ArtSake

Here’s the latest installment of Fellows Notes, the current news of past fellows/finalists from our Artist Fellowships Program.

From the looks of it, the new year will be rich with great art!

Peter Brown (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06) reads from his new short story collection A Bright Soothing Noise at Brookline Booksmith, on Tuesday, January 11, 7 PM. The collection, which won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, is about characters struggling to realize their own pieces of the American dream.

Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky aka TRIIIBE (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09) have their New York City debut in a show at DODGE Gallery, January 8 – February 13, 2011.

Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ’08) is the new director of the Advanced Seminar at The Frost Place, a poets’ residency and educational center in New Hampshire.

Beth Galston (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’84) unveils a new public art project this month, Serpentine Fence. Three years in the making, this permanent sculpture is a 120-foot-long serpentine fence made of stainless steel and translucent purple metal mesh, with special lights at night. The project has involved a collaboration between the City of Boston Parks Department, JP Centre/South Main Streets, Ray Dunetz Landscape Architecture, Solutions in Metal (Fabricator), Ron Marini (Contractor), and the artist, supported by grants from The Browne Fund.

In April 2010, Ralf Yusuf Gawlick (Music Composition Fellow ’09) premiered Kinderkreuzzug, a large-scale work for children’s voices and small chamber ensemble (read an ArtSake post about the work). Musica Omnia has released a CD of the powerful cantata, which adapts Bertolt Brecht’s extraordinary poem about a group of orphaned children on a crusade to find a land of peace.

Michael Hoerman (Poetry Fellow ’04) will read on February 4 for Dire Literary Series at 106 Prospect Street, Cambridge, at 8 p.m. Joining Michael are poets Carissa Halston and John Hodgen.

Eric Hofbauer (Music Composition Fellow ’09) was recently featured in an interview/solo set on BBC’s Jazz on 3 radio show. In it, he played several pieces from his American Fear solo recording.

Congratulations to Sharon Howell (Poetry Fellow ’10), who recently learned that her poetry collection has been accepted for publication by Pressed Wafer Press – details to come!

Jan Johnson (Drawing Fellow ’10) is one of the artists exhibiting in A woman’s work is never done, at the A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. The show, curated by Susanne Altmann, includes work by women from throughout the country (and world). The art focuses on diverse artistic approaches and blends “the personally meaningful with a close and objective eye toward cultural observation” (read more). The show runs at January 5-January 30, 2011. See images of the exhibition on A.I.R. Gallery’s Facebook page.

Caroline Klocksiem‘s (Poetry Fellow ’08) poem No cracked earth was recently featured in the poetry journal Leveler. Also, two of her poems appear in Super Arrow, issue three.

Jane D. Marsching‘s (Photography Finalist ’03) work Ice Out an edition of 5 “hybrid prints,” is on exhibit at Ningyo Editions in Watertown, through January 15, 2011. The work draws on wind data during “ice out” days (90% melt of pond ice), using data drawn today via specially created software (co-written with Matthew Shanley) and from Thoreau’s 1847 almanac. This piece includes a video with choreographer/dancer Sarah Baumert.

Todd McKie (Painting Finalist ’08) has a solo exhibition of collages and of paintings on found wooden panels at Victoria Munroe Fine Art in Boston, January 13 – February 26, 2011.

Rachel Mello (Painting Finalist ’10) has a solo show of cut-silhouette paintings, wood-block prints, and print collages at Club Passim/Veggie Planet in Cambridge, MA. The show runs through January 21.

Nathalie Miebach (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09) has a solo show opening this month at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton. Changing Waters is the largest installation Nathalie has build so far, a 27-foot long wall piece and four 10-foot long sculptures. The installation looks at the interaction between ocean and weather systems in the Gulf of Maine, integrating both data from off-shore buoys and weather stations as well as some of the rich fishing history. It’s fantastical, theatrical and numerical. The installation will be on exhibit January 15, 2011 – September 25, 2011, with an opening reception February 27, 2011, 2-5 PM.

