Teresa Annas

Staff writer

Office phone: 757-446-2485

Teresa Annas covers the arts in Hampton Roads, including previews of exhibitions and performing arts programs.

Teresa has chronicled the arts in Hampton Roads since the late 1970s, when she was a freelancer writing for local, state and national publications. She became a full-time staff arts writer in 1986.

In the 19 years she has held this position, highlights have included covering the Virginia Symphony musicians’ strike, the do-or-die campaign that saved the Virginia Stage Company and the “Art of Glass” festival that signaled this region’s rising reputation as a center for art glass. Recently, she has focused on in-depth profiles and features on people, issues and trends in the arts. She also integrates non-arts stories into her work, such as a profile of the director of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, whose rearing in an arts household in Staunton, Va., has made an impact on his field. Lately, she has been reporting on the adventures of a Norfolk woman, Teressa Rerras, who is helping oppressed Afghan women by teaching them photography, and on the move of the d’Art Center in downtown Norfolk and its 40-plus artists to a new location. Teresa studied fine arts and theater at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, where she performed on stage and practiced many art forms, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography and ceramics. In 1984 and 1985, she was exhibitions curator at the Virginia Beach Arts Center, now known as the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. While at that Virginia Beach nonprofit center, Teresa created what was touted as the first exhibition on New York’s East Village art to note that scene’s tendency to remake images from art history. She also organized art classes and set up lectures and special programs. That experience has proven valuable in covering the behind-the-scenes challenges of running nonprofit arts organizations, just as her early studio and stage experience has helped me empathize with artists and thespians.

Recognition for Teresa's work includes an in-house Slover Award in 2001, third place in features. Nationally, she has been a finalist twice, pitted against all size newspapers, in The Missouri School of Journalism’s Lifestyle Journalism contest. In 2000, she placed with a profile of glass artist Dale Chihuly. In 2002, she was honored for a story about Viktor Schreckengost, “The Man Who Designed Everything.” In 2003, the Cultural Alliance of Greater Hampton Roads recognized her work with an Alli Award. That same year, the Virginia Commission for the Arts issued a certificate of commendation for “outstanding work in covering the arts in Hampton Roads.”

Teresa also writes occasional reviews for the international journal Sculpture.