MURFREESBORO
— MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery will welcome works by 15 emerging young artists
from across America this month in a special traveling exhibit, “The Journey,” that premiered at the
Smithsonian Institution.
The MTSU exhibition is scheduled Aug. 6-20, and a
free public reception to honor the artists and their supporters is set from 11
a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 19, in Room 224 of Todd Hall.
Challenged by VSA, the international organization
on arts and disability, to create works exploring a journey, hundreds of gifted
artists with disabilities participated in the 2014 VSA Emerging Young Artists
Competition.
The 15 winners received a total of $60,000 in cash
awards. Their work is part of a national tour of museums and galleries underway
across the country.
Gianna Paniagua of Miami, Florida, won the $20,000 grand
prize for “Never Stopping,” a hand-cut paper screen print inspired by her
journey as a heart-transplant recipient.
Timothy Lee, an artist working in Brooklyn, New
York, won the $10,000 first prize for “Gookeyes,” a series of watercolors on
crumpled paper that captures his cultural isolation as a Korean-American with
panic and anxiety disorders.
Mary Grace Tinsley of Arlington, Massachusetts,
took the $6,000 second prize for “The Disorient,” a digital print that visually
addresses her dyslexia.
The winners were chosen for their “sometimes
startling and often enlightening interpretations” of the theme, competition
organizers said.
The exhibit
will be on display during the Todd Gallery’s regular hours; it’s open from 8:30
a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and is closed on weekends and state and
university holidays.
In addition to supporting this national VSA
exhibit, MTSU also is a longtime participant in and organizer of VSA events in
Tennessee, thanks to MTSU instructor Lori Kissinger, the VSA Tennessee executive
director, and her organizational communication students.
VSA Tennessee recently concluded its "40 Days
Around the World" Digital Arts Festival, an online celebration of
international arts exchanges involving artists with disabilities in 60
countries and 37 states.
The crown jewel of that project, available online
at http://40days.vsatn.org, was a
handcrafted quilt, comprising 81 specially designed squares from artists around
the world and sewn together at MTSU with the aid of hardworking student
volunteers and local artists.
VSA officials, including Kissinger, presented the
quilt to Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith July 24 at the U.S. Capitol. It had been
on display at the State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., since May
and has now become a permanent part of the U.S. Department of State’s Arts in
Embassies traveling worldwide exhibit.
Smith founded VSA, then known as Very Special Arts,
in 1974. The organization merged with the John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts in 2011 to expand its services.
Like her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s founding
of the Special Olympics, Smith was inspired to encourage and promote the skills
and talents of people with disabilities because of their eldest sister,
Rosemary Kennedy.
For more
information about MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery, including parking and directions,
contact gallery director Eric Snyder at 615-898-5653 or eric.snyder@mtsu.edu or visit http://www.mtsu.edu/art.
You also can find a campus parking map at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParking2015-16.
For more information about VSA Tennessee, visit http://www.vsatn.org or contact
Kissinger at userk7706@comcast.net or
615-210-8819.
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