Koji Nakano (Music Composition Finalist ’09) has had a fortuitous run since receiving his MCC award. In 2011, in conjunction with a University of California/Davis lecture, his work Ancient Songs will be performed at Chapman University (Jan. 14), University of California at San Diego (Jan. 20), and the Hong Kong Arts Centre (March 6). In 2010, Mr. Nakano received a MetLife Creative Connections Grant from Meet The Composer to support the premiere of Time Song III: Reincarnation “The Birth of a Spirits” at the Pacific Rim Music Festival. It was subsequently performed in Seoul, Korea, and Taipei, Taiwan. Two film/music collaborations with filmmaker Tiffany Doesken premiered in 2010: Unspoken Voices-Unbroken Spirits for Audio Visual at the 2010 ISCM World New Music Days in Sydney, Australia, and Looking at a Dancing Apsara through Rectangular Prisms at the Interactive Creative Forum. In the fall of 2010, the multi-media concert Music, Dance and Film: Innovation and Tradition in the Works of Koji Nakano was presented as part of the Annual Music and Performing Arts at Burapha University in Bangsaen, Thailand (see image above). Also in 2010, Mr. Nakano received a residency fellowship from the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, an ASCAPlus Award, and the White Flowers Residency for Composers from Yaddo. In the fall of 2009, Ensemble Reconsil Vienna gave the world premiere of his Scattered Clouds/Dramatic Sky as part of Composers Forum in Mittersill (recorded on CD KOFOMI #14 from Ein_Klang Records).

Monica Raymond‘s (Playwriting Finalist ’07, Poetry Finalist ’08) essay Notes on “Collateral Damage Noted” (about Mobius member Tom Plsek‘s sound meditation commemorating Iraqi civilian deaths in the current war) was published at qarrtsiluni.com in December. Also, her poem Dreaming the World was a prize winner in Old Father William’s Frabjous and Curious Poetry contest for poems influenced by Lewis Carroll, sponsored by Caffeine Theater in Chicago.

Anna Ross (Poetry Finalist ’10) has poetry in the Fall/Winter 2011 issue of the journal Barrow Street.

Eric Henry Sanders‘s (Playwriting Fellow ’09) play Reservoir had its world premiere at The Drilling CompaNY Theatre in New York, November 4 -24th, 2010 – read a terrific review in the New York Times. The run has been so successful that it’s been extended for an additional eight shows: January 6-16, 2011. You can read about the play’s development (as well as hear an excerpt performed by Company One) on ArtSake.

Adam Schwartz (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’10) reads from his new novel A Stranger on the Planet (an excerpt of which won him an MCC fellowship) at Brookline Booksmith on Thursday, January 27, at 7 PM. Next month, he joins poet Dan Chaisson for a reading at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Wednesday, February 9, 7 PM.

In The Guardian, Annie Proulx gives Salvatore Scibona‘s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06) The End a great review, calling it “an outstanding work in all the right ways.”

Peter Snoad‘s (Playwriting Fellow ’09) new full-length farce, Identity Crisis, winner of the 2010 New Play Festival at Centre Stage in Greenville, South Carolina, will receive a workshop production there from January 13-22. Also this month, his short play My Name Is Art will run at the Short and Sweet Festival in Sydney, Australia (January 5-February 20). Recently, his play The Greening of Bridget Kelly was performed at the Roy Arias Studios in Manhattan by 3 Road Productions as part of its “Blood Bond” series of new plays.

Julia Story (Poetry Finalist ’10), who recently won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award for her prose poetry collection Post Moxie, is entertainingly interviewed on the Ploughshares blog by another past MCC awardee, Simeon Berry (Poetry Fellow ’06).

Cam Terwilliger (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) was recently named the Associate Fiction Editor at West Branch, and his short story “The Kingdom” was a finalist for Narrative‘s “People Under 30″ contest.

Daniel Tobin (Poetry Finalist ’10) reads from his new poetry collection Belated Heavens at Brookline Booksmith on Tuesday, January 25 at 7 PM.

Rachel Perry Welty (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09, Drawing Fellow ’04) will have a solo exhibition at deCordova Sculpture Park + Museum in Lincoln, called Rachel Perry Welty 24/7. A 68-page fully illustrated catalogue/artist book has been created in conjunction with the show, which runs January 29 – April 24 with an opening on February 5, 2011. By the way, Rachel recently had a solo show of work at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, which received a nice blurb in The New Yorker.

Jeff Zimbalist‘s (Film & Video Fellow ’05) much-lauded documentary The Two Escobars just received another laud: it was named Best Documentary of 2010 by Sports Illustrated!

