University of Richmond Artist Awarded Fellowship from Virginia Commission for the Arts

January 6, 2005

Tanja Softic, associate professor of art at the University of Richmond, has been awarded a $5,000 painting fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Softic is conducting research for a series of works on paper collectively titled “De Rerum Natura” (“On the Nature of Things”). She is interested in “the idea of botanical gardens as sites of confluence of the sciences and art, particularly biology and medicine, and garden architecture and botanical illustration.”

Softic will use the fellowship funds for travel next summer to the Johns Hopkins Institute for the History of Medicine and the Botanical Gardens of the University of Padua in Italy. While there, she will “collect images and information, make initial sketches and take digital photographs to create a ‘digital library’ that will be the foundation of the project.”

The project will consist of 12 54” x 54” drawings, which she plans to complete in her studio at the university by May 2006. She will propose the series for an exhibition to be shown at public venues in Richmond and around the country. The “De Rerum Natura” drawing series will represent a summation of her work and ideas for the past five years, she said.

She has received numerous awards, including first prize at the prestigious Fifth Kochi International Triennial Exhibition of Prints at the Ino-cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan.