Photo by, Einar Falur Ingolfsson

VCU’s Anderson Gallery will present works by 11 internationally acclaimed artists this fall in the exhibition Surface Charge. Organized by the New York-based curators Sabine Russ and Gregory Volk, the exhibition will be on view from September 23 through December 4, 2005. The public is invited to an opening reception on September 23, from 7:00 to 9:00 pm .

A standard museum practice is to import art works in order to display them on the walls or on the floor; Surface Charge aims to thoroughly alter this practice. Works in Surface Charge will be created directly on and with the walls of the Anderson Gallery, turning its very surfaces into active forces, as opposed to neutral supports. A variety of techniques will be used, and most of the works will exist only for the duration of the exhibition.

Ragna Róbertsdóttir (Iceland) will apply thousands of lava chips from a volcano in Iceland directly to the wall, while Karin Sander (Germany) will sand and polish a section of wall, turning it into a shimmering, highly reflective field. Odili Donald Odita (Nigeria/U.S.) will compose abstract paintings on the walls, and Elana Herzog (U.S.) will staple and sew textiles into the wall. Lawrence Weiner (U.S.), long one of the main figures associated with Conceptual Art, will apply enigmatic phrases to the wall, while Karina Peisajovich (Argentina) will create a light and painting installation that responds to the specifics of the space. Kim Schoenstadt (U.S.) will both draw on and cut into the wall to create a large, architecturally inflected work while Katrin Sigurdardottir (Iceland) will present three sculptures that conflate walls, abstract forms, and Icelandic landscape imagery. Surface Charge will include a riveting video by Maix Mayer (Germany) involving empty walls in a newly built museum in Leipzig. Lisa Sigal (U.S.) will create a three-dimensional painting installation with elements on, and springing from, the walls. Completing the exhibition will be a sprawling wall collage of textile and felt silhouettes by Sally Smart (Australia) replete with references to Australian culture and the artist’s personal life.

Most of the artists—who hail from Argentina, Australia, Germany, Iceland and the United States—will be present during a 10-day installation period. Students from VCU’s top-ranking School of the Arts will provide assistance, resulting in a unique educational opportunity. "We are very pleased to bring together this distinguished group of established and emerging international artists," says Richard E. Toscan, VCU's Vice-Provost of International Affairs and Dean of the School of the Arts. “This exhibition represents our commitment to making Anderson Gallery a leading venue for contemporary art."

Surface Charge is the 15th exhibition co-curated by Sabine Russ and Gregory Volk, who are known for their unusual themes; international scope; tendency to mix older, well-established figures with younger artists; and for the visual appeal of their shows. Sabine Russ, a native of Leipzig, Germany, who has lived in New York since 1994, is an art critic and curator and Managing Editor of American Historical Publications. Gregory Volk is an art critic, curator and associate professor in the Department of Painting and Printmaking and the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at VCU’s School of the Arts. While many of the works in Surface Charge will disappear once the exhibition is dismantled, a catalogue will document the exhibition and provide information on the artists and their works. The catalogue will be published in December 2005.

Since 1971, the Anderson Gallery has been one of the most important venues for contemporary art in the Southeast, with exhibitions of work by noted artists such as Yoko Ono, Gregory Crewdson, Teresita Fernandez, Sally Mann, Douglas Bourgeois, Gregory Barsamian, Dale Chihuly, Jim Campbell, and Heide Fasnacht. Guest curators have included Edward Albee, the renowned playwright; John Yau, noted art critic and poet; and Robert Hobbs, who holds the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair in American Art at VCU and is also visiting professor at Yale University.

Admission to the Anderson Gallery is free. The Gallery is open to the public Monday through Friday from 10 to 5 and Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 5.

Ragna Robertsdottir
Lava Landscape (detail with viewers)
2004
Hekla Lava on wall
Reykjavik Art Museum
Image courtesy of the artist
Photography: Einar Falur Ingolfsson

Photo by Ann Marsden

“Kling’s stories fall somewhere between David Lynch’s perversity and Garrison Keillor’s home-spun humor…” Denver Post

Humorist and playwright, Kevin Kling describes his zodiac sign as “Minnesota with Iowa rising,” and his accent and parlance could be right off the set of the movie “Fargo.” While many of his reference points are specific to the upper Midwest, his childhood stories and topical observations touch upon universal human experiences, with plenty of absurdity and irony in the mix.

