Rogers Corporation Awards Scholarships to MassArt Winners of the PORON® Urethanes Fashion Design Challenge

Rogers Corporation (NYSE:ROG) showed its support for education and design innovation by awarding fashion students at MassArt. The scholarships were given as part of the company’s first, annual “PORON Urethanes Fashion Design Challenge”. The competition showcased the versatility of PORON Urethanes in non-textile design applications created by student designers.

Under the rules of the program, two $1,000 scholarships were awarded to students in the college’s sophomore creative design class for the “Most Creative Use of PORON Urethanes” and “Most Fashionable Garment”. Rogers also presented two $250 scholarships for honorable mentions. The scholarships will be applied toward the students’ upcoming academic year tuition expenses. The winners include:

Most Creative: Hilary Davis, $1000 scholarship (top, left)
Most Fashionable: Leah Lundberg, $1000 scholarship (top, right)
Honorable Mention: Jane Sommer-Fuller, $250 scholarship (lower, right)
Honorable Mention: Maya Molina-Araujo, $250 scholarship (lower, left)

Rogers donated rolls of PORON Urethane foam in various thicknesses and colors which students used to design and construct their non-textile garments. The sixteen students who participated in “The Challenge” created a variety of garments, including swimwear, daywear, evening wear and fantasy wear with flexible PORON Urethane. Rogers’ representatives reviewed and evaluated the garments based on their creativity, potential wearability, intricate design details and finishing work.

MassArt Fashion Student Wins Project Prom Contest

The results are in! MassArt fashion senior Sujung Cho has been voted the winner of the Boston Globe’s Project Prom fashion design contest. Her prizes include a $500 gift certificate from Fabric Place and a trip to New York City to have lunch with Nicole Fschelis, the fashion director for Macy's. For more information about the contest, visit the Boston Globe’s Project Prom website at: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/special_projects/2007/projectprom

Artadia Recognizes MassArt Faculty and Alumni

Congratulations to MassArt faculty members Jane D. Marsching (Studio Foundation) and Stephen Tourlentes (’88 MFA Media & Performing Arts and Photography adjunct faculty) on being two of seven Boston artists recently selected for a 2007 Artadia Award in the amount of $1500. Nationally prominent curators Pieranna Cavalchini (Curator of Contemporary Art, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston), Michael Darling (Contemporary Curator, Seattle Art Museum), and Rene de Guzman (Visual Arts Curator, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco) juried the competition and named the ten awardees – 3 Artadia Awards of $15,000 and 7 Artadia Awards of $1,500. MassArt faculty member Denise Marika (Studio for Interrelated Media) and alumnus Douglas Weathersby (’02 MFA Painting) were among the 15 finalists.

Applications for the Artadia Awards were open to visual artists in all media and at any stage of their career working and living in the metro Boston area, and award winners were selected from nearly 700 applicants. Artadia is an organization devoted to individual artist support at the local level, and has partnered with several local foundations to help make this award possible here.

Boston is the fourth city in Artadia’s national awards program. The organization already administers successful programs and awards in Houston, San Francisco and Chicago. Laura Donaldson, Director of the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts will curate an exhibition of the Awardees’ work during the summer of 2008 and a fully-illustrated catalogue will be published to commemorate the inaugural Artadia Awards in Boston.

For more information about the award process and great list of Boston artists who are this year's awardees visit: http://www.artadia.org/news.html

Jane Marsching is a photographer, sculptor, and video artist. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, she collaborates with scientists from all over the world for her current project Arctic Listening Post. Pulling content from various sources including the internet, science fiction illustrations, and historical source material, she weaves the complexities of the “real” visions and representations of the North Pole and Arctic with artistic sense of imagination and “narrative wonder”.

Stephen Tourlentes teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and the Isaldn Center for the Arts in Skopelos, Greece. His current series of black and white photographs explore the sites and geography of the prison industry in the United States. Tourlentes’ eerie nightscapes capture the light pollution and menacing aura of the penitentiaries.

MassArt's 2007 Commencement Ceremony

On Friday, May 18, 2007, MassArt awarded Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts, and Master of Science in Art Education degrees to approximately 360 graduate and undergraduate students. In addition to recognizing the tremendous efforts of graduating students, the college also awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts to Robert Pinsky, United States Poet Laureate, translator, essayist, and teacher. Mr. Pinsky addressed the class of 2007.

Congratulations graduates!

To view a slide show of this year's Commencement day festivities visit photographer Glenn Kulbako's website. Photographs are available for purchase.

For more information on Commencement 2007 view the press release.