VCCA receives NEA Grants

The VCCA has just been awarded two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Both projects support the core mission of providing residential fellowships to artists and extend the mission to allow those residencies to be offered for no cost to the artist.

One project is a collaboration with Cave Canem, the association of African American poets, founded by VCCA Fellows Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte. This project will provide two-week residencies for seven Cave Canem Fellows in June 2010.

Another project provides fellowships and stipends to four artists of limited financial means and to four artists of minority ethnic heritage. These fellowships will be offered to artists who have never been in residence at the VCCA.

Jacqueline Jones LaMon (left) and Natasha Marin (right), both Cave Canem poets pictured at the VCCA gazebo with Porochista Khakpour (center) during a pilot program at the VCCA in June 2009. (photo by Karen Bell)

Happy Holidays!

VCCA staff members gathered for a holiday lunch at the Briar Patch restaurant on December 15th. We were so happy that Dorothy Johnson and Cora Tabb were able to join us at this festive event. There were seventeen of us around the table.

Happy Holidays to all VCCA Fellows and supporters across the globe!

(photo: left to right: Suny Monk, Dorothy Johnson, and Carolyn Angus; Cora Tabb, Sheila Gulley Pleasants, and Dana Jones;

photo by Barbara Bernstein)

David Licata screens his short film for VCCA Board

Currently in residence in W5, the corn crib, writer/filmmaker David Licata screened his award-winning short film Tango Octogenario at the VCCA Board of Directors meeting last week. On his blog, Licata talks about this experience and the value of a residency at an artists community. "Time and space are the most obvious gifts a residency provides, but just as important is the interaction between artists of different disciplines," says Licata.

VCCA, Hollins and the Valley: Artists Create Connections

Suny Monk, VCCA's Executive Director, and the Roanoke Regional Ambassadors are hosting a reception at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University on November 19, 2009, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, to honor Betty Branch and VCCA Fellows in the region. The event is being held in conjunction with the exhibition "Betty Branch, Through the Crow's Eye, a Retrospective".

Come to celebrate these artists, writers and composers and to learn more about the role of the VCCA in the vital cultural fabric of the Roanoke Valley.

There will be a presentation at 6:15 pm in the Frances J. Niederer Auditorium of the Richard T. Wetherill Visual Art Center, with presentations by visual artist Betty Branch, writer Cathryn Hankla, and composer Jonathan Romeo. Refreshments will be provided.

Please join Suny and regional ambassadors Susan Jennings, Pat and Jim Kermes, Amy Moorefield, Brian Counihan, Eva and Cal deColigny, and Ed Dolinger.

Catch up with fellow Fellows at the VCCA Reunion

2009 VCCA Fellows Reunion

Saturday, November 14

7 p.m.-9 .m.

Community Room at Westbeth

57 Bethune Street, New York, NY

For more information and directions:

http://www.vcca.com/NYreunion.html

VCCA Fellow Helen Benedict's fifth novel, The Edge of Eden, is out today from Soho Press. Inspired by her parents' anthropological field notes, the book is set in 1960, on the tropical Seychelles Islands, a thousand miles off the eastern coast of Africa. Benedict's lush descriptions of life on the islands are  firmly based in the realities of the time. The role of black magic in Seychelles culture, passed down from the country's past as a former slave colony, the decaying culture of British colonialism's last gasp -- these form the background of this witty, sharp and yet heartbreaking novel about a family unraveling and a child's desperate attempts to save it. For more information: www.helenbenedict.com

VCCA Celebrates 20-Year International Exchange on Oct. 17

In 1988, two upstart artist fellowship programs embarked on an experiment. The VCCA, in Amherst, and the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, located in the picturesque Bavarian village of Schwandorf, each agreed to send two of their own artists to be in residence at the other place. In 1989 the first two Americans went to Germany. Twenty years later, 100 artists have traveled back and forth, inspiring exhibitions, translations, concerts, events and other creative collaborations.

The VCCA is celebrating this milestone on Sat., Oct. 17, 2009, with art and music created by these exchange artists. The event, which is free and open to the public, includes a retrospective art exhibition and a concert of music for piano by Bavarian composer Jens Barnieck. The exhibition is open from 3 to 5 p.m. and the one-hour concert begins at 5 p.m. The event takes places in the Fellows Residence building. All art featured in the exhibition is for sale.

Several American and German Fellows, who have participated in the exchange over the years, will attend the event. In addition, the director of the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Heiner Riepl and the organization's board president will be on hand to make remarks.

The VCCA's international exchange program with seven artists communities abroad is the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. And this event is one of the rare opportunities offered to the public to visit the VCCA and meet artists from around the world. 

Image: Untitled Clay Horse, Peter Mayer, 1998, is one of about 40 pieces in the 20-year retrospective exhibit.