The ISC established the Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award program in 1994 to recognize deserving sculpture students and to encourage their continued commitment to the field of sculpture.

Kalimah’s Faculty Sponsor was Asst. Sculpture Prof. Marilu Swett.

Kalimah’s senior year work was an exploration of minimally hewn objects interacting with and within a chosen space. It involved found and cast pieces in basic sculptural material, drawings made with or rubbed over simple objects and building materials, and spaces redefined by using string or wooden pallets.

Kalimah competed against 485 sculpture students at 190 colleges here and abroad. We are proud of her achievement!

Prof. Meredith Morten with student artist Kalimah Muhammad.

Song and Dance from IN THE CAR on Vimeo.

I also wanted to give a heads-up about “T: an MBTA Musical” that I’m participating in that I had emailed about before. This week we “flash-mobbed” Boston’s Red Line to promote the show, surprising passengers by breaking out into song. Here’s a video of us singing The Bro Song to…a few bros:

(A reminder you can get tickets here – there are two lots behind the theatre on Prospect Street that have free parking after 5pm!)

From Left: President Steve Immerman, Dean Laura Tonelli, Corinne Reid and Professor Fred Lynch pose with Reid’s award.

Montserrat Senior Corinne Reid took the top honor out of 7,000 student submissions in this year’s Society of Illustrators National Student Competition, and Prof. Fred Lynch, who teaches at both Montserrat College of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), was the professor of both Reid and JooHee Yoon from RISD, who also won a top award from a screenprint and mixed media. Yoon’s other teacher on the project was Susan Doyle.

Student Dana Robinson received an honorable mention in the annual Grand Circle Gallery (Boston) Student Poster Competition for  “Cairo & the Eternal Nile.”

Participants were asked to create an original interpretation of a vintage travel poster that highlighted one of the top travel destinations offered by the travel entities of Grand Circle Gallery’s parent company, GCC: Grand Circle Travel and Overseas Adventure Travel. Among those top destinations are India, Africa, Costa Rica, Nepal, Egypt, Ireland, Greece and Spain. The competition was open to all students actively enrolled in an undergraduate, art-study program in the Boston area.

An awards ceremony will be held Thursday, April 28, from 6-8pm at Grand Circle Gallery, 347 Congress Street, Boston, and the work will remain on display for the Fort Point Art Walk on May 6-8.

Congratulations, Dana!

“My project involves returning to Hungary to create a body of work that draws inspiration from the archaeology and landmass of the Great Hungarian Plain,” Morten said, “I will be in residence at the International Ceramics Studio for three months. An invitation from a lead archaeologist at the National Hungarian Museum has been obtained for accessing excavation sites on the Plain for inspiration. I will give talks about my work and life as an American artist and professor at the American Corners in Budapest and Debrecen. American Corners is an initiative of the US Department of State and overseen by the Fulbright Commission. The programs are well attended by youths and adults, Hungarians, ex-patriots (US), and other internationals. The work I complete at the Studio will be stored for a solo exhibition scheduled for August – October 2012.”

Congratulations Meredith!

Spectrum 18 the premier annual juried international professional showcase of “Fantastic Arts” were announced recently and Montserrat Illustration will be very well represented! Spectrum selects the best art of the Book, Game, Animation, Comics, Horror and Fantasy Genres. It is the professional standard bearer.

Chosen this year from the hundreds and hundreds of entries:

Senior CORINNE REID! (a huge honor for a student!)

Faculty member ANTOINE REVOY! (This is his first semester teaching at Montserrat!)

Future Faculty ROB REY! (Just yesterday, he was a guest artist at Montserrat! He’s teaching Narrative Figure Drawing in the Fall)

and JOE QUINONES (A teacher in the Illustration Department for the past few years… now too busy to teach!)

The book will come out later in the year. See the list of winners at http://j.mp/ehkHPF

MORE BIG NEWS:

Senior CORINNE REID who was also selected for Creative Quarterly 23, an international survey of the best professional and student work of art and design. Corinne was one of only three students selected. On newsstands this Summer! (Corinne was also a runner-up with another piece!) Visit http://www.cqjournal.com/winners.html

Fred Lynch
Professor, Chair of Illustration, Montserrat College of Art
Web: www.FredLynch.com
Blog: www.Picture-It.posterous.com

Montserrat faculty member Erin Dionne will be celebrating the paperback release of her second novel, The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet (Penguin/Dial Books) on Sunday, February 27th, at 1:30pm at Panache Coffee (Rte 9 East, in the Ski Market complex) in Framingham. Events will include a book sale and signing, reading, origami lessons and photos with Shakespeare.

The event marks a natural collaboration between the author and the locally-owned business. “I do most of my writing at Panache,” Dionne said, “and this was a way for me to acknowledge the role that they’ve had in helping me create these books.”

The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet follows eighth grader Hamlet Kennedy, whose Shakespeare-obsessed parents dress, speak, and cook straight out of the sixteenth century. As if their mortifying behavior weren’t enough, Hamlet must also cope with the news that her seven-year-old genius sister, Desdemona, will be attending eighth grade with her. The family farce that results is a comedy both hilarious and heartwarming.

The novel has already been a success in hardcover. Named to state reading lists in Texas and Kansas, honored with a starred review in Library Media Connection magazine, and featured in Disney’s FamilyFun Magazine and Girl’s Life, Hamlet’s plight has connected with readers.

“I’m thrilled with the response to the novel,” Dionne said. “Hamlet is a great character and I love hearing from readers who have connected with her.”

Erin Dionne lives in Framingham, Massachusetts, with her husband, daughter, and dog. She’s an Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass. Her debut novel, Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies (Dial Books, 2009) was honored with a 2006 PEN/New England Susan P. Bloom Discovery Night Award and was nominated to the ALA Popular Paperbacks list.

Rosenberg, "Tightly Bound", 2008, soft and hard ground etching, 15" x 22.5"

The Winners of the 2010 New Art Art Awards – picked by more than 2,205 people – were announced February 9th at the Art Awards Ball at the Burren in Somerville. The Awards are a contest to honor the best art made here, local writing about local art, and exhibits organized here in 2010. Here are a list of the Montserrat finalists:

Best Painting Show
“Mary Bucci McCoy: Trace” at the Kingston Gallery
The exhibit presented new paintings and works on paper, a collection of abstracts that suggest mood shifting and constantly subtle alterations. The works conveyed – at one and the same time – a sense of disappearance as well as adherence.

Drawing and Printmaking
“Rhoda Rosenberg: The Shape of Memory” at the Danforth Museum

Rhoda won both the People’s Choice and the Critic’s Choice for Drawing and Printmaking in the New England Art Awards with her exhibit “The Shape of Memory” at Danforth Museum!
For more information about the exhibit, visit danforthmuseum.org

Installation
John Osorio-Buck “The West is Now Closed,“ Montserrat Gallery

Curators
Concept/ Theme Show: “Morning Exciting” Shauna Dumont, Montserrat Gallery

Check out all the details on Greg Cook’s journal!

Congratulations to all winners and finalists!!