.C, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, L.I.C., NY; and the Bronx Museum for the Arts. He is represented by Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York City. Paolo Arao lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Artist Statement, as published by NYFA at http://www.nyfa.org/nyfa_artists_detail.asp?pid=5398

Recently, I have been working with charcoal and graphite on paper. I have also worked with sculpture, painting, performance and video. Before pursuing art, I was a classical pianist. My background in music has been a strong influence on my work in the visual arts. The drawings for which I was awarded the NYFA grant, are from the series “Make Them Love You.” They depict microphones in a pristine space without an audience nor a speaker/ performer. They appear to interact with themselves: standing, bowing, hovering, or yearningly reaching towards someone before them, evoking a sense of anticipation.

For more information on Paolo Arao, visit Jeff Bailey Gallery at
http://www.baileygallery.com/artists_02.cfm?fid=89

Turning Straws Into Clouds

Using massive quantities of commonplace materials like Scotch tape, tar paper, and drinking straws, Tara Donovan creates almost magical installations evocative of haze, roiling water, and other natural phenomena. By Hilarie M. Sheets

Pick up a copy of the magazine for the complete article. More information is available at http://www.artnewsonline.com/current.cfm

Judith Godwin receiving the Alumni Star Award

On November 11, 2005, Judith Godwin, BFA 1952, received the prestigious VCU Alumni Star Award in recognition of her professional achievement.

Judith Godwin may be Virginia’s best known Abstract Expressionist artist, but there is little abstract in her direct, no-nonsense approach to life. “I stretch and prime my own canvas,” she admits with a smile in her voice. “To me it’s part of what I do.”

The daughter of a Suffolk couple who loved touring old houses, Judith grew up with a fascination for architecture and gardens, interests she retains.

Judith started college at Mary Baldwin in Staunton but found a passion for art and began to look for a good school of art. “I decided on RPI she says. It had a very good art department.” Judith enrolled there in 1950, and came to realize that the quality of an art program lay in the teachers. “One has to make students excited about art.” She also explained, “RPI gave me confidence in myself… as a person and as an artist. The teachers were so enthusiastic. If you don’t have teachers who are enthusiastic and listen to you, you can’t get anywhere.”

She adds that it is also important they be realistic about the small number of students who ultimately succeed in the field. “It was a wonderful art department then… And VCU is now known nationally and internationally as one of the very top art schools in the country.”

Judith found something else at the University too… a sense of belonging. “It’s funny, but I always thought I was a little odd until I can to RPI. I found a lot of odd people there.” And her presence did not pass unnoticed either. “I was the first woman student to wear jeans into the RPI cafeteria,” she boasts. “Men could come with their jeans straight from the studio to lunch. Women were required to wear skirts – so I would have to return to the dorm, change and then go eat, then back to the dorm to change into work clothes. During this process, I lost half an hour.” She thought the rules were illogical, and ignored them. Called before the dean, she quietly spoke of that discriminatory rule, and found understanding. The rule was dropped.

After she graduated in 1952, Judith moved to New York City to continue her studies. She was one of the youngest artists accepted into the prestigious Art Students League in New York, where she studied with leading artists. Her works were shown along with those fellow artists and acquaintances Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Marcel Duchamp.

Judith recalls, “During the 1950s, we didn’t know anything about the feminist movement… It is easier today. In the 50s it was a very macho time in the arts. They just didn’t feel as though women could be good painters.” She struggled to support herself and her studies. She learned to share food with other artists, and took a variety of jobs. She became apprenticed to both a mason and a carpenter … for money, and for insight with which to enrich her art.

After participating in a number of shows, Judith’s work was included in shows at the prestigious Stable Gallery and the Betty Parsons Section Eleven Inaugural Show in 1958. A year later she gave her first solo show at Betty Parsons.

Today, after a half century as a painter, Judith has a prominent place in the evolution of Abstract Expressionism. She has exhibited extensively in the United States and Japan, and her works are now part of many major collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in NY, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also been awarded honorary doctorates by VCU and Mary Baldwin College.

Judith Godwin continues to paint and exhibit today, and still finds her work stimulating and fulfilling. “I would hope that those viewing my work will experience the excitement I felt in creating it.”

Announcing a unique VCUarts opportunity…

VCUarts Graduate Student Open Studio Night
Friday, December 9, 2005
5 to 8 p.m.
VCU Fine Arts Building , 1000 W. Broad Street

Graduate students in VCU’s Departments of Sculpture & Extended Media, Crafts, Painting & Printmaking and Photography invite the Richmond community to visit their studios for a behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge art they are producing. The student artists will be on hand for questions and answers.

U.S. News & World Report ranks VCUarts the top public university art and design program in the nation . Individual graduate programs are also highly ranked: Sculpture as #1, Graphic Design as #4 and Painting as #10, among all universities in the country.