Faculty Contact

Director

• Kevin Concannon Director
  Professor, Art History

  Kevin Concannon, received his PhD in Modern/Contemporary and African art history from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2000.  His scholarship focuses on art of the 1960s, particularly the work of Yoko Ono.  Publications include Agency: Art and Advertising, exh. cat. (Youngstown, Ohio: McDonough Museum of Art, 2008); YOKO ONO IMAGINE PEACE Featuring John & Yoko’s Year of Peace, exh. cat. (Akron, Ohio: Emily Davis Gallery, 2007); Mass Production: Artists’ Multiples and the Marketplace, exh. cat. (Akron, Ohio: Emily Davis Gallery, 2006); "Nothing Is Real: Yoko Ono's Advertising Art," in YES: YOKO ONO (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. and the Japan Society of New York, 2000); and, with Reiko Tomii, "Chronology" and "Bibliography" in the same volume. 

  Concannon is also active in the Scholarship of Teaching, Assessment, and Learning (SoTAL).  A SoTAL Fellow at The University of Akron, he has contributed to and chaired panels on pedagogy issues at professional conferences, including the College Art Association (CAA), for which he served as a member of the CAA’s Education Committee from 2003-2006.  He is a contributor to a roundtable discussion of the Art History Survey in CAA’s Art Journal (vol. 64, no. 2).  Currently, he serves as chair of CAA’s Committee on Diversity Practices.Concannon’s prior museum career spanned 12 years, managing outreach programs for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) and the Neuberger Museum, and culminating in his appointment as Project Manager for the Lila Wallace/Readers Digest.

  • Office: 205 Armory
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Email: kevinconcannon@vt.edu

Program Chairs

• Troy Abel Assistant Professor
  Chair, Visual Communication Design

  Dr. Troy Abel received his PhD in Human Computer Interaction and MFA in Graphic Design from Iowa State University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Communication Design at Virginia Tech and is also the director of the new Eye-Tracking & Usability Testing (E-TUT) lab at Virginia Tech. He is affiliated with the Center for HCI and the Institute for Creativity in Art & Technology as a participating faculty member.
  
  Dr. Abel has extensive experience teaching abroad. For two years he taught in Rome, Italy and Zurich, Switzerland and has conducted master classes abroad with designers such as Rosemarie Tissi and Primo Angeli. His interest in Roman typography had lead to several interesting field studies with students of the famous Trajan's Forum.

  Dr. Abel's current research areas investigate the intersection of perception and usability evaluation methodologies utilizing multiple data-streams including eye tracking, qualitative data and facial reading. His lab is currently developing an instrument system designers can utilize during the iterative phases of design to assure positive affective interactions as well as exploring data visualizations of usability data.
  
  Additional areas of research include participatory design, Interaction Design, experience design, mobile app development, and design for social change as well as anything that includes the intersection of design with other disciplines.

  • Office: 352A Henderson
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Email: drt@vt.edu
  • Website: http://troyabel.com

• Ann-Marie Knoblauch, Ph.D. Assistant Director
  Director, Art History

  Appointment(s):

  • Associate Professor of Art History
  • Affiliated Faculty, Classical Studies Program
  • Affiliated Faculty, Lycoming College Excavations at Idalion, Cyprus 

  Research:

  Dr. Knoblauch’s current research involves underrepresented groups in theancient Mediterranean world, particularly the archaic and classical Greek world (ca.600-400 BCE). The history of the Greeks is written by and about Athenian men, and Dr. Knoblauch attempts to articulate other voices, non-Athenian and non-male, through looking at the material culture left behind. This approach to the ancient world manifests itself in two main research streams, active fieldwork on the island of Cyprus, and investigations into the visual iconography of Athenian women. Dr. Knoblauch has been involved in the excavations of Idalion, Cyprus since1998. Idalion was one of the most important cities of ancient Cyprus, and the material remains make clear it was also an exceptionally active religious sanctuary. Dr. Knoblauch is currently publishing the sculpture found during the current excavations. This material is especially important because of a lack of historical sources from this eastern Mediterranean island, an island that had direct andindirect contact with most of the major cultures surrounding it, including Greek, Egyptian, and western Asia. Recently, Dr. Knoblauch co-edited a special double issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Near Eastern Archaeology (vol. 71, 1-2), called Ancient Cyprus, American Research. She has also served as a board member for the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, the only international archaeological school on the island. The role of women in ancient Greece has also been a research interest for Dr. Knoblauch, particularly vases depicting young girl’s preparing for marriage and themythological females they sought to emulate. Such investigations allow us tounderstand the concerns and anxieties of a demographic not typically discussed by in ancient historians. Her research in this area has appears in press in an articlecalled “Promiscuous or proper? : nymphs as female role models in ancient Greece”in Religion, Gender and Culture in the PreModern World (Palgrave 2007). Dr. Knoblauch maintains a strong international profile, having presentedpaper in Italy, Germany, Greece and Cyprus and Scotland, as well as co-organizingan international conference in 2006, The Mythology and Iconography of Colonization,with colleagues from the Universita’ degli Studi di Napoli Federico II in Naples, Italy. The papers from this conference will be published in the peer-reviewed Electronic Antiquity.

  • Office: 351D Henderson
  • Phone: 540-231-8415
  • Email: amk@vt.edu

• Simone Paterson, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Digital Art and Design
  Chair, Studio Program

  Dr. Simone Paterson is a new media artist and researcher who teaches New Media Art and Theory, Cyber Arts and Digital Video and Special Effects in the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Polytechnic and State University (Virginia Tech). Educated in New South Wales, Australia she was awarded a PhD in Philosophy/ Fine Arts from The University of Newcastle, in 2005 where her research focused upon cyborg culture and third wave feminism. In 1995 she was awarded a Master of Visual Arts from the University of Sydney, Sydney College of the Arts and was the winner of the prestigious New South Wales Travelling Art Prize, which enabled her to travel to Florence, Italy to study traditional sculptural techniques and digital imaging. Paterson exhibits her new media installations and performance work internationally (Australia, Europe and USA). Her installations usually consist of sculptural fabric forms and large-scale digital prints as well as interactive new media works and digital video. Her performance art work integrates playing the harp with pre-recorded sound and video. She is a member of the new media CAUCUS for the College Art Association and a team member of the Collaborative for Creative Technologies in Art and Design, (CCTAD) and an active member of the Digital Art Research Team (DART). Paterson is also an invited affiliated faculty member of the Women’s Studies Program at Virginia Tech and a part of the Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) Embodied Design and Aesthetic Representation of Gender, Bodies and Technologies.

  • Office: 206 Henderson
  • Phone: 540-231-3385
  • Email: simpat@vt.edu
  • Website: http://www.simonepaterson.com

• Bailey Van Hook, Ph.D. Professor of Art History
  Chair, Program in Art History

  Bailey Van Hook is an historian of 19th and 20th century European and American art. She received her M.Phil and Ph.D. at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where she wrote a dissertation on images of idealized women in turn of the 20th century American art.  She published it as Angels of Art:  Women and Art in American Culture, 1876-1914 (Penn State Press, 1997).  Her more recent research has been in the area of American beaux-arts art and architecture and she wrote a study of murals of that era, The Virgin and the Dynamo: Public murals in American Architecture, 1893-1917 (Ohio University Press, 2003). She is currently finishing a biography of beaux-arts muralist Violet Oakley (1874-1961).

  Dr. Van Hook taught at Fordham University, SUNY New Paltz, and Queens College (CUNY) before she came to Virginia Tech.  She teaches over a wide area of interests, including her specialties, 19th and 20th century art, as well as the history of photography and graphic design.