Past Fellows Notes

Dec. 2010

Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.

Images: Image from a portrait concert of work by Koji Nakano as part of the Annual Music and Performing Arts Festival at Burapha University in Thailand on November 17, 2010; CD cover image for KINDERKREUZZUG by Ralf Gawlick (Musica Omnia 2010); Todd McKie, FRUIT BOWL (2007), flashe on canvas, 40×30 in, photo by Bill Kipp; poster for IDENTITY CRISIS, a play by Peter Snoad, performed by Centre Stage Theatre; cover art for BELATED HEAVENS by Daniel Tobin (Four Way Books, 2010).

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Since mid October, the artists collective TRIIIBE (Alicia, Kelly, and Sara Casilio and Cary Wolinsky) have been creating an ever-evolving installation at Boston University’s cavernous 808 Gallery space, called In Search of Eden. You have one more weekend to join the search: the artists, who received an MCC Sculpture/Installation fellowship in 2009, will continue the installation until December 23. (You can watch an audio slideshow exploring TRIIIBE’s work, created by Boston University.)

Cate McQuaid’s admiring review in the Boston Globe explains the two parts of TRIIIBE’s “witty, luscious exhibit”: the photographic narratives and the public living room. In the photographs, the identical Casilio triplets “appear in richly designed narratives as different characters with identical faces, a conceit that tickles and prods our perceptions and beliefs about personal identity.”

In the living room section, where exhibition goers are encouraged to lounge and visit, the “squarish” room is painted to resemble a dome from the perspective of people within it.

In Search of Eden is a deeply collaborative project, including visits by musicians and dancers whose performances spontaneously play off aspects of the exhibition. This Saturday, December 18, 2-3 PM, there will be a performance of INSTADANCE, an on-the-spot dance choreographed and danced by the attending group of “non-dancers” (though if you’re an actual dancer, you won’t be turned away). The dance will be based on everyday gestures, matched with 3 different pieces of music.

After Eden closes, TRIIIBE’s search as artists continues: they’ll have their New York City debut in a show at DODGE Gallery, January 8 – February 13, 2011.

Images: playbill for IN SEARCH OF EDEN; TRIIIBE creates the public living room in IN SEARCH OF EDEN.

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We compile a monthly list of presentations, honors, publications, and events featuring past and present MCC Artist Fellows & Finalists. As you’ll see, the news is good – not just about these award-winning artists, but also about the breadth and vitality of contemporary arts throughout the Commonwealth.

Two past Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellows will read from their respective short story collections as part of the Blacksmith House Reading Series in Cambridge. Tracy Winn (’08), author of Mrs. Somebody Somebody, reads with Peter Brown (’06), author of A Bright Soothing Noise, on December 6, 8 PM.

Sachiko Akiyama (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’05) has a solo show at The Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, called Sachiko Akiyama: Things Unseen, an exhibition of carved polychrome wood sculpture and relief. The show runs through February 6, 2011. The artist will speak on her work on Sunday, December 12 at 3 PM.

Congratulations to Kathryn Burak (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ’10), whose novel The Dress is going to be published by Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan in Spring 2012. Read an excerpt of an earlier version of the novel, which garnered Kathryn her MCC honor.

Michael Dowling‘s (Playwriting Fellow ’09) film Speck’s Last (adapted from his award-winning play) will screen at Anthology Film Archives in NYC, on Sunday, December 5th, 3 PM. RSVP here. Find more details on the film’s Facebook page.

Brian Knep’s (Sculpture/Installation Finalist ’07) interactive installation Healing 1 is on display in the Brigham Young University Museum of Art’s e.g. (Electronic Gallery) through January 2011.

Niho Kozuru (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09) has a solo show of new work at Boston’s Arden Gallery on Newbury Street. The show runs December 1-30, 2010, with an opening reception Friday, December 3, 5-7 PM.

Scott Listfield (Painting Finalist ’10) has created a series of 15 small works which will debut in Stars & Cars: Paintings by Jason Chase and Scott Listfield, which runs at Laconia Gallery in Boston in December and January. The exhibit opens Friday, December 3rd (5:30-8 PM) at Laconia Gallery. In other news: Scott was selected as the creator of this year’s First Night Boston pin; on December 31st, an estimated 70,000 people will have one of Scott’s distinctive astronaut images pinned to their clothes. (See a picture of Scott at the button unveiling.) Scott also has a work in the current Icons + Altars show at the New Art Center in Newton (through Dec. 12); benefits from the show will go to the New Art Center.

