Jill Adler
(MFA1)
Jill Adler is a multimedia artist from New York, NY studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (expected graduation 2021). Her work currently revolves around themes of home, nostalgia, absence, food, and memory. Since transitioning to working from home, her work has taken the form of relief prints and gouache paintings, a change of pace from her previous painting and sculpture practice.
Website: www.jilladler.net
Instagram: @jill__adler
Cherisse Alcantara
(MFA1)
My paintings are about the complicated ways of how I relate to identity, personal history, the complexities of the immigrant, the Asian-American, and the adoptee experiences. It is about the desire to create a visual language for these experiences that weaves many things at once and to do this in an imagery that is quiet and with a subtle approach while reflecting upon the history of painting. Spaces that seem strange, undefined, uncomfortable, surreal, and with moody atmospheres and tension are what I explore. The in-between spaces which the figures inhabit are more akin to internal worlds and psychological states because for me, the spaces I
have navigated all my life are first and foremost, states of mind.
Website: www.cherissealcantara.com
Instagram: cherisse_alcantara
Jan Baltzell
(Professor, Critic)
Jan Baltzell received her BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art, and her MFA from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. She has exhibited nationally, received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and been an instructor or visiting professor at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, Towson State University and Drexel University, among others.
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Jan's painterly abstractions display a master's control of contrasting markmaking that transends the viewers conventional vocabulary. Her work is included in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. She is represented by Schmidt Dean Gallery in Philadelphia.
Jan teaches courses in Still Life Painting and beginning, intermediate and advanced drawing and acts as a Critic in the Certificate/BFA, Post-Baccalaureate, and MFA programs.
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Jan Baltzell has taught at PAFA since 1985 and is retiring this year. Jan is represented by Schmidt Dean Gallery.
Mark Blavat
(Resident Critic)
"Whoever has been forced into an attic, who has taken refuge there, is cornered and knows corners and lives under beams, beneath an inverted bow and up from stairs that emerge midroom like a gang plank step onto a trapeze dropped from a Persian firmament and a scarf rack serpentine and a bed made of rags, has learned that whatever is not strictly prohibited is allowed. I am attic."
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Social Disease:
Facebook: Mark Blavat
Instagram: @mblavat
Email: Mblavat@pobox.pafa.edu
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Autumn Casey
(MFA2)
Autumn Casey (b. 1987, Dallas) draws on the ambiguity of personal memory and pop-cultural ephemera, to challenge and question her subjectivity against the world at large. Her practice, which moves from sculpture to collage, as well as video and performance, considers the history of the found object and assemblage-redeploying existing materials or moments in unexpected, idiosyncratic ways.
I see life and death as constant cycle forever unfolding all around us. Through the cone of my dome I distill the cycle in a way I find therapeutic, maintenance like, domestic like, and fun. There is a great deal of pleasure taken in the re-organization of life’s contents that I find myself surrounded by. My work usually takes the form but not limited to
sculptures, performances, music, and videos.
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I reach out for that special bond that exists between the crevices of daytime television and fantasy pockets of glitz and glam, new cars and exotic trips. My nana used to juice carrots in the kitchen and yell out the answers. We are taught to visualize ourselves as striking it rich one day. Making connecting to what is artificial, meaningful. Found objects become placeholders for real bonds that have been formed with material culture.
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My work is about the act of giving up something you love. The act of setting it free, an attempt at shedding the layers of time that are impressed upon us constantly, while simultaneously reclaiming their existence as beautiful and responsible for the slipping present. I am interested in how memories shape an idiosyncratic conception of beauty.
Website: www.autumncasey.blogspot.com/
Instagram: @freaky_friday_fragile
Neill Catangay
(MFA2)
Neill Catangay (b. 1993) is a Filipino interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Guam. Catangay received his BA at the University of Guam in 2017 and is a graduate candidate at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His multimedia process employs illustration, paintings, sculpture, photography and video. Catangay explores the ironic relationships between found objects and personal memory, using contrasting materiality to create objects of context. He uses the physical connections of this process along with influences from pop/subculture films to explore themes of absurdity, the abject, colonialism, consumerism and post-humanism.