  • Office: 351E Henderson
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Email: vanhook@vt.edu

• Dane Webster Director of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Technologies
  Associate Professor, Animation & 3D Modeling
  Area Coordinator, Creative Technologies

  M.F.A., Washington State University

  Appointment(s):

  • Assistant Professor of Computer Animation in Visual Communication Design
  • Area Coordinator for Creative Technologies
  • Co-Assistant Director of CCTAD, Collaboration for Creative Technologies in Arts and Design

  Creative Scholarship and Research: 

  Prof. Webster’s research is focused on the use of 3d computer animation software (MAYA, MODO, ZBrush, Unity3d, and After Effects) as a tool of visualization and art. The majority of his work has been focused on the creation of animated short films. His newest film “With Delicate Risk” has been screened at many national and international film festivals, including the Brooklyn International Film Festival, where “With Delicate Risk” was 1 of 102 films selected from over 2000 submission from 79 countries. His previous films, “Idea Development”, “A Sixty Second Tragedy”, and “Up, Up, and Away” have also been exhibited widely. Recently Prof. Webster has started exploring the use of 3d gaming engines as part of his research. In November 2008, his interactive piece “Always Uncoupled” was part of a group exhibition for the grand opening of the new Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke Virginia.

  • Office: 350 Henderson
  • Phone: 540-231-2952
  • Email: webster@vt.edu
  • Website: http://danewebster.com/

Advising

• Betsy Bannan Director of Advising
  Advanced Instructor, Studio Arts

  Betsy Bannan received a BA in Studio Art from Virginia Tech and an MFA in Painting, minor in Art History from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.  She is an oil painter whose work is drawn from personal experience and is based in an interest in materials and the application of the materials.  The paintings use symbolic and iconic figures to reference art historical and cultural influences on artists and society.  She has shown nationally in solo and juried exhibitions, and has won numerous awards in such shows as The Roanoke City Art Show and the Roanoke College Biennial.  She has taught at colleges in New York and Virginia and has been and instructor of painting and drawing, and Director of Academic Advising for the School of Visual Art at Virginia Tech since 2000.

  • Office: 110 Armory
  • Phone: 540-231-1714
  • Email: dbannan@vt.edu
  • Website: http://www.betsyhalebannan.com/

SOVA Faculty & Staff

• Debbie Alvis Business Manager

  • Office: 106 Armory
  • Phone: 540-231-8135
  • Email: dsalvis@vt.edu

• Vincent Argentina Instructor, Animation & 3D Modeling

  Vinny Argentina is a digital media professional that has worked in the video game industry, the advertising industry, and in educational research. He is a 3d CG specialist with a background in the performing arts, cinema, audio production and interactive programming.

  • Office: Suite 2000 DAAS Lab
  • Phone: 540-231-2951
  • Email: vinnyargentina@vt.edu

• Steve Bickley Professor Emeritus, Studio Art

  BFA East Carolina University
  MFA University of Georgia

  My recent works return to more familiar metaphors of natural symbols that have been the focal point of my sculpture for over 25 years. This symbolic visual language provides an opportunity to synthesize diverse ideas, theories, emotions and opinions into a creative unity. These new abstract landscape compositions of natural forces such as water, wind, and air provide the viewer both complicated and minimal interpretations. 

  These works also reinforce and refresh the history of metal sculpture. Bridging the gap of the past and present, the works integrate the tradition of drawing with the latest of digital technology. The textures and color of the works create an additional visual depth for the viewer with a natural surface that is often in contrast to the mechanical formalism of their construction. 

  Bickley’s work has been exhibited at many prestigious venues such as The Phillips Collection, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Baumgartner Gallery, Franz Bader Gallery, Reynolds Gallery, The Painted Bride, Laumeir Sculpture Park, Chairoscuro Gallery, Huntington Museum of Art, Penisula Fine Arts Center, Mint Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Roanoke Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of Art and over 150 additional juried, solo and group exhibitions at art centers and universities through out the United States since 1974.