Tara L. Masih‘s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ’96) story collection, Where the Dog Star Never Glows, was announced as a finalist in the USA Book News Best Books 2010 Awards, short story category. Read Tara discussing Three Stages in the book’s development on ArtSake.

Gary Metras (Poetry Fellow ’84) has published a new book of poems, Two Bloods: Fly Fishing Poems, winner of the Split Oak Press Chapbook Award.

Joshua Meyer (Painting Fellow ’10) has a solo exhibit, Everything in between at Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco, December 2, 2010-January 31, 2011. Check out Joshua’s terrific video interview with Evelyn Herwitz.

David Moore (Painting Fellow ’08) has work on exhibit at the FP3 Gallery in Boston’s Fort Point Channel, through January 3rd.

You can hear Monica Raymond‘s (Playwriting Finalist ’07, Poetry Finalist ’08) poem Economies read aloud by Nic Sebastian on the Whale Sound website. Monica’s photograph of the Cambridge Carnival was published by Dave Bonta on qarrtsiluni.com. As part of an evening program devoted to mythology, Monica read her poems Tale Tale, The Love Twin, and What the Echo Knows at Sprout in Somerville on November 17th.

Salvatore Scibona (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06), named one of The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40, has a short story in the just-published accompanying story collection, 20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker.

Congratulations to Peter Snoad (Playwriting Fellow ’09), whose play Identity Crisis, a farce about race, won the 2010 New Play Festival of Centre Stage in Greenville, SC in October and will be produced there January 13-22, 2011. Peter won the same festival in 2006 with his play Guided Tour. Identity Crisis is also scheduled for a staged reading in February by HRC Showcase Theater in Hudson, NY. In November, Peter’s popular short play, My Name is Art, had two more Australian productions at Short and Sweet Festivals in Melbourne and Brisbane after being staged earlier this year in Canberra. Another of his short plays, The Greening of Bridget Kelly, will be produced December 1-5 in New York by 3 Road Productions.

Congratulations to Julia Story (Poetry Finalist ’10), whose poetry collection Post Moxie won the Zacharis Prize, awarded by Ploughshares each year to a first book of poetry or fiction. This month, Julia will read as part of the Small Animal Project series, joining Claire Hero and Becca Klaver on Wednesday December 15th, 8 pm, at Outpost 186 in Cambridge’s Inman Square. The Small Animal Project series is directed by Jessica Bozek (Poetry Finalist ’10).

Rachel Perry Welty‘s (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09, Drawing Fellow ’04) solo exhibition Lost in My Life continues at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York through December 23, 2010 (a recent review calls the show “a hoarder’s dilemma and an obsessive-compulsive dream.”) What’s more, Rachel’s work has or will feature into two art fairs, PARIS PHOTO in the Carrousel de Louvre (November 18-21), and PULSE Miami, at the Ice Palace in Miami Florida (December 2-5). Yancey Richardson Gallery is representing Rachel in both fairs. Other recent news: Rachel recently donated a pigmented print from the “Lost in my Life” series to The Kitchen Benefit Art Auction, and she’s been invited to be visiting artist (and speak) at Cranbrook Academy of Art (Detroit, Michigan) and Montserrat College of Art (Beverly, Massachusetts).

Past Fellows Notes
Nov. 2010
Oct. 2010
Sept. 2010
Aug. 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
Apr. 2010
Mar. 2010
Feb. 2010
Jan. 2010

Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.

Images: Scott Listfield, painting from the STARS AND CARS exhibition at Laconia Gallery in Boston; Brian Knep, HEALING #1 (2003), Computer, custom software, video projectors, video cameras, vinyl flooring. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist; David Moore, FLIGHT I (2007), oil on linen, 72×72 in; cover art for POST MOXIE: POEMS by Julia Story (Sarabande Books 2010).

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Today’s glimpse from our gallery of past MCC fellows/finalinsts: interactive sculptures by Nick Rodrigues are one part social commentary, one part irreverence, and all-out thought-provoking hilarity.

