We’re excited to introduce the Aunspaugh Fifth Year Fellows for 2020 – 2021!
The Aunspaugh Fifth Year Fellowship is meant to assist the department’s most dedicated students to pursue professional aspirations. The fellowship enables a UVA student, who has completed an undergraduate degree in Studio Art, to spend an additional year of intensive effort in a studio area within Ruffin Hall. Fellows receive a stipend, research funds, and a private studio space for the year. They participate in an advanced seminar, interact with visiting artists and have a culminating exhibition of their work at year's end. We can’t wait to see what these artists make this year!
Elliana Given is from Chicago, Illinois and graduated from the University with a double major in the Distinguished Majors Program in Media Studies and American Government, as well as a minor in Studio Art. Her work is inspired by histories of social and political protest and is heavily rooted in feminist theory, critical race theory, and postmodern cultural critique. She explores themes of memoir, amateurishness, and digitization in order to highlight the ways in which contemporary American culture impacts ideas of truth, understanding, and storytelling, while also having fun with the absurdities and contradictions which she sees constantly popping up around her.
Megan Richards is an animator and mixed media artist from Yorktown, Virginia. Her work explores the use of color, the handmade, and humor to deal with issues around gender and trauma.
Isabella Whitfield is from Centreville, Virginia, and recently received a BA in Studio Art and Foreign Affairs. She creates all her works under the maxim of material temporality. This baseline ephemerality reflects thematic content, which considers the evolving relationships between community, self, and others. She plays off the familiarity of common objects, abstracting them to pose questions of function, absence, and connection.
Anne Whitney is from Albany, NY and primarily works with photography, particularly with historical processes such as cyanotype and kallitype. She also enjoys printmaking and book arts, and likes to investigate body image, abstraction in portraiture, and the landscapes of home in her work.