Playwright, storyteller and actor Kevin Kling built his reputation in the Twin Cities during the 1990’s with his groundbreaking plays “21A” and “Fear and Loving in Minneapolis,” and toured a oneman show of “Home and Away” across the United States in the early 1990’s. While his writing and performing continue unabated, he has also become well known for his regular storytelling contributions to NPR’s “All Things Considered. “

Kling has performed nationally and internationally and has been awarded prestigious arts grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Bush Foundation and Jerome Foundation.

Freezing Paradise: An Evening with Kevin Kling is sponsored by the Windmueller Arts Series. The lecture will take place on Thursday, September 29, 2005, at 5:30 p.m. at the Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace Street. The event is free and open to the public. Seating is on a first come, first served basis. For more information, please call (804) 827-4676.

Jimmy Black

On Sunday, October 16, 2005, at 8:00 p.m., VCU School of the Arts will present an evening of jazz honoring the life and musical legacy of jazz pianist, Jimmy Black. This event celebrates a generous $1 million commitment from Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Singleton in memory of their musician friend, and marks the naming of the James W. Black Music Center. The concert will feature Tom Saunders and the Midwest All-Stars, “Fast Eddie” Erickson, Steve Bassett and the music of the Jimmy Black Trio and The Daniel Clarke Quartet.

Known to his audiences as Jimmy Black, the Richmond-born jazz pianist engaged and enthralled generations of Virginia audiences. Black initially entered the music spotlight as a University of Virginia student in the 1950s. When a snowstorm prevented their back-up band from joining trumpet great Louis Prima and vocalist Keely Smith for a UVA spring formal, Jimmy Black’s student jazz trio joined Prima and Smith on stage that evening. They were an instant hit.

“I’ve heard a lot of jazz piano players over the last 55 years,“ said W.E. Singleton. “Most of them play well, but not all of them make music. In the good ones that do, I hear style, creativity, subtle tempos and key changes and the general feeling of the fun of jazz. I heard it in Erroll Garner and I heard it in Fats Waller. And I heard it in Jimmy.”

Singleton has been an enthusiastic jazz fan for over 50 years. He counts among his personal friends such jazz legends as Louis Armstrong, Zutty Singleton, Maxine Sullivan, Gene Krupa, Wild Bill Davison, and Count Basie. He has collected their recordings and those of other jazz luminaries. In 2002, VCU celebrated Mr. Singleton’s $2 million commitment to the VCU Jazz Studies program by naming the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts in his honor. This recent pledge by Mr. and Mrs. Singleton raises their total commitment to $3 million in support of VCU Jazz, the largest gift ever made in the United State to support a jazz education program.

BT McNicholl

Lyricist, co-author and director BT McNicholl will direct Theatre VCU students this fall in the production of Shakespeare in Hollywood. Mr. McNicholl, an experienced and accomplished theatre professional, won the 2002 "Tony" Award in Australia -- the Helpmann -- for his direction of Barry & Fran Weissler and IMG's production of Cabaret.

Recent credits include acclaimed revivals of Jerome Kern's Very Good Eddie (Goodspeed Opera House) and a new adaptation of The Cherry Orchard (Best Production, Dorset Theatre Festival). On Broadway, he has directed for the Roundabout Theatre Company; internationally, he staged Disney & Kenneth Feld's musical version of Winnie the Pooh, currently on tour. He has also been associated with James Lapine, Jerry Zaks, Rob Marshall and Sam Mendes on a number of Broadway plays and musicals, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Nathan Lane and Whoopi Goldberg.

Winner of a BMI Award and a Drama League grant, McNicholl has directed new works at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center and popular productions of She Loves Me and Noel Coward's Fallen Angels, among others. Working with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, he directed Kristin Chenoweth in their musical Billion Dollar Baby at the York Theatre Company, and also produced the show's critically acclaimed cast album. He staged the world premiere of the new musical Camila at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and was the associate director for the Broadway production of The Civil War.

by Lydia Thompson

Lydia Thompson, COLOR: Ten African American Artists
May 20 – October 22, 2005
Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA

www.contemporarycraft.org

Lydia Thompson is one of ten artists featured in the current exhibition at the Society for Contemporary Craft. COLOR: Ten African American Artists, on view through October 22, 2005, offers an opportunity to appreciate African American identity reflected through a variety of craft media, such as clay, fiber, wood and mixed materials. COLOR highlights a variety of techniques and forms, including innovative art expressions rooted in traditional craft materials, structure, processes and history, as well as art that explores unexpected relationships between craft and painting, sculpture, conceptual and installation art. The exhibition features 38 works by both emerging and established artists from eight different states, and seeks to support artists of color by presenting work representative of their diverse backgrounds and personal histories.  