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Today’s glimpse from our gallery of past MCC fellows/finalists: Alicia, Sara, and Kelly Casilio and Cary Wolinsky, aka TRIIIBE, surprise the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston with an impromptu art installation.

Incidentally, the opening reception for TRIIIBE’s large-scale installation-in-progress, In Search of Eden, is tonight, Friday, November 19, 6-9 PM, at Boston University’s 808 Gallery.

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Today’s glimpse from our gallery of past MCC fellows/finalists: collaborators Nell Breyer and Stefanie Nelson (Choreography Fellows ’06) expand the boundaries of dance with their fascinating blend of human movement and digital art.

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Here’s the latest installment of Fellows Notes, the current great news of past Fellows/Finalists from our Artist Fellowships Program.

November’s got some terrific stuff: Claire Beckett’s photos on DC buildings… TRIIIBE’s ongoing installation at Boston University… Eric Henry Sanders’s new play in New York. Read on.

On the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene blog, Steve Almond is entertainingly interviewed by Cam Terwilliger, in advance of Steve’s participation in the Somerville News Writers’ Festival, November 13, 2010, at the Center for the Arts at the Armory in Somerville. (Both Steve and Cam are 2008 Fellows in Fiction/Creative Nonfiction.) Here’s a sample of Steve discussing his recent, DIY self-publishing projects: “Of course, there’s a lot of schlepping involved. And some low-level humiliation. But that’s the life of a writer anyway these days.”

Diane Arvanites-Noya and Tommy Neblett (Choreography Fellows ’08, ’04), aka Prometheus Dance, are part of Dance and back again! A 19th Birthday Faculty Concert in the Julie Ince Thompson Theatre at The Dance Complex. New and renewed pieces by Prometheus Dance, The Prometheus Elders, and numerous other groups will be performed on Saturday, November 13, 8 PM and Sunday, November 14, 7 PM.

Claire Beckett (Photography Fellow ’07) is one of the artists included in the 2010 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50. Also, her work will be on display during FotoWeek DC in the show 100 Portraits – 100 Photographers: Selections from the FlakPhoto.com Archive, curated by Andy Adams of FlakPhoto.com. This exhibition is part of the NightGallery series of projections on display from November 6-13, 2010, with a launch party at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on Friday, November 5. The images will be projected on exteriors of significant buildings across Washington, DC, including: Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design, Newseum, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Red Cross, National Museum of the American Indian, Satellite Central (M Street – Georgetown) and the Human Rights Campaign buildings.

Liza Bingham (Painting Finalist ’10) is one of the over 80 artists exhibiting work in the 34th Annual Waltham Mills Open Studios, on Saturday, November 6 (12-6 PM) and Sunday, November 7 (12-5 PM).

Martha Jane Bradford (Drawing Fellow ’85) collaborated with Chantal Harvey to produce Acquarella: The Fable, digital/virtual art on view in the Air Tree Exhibit in the Madrid Pavilion of the World Expo in Shanghai, curated by Spanish curator and virtual arts leader Cristina García-Lasuén. Martha (Alizarin Goldflake in Second Life) produced, directed, and designed most of the virtual environment, while Chantal Harvey helmed the 3-D computer animation. Watch the clip with narration in English or Chinese. Also, Martha recently constructed Second Life sets for a real life play, The Winter Bear, which premiered in Anchorage October 29, 2010. Martha’s virtual, immersive art is integrated into the show’s the stage design (watch a video trailer). Find more information about the play The Winter Bear, a story of a troubled Athabascan teenager whose video game skills come in handy against a marauding Winter Bear. The play runs at Cyrano’s Off-Center Playhouse, Anchorage AK, Oct 29 – Nov 13. Read more about the project.

Sarah Braunstein (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’04) was named as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 selections, recognizing five young fiction writers chosen by National Book Award Winners and Finalists. She’ll be formally honored at a celebration at powerHouse Arena in NYC on Monday, November 15, hosted by musician and author Rosanne Cash with music journalist Rob Sheffield as DJ. Sarah’s novel The Sweet Relief of Lost Children will be published by W.W. Norton in 2011.

Congratulations to Peter Brown (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06), whose short story collection A Bright Soothing Noise is published by University of North Texas Press this month. The book won the press’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.

Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09), aka TRIIIBE, are turning Boston University’s massive 808 Gallery space into a site-specific installation. In Search of Eden will evolve as creators and observers participate in developing a present day version of the Garden of Eden. The installation will encompass photography, sculpture, painting and daily performances by the artists.

Lorraine Chapman (Choreography Fellow ’04) and her dance company join Contrapose Dance for an afternoon of dancing and dynamic work by Gianni Di Marco, Courtney Peix, and Lorraine Chapman. The event is on Sunday, November 14, 2:30 PM, Green Street Studios in Cambridge, MA. Among the works by Lorraine Chapman, The Company are “Pulp Tango,” the gold section from “Displaced Here Persons There,” and a new solo danced by Lorraine Chapman.

Regie Gibson (Poetry Fellow ’10) will emcee the literary feast A Taste of Grub, a November 5 fundraiser for Grub Street, a writers’ service organization based in Boston. Regie has plenty of experience behind a microphone; he’s a former Poetry Slam National Champion.

Jane Gillooly (Film & Video Fellow ’07) will be a guest at EventWorks SIM (Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design) on Thursday, November 4, 2010, at 7:30 PM when her documentary Today the Hawk Takes One Chick has a free screening.

Cathy Jacobowitz‘s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ’10) short story “You Made Me Leave My Happy Home” (drawn from her novel Melly Mockingbird) will be published in the Santa Monica Review spring or fall of 2011.

Congratulations to Liza Johnson (Film & Video Finalist ’07), who won the prestigious Rappaport Prize from the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. The prize is a $25,000 award to an individual artist, “an investment in both an individual and the broader community.”

Dawn Lane (Choreography Fellow ’10) was recently invited by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival to a Creative Development Residency to develop a new work, one potato, two potato. The work uses aspects of Irish culture and history as a metaphor for exploring excess, loss & insufficiency. Joined by dancers Lorimer Burns, Jane Goodrich, Susannah Millonzi and Leslie Nelson, Dawn spent a productive week in October in the Doris Duke Theatre that culminated in an informal showing of the work in progress on October 15.

Scott Listfield (Painting Finalist ’10) was selected as the creator of this year’s First Night Boston button. The design will be unveiled this month.

Tara L. Masih‘s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ’96) story collection, Where the Dog Star Never Glows, was announced as a finalist in the USA Book News Best Books 2010 Awards, short story category. Read Tara discussing Three Stages in the book’s development on ArtSake.

Rania Matar (Photography Fellow ’07) was selected for inclusion in the 2010 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50.

Rachel Mello (Painting Finalist ’10) has a solo exhibition on paintings, prints, and collages at Club Passim in Cambridge. The exhibition runs November 15, 2010-January 3, 2011. Additionally, she has two pieces in the Nave Gallery’s Our Town exhibit, featuring works of and about Somerville, MA. Opening November 18, Rachel’s work will be included in Plenty at 13FOREST in Arlington. It’s the annual small works holiday show (gift ideas, anyone?).

Eric Henry Sanders’s (Playwriting Fellow ’09) play Reservoir will have its world premiere at The Drilling CompaNY Theatre in New York, running November 4 -24th, 2010. An earlier draft of the play helped Eric win an MCC fellowship, and you can read about its development (as well as hear an excerpt performed by Company One) on ArtSake.

Leslie Sills (Crafts Fellow ’95) created a sculptural teapot, called High Tea, that is among the works included in The Teapot Redefined. The exhibition of sculptural teapots ran at Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge through Oct. 31. High Tea was inspired by Leslie’s artist residency this past summer at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, which borders a sheep farm in Newcastle, Maine.

Ron Spalletta (Poetry Finalist ’10) had a poem featured in Slate this summer, selected by poetry editor Robert Pinsky (hear Ron reading “Blank Villanelle”). Also, check out a great article about Ron in the Harvard Gazette, highlighting his dual careers as an award-winning poet and a Harvard Medical School manager.

Rachel Perry Welty (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09, Drawing Fellow ’04) has a solo photographic exhibition, Lost in My Life, at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York. The work is a series of photographs in which the artist herself is immersed in an environment of flattened cereal boxes, bread tags, twist ties, and other miscellaneous leftovers of modern consumption. Lost in My Life runs November 4-December 23, 2010, with an opening reception November 4, 6-8 PM.

Leslie Williams‘s (Poetry Fellow ’10) new poetry collection Success of the Seed Plants has been published by Bellday Books. The book won the 2010 Bellday Books Prize.

Kevin Young (Poetry Fellow ’10) has poetry featured in the Best American Poetry 2010 anthology.

Jeff Zimbalist’s (Film & Video Fellow ’05) documentary The Two Escobars is being released in San Francisco this month, is currently running in New York, and will have an LA release next week. The film recently received a glowing review by The Onion’s AV Club (and those discerning hipsters are tough to impress!). The highly lauded documentary will be released on DVD Blu Ray this month.

Past Fellows Notes
Oct. 2010
Sept. 2010
Aug. 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
Apr. 2010
Mar. 2010
Feb. 2010
Jan. 2010

Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.

Images: poster for RESERVOIR by Eric Henry Sanders, produced by The Drilling CompaNY; still from a trailer for THE WINTER BEAR, with virtual environments designed by Martha Jane Bradford; still from THE TRAVELERS CABARET by Lorraine Chapman; Scott Listfield, GRAND CANYON (2008), Oil on canvas, 24×48 in; Rachel Perry Welty, LOST IN MY LIFE (BOXES) (2010), Pigment Print, represented by Yancy Richardson Gallery.

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What stands between you and What Stands Between Us and the Sun? Well, the literal answer would be whatever mileage and topography stands between your current location and the AXIOM Center for New and Experimental Media in Jamaica Plain. But isn’t it also the modern era, that socially networked hyper-connectivity that distracts us all from attending the readings, art exhibitions, film screenings, dance concerts, orchestral work premieres, and other assorted artistic greatness that we know in our heart of hearts we want to attend? Not surprisingly, our official ArtSake suggestion is, after reading this post (and all other ArtSake posts you have yet to read), disconnect and go experience some art.

One of the options you’ll have available to you is the current AXIOM show, a photography, installation, and video project by artists Megan and Murray McMillan.The McMillans’ interdisciplinary work starts when the collaborators build a theatrical set, which serves as a stage for a video and photography production. With What Stands Between Us and the Sun, the McMillans built an artificial lake in warehouse in Rhode Island (where the McMillans are based). The AXIOM exhibition includes a video, photography, and elements from (or referring to) the original set interwoven into the piece.

Below are images from AXIOM’s Flickr page, including the exhibition’s installation and its opening reception. The show is on exhibit at the AXIOM Center for New and Experimental Media until November 27, and Megan and Murray McMillan will take part in an artists’ talk on Tuesday, November 9, 7-9 PM.

Images: Megan and Murray McMillan, WHAT STANDS BETWEEN US AND THE SUN, photo, installation, and video project; images from AXIOM’s Flickr page (photos by Sarah Rushford): the show being installed at AXIOM; three images from the opening reception.

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This post is a pictorial tour of some of the exceptional stuff past fellows/finalists from MCC’s Artist Fellowships Program are currently up to.

1. Reimagined tea pots. Leslie Sills (Crafts Fellow ’95) created the above work, called HIGH TEA. The sculptural teapot is among the works included in The Teapot Redefined, an exhibition of sculptural teapots at Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge (through Oct. 31). The work was inspired by Leslie’s artist residency this past summer at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, which borders a sheep farm in Newcastle, Maine.

2. National film releases. Jeff Zimbalist’s (Film & Video Fellow ’05) documentary The Two Escobars is being released in San Francisco this month, is currently running in New York, and will have an LA release next week. The film recently received a glowing review by The Onion’s AV Club (and those discerning hipsters are tough to impress!).

3. Chinese World Expos. Martha Jane Bradford (Drawing Fellow ’85) collaborated with Chantal Harvey to produce Acquarella: The Fable, digital/virtual art on view in the Air Tree Exhibit in the Madrid Pavilion of the World Expo in Shanghai, curated by Spanish curator and virtual arts leader Cristina García-Lasuén. Martha (Alizarin Goldflake in Second Life) produced, directed, and designed most of the virtual environment, while Chantal Harvey helmed the 3-D computer animation. Watch the clip with narration in English or Chinese.

