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PHILADELPHIA— Of more than 300 applicants, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts graduates Anne Seidman and Mauro Zamora are two of four painters and twelve artists total to be awarded Pew Fellowships in the Arts. Both painters, Seidman and Zamora received $60,000 each, the largest such grants in the country for which individual artists can apply.
Seidman earned her B.F.A. from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in coordination with the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, in 1973, and her M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in 1976. She also earned her M.A. from Ohio State University, Columbus, in 1986. Seidman has exhibited extensively over the years, most recently at Mercer Gallery, New York City; George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles; and Arcadia University, Glenside, Pa. She currently has a solo exhibition on view at Schmidt-Dean Gallery, Philadelphia, by whom she is represented. Seidman has received many honors including grants from the Leeway Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Purchase Awards from both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Arcadia University. She is currently a Professor at Moore College of Art & Design, where she has been teaching since 1986.
Seidman describes her work as rigorous and controlled, while at the same time allowing room for spontaneity, irony, and consciousness. Seidman’s practice has allowed her to explore the nature of pure painting through abstraction, suggesting friction, awkwardness, and ultimately a sense of self. Her painting relies on a commitment to process, working through the unfamiliar until it becomes recognizable, eventually reaching a resolution.
Zamora received his M.F.A. from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia in 2004, and a Certificate in Painting from the Academy in 1999. Recent solo exhibits include Solo Series at the Abington Art Center, Jenkintown, Pa.; Border Crossing at Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia; Converge at Vox Populi, Philadelphia; and Fleisher Challenge, at the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at the Tower Gallery, Philadelphia, the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York City, to name a few.
Zamora is compelled to make paintings of landscapes although he is not always interested in the landscape itself. Zamora’s images derive from nature, architecture, and print media. He states that his work is rooted in the affects of “care/neglect, entropy/growth, and construction/destruction,” believing that architecture cannot exist without nature and nature cannot exist without architecture. He is most interested in understanding how we are all tied to the land and how its use ebbs and flows throughout our lives.
The 2008 Pew Fellowships in the Arts are awarded to artists working in folk and traditional arts, painting, and playwriting. Pew Fellowships in the Arts is located at the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts. The goal of the program is to award outstanding artists who live and work in the five-county Philadelphia area, who have a demonstrated commitment and professional accomplishment within their field, and who will continue their artistic growth within the five-county Philadelphia area. The grants provide artists with economic freedom so that they have the opportunity to concentrate on their work over a considerable period of time. The program aims to provide such support at moments in artists’ careers when a concentration on artistic growth and exploration is most likely to have the greatest impact on an artist’s long-term personal and professional development.
The fellowships are for a minimum of one year and a maximum of two years. Fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis and selections are made through a two-phase peer-review process involving preliminary and final selection panels. For the recipients, this honor reflects both their distinction within the discipline-specific pool and the collective judgment of the final, interdisciplinary panel.
Continuing an ongoing, award-winning trend for Academy graduates, sculptor Jordan Griska was named one of fourteen recipients of the International Sculpture Center’s 2008 Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards, and in 2007, Academy MFA graduates Stephanie Beck and Andrew Patterson-Tutschka, were two of fifteen recipients of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, each receiving a grant in the amount of $15,000. The Academy was the only school of fine arts in the country where two of its students were given this national award in the same year.