Saturday, March 28, 2009

Big news in the lifes of the Pierotti's

You recently may have had a long conversation with me about art, life, and growing up. I have been using my friends and family as a sounding board. I was having a small life crisis. Not that my life was small, but that the crisis was small. I sent out 9 grad school applications. I threw the bones into the air hoping that the fates would smile on me. But I kept getting rejection letters. After the 8th rejection I started looking at alternative routes. Architecture seemed interesting, I thought. Oh by the way, Ohio University sent me two rejection letters. Maybe because of my low GPA they thought I couldn't read. Okay, I get it! You are glad I applied but you can not accept me. I get it, geez. I didn't want to be a Bobcat anyway. What a wimpy mascot... Now the Ram, now that is a regal animal. That is an animal that can represent me on a shirt or at a sporting event. The Virginia Commonwealth University Ram Bucks offered me a place in their ceramics graduate school. After much prayer and fasting and thinking. Andrea and I feel strongly that we are to take our family to Richmond Virginia to go to graduate school. This is an exciting and a scary time for us. We have the most anxiety about finding Andrea a good teaching job.



VCU is a really good school.

Here is some information about VCU:

Grants and Awards
3 MacArthur Genius Awards ($500,000 each) in the last 5 years!

$75K Tremaine Foundation Grant

American Academy of Arts and Letters Awards (3)

3rd Simultaneous $120,000 US Dept. of Education Jacob Javits Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships (3)

Pollock-Krasner Awards (4)

Windgate Fellowships (2)

International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement Award

National Rankings

Sculpture, #1 overall

Graphic Design, #4 overall (#1 among public university programs)

Painting, #8 overall (#3 among public university programs)

Fiber Arts #4 overall (Dept. of Craft/Material Studies) (#1 among public university programs)

Glass #5 overall (Craft/Material Studies) (#1 among public university programs)

Multimedia/Visual Communications #9 overall (likely a combination of our departments of Communication Arts, Graphic Design, Photography and Film, and Kinetic Imaging) (#3 public university ranking)

Ceramics #12 overall (Craft/Material Studies) (#6 among public university programs)

3 comments:

steve said...

me is happy for Giandrea.

very happy.

BFR said...

Congrats! Things here on the east coast are pretty great. THis is Brad. Thanks for the link to your website and blog.

Ronielle said...

Gian - Glad you hear you have seen the light and will soon move to Virgina. Chas told me you were coming. I teach in Northern Virginia - I don't know anything specific about Richmond schools - but if there is anything I can do to help you all navigate teaching in VA - let me know! my email - ronielle@gmail.com. See you in Virginia!

-Roni