Catangay’s work has been exhibited internationally: selected exhibitions include Guam Filipno Artists, Dededo, Guam; Guam Art Exhibition (GAX), Tumon, Guam; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Isla Center for the Fine Arts, Mangilao, Guam; Cambridge Innovation Center, Philadelphia, PA; Anne Bryan Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; InLiquid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Orion Pop-Up Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; The Guam Council on the Arts and Humanities Agency Gallery, Hagatna, Guam; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; and Guam Museum, Hagatna, Guam. Catangay is a recipient of CAHA FY 2017-2018 Grant from The Guam Council on the Arts and Humanities Agency.
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Website: www.neillfcatangay.com
Instagram: @n.catangay
Bernadette Colburn
(MFA2)
Bernadette Colburn is a visual artist who grew up in Baltimore, MD and currently resides in Hanover, PA. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Towson University and she is currently working on her Masters of Fine Arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Bernadette is a multi-disciplinary artist working in clay, metal, printmaking, and painting. Her artwork touches on themes of nature, environment and memory. During the COVID-19 crisis she has adapted from making sculpture to working entirely on paper.She has converted a bedroom into a temporary studio space where she has been creating collages and monotypes based on her evening walks at the state park near her home. She has also been using inspiration from her vivid dreams brought on by the crisis.
Instagram: @bcolb2812
Email: colburnbe@pobox.pafa.edu
Tom Csaszar
(Associate Professor, Resident Critic)
Tom Csaszar is an artist, art writer, and educator based in Philadelphia. He has taught since 2000 while continuing an active studio practice. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Website: www.tomcsaszar.com
Email: rbtc@infionline.net or csaszar@pobox.pafa.edu
Rachel D’Angelo
(MFA1)
I am interested in the subconscious and the ways in which we conceal ourselves through ego and consumerism. I like to work in mostly three-dimensional media, and I have been experimenting with video to explore these themes. I use materials that are accessible to me, and that have already played a role in my life in some way.
Instagram: @rachelrdangelo
Victoria Davis
(MFA2)
Victoria Davis is a contemporary feminist artist exploring the uncanny through work that mines identity, domestic space, and the body. Her work is primarily mixed-media assemblage of ceramics, painting, printmaking, collage, and found materials and is focused on the exploration of aesthetics, decay, and the passage of time. Victoria lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.
Website: www.victoriavdavis.com
Email: davisvi@pobox.pafa.edu
David Dempewolf
(Resident Critic, Seminar Instructor)
David Dempewolf earned a Certificate in sculpture from PAFA, a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from Columbia University. He has been a resident of the Whitney Independent Studio Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
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He is the co-founder and co-director of the Marginal Utility gallery, and the Machete art-zine in Philadelphia. Dempewolf has shown singular projects in various group shows in spaces and venues such as Greene Naftali, New York; the CAC, Cincinnati, Ohio; Whitechapel, London; the Oberhausen and London film festivals.
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Dempewolf alters found video footage to investigate and enhance themes of memory, history, repetition and experience. Frame by frame, Dempewolf transforms canonical films and videos, creating a new recombinant text/video that explores how our recollections of the past frame and define our shared present moment. The manipulation not only affects how the viewer experiences the visual components of the archival material, but it also changes the auditory encounter with an emphasis on rhythm that threads together a time based consideration of the instability of collective and personal memories.
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Dempewolf is a Resident Seminar Critic in the MFA program. He teaches a course in Readings and Research.
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Instagram: @dempewolfdavid
Marginal Utility Website: www.marginalutility.org
Marginal Utility Instagram: @marginalutilitygallery
Renee Foulks
(Chair of Drawing, Professor)
Renée P. Foulks exhibits her paintings and drawings extensively throughout the United States, and her work is represented in museum, college, corporate and private collections. Solo and group shows include venues such as the PAFA Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Delaware Art Museum and the Oglethorpe Museum of Art in Atlanta. Renée is currently represented by Haynes Galleries, Inc. of Nashville, TN and Thomaston, ME.
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Renée teaches courses in Life Painting, Portrait, Narrative and Sequential Drawing and is a Critic in the Certificate/BFA Programs. She serves as Chairperson of the Drawing Department and Co-ordinator of the Fine Arts Illustration Specialization. Renée teaches Painting and Drawing and is a Critic in the MFA Program and also offers courses in Continuing Education.
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Work in this show:
“In the Garden: Right Panel” is the second in a series of 9 paintings. Ultimately, I hope to assemble a 3 tier polyptych revolving around Adam and Eve in the garden. An exploration of man’s will vs. God’s will, this figure, released from struggle, is cradled lightly by the vines.
