Filipe Leitão

Filipe Leitão

Composer and producer Filipe Leitão describes the art of composing music for cinema and explains that what a director says they want is not always what they really want. --- About Filipe Leitão Filipe Leitão, D.M.A., is an award-winning composer, music producer and educator. He is Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he developed and leads the Media Scoring program. He earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at The University of Alabama, a Master of Fine Arts degree in Music Production and Sound Design for Visual Media at the Academy of Art University (San Francisco, CA) and a Bachelor in Art Education in Brazil, where he served as an Assistant Professor at the Federal University of Pará. As an educator, he has taught composition, orchestration, music production and film scoring.   Leitão has collaborated with many artists, creating original compositions and sound design for films and video games, and has written concert pieces for varied ensembles. His works reflect his unique voice, originating from a mix of classical, popular, Brazilian and film music, and have been recognized at both national and international levels. His works has earned prizes and performances on renowned film and music festivals, including New York Electroacoustic Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, University of Tennessee Contemporary Music Festival, SCI Conferences, Belgian Saxophone Choir, North American Saxophone Alliance Conference, Cannes Short Film Corner, Toronto Film Week, Anima Mundi and WorldFest Houston. In addition to his work as a composer and educator, Leitão also develops professional virtual instruments and digital tools for composers and producers, combining musical creativity with cutting-edge sound design to empower artists worldwide. --- VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU [https://icavcu.org/]. Music by Felipe Leitão [https://arts.vcu.edu/directory/filipe-leitao/].  For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted [https://arts.vcu.edu/uncharted].

Roberto Jamora

Roberto Jamora describes the magic of color, the importance of seeing in critical thinking and the legacy of first generation immigrants in the arts. This episode also features Michelle Yee, assistant professor of Art History at VCUarts. --- About Roberto Jamora Roberto Jamora is a Richmond-based artist and educator. He holds an M.F.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase and a B.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. He is an Assistant Professor in the VCUarts Art Foundation Program. In Jamora’s series "An Inventory of Traces," color operates as both material and metaphor: gradients become repositories for memory, while layered surfaces suggest accumulation, erasure and return. He mines color from memory, photos, interviews and artifacts from his family. Skin tones, a day at the beach, hiking up a mystical mountain in the Philippines, a sonogram, aging postcards from his uncle to his grandparents from the 1970s, the bayous in Louisiana where Filipinos used to hide, the shapes of rivers, an ordinary day in Virginia. Each gradient and incision are both spectacular and everyday, familiar and distant. Through slow, attentive processes of application and concealment, thin traces of color are revealed. The paintings are quiet provocations, asking the viewer to reflect on the meanings and power of color. His practice is grounded in an ongoing inquiry into color, memory and perception, approached through abstraction as a means of holding experiences that resist literal representation. He makes this work to better understand how lived moments—personal, cultural and historical—leave traces that persist beyond narrative clarity. His artwork has been exhibited at the Anderson at VCU, Cody Gallery at Marymount University, Virginia MOCA, Frost Art Museum, Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, SFA Projects, Antenna, FLXST Contemporary, Page Bond Gallery, ADA Gallery, Topaz Arts, Norte Maar, Open Space, Outlet Fine Art, and Ishmael Bernal Gallery. He is represented by Bond Millen Gallery in Richmond. His artwork is in collections including the Atlanta Hawks NBA Team, Capital One, CoStar Group, Harvard Kennedy School, Muscarelle Museum of Art at William & Mary, and several private collections. About Michelle Yee Michelle Yee, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on contemporary Asian American and Asian Diasporic art including issues of race and representation, transnational connections and collisions, and cosmopolitanisms. She serves as organizer and chair of the Diasporic Asian Art Network, an affiliate society of the College Art Association. Her writing can be found in journals such as Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, Art Journal, Third Text, Panorama and Art Etc., as well as several exhibition catalogues. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the University of California - Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Art History from the University of Connecticut and a B.A. in Art History and English Literature from Georgetown University.  --- VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU [https://icavcu.org/]. Music by Felipe Leitão [https://arts.vcu.edu/directory/filipe-leitao/].  For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted [https://arts.vcu.edu/uncharted].

