Happy 4th!

Today I'm going to thank my parents who had the foresight, strength, and courage to escape the Castro brothers' brutalized island; leave everything behind; leave everything they knew, and raise me as an American.

I am grateful to them.

I am so proud of this nation, and so lucky to be Cuban by ancestry, but American by the grace of God.

Happy birthday USA!

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship program

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship program is a vital source of funding for the visual arts and art history in Virginia.  VMFA is committed to supporting professional artists and art students who demonstrate exceptional creative ability in their chosen discipline and, as such has awarded nearly $5 million to Virginia’s artists since the program’s creation over 70 years ago.

 

The VMFA Fellowship program was established in 1940 through a generous contribution made by the late John Lee Pratt of Fredericksburg, Virginia.  Offered through VMFA Statewide, Fellowships are still largely funded through the Pratt endowment, and supplemented by annual gifts from the Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation and the J. Warwick McClintic, Jr. Scholarship Fund.  The Fellowship program has a long and established history of supporting Virginia’s artistic talent and has helped to further the careers and studies of many distinguished individuals, including recent recipients Rick Alverson of Richmond, Michelle Erickson of Hampton, and Megan Marlatt of Orange.

 

VMFA offers $8,000 awards to professional artists, $6,000 awards to graduate students, and $4,000 awards to undergraduate students.  Applicants may apply in the disciplines of Crafts, Drawing, Film/Video, Mixed Media, New/Emerging Media, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Art History (graduate students only).  All applicants must be legal residents of Virginia and student applicants must be enrolled full-time in degree-seeking programs. Applicants’ works are reviewed anonymously by distinguished jurors and awards are made based on artistic merit.  The deadline for Fellowship applications is Friday, November 7, 2014. 

 

We ask that you please encourage interested students and professional artists to apply. Full eligibility criteria, an application, and a printable PDF flyer can be found at www.VMFA.museum/fellowships. 

An old friend returns

Frida Kahlo in a Picasso Style. Oil on wood, 1980 by F. Lennox Campello

In 1980, as part of a student assignment at the University of Washington School of Art in Seattle, we created multiple artworks "in the style" of masters. As part of my highly documented Fridamania, I painted the above oil of Frida Kahlo in the style of Picasso.

I honestly can't recall when it was eventually sold, but I think it was in my show at Georgetown's Fraser Gallery a decade ago, as that show chronicled what was then 27 years of my obsessive interest in Kahlo (read the Washington City Paper review here)

Anyway, this work just made an appearance, as I was contacted by the new owners, who acquired it at an auction in Florida recently!