Brian Caverly, Construction 3

For the third time, recent MFA graduates have been invited to show their work at two important galleries in Chelsea. Since the first Fresh Meat in 2001, these exhibitions have occurred biennially.

More Fresh Meat
Exhibition of recent MFA graduates from VCU’s Sculpture & Extended Media Department. Opens Saturday, June 4, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and continues through July 2
Kim Foster Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, New York, NY
Tel. (212) 229-0044
www.artnet.com/kfoster.html

Artists include Diana Al-Hadid, Sarah Bednarek, Gabriel Bennett, Brian Caverly, Jacq Crowley, Tim Devoe, Fernando Mastrangelo, Alessandra Torres, Kia Vierstra, Claire Watkins, and Ruby Wescoat.

Double Chin
Exhibition of recent MFA graduates from VCU’s Painting & Printmaking Department. Opens Saturday, July 14, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and continues through August 6
Stux Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY
Tel. (212) 352-160052.1600
www.stuxgallery.com

Maurice Bonds, Untitled

art6 Gallery will host a lecture on Friday, May 20, at 8 p.m. by Dr. Robert Hobbs, VCU’s Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of Art History, which will expand on and introduce some of the themes of Fluxus Redux, its forthcoming July exhibition. Dr. Hobbs will speak on the topic Fluxus and Conceptual Art. This will be the second Pinkney Near Memorial Lecture in Art History, a series initiated in 2004 by art6 Gallery to feature noted art historians and to honor the memory of the first Chief Curator of The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Dr. Hobbs was U.S. Commissioner and Curator of Kara Walker: Slavery! Slavery!, which was selected as the U.S. Official Representation at the 2002 São Paulo Bienal. From 1983 to 1987 he was Director of The University of Iowa Museum of Art. He has held professorships at Cornell University, Florida State University, and Wake Forest University, and has also lectured at Yale. He was U.S. Commissioner to the Venice Biennale in 1982, and he was Chief Curator of Contemporary Art and Chair of Curatorial Division, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and Director of Museum Studies Program, Farabi University, Tehran, Iran, in 1978. He has been on the faculty of VCU since 1991.

A reception will follow the lecture, which is free to art6 members. The public is invited to attend with a $5 donation.

VCU Qatar

U.S. Department of State Selects VCUQ Student
Gulf Times online
May 2, 2005

Excerpt from article:
”A QATARI student of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUQ) has been selected by the US Department of State to participate in the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Study of the United States Institute for Student Leaders.” “The MEPI mission is to encourage international and inter-cultural understanding between students from various parts of the world,” VCUQ announced in a statement yesterday.
Read full article here.

Book by VCUQ Professor Is #1 on Architectural List
The Peninsula: Qatar's Leading English Daily online
May 3, 2005

Excerpt from article:
"DOHA: Treena Crochet, assistant professor in the Interior Design programme at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUQ), has recently released a book that has been number one on the overall architectural list on BookScan, selling approximately 275 to 300 copies a week in bookstores throughout the US... Treena is an award-winning author of four books on interior design and architecture, and her work has been published in books and magazines internationally."

Follow this link for the full article.

Follow this link for a related article in Gulf Times.

VCU Music

VCU’s Department of Music is home to some of the nation’s top performers and music educators. Dr. Terry Austin is chairman of the National Band Association, Doug Richards is founder and musical director of the highly acclaimed Great American Music Ensemble, and Dr. Jean Montes frequently conducts the L'Orchestre Philharmonique Ste Trinité in his home town of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Alumni Pamela Armstrong and Thomas Moser have performed numerous lead roles at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Kerry Smith is a sound composer and three-time CLIO winner, and composer Peter Ware is a recipient of the Frances E. Osborne Kellogg Prize from Yale.

This summer, the Richmond community can gain access to the faculty and resources of this outstanding department. After Hours is a new series of short courses featuring various topics in music history and theory. Throughout the coming year, sessions will include The Music of The Beatles, Hand-Drumming, and American Popular Song: Blues, Broadway and Beyond.

50 Years of Rock, the first of the series, is designed for the music lover in everyone - those who grew up with Ray Charles and Elvis, Hendrix and the Stones, or Nirvana and Madonna. The evolution of rock music has forever influenced American culture, and this course will examine the music, the artists, the fans and the history that rock has made and continues to make.

John Winn, local jazz/rock musician, will lead the course. Classes will be held for five weeks, from 6 to 8 p.m. each Tuesday, June 7 through July 5, 2005. Please contact the VCU Department of Music for registration information at (804) 828.1166 or www.vcumusic.org.

Heide Trepanier, Trade Off (detail)

James Gardner’s review, Art Attack, in the March 19 edition of the New York Post stated that "Heide Trepanier's gloppy paintings are abstract art at its best." Gardner gave Trepanier’s March 2005 show at the STUX Gallery four stars, and refers to her as "one of the best artists alive." The same column gives Damien Hirst's latest effort "The Elusive Truth" only one and a half stars. "What is astonishing about her art is that it satisfies our longing for both precise delineation and formal energy," said Gardner.

Trepanier (MFA 2000, Painting and Printmaking) has been an instructor in both the Art Foundation Program and the Department of Painting and Printmaking, and was Co-Founder and Director of the Orange Door Gallery in Richmond.

Strange Attractors - 1996 Polymer clay and metal - 96 x 144 x 2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Kent Gallery

VCUarts Anderson Gallery has won honorable mention in the 2005 American Association of Museums Publication Design Competition for its exhibition catalogue, "Heide Fasnacht: Strange Attractors.” Working with the Anderson Gallery, VCUarts Communication Design Assistant Professor Sandy Wheeler designed the "Heide Fasnacht: Strange Attractors" catalogue, which includes essays by playwright and art collector Edward Albee and Raphael Rubenstein, senior editor of Art in America. "Heide Fasnacht: Strange Attractors" is distributed nationally and internationally by University of Washington Press.

Follow this link for more information on the catalogue.

Follow this link for more information on the exhibition