Two professors from Raritan Valley Community College’s Arts & Design Department have been honored for their creative work, receiving 2021 Individual Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Dennis Russo of Wayne, professor of theater, was awarded a $4,100 fellowship for screenwriting and playwriting for his play, “Yellow with Grey Edges.”
Adjunct professor William Macholdt of Raritan Borough, Somerset County), who teaches ceramics at the college, received a $6,000 fellowship for crafts.
Russo has been teaching at RVCC for 20 years, 17 years as a full-time faculty member. “Yellow With Grey Edges” centers around a children’s book author-illustrator who decides to write a play in response to Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s “Stages of Dying,” which later became known as the “Stages of Grief.”
The play includes Russo’s attempt to offer his own “Styles of Grief” based on painting styles such as Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Impressionism.
Macholdt has been a faculty member at RVCC for close to 20 years. The ceramic pieces he submitted for the fellowship are from a group of works titled the “Lever and Fulcrum Series.”
The title was initially conceived as a fairly literal translation of the visual appearance of several of these works. However, it also came to embody what the pieces represent metaphorically.
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