Julian F. Abele (1881-1950)
PMSIA Class of 1898, Certificate in Architectural Drawing.
Architect
Frederick Graff Prize of $25.00 for work in architectural design, evening class students, 1898.
[sic: Julian is misspelled as Julius in the commencement program]
Julian F. Abele was a prominent architect and chief designer for Horace Trumbauer's architectural firm. Abele attended PMSIA and received a certificate in Architectural Drawing before attending University of Pennsylvania and becoming the first African American graduate of its Architecture program. Hired by Trumbauer following his graduation, Abele contributed to the design of more than four hundred buildings, including Philadelphia landmarks such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Free Library of Philadelphia's Central Library.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Stephen Albert (1941-1992)
PMA Class of 1962, BM, Composition
Composer
Pulitzer Prize in Music for Symphony, RiverRun, 1985
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1989.
Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Albert: Cello Concerto, 1995.
Stephen Joel Albert was an American composer. He was born in New York City and studied at the Eastman School of Music, the Philadelphia Musical Academy, the University of Pennsylvania and, after being awarded a Rome Fellowship in 1967, the American Academy in Rome. Albert won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1985 for his First Symphony, RiverRun. From 1985-1988 he was the Seattle Symphony's composer-in-residence. Following his sudden death in 1992, he posthumously won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for his Cello Concerto, performed by Yo-Yo Ma and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as conducted by David Zinman.
Image Source: http://www.bruceduffie.com/albert.html
Laura Jean Allen (1916-2003)
PMSIA Class of 1939, Diploma
Designer, Illustrator
1938: Award for work in water color
Laura Jean Allen was a designer of ceramics and textiles for the Associated American Artists. Allen also illustrated twenty-one covers for The New Yorker between 1965 and 1987. Additionally, Allen was the illustrator of several children's books, including the Rollo and Tweedy series.
Above: The New Yorker November 21, 1970.
Image Source: The New Yorker
Richard Amsel (1947-1985)
PCA Class of 1969, BFA, Illustration
Illustrator, Graphic Designer
Award of Excellence, Philadelphia First -- Art Directors 44th Annual, 1980.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2009.
Society of Illustrators in New York Hall Of Fame Inductee, 2023.
In a career spanning just 15 years, Richard Amsel created illustrations for movies and television that became part of the cultural language of the 1970s and '80s. A 1969 graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts), Amsel created some of the most recognizable, iconic imagery of the late 20th century. He created artwork for more than 30 major motion picture posters, close to 40 TV Guide cover illustrations, and numerous album covers and concert posters.
Amsel's professional career began while still an undergraduate at the University when he won a contest to design a poster for the film "Hello Dolly!" Through the '70s and '80s, his work could be seen everywhere and included posters for films such as "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Sting," "Chinatown" and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," and album covers for Bette Midler. His Time Magazine cover of Lily Tomlin is in the Smithsonian Institution's permanent collection and he won numerous awards for his work, including a Grammy for insert art for a London Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Choir release of The Who's "Tommy."
- University of the Arts Commencement Program, 2009
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Ronne Arnold (1938-2020)
PMA Class of 1959, Bachelor of Music (Dance major, earned through the Philadelphia Dance Academy's college program at the PMA)
Dancer
Taught at the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association, 1986-2003.
Ronne Arnold was a dancer and educator who began dancing at the age of seven at the PMA, taught by Nadia Chilkovsky. After earning his Bachelor’s Degree from the PMA, Arnold traveled to Australia, where he taught jazz and modern dance in addition to working for the famous Sydney nightclub, Chequers, where he choreographed dance sequences. Arnold founded the Contemporary Dance Company of Australia in 1967 and was the academic course director at the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association College from 1986 until 2003 and a teacher at Wesley Institute in Sydney.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Lydia Artymiw
PMA Class of 1973, BM, Piano
Pianist
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1991.
Lydia Artymiw is a concert pianist and professor. She was born in Philadelphia and began studying piano at age four. Following her graduation from the Philadelphia Musical Academy, Artymiw has performed as a soloist around the world. She is also a Professor Emeritus of Piano at the University of Minnesota.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Dotty Attie
PMCA Class of 1959, BFA, Art Education
Painter
Anonymous Was A Woman grant, 2018.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2023.
Dotty Attie BFA '59 (Art Education) was born in 1938 in Pennsauken, New Jersey, and is an acclaimed painter and one of the founders of A.I.R. Gallery, one of the first all-female cooperative art galleries in the U.S. Her work has been widely exhibited and is in many major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery in London and many other institutions.
Attie attended the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts), from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Following her time there, she continued her education through fellowships at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1960 and the Art Students League in 1967.
In 1972, she co-founded A.I.R., a nonprofit cooperative gallery and one of the first to exclusively feature the work of women artists. As an early artist-member, Attie helped the group choose a gallery space and recruit members. She also had her first solo show at the gallery in 1972. Later, she was an integral part of the gallery's establishment of an international presence and helped to secure shows in Paris, Israel and Japan.
