As a 2008 Creative Fellow of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Colony Residency Grant I will spend five weeks at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts again, continuing the work on the Migrant Universe project!

I am honored to have the image of my 2005 drawing, Seraphim, on the cover of the new book by a dear colleague of mine, Elizabeth Schlatter. I have worked with Elizabeth on many projects and I know that the book will be a valuable resource for the new professionals in the Museum field: I have witnessed, first hand, her talents as both curator and a generous mentor to our students.

 

"N. Elizabeth Schlatter literally brings the museum field to life with her carefully chosen interviews, a cross section of professionals in art, history and science museums. While concisely organized with the most current information, the guide provides a reality check for students and novices and is notable for its on-the-mark analyses and engaging writing." — Sarah Clark-Langager, Ph.D., Director of Western Gallery and Curator of Outdoor Sculpture Collection, Western Washington University, Bellingham N. Elizabeth Schlatter is Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions of the University of Richmond Museums, Virginia, where she has worked since 2000. Her career includes administrative and programmatic positions at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. With an M.A. in Art History from George Washington University, she has curated numerous exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, published articles, reviews, and catalog essays, and presented papers on related topics at regional and national conferences. She is author of the e-book Become an Art Curator.

text in the box the courtesy of Left Coast Press

 

The printmaking world converged in Richmond for the Southern Graphics Council Conference: CommandPrint, organized by the Painting and Printmaking Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. It was an absolute success. The panels and speakers were truly engaging, the exhibitions full of energy and innovation. Many thanks to my colleagues at VCU!

Along with Will Berry, Kris Iden, Chris Palmer and Randy Toy, I participated in a group print show, Inked, at Page Bond Gallery.



Kathy Caraccio at the opening!




Master printers in conversation (with a Museum Director thrown in). From left to right, Jim Stroud (Center Street Studios, Boston), Richard Waller (University Museums, UR) and Kathy Caraccio (K.Caraccio Etching Studio, NYC).

I spent five heavenly weeks in a perfect balance of solitude and company of some extraordinary artists at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and worked on the first part of my drawing project, Migrant Universe in July and August 2007. This project, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2009, will be an interrupted frieze of 21 panels, 60" x 60" each, that form "stanzas" of one to four panels that join laterally. The project is somewhat autographical in a sense that it comes out of the urge to try to sort out the contemporary living experience, and more precisely the experience of an immigrant; a person whose identity is suspended in the space between at least two cultures, two ways of thinking about and engaging the world, in at least two (but very likely several) very different geographic locations. The completed installation will create an interrupted and re-orderable frieze of images. While the individual stanzas in the frieze will suggest direction, exclamation points, and pauses in "reading" of the panels, the nature of the visual narrative will be protean, responsive to the space in which the installation is configured and shown. It will be possible to order, edit and punctuate the installation according to the layout of the host space.

Many thanks to VCCA for providing me, again, with the time, space and spiritual and creative nourishment needed to complete a major chunk of work on my most extensive project ever.