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| Photo: Andy Lock VSW artist-in-residence 2006 |
Please join us for our sixth VSW silent auction benefit and holiday party on Friday, December 8, from 6 to 9 pm in the Gallery. As in previous years, there will be good food and beverages, and plenty of artwork. You can bid on high quality photographs, prints and bookworks offered at prices far below their market value. Among the highlights are works by notable artists such as Brad Freeman, Douglas Holleley, Keith Johnson, Andy Lock, Joan Lyons, Philip Zimmermann, Janet Zweig and many others. Tickets are $15 for the general public and $5 for students. For more information, contact Kris Merola at workshops@vsw.org. |
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Tate Shaw, a teacher in the MFA Program and recent VSW graduate, received the award for Best Book exhibited at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center’s Ninth Biennial Book Arts Fair & Conference in Silver Spring, MD, last month. Shaw’s book, Ordinary Curtains, is the third title from Preacher’s Biscuit Books, a publisher of artists’ books in Rochester, NY. VSW press also had a busy fall producing two new titles, Ansel Adams|New Landscapes by Luke Strosnider and The Genetically Modified Foods Cookbook by Christine Chin. Both are excellent examples of the impact of digital photography on the art of photography. |
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Afterimage has been nominated for a 2006 Utne Reader award for Arts Coverage. The winners will be announced in the January 2007 issue of Utne Reader. In September, Afterimage published a special double issue on "Art & Activism," which has been very well received (and much talked about) in the media arts world. The new November/December issue, on newsstands now, contains even more exciting content including WJT Mitchell on the iconic Abu Ghraib images, as well as features on "The [Bertolt] Brecht Effect" and the work of multimedia artist Annette Barbier. Afterimage also recently received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to update our Web site and move toward a more dynamic and interactive presentation of content. |
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VSW's Media Education committee recently hosted "A Call to Action: Media Education in our Community," an event that brought together educators and cultural leaders in the Rochester area to discuss the needs and possibilities of media education. Jody Siegle, executive director of the Monroe County School Boards Association, Van White, board member of the Rochester City School District, and G. Rollie Adams, Director of the Strong National Museum of Play, were in attendance. The meeting was a preliminary step toward creating a Greater Rochester Media Education Collaborative. This consortium of educational institutions and agencies will provide critical information, programs, exhibits, education and training to ensure that the children, parents and area teachers are media literate. |
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The research center is undertaking an advanced digitization project to create an online resource to promote research, study and access to its important collection of artists' books and independent press publications. The project is in collaboration with Artists' Book Online of the University of Virginia. The VSW archive, certainly the largest of its kind in Upstate New York, will add a range of unique titles from the fields of artists' books, photography, experimental and found poetry, and media criticism. When finished, the digital library will not only help preserve artists’ books but also point out their continued relevance in a digital age. Chris Burnett, VSW director, and Tate Shaw, project coordinator, attended training workshops in Virginia to kick off the project. |
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The research center has received a significant bequest of photographs and digital prints from the estate of Esther Parada (1938-2005). Parada created intricate photo-composites to interweave fragments of her family history and later used digital technology to reflect on historical and cultural representations of power, especially concerning relationships between the United States and Latin America. The collection represents each phase of her artistic development, including early work (pre-1971), Past Recovery (1979), The Monroe Doctrine & Option/Shift (1988-89), Native Fruits & Variations (1991/2000), and When the Bough Breaks (2004). |
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Photographs from the Maier Collection, received last year, are on display on the experimental Web site, The 3rd Effect. The project originated with members of the art department of the University of Central England, Birmingham, UK, and explores what happens when any two photographs are juxtaposed - without captions, titles or any other textual clues. Our pairings use historical images in a way inspired by the American historian and photographic archivist, Paul Vanderbilt, who encouraged making combinations of unrelated images to suggest an unexpected line of interpretation. |
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