Polly Apfelbaum creates what she calls "fallen paintings," hybrid works of rare beauty that exist in a contentious, ambivalent space between painting, sculpture, and installation. Often arranged on the floor, spreading around corners in indeterminate shapes, Apfelbaum's overall forms are comprised of intricate, nearly psychedelic layers of dyed fabric, as if myriad smaller paintings have accreted or grown from a central cluster of shapes and colors.  Her extensive exhibition record includes solo shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; Kempner Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH. Group exhibits include The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Galarie Nachst St. Stephan, Vienna, Austria; The Wexner Center, Columbus, OH; and The Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT. More information on her work can be found at www.artnet.com/artist/1572/polly-apfelbaum.html. LOVEKRAFT will run through June 30.

Also at Solvent Space, Rachel Hayes presents an exterior installation, Wow and Flutter.  Here, she uses fabric to take advantage of the wind and lack of color in the industrial landscape in an effort to imply that colors are mixing together as the wind blows. Hayes earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and an MFA from VCUarts in 2006. Exhibitions include Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York; Grand Arts and Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri; ADA Gallery, Richmond, Virginia; Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico.  Reviews of these and other exhibitions have appeared in Art Papers, The Kansas City Star and Review Magazine. Awards include a one-year residency at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, The Charlotte Street Fund, and a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture.  For more information on her work, please visit www.rachelhayes.com.

This red-hot musical theatrical revue celebrates the music of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, featuring 39 of their most-loved songs. The two met as teens and fused their loves of jazz and blues with rock 'n' roll. Many performers including Elvis, The Drifters, The Coasters and Peggy Lee, embraced their writing in the 1950's and 1960's. Nominated for seven Tony Awards, the original Broadway cast soundtrack, Smokey Joe's Café: The Songs of Leiber and Stoller won a Grammy award in 1995. The show made its theatrical debut in 1994 in Los Angeles, the New York production closed on January 16, 2000 after 2,036 performances, making Smokey Joe's Café the longest running musical revue in Broadway history.

Broadway musical theatre veteran and Theatre VCU professor Patti D’Beck is the director.  “It’s going to be more than a musical review. I want it to tell stories, to bring back memories by revisiting the early Rock n’ Roll and Doo Wop era. Because of the physical and vocal talents of the cast, I’ve been able to make the dance and movement sequences more complicated than when I last staged it for the Pioneer Theatre Company,” D’Beck explained.

Smokey Joe’s Café is split into two acts with wall-to-wall music. The revue style of the show spotlights singing and dancing with the first act of the show starting off at frenetic pace. Hits like Dance With Me, Kansas City, Trouble, Poison Ivy and On Broadway clip right along, one after another. The second act keeps on smokin’ with an even larger quantity of Leiber and Stoller's more recognizable songs: Yakety Yak, Charlie Brown, Hound Dog, Love Potion # 9 and Stand by Me will get the audience swaying and tapping their feet to the beat.

Patti D’Beck is a veteran director/choreographer having worked on thirteen of the most popular Broadway shows of all time. Her credits as associate choreographer, supervisor and/or performer include the Broadway productions of Annie Get Your Gun (Bernadette Peters and Reba McEntire), Bells Are Ringing (Faith Prince), Grease (Lucy Lawless), The Will Rogers Follies (Keith Carradine), My One and Only (Tommy Tune and Twiggy), Evita , The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , A Chorus Line , Pippen (Ben Vereen), Seesaw ( Michelle Lee , Ken Howard ) , Applause (Lauren Bacall), and the pre-Broadway original musicals Busker Alley and Easter Parade . Patti also choreographed the opening number for the 1997 Tony Awards for Rosie O’Donnell.

Performances of Smokey Joe’s Café continue April 19, 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m. and April 22 at 3:00 p.m. Ticket prices are $18 for general admission, seniors, VCU Faculty and Staff $15, VCU students with valid ID $5.00, and can be purchased at the Hodges Theatre Box Office, W.E. Singleton Performing Arts Center, or reserved by calling 804.828.6026 or by emailing theatretix@vcu.edu . Dinner Theatre will be offered on April 19 at 6:30 p.m. for $33 per person. Reservations are required.

The 36th annual Juried Fine Arts Exhibition, to be held at the Anderson Gallery April 13 through April 22, will feature students’ paintings, prints, sculptures, site-specific installations, drawings, crafts, photography and video.

This year’s juror Eric Heist is a celebrated multi-media fine artist and Co-founder and Director of Momenta Art in Brooklyn, New York. His work has graced many notable spaces including the Schroeder Romero, the Clementine Gallery, Roebling Hall, and White Box in New York City.  Momenta Art is a not-for-profit exhibition space that promotes the work of rising artists. Heist received an M.F.A from Hunter College in 1990. He also holds a B.F.A. from the University of Delaware, and is a graduate of Empire State’s Studio Program in New York.

