Blacksburg artist Truman Capone, a professor emeritus and former director of Virginia Tech’s School of Visual Arts, had works “Chromatmos I” and “Chromatmos II” selected for “SMALL WONDERS, Piccole Meraviglie,” a juried show that took place at LINEA Spazio Arte Contemporanea (the LINEA Contemporary Art Space) in Florence, Italy from April 20 to May 4. Though being selected for the show was an honor in its own right, the show’s jury awarded Capone the grand prize, full participation in the Florence Biennale, to be held Nov. 30 to Dec. 8 in the Fortezza da Basso. Capone’s art competed against artists from 20 other countries.

According to a bio provided by Tech, Capone received his bachelor’s degree from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree from Virginia Tech, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Radford University.

From my Inbox to you:

Hollins Writers Karen Osborn and Shelby Smoak Win Gold IPPY Awards

 

Karen Osborn, this year’s Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University and a 1979 Hollins graduate, and Shelby Smoak M.A. ’99  have each received a 2013 Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal for their latest work.

The “IPPY” Awards, launched in 1996 and designed to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers, honored Osborn in the Popular Fiction category for her novel, Centerville (West Virginia University Press), and Smoak took top prize in the Autobiography/Memoir III (Personal Struggle/Health Issues) category for Bleeder: A Memoir (Michigan State University Press).

Set in the summer of 1967, Centerville (which shared the gold with All the Dancing Birds by Auburn McCanta) is the story of how the bombing of a small Midwestern town’s drugstore alters the lives of the community’s residents. The book is based on an incident that occurred during Osborn’s own youth and explores how a small town copes with a senseless act of violence.

Osborn is the author of three other novels: Patchwork, Between Earth and Sky, and The River Road. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in journals nationwide, including The Southern Review, Kansas Quarterly, Clapboard House, Poet Lore, Wisconsin Review, New England Watershed, and The Centennial Review. Her grants and awards include fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and a Notable Book of the Year Award from The New York Times.

In Bleeder, Smoak, a hemophiliac, discovers at the start of his college career that he has been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion. This devastating news leads him to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness is perpetually just around the corner.

Smoak’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in journals and magazines such as Northern Virginia Review, Clues, Cucalorus, Juice, The Crutch, New Thought Journal, Cities and Roads, and Coastal Plains Poetry.

Nelson Gallery, a nine-member artist co-op in Lexington, is putting out a call for submissions for its 14th Annual Juried Show, prizes for which include a $1,000 Best in Show award. Other prizes include a Members’ Choice Award of a solo Nelson Gallery show in 2014.

The juror is painter Langdon Quin, a Washington & Lee University alum who is a professor emeritus of painting and drawing at the University of New Hampshire.

There’s an entry fee of $30 for up to three digital submissions. The deadline is June 11. For more information and to download a prospectus, visit www.Nelson-Gallery.com or call (540) 463-9827.

The prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock and others, has inducted two Hollins University creative writing program graduates into its ranks: U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey and 1975 Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Trethewey earned her master’s degree in creative writing at Hollins in 1991, and returned last spring to serve as the 2012 Louis D. Rubin writer-in-residence. In the summer the Library of Congress chose her as the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate. Her collection “Native Guard” won the 2007 Pulitzer for poetry.

Dillard is a member of the Hollins class of  ’67 and earned her M.A. in Creative Writing in ’68.

The two authors are in intriguing company. From the Academy press release:

In the Humanities and the Arts, new members include: novelist Martin Amis; novelist and essayist Wendell Berry; philosopher David Chalmers; director and actor Robert De Niro; Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Annie Dillard and U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey; actor Sally Field; Michael Fishbane, a scholar of Jewish studies; operatic soprano Renée Fleming; jazz musician Herbie Hancock; documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles; French history scholar Sarah Maza; linguist David Perlmutter; artist Judy Pfaff; Stuart Schwartz, a leading historian of colonial slavery; artist Yoshiaki Shimizu; and singer-songwriters Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen.

From Sunday’s column:

Roanoke College’s Olin Hall Galleries has 66 works of art on display by 44 artists with regional connections in the 2013 Juried Biennial Exhibition.

Held every two years, the Biennial serves as the Roanoke Valley’s principal juried art exhibit. The Biennial is open to artists who live within a 150-mile radius of Roanoke College.

Margot Norton, curatorial associate at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, judged this year’s show. First place went to Blacksburg artist Travis Head for his drawing “Reading List Yeah!” Head received $500 and will have a solo exhibition in the college’s Smoyer Gallery during the 2013-2014 exhibition season. The $300 second prize went to Roanoke artist Brett LaGue’s “Parting on Cordial Terms” and the $100 third prize went to Roanoke artist Melissa Humphrey’s “Iceblink.” Roanoke artist Deborah Dreyer and Christiansburg artist Jeffrey Rowland received $50 honorable mentions.

The show, which takes up both the Olin and Smoyer galleries, will remain up until April 5. Gallery hours are 1 to 4 p.m. daily, excluding holidays. For more information, call 375-2332 or visit roanoke.edu/olingallery.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

From my Inbox to you:

Radford University alum Shaun Whiteside was awarded ‘Best in Show’ for his painting ‘Rise’ at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art’s “New Waves 2013″ exhibition. The group exhibition will feature Whiteside’s painting until April 28th.