Currently in the second stage of underpainting, the sky retains a light local color while the tree and figure are modeled tonally and are stained with colors complementary to the quality of the light. The left panel was completed and exhibited at Gallery Henoch, NY in Sept. 2019 and will be connected with the right panel as “wheel of life” companion pieces. All of the panels are planned to be executed as diptychs and triptychs to explore multiple sub themes; however, once all of the paintings are developed, they may be reassembled to present the original narrative.
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View also: Online Catalogue from Gallery Henoch for the exhibition "The Female Eye" - a group exhibition of 11 contemporary female realist painters investigating their present-day truths. Link Below:
https://issuu.com/sherylgh/docs/horizontal_brochure_use/s/141909
Lily Furniss
(MFA2)
Lily Furniss (b. 1995, Chicago, IL) is completing her MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her wide-ranged artistic practice includes drawing, painting, video, and jazz music. She primarily focuses on psychological works that examine class, familial political history, hegemony, and childhood memory. Coincidentally, Lily is currently quarantined in her family’s apartment building that used to be a convent.
Website: www.lilyfurniss.com
Instagram: @lilyfurnissart
Ashley Garner
(MFA2)
Ashley Garner TheColorG is a visual artist who grew up in Martinsburg, PA and currently resides in Philadelphia, PA. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Ash works in soft sculpture, site-specific installation and painting. Her work examines visual and physical relationships between art and architecture that exist as a metaphor for connections and bridges between her childhood and adulthood experiences. She uses symbolic soft objects as a physical link between those experiences within a presented architecture and space.
Ashley’s work has been exhibited at museums, galleries, and institutions that include Atelier FAS Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Cherry Street Pier, Philadelphia, PA; Point Part University, Pittsburgh, PA; Westin Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA; Framehouse and Jask Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; The Brewhouse Association, Pittsburgh, PA; Fusion Atelier, Brookville, PA; Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Edinboro, PA; and the Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA. Ashley’s work will be featured in the Wassaic Project Summer Publication 2020 and she will also be attending a 2-week residency at the Studios at MASS MoCA in March 2021, funded by a PAFA fellowship.
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Website: www.thecolorg.com
Instagram: @the.color.g
Email: thecolorg@yahoo.com
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Marnie Gelfman
(MFA2)
Marnie Gelfman is an artist and educator living in New York. She explores intimacy in portraiture and landscapes. She received her BFA from Cornell University and is a graduate Candidate at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
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Instagram: @marniegelfman
Email: marniegelf@gmail.com
Alexis Granwell
(Professor)
Alexis Granwell (New York, b. 1981) received an MFA from The University of Pennsylvania in 2007. She has been exhibiting in the US and abroad for the last 15 years. Granwell is a Professor of Art and currently teaches at The University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. S he is a member and one of the founders of Tiger Strikes Asteroid.
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In her recent work, Granwell depicts time's movement as ruination, artifact, or geological process. She examines the psychological and bodily characteristics of our built and natural environments, exploring relationships within collections of forms. Her sculptures are made from raw materials such as concrete, steel, and wood, which are juxtaposed with forms made from handmade paper painted with pigmented pulp.
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Website: www.alexisgranwell.com
Instagram: @alexisgranwell
Sara Havekotte
(MFA2)
My practice explores how materials and objects can be used together to tell stories. I use my work as a way to chronicle time, personal narrative and experience through fabric, string and found-objects. I use poetry, memoirs and personal diaries as a guide to make intuitive material decisions in my textile works. The material used in the weavings, sculptures and fabric works are scraps of fabric and trinkets found in my studio or at home. I am an artist working in Philadelphia, PA and I received my Bachelors of Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Website: www.sarahavekotte.com
Instagram: @sara.k.havekotte
Email: sarahavekotte@gmail.com
Grace Humphries
(MFA1)
Grace Humphries (MFA I) is an emerging artist working in Philadelphia, PA. Her work is centered on ideas of trauma, showcased through complex self-portraiture. The materials utilized are primarily acrylic and gouache paints on paper or canvas but found objects and materials can often sneak their way into the processes, as they heighten the significance of memory within the narratives. Humphries grew up in Baltimore, MD and received her BA in Fine Art from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2017 before beginning the MFA program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019.
