Rob Tarbell’s new work from the   All Ages   and   Failure to Appear series was featured at Decorazon Gallery (London) at SCOPE Miami.     Installation Magazine   has posted an article and video studio visit/interview of Rob by Matthew McLendon, Modern and Contemporary Curator at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art as part of their coverage of Art Basel, Miami. Rob was awarded the 2014/2015 John Ringling Towers Fund Individual Artist Award by the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County for the   Failure to Appear   series. For sometime now, Rob has been using smoke in his work to create lyrical gesture and a mysterious atmospheric quality. Rob uses paper suspended above a flame to take advantage of smoke’s natural inclination to rise. Wearing a flame resistant suit and using a fresh air system with a mask and air hose, he carefully controls the accumulation of smoke on the paper surface. In some works Rob allows the We...

VCCA is very saddened to report the death of its great friend and supporter Robert Reed on December 26, 2014 .  A former VCCA board member and founder and Director of the Institute for Studio Studies at VCCA's the Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France (part of Yale University’s Summer Session), Robert’s "commitment to VCCA in Auvillar helped ensure the success of the program," according to Sheila Gulley Pleasants VCCA Director of Artists Services. Robert's widow, Susan Whetstone, relates that VCCA was "such a crucial part of his being able to pursue his passion to teach studio arts. There was nothing more important to him than "his" program in Auvillar and he counted it as one of his singularly most significant accomplishments."     Robert was a highly regarded member of the faculty of Yale University’s School of Art’s Department of Painting and Printmaking for almost fifty years where he was a beloved professor known for his “tough love” style...

Jennifer Karady ’s long-term photographic project, Soldiers' Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan consists of staged narrative photographs that are collaborations between Jennifer and the veterans she photographs. Before taking the photographs, Jennifer interviews the veterans to pinpoint a moment in war that has stayed with them, following them back into the civilian world. So the photographs present both the memory of war and how that memory has manifested itself in the present — in essence Jennifer is interested in conveying the experience of two realities at the same time, a common occurrence for those returning from war. Accompanying text and audio tells the story in the veterans’ own words. Jennifer’s project speaks to the humanity of the servicemen and women: ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances. Soldiers' Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan was featured on the PBS NewsHour on November 11 in honor of Veterans Day and is currently on view in  In Count...

More good news for N. West Moss whose short story, Omeer's Mangoes , as reported here, won the 2014 Faulkner-Wisdom Award back in the fall. The story has now also won the  Saturday Evening Post's Great American Fiction Contest of 2015. “Omeer’s Mangoes is my first piece of fiction to reach a national audience,” says West. “ The New York Times  published an essay back in 2008, and that was exciting and unexpected. But this is exciting in a completely different way. Having people read my fiction feels much more vulnerable because it is entirely mine in a way that nonfiction skirts.” After receiving her MFA from William Paterson University in 2013, West took a year off to write full-time. The hard work has paid off as West has been mopping up the awards. In addition to the Faulkner-Wisdom and The Saturday Evening Post kudos, she has also won the Diana Woods Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction — for work appearing in such journals as  The Westchester Rev...

Passing Strange at the Hunt Gallery, Mary Baldwin College features new work by Adria Arch on view January 12–30, 2015 . Adria credits her April 2012 residency at VCCA as the reason for the show. It was then that she met Dinah Ryan, also in residence. A critic of contemporary art and visual culture, and an independent curator, Dinah has been she has been a contributing editor for  Art Papers magazine since 1992. Dinah’s husband, Paul Ryan, is the Hunt Gallery’s director . Based in Arlington, Massachusetts, Adria is a mixed-media artist who produces striking compositions that pair strong graphic elements and intense color. There is a purposeful rightness to her compositions despite the fact that Adria incorporates bits of chance in the form of doodles and paint spills: “I look at the edges of things: the eccentric and unpredictable shapes found in unexpected places such as the puddles and pools of spilled paint and the overlooked doodle found in the margins of a no...

Seed saving is a topic Rachel Breen’s explored from a number of different angles over the past four years. The practice preserves heirloom seeds by collecting them and then sowing them, with the goal of keeping the plants in circulation. Seed saving speaks to the very essence of sustainability. In husbanding what we have inherited from the past and passing it onto future generations, we are fulfilling a sacred duty. We’ve all heard about the threat from GMOs, but as Rachel explains there are other factors negatively impacting our agricultural biodiversity. “One of the problems is that we’ve lost a lot of edible plants over the last 100 years,” she says. “Many farms, in their effort to provide a particular kind of tomato or apple to a grocery store, have only planted certain varieties, letting other ones disappear.” Prior to arriving for her VCCA residency, Rachel visited Association Kokopelli, the largest seed saving organization in France, where she made drawings of the see...

Lori Horvitz’s new collection of personal essays: The Girls of Usually, hailed as “Deeply intimate and wickedly funny," will be available February 1, 2015 from Truman State University Press. A professor of Literature and Language at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, where she teaches courses in creative writing, literature, and women, gender and sexuality studies, Lori’s work has appeared in Epiphany, South Dakota Review, Southeast Review, Hotel Amerika, and Chattahoochee Review among others. http://www.lorihorvitz.com/home.html

Adam Grossi is a Chicago-based artist and a yoga practitioner. Having successfully melded the two disciplines, Adam produces work that is a combination of painting, drawing, writing, chanting, breath-oriented movement and contemplation. It sounds incredibly serene and fluid. But things weren’t always that easy. At 21, Adam’s mental health imploded. Blindsided by this calamity, Adam was looking at a grim future. But he managed to navigate the subsequent decade through trial and error, and emerged healthy.   Adam’s account of his experiences, Wind Through Quiet Tensions is being published by The Chicago Perch a creative platform for social exchange in February 2015. Both hand-bound, hardcover (limited edition of 50) and a paperback version are both available for December pre-sale.   Adam is also producing a handsome limited-edition print based on the book's cover. Wind Through Quiet Tensions is divided into two parts...