  • Office: 203 Draper Road
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Email: sbickley@vt.edu

• Sam Blanchard Assistant Professor, Sculpture

  Sam Blanchard received a BFA in Sculpture from Ohio University and an MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design.  Prior to his appointment with Virginia Tech, he served as the Chair of the Sculpture and Functional Art Program at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  

  Blanchard is an artist that skirts the line between sculptor and performer, for whom the process and the result are often one in the same. His ongoing explorations in open-source technology and digital fabrication serve to inform and fuel his approach to art making.  His work has been exhibited nationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions at such venues as The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Grant Selwyn Gallery in New York, and The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids.  Upcoming exhibitions include solo shows at The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, The Las Vegas Contemporary Art Center, The New Galley in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the Olin Gallery on the campus of Washington and Jefferson College.  
   

  • Office: 118 Art & Design Learning Center
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Website: www.samblanchard.com

• Carol Burch-Brown Professor, Studio Art
  Director 2012-2013, MFA Program in Creative Technologies

  Carol Burch-Brown received her MFA from the University of Chicago.  Burch-Brown's work is conceptually interdisciplinary and she also works across several creative media, including drawing, sound art, photography, and video.  Her current projects connect sound and imagery using Max/MSP/Jitter and other forms of digital processing.  Much of her work for the past ten years has been engaged with new media and natural history, including projects on Darwin and currently on Salt Marsh estuary habitats on the southeast Atlantic.  Burch-Brown's work incorporates field and underwater recordings as well as video, photography, and installation.
  
  Her work has been included in over 200 exhibitions, performances, and video screenings throughout the United States and Canada, including the Drawing Center, Dorsky Gallery, and Bertha Urdang Gallery in New York.  "It’s Reigning Queens in Appalachia", a documentary project about an obscure gay bar in the West Virginia Appalachians is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American History.  Burch-Brown’s photographic book, Trailers, with essayist/poet David Rigsbee, was published by the University Press of Virginia.  Her collaborative new media work with composer Ico Bukvic and tap dancer Ann Kilkelly has been featured at the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States and at the International Computer Music Conference.
  
  Burch-Brown is also a musician, with collaborative appearances at Cal Arts; La MaMa Theater, Duke Theater, and Symphony Space in New York; Emory University; and the Millennium Stage Series at the Kennedy Center.  She is a member of a new vaudeville trio, Junk DNA.  She collaborates as a musician with performers of Alternate R.O.O.T.S., an organization of southeastern activist artists.  Burch-Brown has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous exhibition awards.  At Virginia Tech she has received the Creative Achievement Award from the College of Architecture and Urban Studies; the Al Sturm Phi Beta Kappa Award for Faculty Excellence in the Creative Arts; and the Diggs Teaching Scholar Award.
  
  Burch-Brown teaches drawing, book arts, and sound for visual media.

  • Office: 104 Armory
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Email: cbb@vt.edu
  • Website: http://www.carolburchbrown.com/

• Marilyn Casto Associate Professor

  Marilyn Casto is a design historian who teaches classes on the history of interiors and the decorative arts.  She has spoken at numerous national and international conferences. The range of topics on which she has spoken and written include theater history, colonial revival, and nineteenth-century design.

  • Office: 351B Henderson
  • Phone: 540-231-3687
  • Email: casto@vt.edu

• David Crane Professor, Studio Art

  David Crane received a BFA from Northern Arizona University and a MFA from Illinois State University.   Since 1980 he has been a Professor of Art/ Ceramics at Virginia Tech.  He has served as Program Chair of Studio Art (2006-2008), Head of the Department of Art & Art History (1995-2000), and Director of the Armory Art Gallery (1990-1993). 

  In 1997 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Northern Arizona University.  He is the recipient of a Virginia Museum Artist Fellowship and a SECCA- Seven Artist Fellowship Award. His artworks have appeared in over 225 national and international exhibitions.  Reproductions of his ceramic works have been published in 6 books, along with numerous catalogs and periodical articles. His work appears in numerous university and museum collections.  He has conducted 36 invited lectures and demonstrations.

