VCU news

By Tom Gresham

Teresita Fernandez, a lauded sculptor and graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts, was among those recently selected to receive a coveted MacArthur Fellowship grant.

Fernandez, who acquired her M.F.A in sculpture at VCU in 1992, was one of 25 MacArthur Fellows named for 2005. Each grant winner will receive $500,000 over the course of five years with no obligations on how the money is spent, giving honorees a large measure of freedom to advance their work.

Fernandez, who lives and works in New York, became the second VCU graduate to win a MacArthur grant in the past three years. Daisy Youngblood, who is also a sculptor, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2003. The graduate sculpture program at VCU is ranked No. 1 in the country by U.S. News & World Report.

Among the venues where Fernandez’s work has appeared are the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, the Helga de Alvear in Madrid and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

Fernandez, a Florida native, previously was an artist-in-residence at Artpace San Antonio and is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Fernandez has been widely praised for her inventive sculptures and installations that often incorporate architecture and landscape. Naief Yehya called Fernandez’s work “elegant and striking” in a story published in ArtNexis earlier this year.

“She keeps updating the language of minimalism with her impressive simplicity and powerful cinematic evocations,” Yehya wrote.

Fernandez often creates room-sized pieces that invite the viewer to experience them intimately rather than at a detached distance, urging the viewer to experience her work both visually and intellectually.

“It’s important to me to engage viewers first in something that involves them,” Fernandez told the New York Times in 1999. “Then, it’s like a kind of seduction to lure them into thinking about it as an idea.”

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships are awarded annually to individuals from a variety of fields. Fellows are selected for their “creativity, originality and potential.” This year's winners range from a molecular biologist and a fisherman to a violinmaker and a novelist.