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A poet, a painter, a composer and a dancer have today been named the University of Otago's 2008 Arts Fellows.
Dunedin poet and fiction writer Sue Wootton has been awarded the Robert Burns Fellowship. She will use her tenure to produce a third collection of her poetry and her first collection of short stories.
Ms Wootton said her works would be influenced by several themes including place and landscape.
The 2008 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship has been awarded to Auckland painter Heather Straka, who plans to work on a project examining the history of dissection and the human body in the Renaissance, in conjunction with the university's medical department.
Ms Straka has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Canterbury School of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Auckland University's Elam School of Fine Arts.
The Mozart Fellow is Christopher Watson, currently working part-time at the Centre for New Zealand Music on its SOUNZ Online project.
He plans to use the fellowship to compose several works, including a duo for percussion and violin that will premiere in the Netherlands next year, a chamber opera, a major new work for orchestra and a duo for flute and piano.
Former Dunedin resident and dance education consultant Barbara Snook has been named the Caroline Plummer Fellow.
Ms Snook graduated in 1988 with a diploma of secondary teaching in drama and dance from the Brisbane College of Advanced Education and completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in dance in 1995.
Ms Snook is currently chair of the Brisbane North Dance Panel.
She recently launched her second book Dance for Senior Students, which concentrates on dance appreciation and choreography.
Having lost a mother, daughter and husband to cancer, Ms Snook plans to work on a project focused on the community around cancer suffers.
- NZPA
