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VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition: Round One

RVA Staff | March 7, 2019

Topics: events, mfa thesis exhibitions, round one, RVA ARt, VCU arts

April 5-18, 2019

The MFA Thesis Exhibition is a signature event in the VCUarts annual student exhibition calendar. The 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition will showcase ambitious and challenging works by some of the most talented emerging artists and professionals in the country. Participating departments include: Craft/Material Studies; Graphic Design; Kinetic Imaging; Painting + Printmaking; Photography and Film; and Sculpture + Extended Media.

TICKETS: https://arts.vcu.edu/calendar/event/mfa-thesis-exhibition-round-1-opening-reception-2/

What Happens When A VCU Employee Calls Security On A Black Professor

Brianna Scott | November 5, 2018

Topics: campus security, Police, VCU arts, Virginia commonwealth university

There’s been a recent, yet not new, trend in people calling the police on black. Whether it be for falling asleep in their own dorm, brushing their backpack up against a white woman in a store accidentally, waiting for a business meeting in Starbucks, or having a barbeque at the lake — black Americans have had the police called on them for many reasons.

The latest example: last week at Virginia Commonwealth University, an associate professor in the School of the Arts called campus security on artist and visiting professor Caitlin Cherry. 

Cherry was invited to teach a graduate critical theory seminar course and conduct graduate studio visits for painting and printmaking grad students during the fall semester. She commutes from New York to Richmond every two weeks to teach at VCU. Last week, she was beginning her day by sending out emails, sitting in the adjunct lounge of the Fine Arts Building. The room is code-access only, for faculty, administration, and graduate students.

As Cherry was working, an older, non-black gentleman entered the lounge. 

“I say hello and he sort of comes in, doesn’t do anything, doesn’t verbally acknowledge me and walks back out of the room,” Cherry said. 

Minutes later, campus security arrived to ask Cherry to show her VCU identification card. After providing it, Cherry began to absorb what had happened.

“I left the classroom to walk around, and I saw the same gentleman in a classroom. I realized he was a fellow painting and printmaking professor,” Cherry said. “I didn’t know his name, so I looked at him to make sure I could say who it was. I was going to send an email to the chair of my department and tell him what happened.”

Cherry sent an email to Painting and Printmaking Chair Noah Simblist, who apologized for the incident and said they would look into the matter.

After giving security the name of the man she thought made the call, Simblist confirmed it was associate professor Javier Tapia. The reason why Tapia, a Peruvian-born Associate Professor in VCU’s Painting & Printmaking Department, called campus security is still unknown at this point. Tapia did not respond to RVA Magazine’s requests for comment.

“If I didn’t have my ID on me at the time, it would have been possible that I would have been removed from my own classroom — or removed from the building until somebody identified me,” Cherry said.

“It’s a greater issue of what Javier Tapia had to have thought… To think that not only did I not belong in this locked classroom — but that I wasn’t even given the privilege of looking like a graduate student, or any student in the building. I think he was shocked to find out that I was a visiting professor.”

While Tapia is of Peruvian heritage, there is still a bigger racial issue of non-black people calling law enforcement on black people that must be dealt with. When George Zimmerman killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, many people tried to write off his act as racially motivated because Zimmerman is Hispanic. However, acts of oppression and anti-blackness can be perpetrated by anyone.

After posting about the incident on her Facebook, the response from students, other faculty and friends was swift. Many have e-mailed VCU Equity and Access about the occurrence, demanding that action be taken.

PHOTO: Caitlin Cherry, Facebook

“Later that morning, I started my studio visits and felt like I had to suck up a little bit to continue doing my grad student visits,” Cherry said. “Probably the saddest thing is that I had to walk past the man who called security to go to the bathroom, so there was a moment where I had to use the restroom, and I tried to hold it in so that I could avoid him.”

Cherry is taking this experience as an opportunity to not only foster a dialogue about racial tensions in the School of the Arts, but also put measures in place so that this doesn’t happen to any other professor or student. In a political climate hostile to many minority communities, this is an opportunity for a bigger conversation to take place about the power that other people feel over marginalized groups.

Entitlement over spaces and who can be in them is an issue that America needs to address: because it’s not new, and it’s getting black people killed. While it’s a more extreme version of these situations, the shooting of a black man, Botham Jean, in his own apartment in Dallas, Texas is a perfect example of power and entitlement. If someone can have such a strong sense of ownership that they can claim someone else’s home as their own, then kill them, where are black people safe?

“I think that’s why the response is so strong — not because of what could have happened,” Cherry said, “but the fact that there is anxiety around people in positions of power feeling possessive of spaces that they feel are theirs.”

An email was sent out internally by VCUArts Dean Shawn Brixey informing VCUarts students and staff about the situation at hand. It read:

“In light of a recent event involving individuals in one of our departments, which was reported to the School of the Arts administration on Thursday, October 25, we have asked VCU Equity and Access Services to conduct an inquiry into the matter.”

Cherry is making her formal complaint this week with VCU Administration, and says that both the Chair of Painting and Printmaking and the VCUArts Dean have been supportive.

Top image by Jeff Auth at English Wikipedia, CC by 3.0/via Wikimedia

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect new information regarding the race of the VCU professor in question. 

Fashion, Murder, and Smashed Guitars: VCU Cinematheque Screens Counterculture Classic

Daniel Berti | November 2, 2018

Topics: Blow-Up, Herbie Hancock, Josh Tyree, Michelangelo Antonioni, The Byrd Theatre, The Yardbirds, VCU arts, VCU arts Cinematheque

VCUarts’ Cinema is screening Michelangelo Antonioni’s bizarre counterculture masterpiece, Blow-Up, this Sunday at Grace St. Theater as part of VCU’s fall Cinematheque series. The film was hugely influential at the time of its release in 1966, and was the influential Italian director’s only brush with mainstream success.

The film, based on a short story called “The Devil’s Drool” by Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar, follows a hip London fashion photographer as he embarks on a labyrinthian murder investigation, taking him into the seediest corners of London’s mod underground. 

VCUarts’ Cinema visiting professor and film critic Josh Tyree said that Blow-Up was one of the key films of the 1960s.

“It brought high modernist European filmmaking into a commercial framework,” Tyree said. “It also provided the final nail in the coffin of the already very rickety Hollywood Code, regarding censorship of film content.”

The film was a critical and commercial success, despite its (by mid-60s standards) sexually explicit content. It led major Hollywood studios to abandon the Motion Picture Production Code, which set strict limits on what was acceptable to show in a movie released in the USA, in favor of the MPAA rating system that is used today.

Blow-Up is one of 12 Antonioni films being screened by VCUarts’ Cinema this fall. All the films are being presented in their original format: 35 mm film.

“This series provides focused knowledge not only of Antonioni but also of how his films were designed to be seen, in 35mm projections on large screens as collective movie-going experiences,” Tyree said.

The film’s soundtrack was composed by Herbie Hancock. It also features an outlandish live performance by The Yardbirds in which Jeff Beck destroys his guitar and throws the bricolage into the audience, causing a frenzy.

Antonioni’s classic films were groundbreaking at the time of their release in the early 1960s, and have had far-reaching impacts on the world of cinema. Films like L’Avventura, La Notte, and Il Deserto Rosso questioned traditional storytelling narratives, examining existential and modernist dilemmas of life in post-war Europe.

“He challenges almost every element of what Hollywood tells us makes for a good cinematic story,” Tyree said. “It’s simply impossible to fully understand later works by major global directors across the commercial and arthouse spectrum without studying Antonioni’s classics.”

The department presented two of the films, L’Avventura and Il Deserto Rosso, at The Byrd Theatre in Carytown, Richmond’s oldest operating movie theater. Todd Schall-Vess, general manager of The Byrd, works frequently with Richmond film institutions like VCUarts’ Cinema to bring special screening events to the city.

“We are particularly proud of the partnerships that we have with cinema-based institutions,” Schall-Vess said. “Of course, that would not be complete without our ongoing relationship with VCUarts’ Cinema.”

VCUarts’ Cinematheque provides a unique opportunity for students and the public to see Antonioni’s work on the big screen. This Sunday’s presentation of Blow-Up is free and open to public, and will be shown at 7 p.m. at Grace St. Theater, located at 934 W. Grace St.

“Viewing these films in 35mm color projection on a big screen is a feather in the cap of any cinephile,” Tyree said. “It’s difficult to believe how different this can be until you’ve seen it with your own eyes.”

Rejecting Consumerism with New Media Artist Mitchell Craft

Sarafina Sackey | July 5, 2018

Topics: Black Iris Gallery, new media, VCU arts, video art

Technology for Mitchell Craft isn’t just a form of engineering or applied sciences, it’s a sense of hope and a means for expression.

Craft saw the advantages of technology at a very young age, and wanted to explore that talent. While growing up, he was introduced to making art with technology through his parents and his guitar teachers, Mathew E. White and Scott Burton.

