VCCA Fellow and Resident Director of the Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, Cheryl Fortier just completed five weeks at Mt. San Angelo. Cheryl is known for her love of nature and her evocative and poetic paintings of water. In these works, Cheryl deftly conveys the way water looks in its myriad states, while masterfully capturing its elemental wateriness. While at VCCA, Cheryl found herself moving away from water for the most part, painting a striking series of interior views of other Fellows' studios after they'd been vacated. Not surprisingly, the paintings all have a watery quality. This is particularly noticeable in the view of a desk before a window, where sprightly brushstrokes and the play of light and shadow on the floor seem to suggest a limpid pool. Part of the works’ appeal is their large scale and the scaled down compositions which allow us to focus on color and technique and to admire wonderful little passages: a pair of rubber gloves, eyeglasses on a shelf, pain

Prilla Smith Brackett’s paintings will be featured together with Amy Ragus’s photographs in Fractured Visions  curated by Michele Cohen at the DanforthART Museum in Framingham, MA through May 15. Prilla approaches landscape conceptually employing fragmentation and the insertion of random objects that resonate with meaning to amplify the work’s effect. http://prillasmithbrackett.com/

Jackie Hoysted’s work is included in Ne Pas Sourire  at the Arts Club of Washington through March 28. Curated by Christopher With, the exhibition also includes the work of Sandra Gober and Blair Jackson.  Jackie’s portraits are both intense psychological studies and visually arresting compositions of color and line. Her models are positioned against a richly hued monochrome. Jackie pares the figure down allowing the focus to zero in on the deeply expressive faces. http://jackiehoysted.com/

Treehouse , a solo exhibition featuring new paintings by Josette Urso will be on view at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York. Josette’s works have densely packed surfaces of delicate marks, swirling brushstrokes and blocks of vivid color. Her abstractions reference landscape, still life, and views of New York City where she lives. An intuitive painter, Josette explores our perceptions of time and space. The works “seek to reflect multiple moments occurring at once in order to comment on a live experience. An endless stream of information is constantly projected at a person from all directions; Urso’s work acts as a filtering of the physical, thoughtful, auditory, visual and even technological stimuli that we interact with at any point in time.” Josette received her MFA in Painting from the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her work has been exhibited widely including the New York Public Library, The Drawing Center, and the Bronx Museum for the Arts. She has been awarded

Allan Rosenbaum’s Binary a solo exhibition presented in conjunction with Lively Experiments: the 49th annual conference of the National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts in Pawtucket, RI March 25-28, 2015. Opening Reception: Friday March 27, 6-9 pm. “Currently, I am exploring the idea of the binary in a series of sculptures and constructed drawings,” says Allan.  “I am particularly interested in the physical aspects of constructing these works and I develop my palette in this series through material choice and construction. “I hope to call attention to structural nuances, to raise questions about the relationship between sculpture and drawing, and to create work that explores the notion of beauty outside of classical standards and cultural expectations.”  The exhibition explores the area between drawing and sculpture with epoxy clay sculptures that are mounted on the wall casting shadows that provide a visual echo underscoring the piece's form.

Poet and sound artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs was awarded a 2014 Fellowship in Poetry from the NEA along with a month-long residency at  Headlands Center for the Arts where she will be beginning April 27. “You have no idea what this means to me given I've been in a such a mental funk,” says LaTasha. “This will provide some time away from New York to focus soundly on new and on-going work. It also grants me the opportunity to travel to a handful of places for research. So I guess the universe is saying I'm doing alright even when I don't always understand this path taken. What is clear is that many hands, eyes and spirits are holding me up and pushing me forward on this path. For that I am humbled and grateful.” Latasha works is a hybrid of sounds and words incorporating many languages, including Japanese, Spanish, Hindi, Welsh, and Maori. Her highly acclaimed first collection of poems, TwERK  (Belladonna* 2013), has been called “a dope jam of dictions” by poet Terra

Jeannette Rogers reports that  A dozen of her translations will appear in Grains of Gold: An Anthology of Occitan Literature (part of Francis Boutle Publishers’  Lesser Used Languages of Europe  series). The anthology, which features Occitan writing from the 11 th century to the present, has already received PEN England’s translation award.  A Romance language spoken in southern and south-central France, the Val d’Aran in northeastern Spain, and a small part of northwestern Italy, Occitan is closely associated with the troubadours, composers of courtly lyric poetry of the 12 th and 13 th century.  

Colleen Kiely   work has been included in  MDC , a limited-edition book published as in honor of legendary Italian born poet, curator and critic Mario Diacono who typically displayed a single work in his Boston gallery. Diacono’s projects which entailed renowned international artists were accompanied by detailed and complex critical essays. Artist Luisa Rabbia conceived of and coordinated the project, with the support and sponsorship of Luigi Maramotti of the Collezione Maramotti. The book, which takes the form of a large Moleskin sketchbook will be published by  Edizioni del Pareto. One hundred artists whose work Dizcono supported over the years, including Collen, are each contributing a double-page drawing. Participating artists include Jules de Balincourt, Huma Bhabha, Richmond Burton, Francesco Clemente, Ann Craven, Frank Egloff, Eric Fischl, Peter Halley, Nicky Hoberman, Matthew Day Jackson, Alex Katz, Annette Lemieux, Luisa Rabbia, Matthew Ritchie, Jes

The Orange-and-White High-Heeled Shoes , a poem by Ellen Bass, is featured in the March 30, 2015 issue of The New Yorker , which also includes a link to her reading the poem on it’s online version. Ellen’s work has been published in The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Progressive, The Kenyon Review and many other journals. Among her awards for poetry are a Pushcart Prize, the Elliston Book Award, the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, the Larry Levis Prize from Missouri Review, and the New Letters Prize. Her books of poetry include The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) which was named a Notable Book of 2007 by the San Francisco Chronicle and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) which won the Lambda Literary Award. Ellen teaches in the M.F.A. program at Pacific University and in prisons in California. Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) is her most recent book of poems.

Joshua Zeman reports that he surpassed his Kickstarter campaign goal of $300,000. The funds raised will support an expedition to find “52, the loneliest whale in the world,” and also help raise awareness over the growing scourge of ocean noise pollution which affects the welfare of marine mammals across the globe. Funding beyond the goal will go into production of the film. Josh’s  52 The Loneliest Whale  is a feature length documentary that tells the story of a whale, which has a call of a pitch that is a much higher frequency (52 Hz) than that of the other whale species with migration patterns that most closely resemble this whale's. Described as the loneliest whale in the world, the mammal has been detected regularly in many different locations since the 1980s. Josh has been creating independent films for over ten years. His directorial debut, the horror documentary  Cropsey , was a critic’s pick with The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Roger Ebert, and called