E. Gaynell Sherrod, Ed.D.

Dancer E. Gaynell Sherrod, Ed.D., describes the challenges and triumphs of creating the sonic landscape for 350,000, an immersive film installation featured in the exhibition Dawoud Bey: Elegy. This episode also features Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. --- About E. Gaynell Sherrod Dance educator, choreographer and historian E. Gaynell Sherrod, Ed.D., danced professionally with the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO!) and Urban Bush Women, Inc. She earned a master’s degree in dance education and a doctorate in dance pedagogy and performance from Temple University. A Fulbright-Hayes scholar in dance research, Sherrod's artistic and theoretical works are steeped in African American vernacular and African Diasporan dance and rhythms, mentored by acclaimed scholars Dr. Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, and the late Drs. Kariamu Welsh and Katie G. Cannon. She was previously the Director of Dance Education for New York City public schools, where she implemented professional training initiatives for dance educators, teaching artists and classroom teachers. She co-founded and directed the New York City Department of Education Dance Institute: Based on the Katherine Dunham Model, for which she was awarded a DANA Foundation Grant. Sherrod taught at New Jersey City University, New York University and Florida A&M University, where she earned tenure. In 2014, Sherrod joined the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) as Chair of the Department of Dance + Choreography. From 2019-2020, she served as the Interim Executive Director of PHILDANCO! on an organizational sustainability position funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation.   She is currently professor of dance at VCU—teaching, writing, choreographing, creating work mixed media and a consultant for dance organizations. Her work TWINE! (2017; 2022), earned her a Sage and John Cowles Residency at University of Minnesota Dance. In 2022, Sherrod collaborated with acclaimed photographer Dawoud Bey on his film 350,000, for which she created the choreo-sonic score. The project—Dawoud Bey: Elegy—was commissioned by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and exhibited from November 2023 to February 2024. More recently, it was on view at the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York City) and at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Sherrod is the author of Katherine Dunham and The Dance Griots: Reading the Invisible Script (Mellen Press, 2022).  About Valerie Cassel Oliver Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.  Since her debut at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, she has organized several critically acclaimed exhibitions including the retrospective entitled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen co organized with Naomi Beckwith (2018); The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture and the Sonic Impulse (2021) that toured nationally. And most recently, Dawoud Bey: Elegy (2023) which also toured. Cassl Oliver has lectured extensively and is a widely published author on contemporary art, artist and art practices. Cassel Oliver holds an Executive M.B.A. from Columbia University, New York; an M.A. in Art History from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and, a B.S. in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin. --- VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU [https://icavcu.org/]. Music by Felipe Leitão [https://arts.vcu.edu/directory/filipe-leitao/].  For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted [https://arts.vcu.edu/uncharted].

Simone Carena & Marco Bruno

VCUarts Qatar-based international architects and interior designers Simone Carena and Marco Bruno explain the creative power of fresh starts and misunderstandings, the meaning of dub design and why arts research is like riding a motorcycle. --- About Simone Carena & Marco Bruno MOTOElastico co-founders and VCUarts Qatar faculty members Simone Carena [https://qatar.vcu.edu/our-faculty/simone-carena/] and Marco Bruno [https://qatar.vcu.edu/our-faculty/marco-bruno/] chat about their Dub-inspired design process.  MOTOElastico is an orbiting Space Lab founded in Seoul by Simone Carena and Marco Bruno and currently working on architecture, interiors, exhibition and art projects. Born and educated in Italy, specialized in California, rooted in South Korea since 2001, and now teaching and practicing in Doha,  MOTOElastico in all its projects is using irony to critically challenge and playfully celebrate local customs and behaviors. In more than twenty years of practice outside of its Italian homeland, MOTOElastico developed a wide range of space projects.  The goal was often to explore local cultures through the unexpected combination of original ingredients with a design process similar to the one used by Dub DJs: enhancing rhythms and underlying features of existing elements, with the purpose of generating new yet familiar design tunes. MOTOElastico works have received several design awards and been included in prestigious international venues and events: Anyang Public Art Project (South Korea), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul (South Korea), Italian Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale (Italy), Korean Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (Italy/South Korea, Golden Lion), Marrakech Art Biennale (Morocco), Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (South Korea), Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism of Shenzen (China), Gwangju Design Biennale (South Korea) the Doha Design Biennial (Qatar) and London Design Biennial (UK). For more information, visit www.motoelastico.com [https://motoelastico.com/] --- VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU [https://icavcu.org/]. Music by Felipe Leitão [https://arts.vcu.edu/directory/filipe-leitao/].  For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted [https://arts.vcu.edu/uncharted].

John Freyer

John Freyer explains how he came to make art that creates space for people to slow down and have honest conversations with each other. This episode also features artist, curator and educator Sarah Irvin [https://arts.vcu.edu/directory/sarah-irvin/], curator of student exhibitions and programs at the Anderson, VCUarts' premier on-campus exhibition space. --- About John Freyer John Freyer is an associate professor of cross-disciplinary media at VCUarts. Freyer is a Peer Recovery Support Specialist and a founding member of the Inclusive Recovery City initiative in Richmond, Va. His projects include the Free Narcan Bike, All My Life for Sale, Free Ice Water, Free Hot Coffee and Free Hot Supper. Freyer is a Fulbright Scholar, a MacDowell Fellow and an artist-in-residence at Light Work & the Fannon Center, Doha. Freyer has brought his social practice projects to the TEDx stage, Mixed Greens Gallery in New York, the Liverpool Biennial Fringe and was a 2018 Tate Exchange Associate at Tate Modern. Freyer founded the traveling symposium Recovery in Practice at Columbia University in the Fall of 2023. Recovery In Practice has since been hosted at University of Derby, Teesside University in the UK in 2024, Virginia Commonwealth University and at the Portland Alano Club in 2025. About Sarah Irvin Sarah Irvin is an artist, curator and educator. She earned a Master of Fine of Arts from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia. Irvin has been featured in more than twenty solo shows, as well as more than eighty group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She is the founder of the Artist Parent Index, a searchable database of artists making work about their experience with reproduction and caring for their children. She is the Curator of Student Exhibitions and Programs at the Anderson and teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses for VCUarts. Irvin is represented by Bond Millen Gallery, Richmond; Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York; and Massey Klein Gallery, New York. --- VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU [https://icavcu.org/]. Music by Felipe Leitão [https://arts.vcu.edu/directory/filipe-leitao/].  For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted [https://arts.vcu.edu/uncharted].