Attie's personal style has remained fairly consistent throughout her career. She typically deconstructs existing images—such as Old Master paintings and early 20th century black-and-white photographs—and her works often includes text to create a narrative. Some of these pictures have been taken from the backgrounds of earlier work, bringing new perspectives to features that might have been formerly overshadowed. That approach produces a quality of differing scale, paired with short segments of text, which creates a cinematic quality throughout. The text and pictures are related but do not contribute to a clear narrative, allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks. Because Attie, at times, has meticulously repainted well-known works but presented them in fragments or with other modifications, her work has addressed the concepts of originality and reproduction.
Attie has received multiple grants, such as the Creative Artist Public Service Grant in 1967-1977 and the National Endowment for the Arts Grant, which she won in 1976-1977 and 1983-1984. She also was awarded an exchange grant to Japan, where she spent six months in 1985.
In addition to numerous honors in the art world, including her induction into the National Academy in 2013, Attie has the unusual distinction of having a punk band named after her: the female-led quartet Dottie Attie, which formed in 2013 and has since disbanded. Since 1959, Attie has lived and worked in New York City with her current partner, David Olan, a classical composer. She is represented by PPOW Gallery
- University of the Arts 145th Commencement Program, 2023
Image Source: UArts.edu
Vernon Howe Bailey (1874-1953)
PMSIA Class of 1892, Certificate, Drawing
Illustrator
First prize of ten dollars for best design for diploma for the Regular Department, 1889.
Vernon Howe Bailey was an illustrator who attended PMSIA at the age of 15. Following receipt of a certificate in drawing he went on to study at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, London Royal College of Art, Académie Delécluse and Académie Bilouil. He worked for the Philadelphia Times and the Boston Herald as a staff artist and also contributed illustrations to Scribner's, Harper's, The Century, The Harper's Weekly, Leslies Weekly and Colliers. During World War I and World War II, Bailey was authorized by the US Navy to make drawings of naval equipment and facilities.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
M. Louise Baker (1872-1962)
PMSIA Class of 1902
Illustrator
Certificate A, Industrial Drawing, 1901.
First Prize, Mayer Pottery Company Prizes for Designs for Printed Table Ware, 1901.
Prize Scholarship for School Year 1901-1902.
Illustration certificate, 1902.
Commendation, Henry Perry Leland Prize for illustration, 1902.
Prize scholarship for School Year 1902-1903.
Certificate in Industrial Drawing Teacher's Course, 1902.
M. Louise Baker was an illustrator who attended PMSIA from 1900-1902. Following her graduation Baker first worked as an illustrator for the archaeologist C.B. Moore before securing a position at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology where she worked as a prolific and well-regarded archaeological illustrator.
Above: Illustration by M. Louise Baker while enrolled at PMSIA
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Raymond A. Ballinger (1907-1985)
PMSIA Class of 1931, Diploma
Advertising Designer
Joseph E. Temple Prize for Second Year Work, 1929.
First Prize for Advertising Design, Third Year Work 1930.
Second Prize for Advertising Design, Fourth Year Work, 1931.
Distinguished Rating, Art Department, 1931.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1956.
Raymond A. Ballinger was born in Philadelphia. He was widely recognized as a graphic designer, art educator and author. He worked for such distinguished clients as the Aluminum Company of America, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the Mutual Assurance Company. He was a professor of Graphic Design from 1932 to 1967 and held the title of Emeritus Professor at his alma mater. He won numerous awards from such associations as the Art Directors' Club and the Printing Week Exhibitions, and was president of the former organization. He wrote several books, including Layout and Graphic Design, which is still considered a classic, Lettering Art in Modern Use, and Sign, Symbol and Form (co-authored with his wife, Louise Bowen Ballinger).
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Cover of Layout, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY, 1956. From Silver Star Alumni Exhibition
Karen Bamonte
PCA Class of 1972, BFA, Film.
Dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, ceramicist
Image Source: Artist's Website
Jabari Banks
UArts Class of 2020, BFA, Musical Theater
Actor, Musician
Jabari Banks was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After graduating from UArts in 2020, Banks secured the lead role on the Peacock Original series Bel Air. In 2023 Banks signed with Epic Records and released his first single, Something Else.
Image Source: Rolling Stone (Clarks)
Kim Y. Bears-Bailey
PCPA Class of 1984, BFA, Dance
Dancer
New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie" award) recipient, 1992.
UArts Mary Louise Beitzel Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2011.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2016.