  Crane’s recent work investigates the integration of geometric ceramic forms and surface glazes associated with functional objects. 

  • Office: 100A ADLC
  • Phone: 540-231-6335
  • Email: dcrane@vt.edu

• Meaghan Dee Assistant Professor of Practice

  B.F.A., University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
  M.F.A., Virginia Commonwealth University

  Appointments:
  Director, FourDesign
  Assistant Professor of Practice

  Creative Scholarship and Research:
  Meaghan Dee is a practicing graphic designer and artist who teaches full-time for the Visual Communication and Design department at Virginia Tech. She is currently the director of FourDesign, a student-staffed, faculty-led graphic design agency. Dee’s research focuses on generative methods of mark-making and the human interpretation of form. Additionally, she investigates the creation and analysis of glitch imagery. Dee received her Bachelors at University of Illinois, with a focus in Graphic Design, and a Masters of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, with a focus in Visual Communication Design.

  • Office: 101B Henderson Hall
  • Phone: 540-315-6878
  • Email: meaghand@vt.edu
  • Website: http://wearefourdesign.com

• Hans Gindlesberger Assistant Professor, Digital Imaging

  Hans Gindlesberger’s artistic practice examines the ways we are a part of, and apart from, the places we belong. His projects span photography, video, and installation and have been exhibited widely in exhibitions, festivals, and screenings, including recent showings at Galleri Image (Aarhus, Denmark), Gallery 44 (Toronto), Jen Bekman Projects (New York), Voies Off Photography Festival (Arles, France), and the International Symposium on Electronic Art (Albuquerque), among others.In his current research, Gindlesberger utilizes photographic and architectural processes as ways of reconstructing and re-performing memory and history.

  His work has been recognized through national and international awards and grants, including a 2008 Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a 2011 Mary L. Nohl Foundation Fellowship, and inclusion in Magenta’s 2012 Flash Forward photography exchange. He earned his BFA from Bowling Green State University in 2004 and an MFA in Photography from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2006.

  • Office: 346 Henderson
  • Website: http://www.gindlesberger.com

• Robert Graham Professor Emeritus, Studio Arts

  B.A., Studio Art, California State University, Hayward, California
  MFA, Painting, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

  Since 1983 he has been a Professor in Art at Virginia Tech. He has served as Director of the Armory Art Gallery (1983-1990).  He was the Studio Program Chair in the School of Visual Arts (2008-2010).

  Robert Henry Graham was born in 1944 and raised in Chicago, Illinois. According to his mother (Ms. MaryBelle Graham), the nun in charge of his first grade class at Holy Angels Grammar School on Chicago’s South-side, would let him draw by himself in a corner of the classroom, in order that he wouldn’t disrupt the rest of the class with what she called his “antics”.  Robert credits Robin Leigh, one-time co-owner of “The BlackMan’s” Art Gallery in San Francisco, California, who - in the late 60’s – for the first-time awakened his interest in expressing himself through art in painting.  In 1980 he received his B.A. in Studio Art at California State University, Hayward and his M.F.A. in Painting (1983) from University of Wisconsin, Madison.  Robert Henry produced 45 paintings in his first year as a full-time artist, and he remains prolific to this day.  Robert Henry’s work today is painted compositions of multiple layers (anywhere from 40 to 70 layers) of color with each layer a different hue on mostly heavyweight gesso-ed paper.  The paintings on paper can be multiple layered color-field paintings, cityscape silhouettes, symbols and forms, or figural/anatomical in content. 

  Robert Henry Graham’s work has been shown in 78 solo, two-person, and or 4-person exhibits; in addition his work has appeared in over 160 group exhibitions throughout the United States since 1968.  He is listed in Thomas Albright’s Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945-1980: An Illustrated History (1985) as Robert Henry.