“I decided I’m just going to get all smooth in highschool, pick an art and look cool,” Craft said. “My thought process was I was just bored at school so I should make art at home.”

Craft was working with family friends and other visual artists since childhood, gaining experience, inspiration, and learning what methods and techniques he could use within his own work. He started making his own videos when he was about 13, but as a young child, he worked with family friend, writer and producer of One Ring Zero, Michael Hearst. Another major influence in his career is singer-songwriter, producer, arranger, and founder of Space Bomb Records, Matthew E. White, with whom Craft assisted one of White’s earlier projects, titled ‘Fight the Big Bull.’

As a graduate from VCU, Craft edits his videos by combining 3D programs, creative code, and manipulated videos. He explains this style is categorized as ‘New Media Art.’ The psychedelic images and optical illusions create an uneasy, yet hypnotic viewing experience as his work is both unsettling and captivating.

“Now that I’m out of college, I’m a freelancer,” he said. “So I do videos for artists and I do professional work, as well.”

Much of Craft’s motivation for his work revolves around nature and redundancies in nature, which is clear in his videos that offer repetitive, albeit bewildering, images. He likes to poke fun at our consumerist society that has an overwhelming amount of product output, yet fails to meet our actual needs.

“I think a lot about the continued series and how we buy the same things over and over again,” he said. “When you go to a big department store to buy toothbrushes, and all [you need] is a toothbrush, but there are hundreds of them, that always baffles me. So I’m trying to explore that and make abstract work about it.” Humans replicate redundancies in nature, similar to the repeat appearance of a type of tree, in their daily lives. Craft uses this theme throughout his work.

Despite his current success, Craft has experienced his own surprises outside the redundancies he feeds on. Life experiences bring out different emotions and different perspectives on things. It’s what defines our character even if it means learning how to redo the usual stuff you’re used to. And for Craft, he managed to constantly evolve through fighting the odds.  

“I was in a bike accident about three years ago and I don’t remember it at all,” Craft said. “That’s the crazy part, I only know stories based on what people told me.”

Craft was diagnosed with a serious concussion and experienced amnesia, losing basic motor and cognitive memory skills such as reading an analog clock. It still didn’t stop him from pursuing his long life goal.

I used video-making as a way of communicating how I felt when I didn’t know how to,” he said. “There’s one piece I made called ‘The Shift,’ because of my depression while I was crippled from the bike accident.

Craft’s solo show recently debuted at Black Iris. The show is based on the idea of arbitrary combinations of images and distortions of reality.

He said he was inspired by the grapple (grape-apple) fruit product in some grocery stores. He explained the whole show revolves around the idea of being surrounded by the things we don’t need, like an unnecessary fruit, yet made to feel like we do.

“I think the show is meant to kind of make fun of the idea that we’re just being thrown things we face all the time, saying consume, consume,” he said. “So I just tried to make weird things for people to look at and say, what the hell is this?”

Mitchell Craft Instagram

In the future, Craft wants to do more immersive set-ups. He likes the idea of filling a space entirely with art, and since he works with new media, he wants to work more with interactivity as well as immersion within architecture. As excited he is for what the future holds, he’s also worried about where it may take him.

“My biggest concern is that I’ll have to get a full time job and not have time to go,” he said. “Luckily, I’ve been okay doing freelance so far but you never know what could happen later.”

Craft said he’s learning to “flow with the wind,” wait for what comes next, and not to think too hard about it.

Glave Kocen opens gallery to VCU students for first time with one-nite-only show

Brad Kutner | November 18, 2016

Topics: Glave Kocen, VCU arts

Glave Kocen Gallery will offer their first VCU College Nite Art Sale at their gallery tomorrow night.
[Read more…] about Glave Kocen opens gallery to VCU students for first time with one-nite-only show

Myron Helfgott’s An Inventory of My Thoughts premieres tonight at Anderson Gallery

Marilyn Drew Necci | January 16, 2015

Topics: Anderson Gallery, Myron Helfgott, RVA, VCU arts

Myron Helfgott has been a creative personality in the Richmond arts community since he joined the VCUarts Department of Sculpture in 1968. From his beginnings in Chicago, Illinois and special studies with Buckminster Fuller to exhibiting in Richmond and numerous other spaces throughout the country, Helfgott has continued to produce an impressive body of work even after his retirement from teaching in 2003. Tonight, a retrospective covering over 45 years of his works titled “Myron Helfgott: An Inventory of My Thoughts” opens at Anderson Gallery.

[Read more…] about Myron Helfgott’s An Inventory of My Thoughts premieres tonight at Anderson Gallery

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