Website: www.gracehumphriesart.com
Instagram: @artrunner_gh
Email: humphriesartgrace@gmail.com
Sarena Johnson
(MFA2)
My practice has changed drastically during the time of this pandemic, but I remain working daily on small oil paintings on paper to keep the hand moving. These portraits are small playful experiments. I've been approaching them with the mentality of just making something that is a failure and every once in a while I'm surprised with some kind of success.
Doah Lee
(Visiting Critic, Pafa Artist in Residence)
Doah Lee is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Philadelphia. She was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. She earned her MFA from University of Pennsylvania and her BFA with a concentration in Painting and Printmaking at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. In her work, she explores and exploits cultural symbols through repetition in a practice that mediates on conflicted cultural translation, immigration, otherness and femininity while interrogating issue of self-identification. She searches through the ways of how children speak, listen, see, and draw and their relationships with the influencing points over a person’s identity structure under socio-political and cultural pressures. The work has been featured in various exhibitions in Virginia, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea. She has been a resident-artist at Vermont Studio Center and Cheltenham Center of the Art. She is a curator and co-director of an artist-run exhibition space, FJORD gallery and currently works as a visiting art critic and artist in residency at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
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Website: www.doahlee.com
Instagram: @doah.lee
About the work in the show:
“Hate Alphabet” and “Alphabet”
Pencil and Eraser on Paper, 6”x6” each (100 editions/ 102 editions), 2020
The 100 Days Alphabet Challenge projects were started on Jan. 25th, 2020 and completed on May 3rd and 5th, 2020. The starting date corresponds with the New Year’s Day of the Lunar Calendar. The work is initiated by questioning how the power dynamics of languages has been structured and how it shapes social relations in today’s society. These drawings are created by pencil and eraser, which are the most fundamental utensils, not only in art but across all education systems.
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Project Instagram pages:
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Sarah Lesnikoski
(Low-Res MFA)
My practice is interdisciplinary and I utilize the body and text as a way of investigating connection and social interaction. I have a background in painting, but began using video and digital media as forms of artifice to subvert the content that I attempt to critique. However, now that these devices are, in large part, our only choice for both materials and sources, I’m feeling the urge to transgress; hence the title of this work: How to Fuck the Internet. These images are still frames from a video poem that I’ve been working on during lockdown.
Website: www.sarahlesnikoski.com
Email: lesnikoskisa@pobox.pafa.edu
Maureen Maduadichie
(MFA1)
Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Maureen Maduadichie is currently developing her art through the MFA studio art program at PAFA. She is drawn to experimental art through mixed media collages, painting and sculptures. She lives and works in Philadelphia.
Instagram: @the_maureen_madu
Email: maduadichiema@pobox.pafa.edu
Kyle Margiotta
(MFA1)
I am a fine artist, an illustrator, and educator. I enjoy the adventure of working in several mediums. My personal works explores the human experience of both agony and glory.
Website: www.km-fineart.com
Instagram: @kylemargiotta
Sallie Marshall
(Low-Res MFA)
Sallie Marshall studied art at the following institutions:
University of the Arts BFA Graduated 1983 (Painting major). Parsons School of design (Photography, Ceramics, Jewelry design). Studio Jewelers Ltd.(soldering, design, gem setting). Fashion Institute of Technology (Jewelry design, business, technology), School of Visual Arts (Sculpture-casting aluminum and bronze). In 1985 I began my jewelry design company in NYC “Downtown Jewelry Designs”. All works were hand crafted, cast in sterling silver, soldered, polished and set by me. I exhibited at Jacob Javitts Center, The Chelsea Pier, and the Philadelphia Convention Center among a number of smaller exhibitions spaces that sold wholesale and I occasionally exhibited and sold at juried craft shows that sold retail. I am presently employed in the after school program for Central Bucks School District. I am presently enrolled in the “Low Res MFA program” at Pafa. I am enjoying all aspects of the program, over the summer of 2019 I discovered that wood had become my new passion, and a fun vehicle for my creative endeavors.
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Instagram: @alienbohemian
Yasue Maetake
(Visiting Critic)
Yasue Maetake is a Japanese-born, New York-based artist. Her large and small sculptures evoke memories of flora, fauna, and unfamiliar hybrid organisms that come into creation via transformations involving steel, resin, wood, stone, animal bone, and handmade papers.