  • Office: 108 Armory
  • Phone: 540-231-1712
  • Email: rograha3@vt.edu

• Jennifer Hand Instructor, Studio and Foundations

  Jennifer Hand received her BFA from Calvin College in 1992 and her MFA in painting from Radford University in 1995.  Since then she has actively pursed her career in painting as well as teaching.  She taught part time at New River Community College in Dublin, VA from 1998 until 2000, and at Radford University in Radford, VA from 1999 until 2008.  Full time at Virginia Tech now she teaches Principles of Art and Design, Principles of New Media, Drawing and Painting.

  Jennifer’s work takes the form of oil paintings exploring the figure and the land.  She also makes collaborative pieces with her father and sculptor Charlie Brouwer.  These collaborations sometimes take the form of large scale commissions.  Locally they have been commissioned to create work for Central United Methodist Church in Radford, St. Albans Behavioral Health in Radford, and Blacksburg Presbyterian Church.

  Jennifer has exhibited her paintings in over 50 exhibitions since 1991: 11 solo, 13 two person, 20 juried , 15 group exhibitions and one invitational.  Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. in New York, Washington D.C., Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky and Washington and internationally in Poland.

  Jennifer also has pieces in the collection of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC.

  • Office: 102 Armory
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Email: jennilc@vt.edu
  • Website: http://www.jenniferlcollins.com/

• Ben Hannam Assistant Professor, Visual Communication Design

  B.F.A., Old Dominion University
  M.F.A., Virginia Commonwealth University

  Appointment(s):

  • Area Coordinator of Visual Communications Design (VCD) Program
  • Assistant Professor of Interactive Design  

  Creative Scholarship and Research:

  Ben Hannam is an award-winning designer, author, educator, design consultant, and small business owner. His education includes an MFA in Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from Old Dominion University. Ben has lectured both nationally and internationally on topics such as typography, freelance, graphic design pedagogy, and experiential learning environments. In addition, Ben has won numerous awards for his graphic design work and teaching.
  
  Currently, Ben is an Assistant Professor in the Visual Communication Design program at Virginia Tech and has helped shape this program. Recently, Ben founded AccomplishStudios, LLC as an opportunity to extend his graphic design research and to help bridge the gap between academia and the graphic design profession. Prior to Ben's appointment at Virginia Tech, he worked internationally at VCU–Qatar for three years. During this time he helped establish and promote the graphic design community in Qatar—a process that was formative and left an indelible mark on him.
  
  Ben is currently authoring, Practice Makes Perfect: A Graphic Design Student's Guide to Freelance, which will be published by John WIley & Sons in October 2012. Ben thinks of himself as a design tactician and problem-solver. He believes that creative solutions to everyday problems reinforces the value of graphic design and helps make the world a better place.

  • Office: 352B Henderson
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Email: bhannam@vt.edu
  • Website: http://www.benhannam.com

• Travis Head Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Drawing

  Head received a BA in Studio Art from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA and an MFA in Painting & Drawing with a minor in Printmaking from the University of Iowa.  Head’s work is included in the Drawing Center’s Viewing Program and his drawings and artist’s books have been exhibited nationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions.
  Selected recent exhibitions include Small at Luise Ross Gallery, NYC, Soft Eyes at Furman University, SC, Drawing Discourse at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, From These Hills at The William King Museum in Abingdon, VA and Spring SOLOS 2012 at Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA. 

  Head’s work may be viewed at his website.

  • Office: 104 Armory
  • Website: http://www.travishead.com

• Soyeon Jung Instructor

  Soyeon Jung received her MFA in Video Art from the State University of New York at Buffalo, Department of Media Studies.  Jung is originally from South Korea and worked professionally at Samsung as a project designer in their Integrated Global Intranet System before relocating to the United States. Jung’s creative research uses time-based media, installation, and interactivity to investigate the intricacies of personal and cultural memory within Eastern and Western social structures.
  