Shaun C. Whiteside works with acrylic paint in a style most influenced by Abstract Expressionism, with an emphasis on the metaphysical and emotional realm, rather than on optical reality. Using several layers of thin glazes, partially washed away, he creates oppressively dense atmospheric environments, with biomorphic, liquid shapes within them. Whiteside graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts from Christopher Newport University in 2007, and received his Master of Fine Arts at Radford University in 2011. He has recently been awarded both a Best in Show at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center’s 2010 Biennial Exhibition, as well as a 2011-2012 VMFA Fellowship grant, and his works are in several private collections across Virginia.

Whiteside’s work explores the metaphysical realm of emotionality through a painting and drawing process that employs physical forces.  By working on vertical, horizontal, or slightly inclined surfaces, the artist uses gravity itself as a medium to develop imagery that is directed by natural law.  Water erosion and sedimentation also determine parts of the visual outcome, as pigments are swept away from certain areas, and deposited in others where water accumulates and evaporates.  Whiteside uses the visual forms that develop to depict emotional forces and energies that are unseen very real powers in the world. Read more »

Any thoughts on this year’s Oscar nominations? Let me know in the comments.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Steven Spielberg has matched his personal best at the Academy Awards: 12 nominations for his Civil War saga “Lincoln,” including best picture, director and acting honors for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

That ties the 12 nominations for his 1993 drama “Schindler’s List,” which won seven Oscars, including best picture and director.

Also among the nine nominees for best picture Thursday: the old-age love story “Amour”; the Iran hostage thriller “Argo”; the independent hit “Beasts of the Southern Wild”; the slave-revenge narrative “Django Unchained”; the musical “Les Miserables”; the shipwreck story “Life of Pi”; the lost-souls romance “Silver Linings Playbook”; and the Osama bin Laden manhunt chronicle “Zero Dark Thirty.”

“Life of Pi” surprisingly ran second with 11 nominations, ahead of “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Les Miserables,” which had been considered potential front-runners.

“I thought we’d get a few, so this is really great for us,” said “Life of Pi” director Ang Lee. “Eleven really surprised me. But it’s a good surprise. I’m very happily surprised.”

More surprising were snubs in the directing category, where three favorites missed out: Ben Affleck for “Argo” and past Oscar winners Kathryn Bigelow for “Zero Dark Thirty” and Tom Hooper for “Les Miserables.” Bigelow was the first woman ever the win the directing Oscar for 2009′s “The Hurt Locker,” while Hooper won a year later for “The King’s Speech.”

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Need a break from the election coverage? Here’s one. Mara Eve Robbins of Floyd County won an essay contest in Real Simple magazine with this heartfelt account ofhow her 3-year-old daughter gave her the will to live after her husband’s sudden death. She and the Real Simple editorial staff have graciously allowed us to reprint the complete essay (click here to read):

I stood at the kitchen sink for a long time, water spilling over the kettle and splashing on my hand before I snapped back from wherever I had just gone.

Half the time I did not know where I was. Half the time I forgot what I was doing. You, my 3-year-old daughter, were the only person who could keep me focused, who could remind me of what was real.

Mara also shared the story behind the essay with me for the accompanying news article I wrote (click here to read):

When did you first understand the meaning of love?

Faced with that question, Mara Robbins knew what her answer would be. The moment she found something to live for after her husband’s sudden death left her adrift.

“It was something I had to write,” she said. “As soon as I saw that, that moment was in my head.“

The Taubman Museum of Art will give its Ann Fralin Award this year to acclaimed and occasionally controversial Lexington photographer Sally Mann.

Mann is a three-time recipient of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a Guggenheim fellow, with works in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York – but she said that recognition in her home state is still important to her.

“I’m a pretty die-hard, dedicated Virginian,” she said. “It’s nice to be embraced by my own.”

She added wryly, “It matters to me that I’m still welcome here, troublemaker that I am.”

Mann, 61, will receive the statuette, a replica of Roanoke sculptor Betty Branch’s “Isabel,” at the Taubman Museum’s annual Women’s Luncheon, which starts with an 11:15 a.m. reception Nov. 12.

The award is named after philanthropist Ann Fralin, who worked to improve the Taubman’s collection in the days when it was known as the Art Museum of Western Virginia.

The museum wanted to recognize Mann’s “vision, commitment to and support of the arts, education and the quality of life in our community, and beyond,” wrote Taubman Vice President of Institutional Advancement Kim Williamson in an email.

“Sally Mann’s work has been controversial at times, but always influential,” Williamson wrote. “She is a renowned artist whose work is personal, poignant and powerful. That’s what makes her so great.

“We are thrilled to be able to recognize a regional artist who has made an impact on a national level in the arts.”

Click here to read the rest of the column.

The Taubman Museum of Art’s 8th annual Women’s Luncheon takes place Nov. 12. This year, the fund raising event will honor acclaimed (and in the past, controversial) Lexington photographer Sally Mann with the Ann Fralin Award.

Time Magazine wrote about Mann in 2001: “Few photographers of any time or place have matched Sally Mann’s steadiness of simple eyesight, her serene technical brilliance and the clearly communicated eloquence she derives from her subjects, human and otherwise—subjects observed with an ardor that is all but indistinguishable from love.”

Taubman Museum volunteer Pat Bratcher will receive the Art Venturer Award. The guest speaker is Nina Simon, executive director of the Museum of Art & History at the McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA. Simon is the author of The Participatory Museum.

Seats for the posh luncheon are $100, for a table $1200. Click here for more information.