Beginning April 27, the Anderson Gallery will present The Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibitions.  Participation in this exhibition isthe final requirement for students earning a master’s degree in the fine arts departments from VCU. The exhibitions provide a forum for emerging artists to display their work and give viewers a “preview” of new directions in the visual arts. Each of the participating artists will exhibit work that represents the culmination of their 2-year master’s program in one of the following areas: painting, printmaking, sculpture, crafts, and photography and film. “These exhibitions provide an excellent opportunity for viewers to invest in up-and-coming artists, as many of the pieces on view will be for sale,” said Amy Moorefield, assistant director and curator of collections for the Anderson Gallery.

Round 1 of the Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition will be on display from April 27– May 6.  Participating artists include from the Crafts and Materials Studies Department: Amanda Douglas, Matthew Isaacson, James Kearns, Josh Rosenberg, and Hyun Kyung Yoon. From the Painting and Printmaking department: Jared Clark, Lauren Clay, Jason Coates, Michael Erickson, and Marian Smith. Photography and Film Department Students include: Dan Currier, Bryant Dameron, Vanessa Fassie, Shane Rocheleau, and Amy Vaughters.  Sculpture Department students Christina Fisher and Matt Spahr will also exhibit.

Round 2 of the Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition will be on display from May 11 – May 29.  From the Crafts and Material Studies Department, students Faridah Al Rashaid, Erica Dyen, Sarah Mizer, Nanda Soderberg, Kazue Taguchi, and Erin Williams will be contributing pieces. Painting and Printmaking artists include Heather Harvey and Andrew Kozlowski. Works by Photography and Film students, Nellie Appleby, Gabriel Barlow, Jacob Dodd, and Amanda Sauer will be on exhibit as well as those by Sculpture and Extended Media Department pupils, Taylor Baldwin, Nathan Carder, Anthony Liberto, and Rosemarie Padovano.

Additional information is available at http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/artweb/gallery/.

The VCUarts Department of Dance and Choreography will present Sociometry, the Spring 2007 Senior Project Dance Concert on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, April 26, 27, 28 at 8:00 p.m. at the Grace Street Theater, 934 West Grace Street.

The formal definition of sociometry is “the measurement of attitudes of social acceptance or rejection through expressed preferences among members of a social grouping”.  Nine VCU Dance and Choreography seniors explore this definition through movement and theater. Ultimately they have produced nine varying views on their individual concepts of society.  Some of them are storytellers; some are redefining definitions; and some are simply taking a closer look at where we connect within society. But all of them are asking the audience:  Where do you connect?

The students include Ashley Berryman, Eliza Diener-Brazelle, Cherish Thomas Horton, Niall Jones, Criscia Richardson, Sarah Ross, Heather Schrock, Travis Steele Sisk, and Bravita Threatt.

VCU Department of Dance and Choreography is a community of highly motivated, disciplined and creative dancers who are interested in shaping the future of the field.  They are committed to building and enlightening dance audiences in the University and Richmond communities while providing opportunities for artists to present and create work.  Recognized by professional dancers and choreographers as a “place where things are happening,” VCU Dance offers a vibrant and stimulating atmosphere where students prepare for careers in dance.

image: Elliott Brown Gallery

Katherine Gray
Monday, April 23rd at 2:15pm
Bowe Street Building, Room 535, 609 Bowe Street

Katherine Gray received her undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art in Toronto, and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. Since then she has been the recipient of several residencies and fellowships, and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in many group and solo shows. Her work is in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass and the Museum of American Glass. She has taught workshops across the country, as well as in Canada, France, Australia and Japan. Currently, she lives and works in Los Angeles, where she is also the glass lecturer at California State University San Bernardino. This lecture is sponsored by VCU School of the Arts and the Department of Craft/ Material Studies.




Ralph Caplan
MAKING IT
Monday, April 23rd at 7:15pm
School of Business Building, Room 1117, 1015 Floyd Avenue  

Ralph Caplan writes about the design process and collaborates with designers on publications, exhibitions, and films.  He is the author of By Design, The Design of Herman Miller; Cracking the Whip, essays on design and its side effects, and a novel, Say Yes!  

A frequent speaker at professional, university, museum, community and corporate events, Caplan was once a stand-up comic in the U.S. Marine Corps.  At VCU he will discuss the relationship between craft and design and the reasons why success in the practice of either depends upon the connections between them. This lecture is sponsored by VCU School of the Arts, the Departments of Craft/Material Studies, Graphic Design, and Interior Design/The Terry Noack Fund for the Arts.

Ever wonder what VCUarts’ graduates do once they get their degrees?  Now you have the opportunity to find out by exploring the web pages of some of our alumni.  Links can be found on the VCUarts website at www.vcu.edu/arts/alumni_and_friends/alumni_webpages.html. 

This list is in the early stages of development and is constantly being updated as more alumni submit their information for inclusion.  If you would like to have your link posted here, please let us know via e-mail to mmitchell@vcu.edu.