  She has been exhibiting and screening her work nationally and internationally, including screenings at the Society of Photographic Education Multicultural Caucus Film Festival, KLEX experimental film/video festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Simultan Media Festival in Timisoara, Romania, CologneOFF Videoart in Germany, among others. Recent exhibitions include Santa Monica Art Studio in Los Angeles, Carnegie Art Center, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, the 7 Days Video Series that traveled to Western Michigan University and The Bret Llewellyn Art Gallery in Alfred State University, and among others.

  • Office: 303 DAAS
  • Email: soyeon@vt.edu
  • Website: www.soyeonjung.com

• Michelle Moseley-Christian, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Art History
  Affiliated Faculty, Medieval and Early Modern Studies

  Michelle Moseley-Christian received her Ph.D. with honors from the University of Kansas in 2007, specializing in the study of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting. Other areas of study include the arts of northern Europe from 1400-1600, the arts of the Italian Renaissance, and intersections between East Asia and the early modern Netherlands in the visual arts. Her current research project investigates the complexities of informal portraits set in scenes of everyday life in seventeenth-century Holland and Flanders by artists such as Rembrandt, Adriaen Brouwer, and Jan Steen.

  • Office: 351F Henderson
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Email: mymc@vt.edu

• Janet Niewald Senior Instructor, Studio Art

  BFA: Kansas City Art Institute, 1976 (painting/printmaking)
  MFA: Indiana University, Bloomington IN, 1978 (painting)

  Janet Niewald attended Connecticut College, New London, (Biology/Art/Asian Studies) and the New York Studio School Program in Paris before transferring to Kansas City Art Institute to earn her BFA in 1976 (Painting/Printmaking). In 1978, she received her MFA (Painting/Drawing) from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.  Subsequently, Niewald was granted a year-long Ford Foundation Grant for an artist-residency at the University of Georgia, Athens where she was then asked to teach.  Since 1980, she has taught at Virginia Tech, focusing on courses in painting and drawing as well as developing/teaching courses for the Humanities program of the university.  She received the CAUS Career Achievement Award in 2008, and has been awarded her department’s Teaching Excellence Award, and several institutional individual research and teaching grants.  

  Niewald exhibits her oil paintings, watercolors and drawings nationally and regionally.  Her work has been included in many juried competitions such as the Bowery Gallery, the Prince Street Gallery, the First Street Gallery, biennial competitions in NYC, and she was selected for both the 179th and the 185th Invitational Exhibit at the National Academy of Design, NYC.  She shows often at university venues, for example, in Wright State University’s “Drawing from Perception” and William and Mary’s “Pictorial Strategies”, and at art centers in the Northeast and the South (SECCA, the Greenhill Center, the Sawtooth, the Washington Depot Art Center).  Her paintings have also been exhibited at the Masur Museum, the Taubman Museum, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum.  She has been affiliated with Bedyk Gallery, Kansas City, Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, and Reynolds Gallery, Richmond. 

  • Office: 114A Art and Design Learning Center
  • Phone: 540-231-5878
  • Email: jniewald@vt.edu

• Joy Rosenthal Instructor, Digital Art

  Appointment(s):

  • Instructor of Photography in the SOVA
  • Instructor for on-line course in College of Lake County (Grayslake, IL)

  Creative Scholarship and Research:

  Joy Rosenthal is a photographer who teaches digital photography, advanced digital photography, topics in photography that cover studio lights and photographic illustration. Currently she has developed an on-line Digital Photography course for Virginia Tech and every spring since 2001 she has taught history of photography on line for College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois. Educated at Pratt Institute, School of Art and Design, specializing in black and white photography, darkroom master printer and studio work along with focusing on chemical manipulations called Chromoskedasic, she received her MFA in 1995. Joy has private collectors of her work in Europe and the USA. She has had solo and group show and collaborated with the DARC group fro the grand opening of the Taubman Museum in Ronoake, Virginia as well as participated in Singing Darwin at Virginia Tech.

  Her interest is exploring the many possibilities in photography. At the moment her primary medium is digital photography focus on advance topics such as high definition range photography, focus stacking and time-lapse photography.

