The College of Arts and Sciences is launching a fellowship program with the Vermont Studio Center. Located in the northern Vermont mill village of Johnson (pop. 3,450), the Vermont Studio Center resides in the heart of the Green Mountains, a beautiful and pastoral region in the northeastern United States
The Vermont Studio Center will be welcoming two members of the UVM CAS faculty this summer as the first year of a UVM/VSC Fellowship Program. According to George Pearlman, Executive Director of VSC, "Connecting the international creative sanctuary of the Studio Center and the outstanding writers and visual artists of the UVM faculty is a natural for these neighbor institutions, both of which are well known throughout the United States and abroad. While the collaboration between UVM and VSC is not new, it is especially wonderful to begin hosting UVM faculty in this organized way in our creative community this summer."
This summer's participants are
Mildred Beltré, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History (medium/genre: printmaking), and
Nancy Welch, Professor of English (medium/genre: fiction). Beltré, a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant as well as a Residency Fellowship at the Lower East Side Printshop, will continue her creative work in printmaking. Welch will continue her work on her current project, Free Country: Stories. The stories, set mostly in the left-behind towns of the upper Midwest, follow the lives of girls and women in the twilight years of the American dream.
To date, CAS faculty and emeriti faculty members Major Jackson, David Huddle, T. Alan Broughton, Barbara Zucker, Meg McDevitt, Steve Budington, and Cameron Davis have all participated at VSC. The Fleming Museum has hosted shows of VSCPress prints and numerous VSC alumni and Visiting Artists in both solo and group shows, including the most recent Rubin Foundation flag show, as well as VSC poet Jill Leininger in the Painted Word Poetry series.
Founded by artists in 1984, the Vermont Studio Center is the largest international artists' and writers' Residency Program in the United States, hosting 50 visual artists and writers each month from across the country and around the world. The Studio Center provides 4-12 week studio residencies on an historic 30-building campus along the Gihon River in Johnson.
As an integral part of the Johnson community, VSC reflects the independence, work ethic, and commitment to the environment that are traditional hallmarks of Vermont life. To learn more about VSC, please visit: www.vermontstudiocenter.org.