DVC Faculty Receive High Honors in Fine Arts

Diablo Valley College's art department is the picture of success, with several of its faculty recently receiving exceptional awards and recognition for their outstanding work.

Art professor Robert Lee Montgomery has been honored with participation in the prestigious 2008 Whitney Museum Biennial in New York City beginning in March. Montgomery, along with artist Michael Trigilio (a former DVC instructor now at UC San Diego), has created a conceptual art project and mobile pirate radio station called Neighborhood Public Radio. This loose collective mixes art and radio, typically setting up its microphone and transmitter at gallery locations or on the street to provide programming with maximum neighborhood participation.

For the three-month duration of the Whitney biennial event, Montgomery's NPR will be occupying a storefront space on Madison Avenue while providing experimental local live radio broadcasts.

Other DVC instructors in the limelight include Desiree Holman and Amy Wilson Faville, who made news when they were recently honored with a pair of highly sought after Artadia Awards. Artadia, the Fund for Art and Dialogue, is a non-profit organization based in New York City that provides artists in specific communities with unrestricted grants and a national network of support.

Holman and Wilson Faville were two of only ten award winners selected from a record number of 520 applications, and each received a $1500 grant. Holman will be using the award money to pursue a series of large scale pencil drawings on paper and a new hybrid video. There will be an exhibition of the award winners later this year.

Photography professor Jessamyn Lovell was the grand prize winner of the very prestigious Aperture Portfolio Prize for her contemporary photographic images. Founded in 1952 by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, the Aperture Foundation was and is the premier not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to advancing fine photography.

Over 800 photographers from around the world applied for this new award, and since Lovell was selected as the 2007 award recipient, her work will be exhibited on their web site for the year at www.aperture.org/store/ap2007-1.aspx. She will spend the $2,500 prize to print and mount exhibition art.

Lovell was also nominated for the locally prestigious Eureka Fellowship alongside fellow instructors Leo Bersamina and Rick Godinez. A Eureka nomination is a high honor that adds prestige to the credentials of any practicing artist.

The Art Gallery is located at the front of the college. For more information, contact the Art Gallery at 925 685-1230 extension 2471.