Digital Arts and New Media: MFA: Collaboration, Innovation, Social Impact

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DANM Faculty named Rydell Fellows

Friday, December 4, 2015 - 8:00am to Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - 8:00am

 

Three DANM affiliated faculty are recipients of the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship, a biennial grant of $20,000 bequeathed in the name of the late Roy and Frances Rydell, and administered by the Community Foundation Santa Cruz County.

For 2016-17 professors Helen and Newton Harrison and digital media professor Irene Lusztig have been named Rydell fellows and will receive the stipend to pursue artistic projects. This year’s fellows were chosen from a pool of 61 applicants, drawn from working visual artists not enrolled in a degree-granting program and a resident of Santa Cruz County.

The Harrisons have been associated with DANM for several years and have had a lasting impact on DANM student research in enviromental art. They are known for their distinctive style of art that embraces and explores ideas of environmental preservation, from agriculture to forestry to urban renewal. They have presented their art in venues around the world and have been featured in scholarly books and publications.

Lusztig is a DANM affiliate faculty member and an associate professor in the Film and Digital Media department at UC Santa Cruz, and an accomplished filmmaker who has shown her work around the world.

Professor Beth Stephens was selected from the 2014-15 recipients and has work in the current Rydell Fellows exhibition at the R. Blitzer Gallery in Santa Cruz. As a performance artist, filmmaker, activist and educator, her artwork, performance art and writing have explored themes of queerness, feminism and environmentalism.