VCU alumna awarded for work in sculpture

Who wants to be a millionaire?

How about half a million dollars?

After 13 years, VCU’s Teresita Fernandez, a 1992 MFA graduate, found herself winning exactly that amount-$500,000-for her work as a sculptor known for integrating architecture and the optical effects of color and light to produce constructed contemplative spaces.

“Her stunning career in the past 10 years has won her international recognition as an artist of undisputed power and vision,” said Elizabeth King, a research professor in VCU’s Department of Sculpture who taught Fernandez when she was a student in her classroom. “Teresita’s current work fearlessly tests her powers by widening the gap between an illusion and the visibility of its means.

“She is seeking opportunities to execute works in metropolitan spaces that are already ringing with urban clamor.”

Daniel Scolow, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, which honored Fernandez with her award, said the program awards $500,000 to about 25 people each year. Besides Fernandez, other recipients include a molecular biologist, a pharmacist, a violin-maker, a photographer and a fisherman.

According to Fernandez’s biography posted on the program’s Web site, she earned her BFA in 1990 at Florida International University in Miami before coming to VCU.

“Teresita was a superb, fierce, charismatic graduate student already deeply original in her ideas and way of working,” King said, recalling Fernandez’s MFA thesis show in 1992. She described it as a large, low platform of maybe 25 feet by 12 feet made of a slab of plaster penciled with graphite to look like a floor of small hexagonal ceramic tile.

“It was obviously tile that you couldn’t step onto. Yet, it was fascinating how beautiful the illusion was-like a not entirely scrubbed bathroom floor,” said King, who then served as an assistant professor in the sculpture department.

Teresita Fernandez

1968 Born in Miami
1986-’90 BFA, Florida International University, Miami, FL
1990-’92 MFA, Virginia Commonwealth University
1994 NEA Individual Artist’s Grant, Visual Arts
1994 Cintas Fellowship
1995 National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, CAVA Fellowship
1995 Metro-Dade Cultural Consortium Grant
1997 Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, The Space Program, New York, NY
1997 ARCUS Project, Moriya, Japan
1998 ArtPace International Artist-in-Residence Program, San Antonio, TX
1999 Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award
1999 American Academy in Rome, Affiliated Fellowship
Lives and works in New York

Work Exhibits in:
1992 MFA Thesis Exhibition, The Anderson Gallery
1995, ’96 The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami
1997 The Corcoran Gallery of Art in D.C.

1998 The National Museum Modern Art in Tokyo.
2005 The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia

Biography from Artnet:
http://www.artnet.com/artist/6133/teresita-fernandez.html

Fernandez, 37, lives in New York City and was unavailable for an interview, but the MacArthur Web site acknowledges her other work for creating large-scale constructions, such as a pool, a waterfall and a sand dune stripped of specific context.

“When Teresita won the award, she told the dean that she would only allow two interviews,” said Jacqueline Crebbs, associate dean for development in the School of the Arts. “Those interviews were done with Kreisburg, (the company) who does the school’s PR work, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch.”

Since June 1981, the program has named 707 fellows, typically in September each year.

Scolow said all awards are monetary and each fellowship comes with a $500,000 stipend for the recipient issued in quarterly installments throughout a five-year period.

“We are looking for people who are very creative and pretty extraordinary at whatever it is that they do. Teresita is an extraordinary, fantastic, creative artist,” Scolow said, adding that the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but an investment in a person’s originality, insight and potential. “We’re not looking at the work Teresita has done in the past, but the work she will do in the future.”

According to the MacArthur Foundation, the fellows may use their fellowship to advance their work, engage in bold new work or change the direction of their careers. The fellowship does not expect products or reports from its fellows and does not evaluate recipients’ creativity during the term of the fellowship.

“There is no membership to the program. They just get nominated and they do their own work,” Scolow said. “Every year we invite 100 nominators to the program. About 1,000 individuals are nominated from many fields and many majors. We review their nominations and choose about 25.”

Scolow said the foundation telephones the individuals selected for the award, but the individual doesn’t know who called. Instead, the callers tell them that they’re giving them half of a million dollars, and they won’t have to hear from them again.

The fellowship is a “no-strings-attached” award in support of the people, not projects, he said.

“Nominators serve anonymously and their correspondence is kept confidential,” Scolow said. “Teresita didn’t even know that she was nominated or that she was receiving the award until after I called her up.”

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation identifies itself as “a private, independent grant-making institution dedicated to helping groups and individuals foster lasting improvement in the human condition,” according to information posted on its Web site.