Professors, students reap benefits of VMFA fellowships
The VMFA Visual Arts Fellowships for 2013-2014 were announced on Tuesday, Feb. 5, and many of the winners were VCU students and professors.
Samantha Foster
Spectrum Editor
VCUarts fiber professor Susan Iverson was awarded her first Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Visual Arts professional fellowship grant this year, after applying since she began teaching at VCU in 1975.
“I think with anything, and I always tell my students this too, different things like this, where there is a different juror every year, there’s going to be a different selection every year,” Iverson said. “If you’re not selected once, you just apply again the next year and the next year and the next year, until you do … get recognized.”
The VMFA Visual Arts Fellowships for 2013-2014 were announced on Tuesday, Feb. 5, and many of the winners were VCU students and professors.
The jurors judge the submitted work based on its artistic merit, not the medium in which it was created. Categories include crafts, drawing, film and video, mixed media, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and art history. Iverson submitted her work in tapestry under the category of crafts for the fellowship.
Yellowstone National Park. Photo courtesy of Mel Kobran
“At the university, we have the ability to make exactly what we want to make in our studio. It’s not necessary for us to sell our work, which allows us to take some bigger risks than some artists working right now, not in an academic position,” Iverson said. “That’s why these grants are so wonderful. It gives people this free money to take some more risks, to do something different.”
The money given for the fellowship must be used to further the artist’s work and creativity, whether that means traveling for inspiration, buying supplies or creating material to give to galleries interested in their work.
Senior photography and film major Mel Kobran was also among the graduate winners for the VMFA Visual Arts fellowship in the category of photography. Her submitted photograph is also featured as the banner on the top of the website for the fellowships.
“I submitted a series of composites from trips I took. The pictures were from a trip to Iceland, a trip to Tangier (Island) and then a trip to Yellowstone (National Park),” Kobran said. Composite images take different elements from pictures and combine them into one.
Kobran intends on using her fellowship funds to travel. “I have a friend who is Syrian and lives in Germany right now, and he’s really in the gay rights movement.”
VCUarts students are often encouraged to apply to VMFA fellowship because it’s free and entry is restricted to Virginia residents. “It’s part of what you do, you get yourself out there and apply for things,” Iverson said. “If I tell my students to do it, it seems like I should do it too.”
The Fellowship Program was established in 1940 through donations and is still largely funded through those donations as well as annual gifts. To be awarded a fellowship grant, the artist must be a Virginia resident and fall into the categories of professional artists, graduate artists or undergraduate artists.
Each year, submissions are reviewed by anonymous jurors in the art community. With the names of the winners, the names of the jurors are also announced.
Fellowship applicants must apply within a certain bracket, including professional artists, non-degree-seeking students, graduate students and undergraduate students. Professional fellowships are awarded $8,000. Graduate fellowships are awarded $6,000 and undergraduate fellowships are awarded $4,000.
