Join us on Friday, September 16th from 6–9pm for our opening reception. We look forward to seeing you there!
VSU Art + Design Faculty Show at Perkinson Center for the Arts
VSU A+D faculty featured in local exhibitions
William Blue Johnson
Histories & Stories: A Special Province
Black American Artists’ Alliance of Richmond
February 5–April 2, 2022
Perkinson Center for the Arts
11810 Centre Street Chester, VA 23831
This exhibit features 13 award-winning artists who have come together to create distinguished, cultural-based art forms that uniquely tie together their African heritage with their American experiences. The exhibit includes a variety of media, including paintings, woodblock prints, collages, etchings, soft sculptures, and quilts. This exhibit demonstrates the importance and development of African American music, literature, theater, dance, and cultural aesthetic through visual art forms crafted by local creators. BAAAR defines African American art as art which aesthetically encompasses the values, visually articulates the circumstances, and culturally celebrates the beliefs which have directed Black Americans’ shared cultural development.
Miguel Carter-Fisher
VSU Partners with Idealliance Communications
Virginia State University has partnered with the nonprofit graphic communications association Idealliance to sponsor a scholarship for students studying Humanities and Social Sciences. This opportunity will allow 2 VSU students to take part in the Idealliance Higher Education Program and receive mentorship to help assist them with getting started in the communications industry.
Be on the lookout for more information about this opportunity at a later date.
Local Call for Artists
Don’t miss this opportunity if you’re from the Petersburg area!
To enhance the image of the newly renamed ‘Petersburg Legends Park” the City of Petersburg is commissioning artists to design and paint a mural featuring local athletes.
From City of Petersburg:
“The City of Petersburg will commission qualified artists to design a mural that local residents can enjoy and a mural that attracts visitors. The goal of the Petersburg Legends Mural Project is to create public art that conveys a piece of the story of Petersburg Legends. The piece should represent Petersburg Legends in their Petersburg High School Jersey with their number affixed to the jersey.”
If you know a local athletic legend you’d like to celebrate, submit a written proposal to Deputy Director Darnetta Tyus by mail at
3811 Corporate Road,
Petersburg, Virginia 23805
or you can email her at dtyus@petersburg-va.org
Proposals must be received by November 13, 2020
If selected you will be contacted by December 1st
VSU Art + Design named a Top 20 HBCU Art Program
We are honored and humbled to announce that we have been named a Top 20 HBCU Art + Design Program by The Hundred-Seven!
Thank you to our University Relations office for this spotlight:
“According to The Hundred-Seven, these art programs offer students training in a variety of areas and have produced successful artists. The noted highlights of the VSU Art and Design Program include recent accolades for being recognized by Animation Career Review as one of the top programs in the nation for Graphic Design and by HBCU Digest as the Best HBCU Fine Arts Program.
“This is a huge honor and accomplishment. Many compliments to the VSU Art and Design program for helping VSU to accomplish one of our strategic priorities— providing academic programming that successfully prepares our scholars to meet the demands of a global society and workforce,” says Dr. Isis Walton, Interim Dean of the VSU College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “We are truly appreciative of the transformative experiences our students are receiving. It is the VSU way.”
Are you ready for a transformative creative education with us at VSU? We’d love to hear from you!
Don’t miss this opportunity…
On Friday, 9/25, join RVA Design Group for a virtual panel discussion on Navigating Design Careers. Click here to register…for FREE!
From RVA Design Group:
“The design industry has quickly become attractive, yet it’s still a nebulous field to navigate with high barriers and very low diversity.
RVA Design Group is committed to increasing the accessibility of design and technology to the Richmond community.
With the effects of racial and social injustices and a looming pandemic, we are experiencing a time of uncertainty where we finally recognize something that has been missing.”
The field of design in general, but especially UX/UI design, has long suffered from the lack of diversity within the field. This ends up impacting the public in a very real way, when only a narrow sliver of the population, with its own perspective on the world, is tasked with designing 99% of the interfaces, apps, and digital devices that we rely on.
Is that narrow perspective able to truly empathize with the thoughts and needs of the users that are actually using these technologies?
As our lives become increasingly connected and dependent on user interfaces, the question is clear…do you want to program or be programmed?
Get help with the Fall 2020 Charrette!
Your VSU Librarians have compiled some wonderful resources for you…find general information, voting data and statistics, and customized research databases. Start here for your charrette research! Click here for library resources >
See our last post about the project info >
Email any faculty member for feedback or questions!! Start now for your posters to make the biggest impact…
Attend a LIVE virtual discussion on The State of Black Design from TSU
Join a The State of Black Design, a two-hour virtual discussion brought to you by Texas State University’s Communication Design program. This event will feature prominent Black Design Practitioners and Academics. This open conversation will be segmented into four focused panels, Industry, Pedagogy, Black Design Organizations, and Design Activism.
Date and Time
Friday, September 18, 2020
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM EDT
The topics of discussion will include but will not be limited to:
- Aunt Jemima, is rebranding racist trademarks enough?
- Decolonizing the field of Design.
- Hegemony in Design curriculum + workspace
- Design’s roots in social commentary (Russian Constructivism, Proletariat vs. the Bourgeoisie)
- Can this momentum around race be used by designers to also champion equity for other minority groups (Gender, Race, Religion, Sexual Orientation, etc.)?
- Black Lives Matter & its impact on Design
- Opportunity in the wake of George Floyd
- Level of diversity in the field of Design, and how do we increase that level of diversity?
Announcing the FALL 2020 A+D Charrette
For the Fall 2020 Art & Design Departmental Charrette, students are to create a work of art or design with the theme of promoting voter registration and equity in voting practices, or celebrating the centennial of women’s voting rights.
“In 2020, AIGA recognizes the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote in 1920 with a special edition of Get Out the Vote: Empowering the Women’s Vote. It commemorates the first legislation for women’s voting rights. Not until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 were voting rights of all women protected and enforced.”
From AIGA: https://www.aiga.org/vote
Some ideas you might explore include: get out the vote, why vote?, facts or infographics on voting, unintended consequences of not voting, etc. Please be creative but sensitive to the subject matter. The work should be bipartisan, i.e. not for or against any one party or candidate. Imagery in art and design can still be very persuasive, even when presented in an unbiased way.
Posters received by these deadlines will have the greatest impact:
- September 22 National Voter Registration Day
- October 24 Vote Early Day
- Charrette works will not be accepted after October 24th at 11:59pm
Dimensions: 11”x17”, vertical preferred but horizontal accepted
Submit your Charrette work:
- To AIGA at https://www.aiga.org/vote
- To the VSU A+D Department by submitting via Blackboard
You have been enrolled in A+D Fall 2020 Charrette
Find us on Instagram
Announcing a *NEW* Instagram presence from the Department of Art + Design…find us today @vsuartdesign.
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