After receiving the Raymond D. & Estelle Rubens Travel Scholarship, Madison Greiner (PAFA-Penn BFA '19) is able to spend an extra year studying at PAFA.
“Now that I have this almost surprise year I want to take advantage of things that I was more hesitant to get involved in before,” she said.
Sculpture student Taylor Freeman is looking to his PAFA professors for guidance as he embarks on a career as an artist. “I really like Steve Nocella, he is my favorite teacher. He’s taught me a lot about welding and plaster sculpture and bronze pours. I want to learn all of that stuff and soak it up…
Second-year MFA student Andrew Snow is turning memories tossed aside by others into art. Discarded Philadelphia Parking Authority tickets become self-portraits for Snow: “It’s playing off of memory and kind of the ghost of a memory.”
“All of art history is here for us. It’s this huge banquet of guilty pleasures, and you can take from Tarbell, you can take from Eakins, you can take from everybody,” said PAFA drawing chair Renee Foulks.
Printmaking major Jesse Castor uses her art practice to center herself. The manual work required for printmaking allows Castor to be grounded in her work.
With works dating back to the 1790’s, time was not on the side of conservator Mary McGinn when she began preparing for PAFA’s current exhibition, From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic.
Sarah McEneaney counts Martie Zelt, Jimmy Lueders, Elizabeth Osborne and Sidney Goodman as some of the PAFA faculty who had a great impact on her artistic development.
Eye Contact, on view through September 15th in the Salon Gallery, is an exportation of contemporary figure paintings and takes on the concept of the gaze.
For the two years Claudia Valenti (MFA ’20) is studying at PAFA for her MFA, she is making the most of her time. As a VAP coordinator, Valenti meets with all of the Visiting Artists, and goes out of her way to make sure her fellow students are taking advantage of the program. “Visiting artists like…
Usually Christine Belton (MFA ’21) is leading a class but this past summer she traded her regular role of teacher for a seat as a student.
“I love to teach. For me, my personal practice supports my teaching and my teaching supports my personal practice and it makes this fantastic circle,” she said…
Sara Havekotte initially came to Philadelphia in 2018 to study painting and making paintings for collage. But as Havekotte took classes, her work stayed in a material and textile base. She now weaves and sculpts with found objects.
“Things began to sort of compact in a singularity of home and…
Perspectives
About PAFA
Founded in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is America's first school and museum of fine arts. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, PAFA offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the fine arts, innovative exhibitions of historic and contemporary American art, and a world-class collection of American art. PAFA’s esteemed alumni include Mary Cassatt, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, William Glackens, Barkley L. Hendricks, Violet Oakley, Louis Kahn, David Lynch, and Henry Ossawa Tanner.