4. Literary/culinary benefit events. Former Poetry Slam National Champion Regie Gibson (Poetry Fellow ’10) will emcee the literary feast A Taste of Grub, a November 5 fundraiser for Grub Street, a writers’ service organization based in Boston.

5. Edens-in-progress. TRIIIBE (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09), the artists collective of Alicia, Kelly, and Sara Casilio and photographer Cary Wolinsky, is turning Boston University’s massive 808 Gallery space into a site-specific installation. In Search of Eden will evolve as creators and observers participate in developing a present day version of the Garden of Eden. If you’re in search of art that’s visually arresting, socially engaged, and possessed of a truly unique vision, then traveler, I think I know where to find your paradise.

6. Collaborative, two-part installations. Liz Nofziger (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’05) and Linda Price-Sneddon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’01) have created a multi-media installation showing at two different art venues. Part one of That Which Changes That Which Stays the Same shows at the Villa Victoria in Boston through November 3, 2010. Part two shows at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence through December 8, with an Artists’ Talk Wednesday, November 17, 7-8 PM. The artists’ collaboration is itself the result of a collaboration (woah, meta) between Villa Victoria and Essex Art Center, called Exchange.

For more exceptional stuff, check out Fellows Notes.

Images: Leslie Sills, HIGH TEA (front and side view), ceramic; still from THE TWO ESCOBARS by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist; still from ACQUARELLA by Martha Jane Bradford and Chantal Harvey; Regie Gibson; promotional image for A Taste of Grub; TRIIIBE, FINE; installation view of THAT WHICH CHANGES THAT WHICH STAYS THE SAME by Liz Nofziger and Linda Price-Sneddon.

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We recently peered inside the studio of Evelyn Rydz (Drawing Fellow ’10), one of the nine Boston-area artists currently exhibiting at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s 2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition.

Further exploring the art-making process of the finalists for the prestigious Foster Prize (six of whom are past MCC fellows), we welcome Fred H. C. Liang (Painting Fellow ’04, ’08), who shares the origins and creation of his multi-layered work Dream of a Thousand Springs.

Wandering into the Dream of a Thousand Springs installation, the viewer is submerged in a floating, dream-inspired world.

I specifically created the installation for this ICA exhibition, with its dimensions, spatial, lighting and counterpoints in mind. Its composition, execution and presentation are respectively drawn from Song Dynasty Chinese landscapes and Jian Zhi paper-cut techniques. These are meditatively disciplined approaches that once fused, produced a lushly complex aquatic/terrestrial environment.

At the core of my work, I use various personal and cultural references as a way of tapping into the universal questions: Where did we come from? Where are we going? Essentially, these considerations help frame events that lead to our current circumstance, and thus make us who we are.

In this particular work, uncovering such answers involves the confluence of a promised box, a secret language and family genealogy. These connections join personal and historic events, and provide the means to reclaim both a displaced portion of family history, as well as lost cultural history. The narrative begins with my mother’s desire for a daughter, after the successive births of three sons. Forty years later, my daughter’s birth finally fulfilled this yearning.

Its accomplishment required my mother pass select personal possessions and secrets – concealed within a precious box – to her daughter.

This transmission from mother to daughter is akin to how the secret language of Nushu, known as women’s writing in China, was passed. It was a lost language shrouded in secrecy for almost a thousand years, but accidentally discovered during the early days of the Cultural Revolution.

This mode of communication, invented by women in southern China, enabled them to pass information among themselves undetected. Up until its accidental discovery, Nushu primarily remained hidden with only vague references sprinkled throughout Chinese literature. Consequently, much knowledge of Chinese women’s lives may have similarly remained missing from its historical record.

It is my hope that once my mother shares this enigmatic box’s content with my daughter, the secrets imagined, revealed, and conjured with its opening will carry the family’s legacy forth among its future female descendants.

Fred H.C. Liang‘s work, along with that of the other eight 2010 Foster Prize finalists, will be exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston through January 17, 2011.

The text for this piece is adapted from Fred H.C. Liang’s audio commentary for the Foster Prize Exhibition.

Images: all images are from Fred H.C. Liang’s installation DREAM OF A THOUSAND SPRINGS (2010), ICA 2010 Foster Prize Exhibition; studio photos are taken by Katie Chaiban and Alex Dusterfeld; ICA installation views are taken by Charles Mayer, staff photographer at ICA.

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