Nicholas DiGiovanni Fiction writer, Highland Park, NJ 1954-2018 A six-time VCCA Fellow, Nick DiGiovanni was a fiction writer, essayist, award-winning journalist, blogger and teacher of creative writing. He died on July 13, 2018.   His last residency at VCCA was in February 2018.   We were happy that he was able to be with us one last time.   A collection of essays titled "Man Has Premonition of Own Death," inspired by an ancestor's death in the 1920s and DiGiovanni's own unexpected encounter with serious illness, was published in 2017 by Blue Heron Book Works. His novella “Rip,” a modern-day parody of Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” was published in 2011 by Black Angel Press. He was one of the writers included in “Songs of Ourselves,” the anthology published by Blue Heron Book Works in 2015.   DiGiovanni founded the Delaware Valley Poetry Festival, held annually in western New Jersey from the late 1990s through the late 2000s, which featured many...

From studio to gallery: Amber Hoy's work in process at VCCA and on view at the Triton Museum of Art. Collateral Reparations: Military Veterans and the Healing Power of Artists Residencies , supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, funds VCCA residencies for military veteran artists. The second iteration of the grant supported six Fellows and finished earlier this year. As part of VCCA’s final reporting to the NEA, we caught up with the Fellows and asked about work produced during their time here. Creative writer Odie Lindsey (Nashville, TN) served during the first Gulf War in an Army Reserve unit. He now teaches at Vanderbilt University and was in residence at VCCA in June 2017. While here, he completed the working draft of a novel to be published by W.W. Norton. He also gave a public reading from his story collection We Come to Our Senses as part of a talk about veterans' issues and art therapy at Riverviews Artspace in nearby Lynchburg. Visual artist ...

Judith Cooper, I ván Ferrer-Orozco, and Olive Ayhens at Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus VCCA has partnerships with five international residencies , including  Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus . Each year, VCCA sends two visual artists, one writer, and one composer for a six-week residency (June-mid-July) to the town of Schwandorf in southern Germany. Fellows are housed in the Künstlerhaus, which features private rooms, a shared living area, and kitchen. The four Fellows in Schwandorf this summer, writer Judith Cooper, composer Iván Ferrer-Orozco, painter Olive Ayhens, and photographer Tucker Hollinsworth were featured at the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus Open Studios Day. Read more about them . Judith Cooper was "very productive at this residency, and found the staff to be delightful and supportive." Cooper continues, "There are beautiful walks right in the area, including a castle dating from 1305 and a path that leads past the grounds and into farmlands behind it, and a ...

A beloved sculpture that stands in the VCCA Studio Barn recently sparked a fact-finding mission that ended with a surprising revelation. The Owl by Blanche Dombek At almost 8 feet tall, the large, totem-like sculpture of a barn owl quietly stands sentry at an intersection in the Studio Barn Complex. Next to it, a brass plaque reads, "THE OWL, Blanche Dombek, 1953-1954, Paris, France."   How did a sculpture this large created in 1953 in Paris land here at VCCA, which was founded almost 20 years later and didn’t put down roots at Mt. San Angelo until 1977? Had Dombek been a Fellow? How did this massive piece get here? Blanche Dombek had four long residencies at VCCA in the 1980s. The only information listed in the VCCA database is that The Owl was donated by Dombek in 1984, over 30 years after its creation in Paris.   Google search returns on Dombek are sparse, with the exception that she had a connection to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph Colle...