  • Office: 114B Art and Design Learning Center
  • Phone: 540-231-1710
  • Email: jrosenth@vt.edu

• Deborah A. Sim Instructor
  Director, Armory Gallery
  Curator, Experiential Gallery

  Appointment(s): 

  • Director of the Armory Gallery (SOVA) 
  • Curator of the University Art Collections/Art Collections Management/Visual Arts Policy
  • Instructor School of Visual Arts 

  Creative Scholarship and Research:

  Professor Sim’s research is centered on the curatorial process and design of exhibitions for the Armory Gallery.  The Gallery maintains an exhibition schedule of twelve to fourteen shows a year.  The presentation of work created by national and regional artists with an emphasis on the educational role of a University Gallery as a teaching tool is the focal point of her approach. The Gallery is utilized as a visual laboratory in the School of Visual Arts.  The challenge of the inclusion of new media, digital and film is an ongoing mission and the Gallery is an adaptive environment encompassing these new avenues of visual expression.

  The picturing the University as one large museum, with the buildings acting as exhibition spaces, is the direction being taken with the Collection. Recent research includes an essay for the catalogue Bob Trotman: Business As Usual, an exhibition at the Greenville Museum of Art, travelling to the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Previous to her academic career at Virginia Tech, Ms. Sim was a curator/exhibition designer for fifteen years.

  • Office: 200 Armory
  • Phone: 540-231-4859
  • Email: dsim@vt.edu

• Eric Standley Associate Professor, Foundations and Studio Art
  Area Coordinator, Foundations

  B.F.A., Massachusetts College of Art
  M.F.A., Savannah College of Art and Design

  Appointments:

  • Foundations of Art and Design Coordinator
  • Assistant Professor of Studio Art

  Professor Standley’s research is driven in two areas: Pedagogical design for the study of Foundations of Art and Design and the creation, production and exhibition of artworks. The two are joined in the area of Creative Technologies, encompassing the exploration of visual digital multimedia and the investigation of technology in relation to the social and vocational sectors of contemporary Fine Arts. His recognition of technological efficiency is equally engaged in curriculum design and creative scholarship. He is one of eight members of the Digital Art Research Collective of Virginia Tech that created the collaborative new-media installation Revo:oveR exhibited at the grand opening of the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke. The new-media installation Cyrene Reefs, produced in collaboration with Professor Ico Bukvic and SOVA B.F.A. student Bryan Lawson, was exhibited in the 9th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) at the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University.

  Eric has recently exhibited his work at B.J. Spoke Gallery in Huntington NY, Fusion Arts Museum of NYC, Jacksonville State University, Art Honors Life Gallery at Funeria in Graton, California, the Virginia Museum of Natural History, the Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts in Long Branch New Jersey and the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, MI. Eric is a recipient of the University Certificate of Teaching Excellence, and the CAUS Creative Achievement Award.

  • Office: 102 Armory
  • Phone: 540-231-3110
  • Email: ericst@vt.edu
  • Website: http://ericstandley.30art.com/

• Thomas Tucker Associate Professor, Creative Technology

  Thomas Tucker received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he was a Joan Mitchell MFA grant recipient. He has been evolving complex drawings into animation/kinetic sculptural pieces using 3D software and sound design for over a decade.

  Prof. Tucker maintains an international profile through his exhibition record and his collaborative research, which often takes him to Japan and the Middle East. Some of these projects include: dealing with body mechanics using motion capture, using technology to create a responsive virtual heritage environment in collaboration with art historians, using animation to describe internal organ movements in collaboration with bimolecular imaging specialists, helping city councilmen visualize new traffic simulations and designing serious games.

  • Office: 347 Henderson Hall
  • Phone: 540-231-5547
  • Website: www.thomastucker.net

Advising

Virginia Tech’s School of Visual Arts is located downtown Blacksburg on Draper Road in the Armory Building.

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