As a ceramic artist, Lydia Thompson creates work that revolves around human existence and its imprint on the earth. Her images combine figurative, natural forms from the landscape and non-western architecture, evoking emotions of how humanity defines itself cross-culturally. Her work has been exhibited at the Cultural Arts Center in Columbus, OH; the Smithsonian Anacostia Gallery in Washington, DC; Artspace Gallery in Richmond, VA; and the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a Fulbright Hayes Scholar and has received a National Outstanding Young Women of America award, as well as an African American Institute Grant for Program Development. Thomspon is a professor in the Department of Craft/Material Studies.

Elizabeth King, Brides of Frankenstein
July 30 – October 30, 2005
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
http://www.sjmusart.org

Work by Elizabeth King is featured in Brides of Frankenstein at the San Jose Museum of Art through October 30, 2005. Assembled by independent curator Marcia Tanner, this exhibition is billed as "experimental work by a new generation of multicultural female artists working with video, performance, installation, robotics, the Internet, computer animation, and other digital and traditional media, to animate synthetic creatures with virtual life." Presenting visually and conceptually compelling pieces by approximately fourteen artists, the exhibition surveys the diverse ways contemporary women artists animate synthetic creatures to investigate a range of humanistic and aesthetic concerns.

King’s work is in permanent collections in the Hirshhorn Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  She was a 1996-97 Fellow in the Visual Arts at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, now part of Harvard University.  She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 for her work in video installation. King is a professor in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media. She is also a featured artist in About Faces: Portraits Past and Present at the Staten Island Museum, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, NY. This exhibition continues through November 14 and more information is available at www.snug-harbor.org.

Stephen Vitiello, Heaven & Hell
September 9 – October 29, 2005
Solvent Space, Richmond, VA

This exhibition includes collaborations with British musician Scanner and Andrew Deutsch. The opening reception is September 9 from 6 to 8 p.m., and a performance will take place October 8 at 7:30 p.m.

Vitiello is a renowned sound and media artist whose work—sound installations, CDs, and performances—has been presented internationally and resides in such permanent collections as the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has been a guest media curator for the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France, and the Knitting Factory.

Carolyn Henne, Ugly Facts
August 29 – September 23, 2005
Hunt Gallery, Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, VA

Richard Toscan, Dean

For the past eight years, Richmond magazine has recognized individuals and groups who are living up to the legacy of Theresa Pollak, founder of VCU School of the Arts. A respected painter, Ms. Pollak is also remembered for her advocacy for the arts, education and philanthropic support.

This year, four VCU artists are among the 10 recipients – Richard E. Toscan, Pollak Prize for Lifetime Achievement; Elizabeth King, Pollak Prize for Art; John Winn, Pollak Prize for Vocals and R. Nicholas Kuszyk, Pollak Prize for Emerging Artist. The complete article is available in the September 2005 issue. Here, please find comments from the selectors of the recipients, as printed in Richmond magazine.

“As dean of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and vice provost for international affairs, Richard Toscan has, in nine years, guided the School of the Arts to a place of international prominence. Under his innovative direction, VCU has established a design school in Qatar, the university’s first international branch campus. While undertaking the important task if educating young women from Qatar in the region for professions in design, VCU School of the Arts in Qatar is also providing a model of cooperation between the Arab world and the West. It is a special privilege to award the Pollak Prize to the talented dean of the school created by Theresa Pollak.”

“While her work is grounded in “the real,” Elizabeth King is a sculptor of the effable. She takes a poet’s approach to attention and memory, and a neurosurgeon’s approach to craft. She is an esteemed professor in the VCU Sculpture Department, not just because of her exhibitions in New York and her inclusion in major museum collections from the Hirshhorn to the Metropolitan, but also because she has inspired countless students with her intelligence, her high seriousness and her richly ornamented critical insights.”

“John Winn is a singer’s singer who has traveled near and far sharing his gift of music. His unique approach to delivering a song always leaves the audience wanting more. John’s scat singing has hints of Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme all rolled into one. He also has the versatility to sing jazz, R & B, and rock. His saxaphone playing is as mellow as his singing, and for more than 15 years, he’s fronted large bands and small ensembles both as lead vocalist and instrumentalist.” Winn received a BM in Music Education in 1993 and a MM in Composition in 1995 from VCU.