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Leeza Meksin
(Visiting Critic)
Leeza Meksin is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working in painting, installation, public art and multiples. Born in the former Soviet Union, she immigrated to the United States with her family in 1989. Her work investigates binary systems (male/female, hard/soft, dressed/naked, public/private) and highlights parallels between conventions of painting, architecture and our bodies.
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Meksin has created site-specific installations for The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City (2016), The Kitchen, NYC (2015), BRIC Media Arts, Brooklyn (2015), Brandeis University (2014), the former Donnell branch of the New York Public Library (2011), and in a National Endowment for the Arts funded project in New Haven, CT for Artspace (2012). She is the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist grant (2015) and in 2013 co-founded Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run gallery and curatorial collective in Brooklyn. Meksin received a MFA from The Yale School of Art, a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA/MA in Comparative Literature from The University of Chicago. She teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
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Website: www.meksin.com
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Dori Miller
(MFA2)
During the luxury of normal studio time, color captures my attention constantly. Its inherent narrative triggers my work. This could be an
archetypal, stereotypical, or personal spark. Red = Mars, violence, or the chosen color of my hair. Mixing color is where I begin. Material collisions evoke much. I accept accidents along the way and seize the controls back as the painting demands. Creativity and the unknown is my work. These are the works from within isolation without the luxury of such musings.
Website: www.DoriMillerFineArtist.com
Instagram: @DoriMillerFineArtist
Email: dori@dorimillerfineartist.com
Suzanne Morgan
(Low-Res MFA)
Suzanne Morgan is an artist, photographer and filmmaker working with traditional materials as well as glass, hardware store finds, garage sale treasures and 4 legged models to turn the ideas in her mind into something physical, different and dynamic. She has a BA from Duke University and is currently pursuing her MFA in the Low-Res program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, graduating in August 2020.
Website: suzannemorganart.myportfolio.com
Instagram: @suzannemorganart
Facebook: facebook.com/SuzArtDesign
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Addison Namnoum
(Assistant to the Graduate Chair, Critic)
Addison Namnoum is a multimedia artist living in Philadelphia. She received her BA in Human Ecology at College of the Atlantic in 2014 and her MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019. In her work she poses questions about experience and studies our relationship with place at the scales of the every-day and the monumental. Frequently she uses narrative structures in the production of art books, videos, and photo series to examine pattern as well as to explore the ways we understand self-identity as it relates to place. She integrates textile, sculpture, projection, and sound to emphasize the sensorial and shifting nature of the material world we inhabit.
Website: www.adnamnoum.com
Instagram: @addison.namnoum
Eileen Neff
(Resident Critic)
Most of my work includes the landscape as a primary element of the photographic constructions I create. As much as the landscape, I love engaging the conventions of seeing and picturing, and question how the world might be re-presented. These works were made recently, instigated by spending this heightened time reconsidering ongoing projects as well as working with some new discoveries from the windows of my studio.
Website: www.eileenneff.com
Morgan Osburn
(MFA2)
Morgan Osburn creates ceremonies of disembodiment and dissection, remaking and reclaiming the body through assemblage and installation. Her tactile installations reflect on the intimate contact exchanged between two bodies. She lives and works in Philadelphia.
Website: www.morganosburn.com
Instagram: @morganaosburn
Heather Palmer
(Post-Bacc)
Heather Palmer (Post Baccalaureate) is an interdisciplinary artist working in collage, found objects, photography, and film. She received her BA in History and Religious Studies from Albright College in 2015. Now more than ever, her photography has become an important vessel to both document and make sense of our ever-changing world. She lives and works in Philadelphia.
Instagram: @midlistartist
Kaitlin Pomerantz
(Resident Critic, Seminar Instructor, Writing Advisor)
Kaitlin Pomerantz works with varied materials and processes to explore human relationships to "nature", land use and mis-use, and ecologies of the built world.
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Work in this show:
Trodden (nearly one month), 2020, imprinted magnolia petals
I had noticed a trodden-on magnolia petal, and admired the markings as well as the intense symbolism: a delicate piece of nature, carelessly marred by human exigency, transit, branding. I noticed, days later, the great bloom of a magnolia tree near my house, also precariously close to a hospital and COVID tent. Fully gloved and masked, I scarcely dared touch a thing outside of my home, yet, these freshly fallen petals promised a sort of safety if I could catch them upon first terrestrial contact. So the small collection began, for the duration of the bloom, and beginning of the quarantine. I would gently carry the petals home, and then crush them beneath my feet: a rumination on the toll of transit, the brevity of bloom, the proximity of mortality, the impossibility of harmless passage.
