VFMA Fellowship winners announced

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Fellowship Program continues its 76-year tradition supporting Virginia’s art community by giving grants to students and professional artists. With this year’s awards, fellowship grants will reach nearly $5.5 million with more than 1,275 awards to Virginia artists since the program’s inception in 1940. VMFA awarded 27 fellowships to Virginia art students and professional artists in 2016-17 for a total of $162,000.


“None of this would be possible without the generous endowment established by the late John Lee Pratt and all the supporters of this mission-based objective throughout the past 76 years.” Director Alex Nyerges said. “The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Fellowship Program is committed to about nurturing artists throughout the Commonwealth.”
  
Twelve professional fellowships, each worth $8,000, were awarded. The recipients are (in alphabetical order by hometown): Moaz Elemam, film/video, Alexandria; Tyrone Turner, photography, Arlington; Lee Anne Chambers, painting, Courtland; Kristin Skees, mixed media, Hampton; Matthew Parker, drawing, Portsmouth; Cynthia Henebry, photography, Richmond; Valerie Molnar, mixed media (collab. with Matt Spahr), Richmond; Matt Spahr, mixed media (collab. with Valerie Molnar), Richmond; Stephen Vitiello, new/emerging media, Richmond; Jack Wax, crafts, Richmond; Paul Ryan, painting, Staunton; Martha Jones, painting, Williamsburg; Charlie Brouwer, sculpture, Willis.   


The juror for the professional awards was  Valerie Cassel Oliver, senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.


Four graduate students won awards worth $6,000 each. They are: Paul Norton, film/video, Arlington; Kathryn Mayes, photography, Mechanicsville; Corey Piper, art history, Richmond; Abbesi Akhamie, film/video, Woodbridge. 


Ten undergraduate students won awards worth $4,000 each. They are: Natalie Abernethy, new/emerging media, Ashburn; Isabel Lee, sculpture, Charlottesville; Donald Boose, new/emerging media, Falls Church; Madeleine Hardy, painting, Falls Church; Emily White, photography, Fork Union; James Heyes, new/emerging media, Newport News; Cassie Williamson, mixed media, Powhatan; John DiJulio, photography, Richmond; Monica Escamilla, photography, Richmond; Kyle Falzone, mixed media, Richmond.
  
In addition, undergraduate student Rachel McGovern, crafts, of McLean was awarded a fellowship worth $2,000 for her final semester.


The juror for the undergraduate and graduate awards was Amy Moorefield, museum deputy director of exhibitions at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Va.


Of this year’s winners, seven artists have received fellowships in the past:
Jack Wax – 2007 Professional fellowship winner
Valerie Molnar – 2007 Graduate fellowship winnerStephen Vitiello – 2010 Professional fellowship winner
Martha Jones – 2011 Professional fellowship winner
Paul Ryan – 2010 Professional fellowship winner
Corey Piper – two-time art history winner
Paul Norton – 2014 Professional fellowship winner


The fellowship funds come from a privately-endowed fund administered by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The Fellowship Program was established in 1940 through a generous contribution made by the late John Lee Pratt of Fredericksburg (the husband of Lillian Pratt, donor of the museum’s Fabergé collection). Offered through the VMFA Art and Education Division, fellowships are still largely funded through the Pratt endowment and supplemented by gifts from the Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation and the J. Warwick McClintic Jr. Scholarship Fund.

Benjamin Abramowitz

Benjamin Abramowitz passed away on November 21, 2011 at age 94 and left a profoundly important legacy of more than 75 years of work.

Lots of information on his life and his more than 7,000 pieces of artwork at www.benjaminabramowitz.com

Trekkies Needed for USS Enterprise Restoration Project

The National Air and Space Museum is looking for Star Trek fans to pass them pre-1976 images or film of the original studio model of USS Enterprise.


Nerds an find more details here, but essentially Trekkies are being encouraged to submit firsthand, original images, or film of the ship under construction, during filming, or on public display at any time before 1976.


For more information about submitting material, contact StarshipEnterprise@si.edu


Live Long and Prosper.

Wanna go draw?

The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) hosts a drop-in “Working from the Figure” session on Fridays, February 5, 2016 and February 19, 2016 from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at CHAW, 545 7^th Street, SE.

Work on drawings or paintings in front of a live model in a session without formal instruction, facilitated by artist Will Fleishell. Please bring your own drawing materials. Easels are available. The session is $15 for drop-in students. For more information, visit www.chaw.org or call (202) 547-6839.

RIP David Quammen

David Quammen passed away yesterday... Some eloquent words about this fixture of the DMV art scene by DMV art critic and artist Kevin Mellema, and at the bottom a painting of Quammen by DMV uber artist Erik Sandberg.

RIP ... We lost Dave today... Folks outside the DC arts community won't know him, but Dave was... Dave was.... well, Dave was Dave.

To say the least, Dave was a unique character. He didn't leave any gas in the tank when he left. We should all be so inspired. 

He entered our lives when he became a figure model posing around the DC area. Later on, he took over the MOCA gallery in Georgetown. 

After years spent around him, there certainty will be no shortage of Dave stories to tell. His epic battles with the MOCA landlord became city wide PR battles gone wild that spilled over into the City Paper. .... They alone were worth the price of admission. This photo, as an example, was done in the midst of one such skirmish. 

But my favorite Dave tale comes from his modeling days before all that.. He was a tenacious model that simply would not give up on a pose no matter how bad it hurt to go on holding it. ...

One night he was on the model stand with another model who had her back to him. She took a fairly simple standing pose, while Dave took a semi-reclining pose akin to the 'Dying Gaul' from the Parthenon... His entire weight held up by one arm for 20 minutes.

Somewhere towards the middle of that, it started to wear on him. Sometimes you bite off more than you can chew, but Dave wouldn't spit it out no matter what. It was a point of pride with him, and we all respected and appreciated such.

Everybody has their limits, and clearly Dave was in well over his head on this one... .. A few more minutes ticked by, and Dave's arm started to give it up for him... By the end of the twenty minutes the entire modeling stand was shaking rapidly from the considerable muscle spasms in Dave's arm.

The buzzer went off, and his torture ended. He sat up, his torso beet red, flush with blood from the exertion. Wiped out, he sat there trying to regain his breath and composure before the call for a new pose... When the other model turned around and said to him... "That wasn't so bad!"... It was a classic line. Couldn't have been more contrast between the average model, and Dave's efforts. Nobody put it all on the line the way he would.

He went on to run MOCA with the same no holds barred gusto....

Underneath the outrageous antics, and occasional irascible episodes, Dave was a genuinely kind and generous man. He prided himself on making MOCA an equal opportunity place for all comers. The art world hates that sort of thing, but Dave stuck to his guns to the bitter end. In some fundamental way, the people were more important to him than the art. He was a curator of people. Nobody could put together a wild collection of people the way Dave could....

It's common to hear people eulogized as 'unique' and 'irreplaceable'. In Dave's case, it's all true. In fact, it's simply unthinkable that we'll see the likes of him again in our lifetimes...

Dave made the DC art scene more colorful, and less buttoned-down boring. We often take **art** as some deathly serious affair. Dave was having none of that, he was all about having fun with it.

We could all do well to remember such, and carry a bit of that with us going forward.... God speed Dave.

                                                                           - Kevin Mellema

Anger. Oil on Canvas, 2009 by Erik Thor Sandberg