VCCA has learned the sad news that landscape painter, Joellyn Toler Duesberry died on August 5, 2016 at age 72, died. The cause was of pancreatic cancer. Joellyn was born and brought up in Richmond, Virginia. A summa cum laude graduate of Smith College, she also held an M.A. in art history from New York University’s the Institute of Fine Arts. She received a Woodrow Wilson scholarship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She had two residencies at VCCA in 2009 and 2014. Joellyn became interested in the landscape as a young child while traveling on a train, where she was fascinated by the scenery passing by her window.   Joellyn worked as a fine art appraiser in New York City, painting on the side. Her NEA grant allowed her to focus more time on panting. As her career blossomed, she acquired a second home in Millbrook, New York, where she reveled in the landscape as painter and inhabitant.   Joellyn’s work was featured in many solo and group exhibitions...

While in residence at VCCA, Alexander Lumans was working on a novel inspired by his recent experience at The Arctic Circle Residency.   The three-week program takes place in the international territory of Svalbard, a mountainous Arctic archipelago just 10 degrees from the North Pole, on a traditionally rigged barquentine. The program brings together an international group of artists, scientists, architects and educators to experience this remote area of the world, fostering the creation and exhibition of new and pioneering work inspired by the engagement with this fascinating region.   Alexander’s novel is set on a tall ship with an international crew who’ve been hired by a filmmaker working on climate change documentary . “Things begin to go south pretty quickly when the ship receives a distress signal from another ship in the area that’s lost. The captain decides to go after the lost one; after this stranger things begin to occur—they too become lost and end up havin...

A former Marine, poet, essayist and playwright, Maurice Emerson Decaul was at VCCA on an NEA grant supporting military veteran artists. Maurice, who served in Iraq, divides his time between New York and Providence, RI where he is a graduate student in the Theater and Performance Studies program at Brown University. In February, Maurice was named as the first artist-in-residence at Theater Communications Group (TCG), an organization founded to foster communication between the theater communities in the professional, community and university realms.  Bringing his perspectives as both artist and veteran,  Maurice is tasked with overseeing the launch of the Veterans Theater Institute (VTI), a pilot program for veterans and active military that allows them to experience, study and create theater. The initiative is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Building Demand for the Arts program. VTI will continue and streng...