Website: www.kaitlinpomerantz.com
Matthew Pring
(MFA1)
I am a firm believer in the power of art to affect change. My work addresses contemporary views of social, political, and cultural issues. These narratives explore relevant varied themes such as racism, war, healthcare, abuse of power, political climate, and the human condition. My large-scale paintings often depict unsettling images of power, struggle, violence, and fear while others sit in contrast showcasing the more human side to these struggles.
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Website: matthewpring.com
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Tania Qurashi
(MFA1)
Tania Qurashi (b. New Jersey) is a painter who lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. Qurashi attended The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts in 2016. She is currently a graduate candidate at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She has attended a residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and completed the Tyler School of Art Summer Painting & Sculpture Intensive in Philadelphia, PA, and a residency at Goldsmiths College in London, UK. Her work often explores paintings and drawings of portraits and objects that attempt to provide narratives to communicate and explore nostalgia, melancholia, and cultural identity.
Website: www.taniaqurashi.com
Instagram: @tania.qurashi
Kevin Richards
(Graduate Department Chair, Professor, Seminar Instructor)
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Dr. Kevin Richards is Associate Professor, the Chair of Liberal Arts, and the Low-Residency MFA Program Head. He teaches in the Certificate/BFA and the MFA programs. He holds a Ph.D. (1995) and MA (1992) from Bryn Mawr College and a BA with honors from the University of California-Berkeley (1989).
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His areas of expertise include 19th-century art and aesthetics, contemporary art, French theory, film history and theory, and, in particular, the work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, he works as an artist and a curator, regularly exhibiting his photographs, videos, installations, and sound art.
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He has published numerous essays in the field of 19th-century art history, contemporary art, aesthetics, and literature, including "Eve’s Dropping/Eavesdropping" in Refracting Vision: Essays on the Writings of Michael Fried (Power Publications; Sydney, 2000). He has also published a book, Derrida Reframed: A Guide for the Visual Arts Student (IB Tauris; London, 2008) and served as guest editor for the American Book Review.
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Richards teaches Art History in the Certificate/BFA program. He is a Critic and teaches seminars in Readings and Research, and Aesthetics and Criticism in the MFA program.
Julia Way Rix
(MFA2)
Julia Way Rix explores spaces of interaction and reciprocity between the human and non-human world. Her practice includes plein air painting, outdoor installation, and experimental video. Julia is a fourth generation resident of the Tookany Creek (Philadelphia area) watershed.
Website: www.juliarix.com
Instagram: @jwrixart
Facebook: Julia Way Rix
James Allister Sprang
(Professor, Critic)
I am a multidisciplinary artist that creates work for gallery spaces, theater spaces and the spaces in-between. Working across mediums—photography, sound, performance and installation—I approach my work like a storyteller investigating poetics, gesture and documentation. During this time I wish I had a modular synthesizer, to make sounds that I could contemplate. Instead, I have been using VCV, a free digital emulation of a eurorack modular synth.
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Website: www.jamesallistersprang.com
Instagram: @jamesallistersprang
Claudia Valenti
(MFA2)
Claudia Valenti (b. 1994, New Haven, CT) is a multimedia artist whose paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures give material form to the tangible contents of the American home. Her work constructs proximate domestic spaces, and the folkloric and surrealist narratives that unfold within them question memory, the social and psychological nature of family, grief, resilience, magic, and the home as the genesis of identity. She lives and works in Philadelphia.
Website: www.claudiavalenti.com
Instagram: @claudiamvalenti
Email: cmcvalenti@gmail.com
Elantu Viovoide
(MFA2)
Elantu Viovoide is a multi-disciplinary artist currently pursuing her MFA degree at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Esten Walker
(Low-Res MFA)
I am a Low-Residency MFA student, currently residing in the NC Mountains. My recent work, in this time of quarantine, has focused on elements of human angst, and natures magnitude…
Using landscapes and cityscapes, and the human form, as points of departure, I explore poetic forces arising between nature, constructed environments, and the spaces of our human psychology. These forces may seem to exist as dualisms, yet through duration and contemplation, a myriad of dialogues emerge, challenging me to listen.
Email: WalkerEs@pobox.pafa.edu
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