Belgian-born poet, Colette Inez died in January 2018. Here at VCCA, we mourn the loss of a good friend. This award-winning poet was in residence twelve times from 1983 – 2010.   Inez with her auburn air and bucket hat was a wonderful summer presence at VCCA.   See her tribute to a VCCA hornet in her poem below. Inez was the author of eleven books of poetry and a memoir, and her work was published in over one hundred anthologies and textbooks. She collaborated with several VCCA Fellows, among them Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and VCCA Fellow David del Tredici. Inez and del Tredici produced a song cycle titled Miz Inez Sez for a CD that “may be the best new music album of the year” wrote The New Yorker . At the time of her death, she was collaborating with VCCA composer Gina Biver on a piece that is scheduled to premiere in October 2018. Among her honors were fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, two awards from the National Endowment for th...

Composer Alexander Blank is working on a solo piece for flute. This might seem like enough to fill a residency, but it is not a typical musical score. Much of the music that Blank writes is microtonal, or “using pitches that lie in-between the white and black keys of the piano,” and these explorations have opened up his compositions to literally billions of additional possibilities. Blank uses a natural phenomenon called the  harmonic series  to organize his musical ideas and sound palette. For this piece, Blank looked at the first 64 pitches found in the harmonic series and narrowed that number down to 21 unique pitches that vary in how far “out-of-tune” they sound. He then ordered them “from the highest level of sharp to the lowest level of flat” and placed that range on a gradient colored scale. This visualization assisted him in analyzing the properties of each of the chosen pitches and how they relate to each other in various ways. He calls it “a kaleidoscope of...

Avy Claire has been busy. Mid-way through her residency she moved to a larger space and has ordered paper multiple times while at Mt. San Angelo. The result is a VCCA studio full of work—paintings hanging on the walls and sculptures resting on every flat surface and suspended from the ceiling. Having worked in a variety of mediums, Claire is currently painting, and says,   “For the past few years I’ve been consciously focused on what a brush stroke does in a painting and how I could pare that down and get really spare.” While at VCCA, she has been experimenting with cutting out those brush strokes, wondering what would happen if they became objects that people could experience in three dimensional ways—even by walking around them. To that end, Claire says she has been doing “a lot of tests.” By trying different paper, different weights of paper, and different adhesives, she has created pieces that work on the wall while at the same time have the potential of bein...

Two generations of Harrises and Hesters: Elizabeth Logan Harris, Jordan Hester, Shaun Spencer-Hester, Isabella Ronchetti, Savia Ronchetti, Lyall Forsyth Harris, Frankie Slaughter On Sunday, February 4, 2018, VCCA announced the establishment of a new Fellowship, honoring Anne Spencer, noted poet, teacher, civil rights activist, librarian, gardener, and longtime Lynchburg resident. Made possible by a generous gift from Lyall Forsyth Harris of Charlottesville, VA, Frankie Slaughter of Richmond, VA, and Elizabeth Logan Harris of New York, NY, the Anne Spencer Fellowship will provide an annual residency at VCCA to an African-American visual artist, writer, or composer. During the residency, the Anne Spencer Fellow will engage with the Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation Inc., in Lynchburg, VA. VCCA and guests celebrated the endowed fellowship with a reception at its Mt. San Angelo location. Shaun Spencer-Hester, granddaughter of Anne Spencer and Executive Director of The Anne...

Sarah Coleman, by NYLA Portraits Novelist and journalist Sarah Coleman, a VCCA Fellow in 1999 and 2000, died of ALK lung cancer December 3, 2017 in New York City .  Sarah and Fellows Jenny Krasner, Rachel Cantor, Kylie Heidenheimer, and Allison Jeffrey all met at VCCA in 1999 and remain friends. Sadly, Sarah missed the launch of her first published novel The Realist, A Novel of Berenice Abbott . More about Sarah’s life and her book can be found on her blog the literate lens . Sarah leaves behind her husband Dan Ellis and two children.

Ramiro Hinojosa is the recipient of a VCCA fellowship funded by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of the “Collateral Reparations: Military Veterans and the Redemptive Power of Artists Residencies” program. A native Texan, Ramiro Hinojosa earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University and a Bachelor’s in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Can you tell us a bit about your journey? You’ve been a journalist, a political analyst and researcher, a lecturer and, of course, an infantryman in the U.S. Army.  What turned your focus to writing? It’s funny, I dreaded reading and writing growing up. With some luck and a lot of support, I kind of fell into writing and fiction. In college, I wanted to be a photojournalist, but due to a mediocre portfolio, was put in the multimedia track, which was basically the print track at the time. I was about to graduate, but had no thoughts of really pursuing a newspaper career. One of my professors enco...

In 2017, VCCA lost some longtime and dear Fellows…among them, Ann Birstein, Shirley Nisbet , and Mel Rosenthal . Together they were with us for almost 50 residencies…months and months over the years, they spent time focusing on their creative work…Ann on her novels and memoir, Shirley on her paintings, Mel on his photography.  They shared their work and their lives with us, and they became part of our lives at VCCA. Their work lives on and the memory of their vibrant personalities stay with us. Ann always exhibited a dry wit and a sharp comeback that belied her kindness.  She told wonderful stories of growing up in Hells Kitchen.  She worked hard in the studio, but loved to spend the late afternoon at the VCCA pool and reveled in the rural landscape outside of her native New York. Shirley with her exuberant paintings and amazing stamina despite her physical challenges, encouraged us all with a kind word, a smile and a lilting accent. Her...