Kim is a 1984 (B.F.A.) graduate of The University of Arts. Hailed from Washington, DC – a Proud Alum of Duke Ellington School of Performing Arts – Ms. Bears-Bailey is currently the Artistic Director with The Philadelphia Dance Company/PHILADANCO. Kim joined PHILADANCO in 1981 and retired from the stage in 2000. Kim represented PHILADANCO at the 1988 American Dance Festival as a soloist where she performed two works by Dr. Pearl Primus. Kim is one of few artists granted permission to remount the works of many world-renowned choreographers including Talley Beatty, Pearl Primus, Gene Hill Sagan and Louis Johnson. Under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield (Dean) and support from the School of Dance Ms. Bears-Bailey produced, reconstructed and directed two evening length showcases; “Celebrating the Legacy of African-American Dance Pioneer Pearl Primus" and 'Celebrating Master Choreographer Louis Johnson', both with performances and panel discussions as part of an American Masterpieces Project. She received the Mary Louise Beitzel Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Silver Star Alumni Award from UArts. Kim choreographs, directs and produces an annual ‘Dancing with the Stars of Philadelphia’ event. Kim received the 2017 ‘Bring it to the Marley’ Icon Award and the 2018 ‘Legacy Award’ from DCNS Dance.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Irene Bedard
UArts Class of 1991, BFA, Theater
Actress
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1999.
As the voice of Walt Disney's Pocahontas, Irene Bedard has laid claim to a form of cultural immortality, just as Snow White's voice remains a part of our cultural landscape. Equally significant, the drawings for the film were based on Bedard's finely-chiseled facial features and animated persona.
The links with storytelling extend far back for Bedard. As a child in Anchorage, Alaska, she drew on her Cree, Inupiat, and French-Canadian roots to create plays for neighborhood children. She grew up visiting ceremonial dances and potlatches (feasts), and was inspired by her father's political activism in Native American issues. She continued her intersets in history, culture, and drama in community theater in high school, and—after earning her BFA from The University of the Arts—secured stage roles in Philadelphia and New York productions. In an early television role, she starred in TNT's Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee as real-life author Mary Crow Dog, work that earned her a Golden Globe nomination. For that work, she was also honored by the American Indian Film Festival, the First American in the Arts Award, and the Cowboy Hall of Fame. In addition, that role led to her discovery by Disney, and her role in that studio's Squanto, A Warrior's Tale. In 1998, she starred in the well-received independent film, Smoke Signals, director Chris Eyre's adaptation of Sherman Alexie's novel, which dealt realistically with the lives of Native Americans. Since "becoming Pocahontas," Bedard has remained busy in her Ojai, California home, where she is also a founding member of Guardians of Sacred Lands, an environmental organization active in Southern California.
- University of the Arts Commencement Program, 1999
Image Source: By Super Festivals from Ft. Lauderdale, USA
Alfred Bendiner (1899-1964)
PMSIA Class of 1918, Certificate, Industrial Drawing
Architect, Artist
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1964.
Al Bendiner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received both a BA and and MA in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and he attented the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts (now the University of the Arts) and the American Academy in Rome, Italy. He was an architect, artist and author who was called "the Hirschfield of Philadelphia" due to his humorous celebrity caricatures. He opened his own architectural firm in Philadelphia in 1929; among his architectural designs are the original offices of the Blue Cross of Greater Philadelphia. His illustrations of local concerts and plays were published in the Philadelphia Evening and Sunday Bulletin from 1938 to 1946, and he wrote and illustrated humorous books and articles based on his personal experiences and travels. He was awarded numerous mural commissions, including one from Gimbel Brothers in 1952 for the mural at the Academy of Music. He was assigned a staff position as an artist on the University of Pennsylvania archaeological expeditions to Iraq in 1936 and Guatemala in 1960.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Oklahoma illustration, c. 1940s-1950s. From Silver Star Alumni Exhibition
Morris Berd (1914-2007)
PMSIA Class of 1936, Diploma, Advertising Design
Artist
First Year Class Awards for Drawing, Nature Study, and Design, 1933.
Distinguished Work in Drawing, Fourth Year student, 1936.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1967.
Morris Berd was born in Philadelphia in 1914. He received a BFA from the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art in 1935 and began teaching there in 1941. During his tenure of more that 40 years, he had over 20 solo exhibitions. In 1952, he won the Philadelphia Murals Competition sponsored by Gimbel Brothers. He retired from full-time teaching in 1979 and continued to teach part-time until 1985. He was awarded Professor Emeritus in 1986. His work was obtained by numerous corporations and private collectors, as well as the important Philadelphia museums and other institutions around the country. In 1988, the American College in Bryn Mawr exhibited a retrospective of his Lancaster County landscapes, the series for which he is best known. His last solo exhibition, Works on Paper, at the University of the Arts in 2001, featured abstract geometric watercolors done between 1990 and 2000.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Janice Berenstain (1923-2012)
PMSIA Class of 1945
Stanley Berenstain (1923-2005)
PMSIA Class of 1945
Writers, Illustrators
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1998.
Janice and Stanley Berenstain were both born in Philadelphia in 1923 They met on the first day of art school at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art in 1941, and married in 1946. They both enjoyed cartooning and, soon after they married, they began submitting cartoons to magazines. The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's regularly published their cartoons, and they produced the comic strip Sister from 1953 through 1955. The first book featuring the Berenstain Bears family, The Big Honey Hunt, was published in 1962. Stan and Jan went on to write and illustrate more than 250 books featuring the Berenstain Bears; more than 260 million of these books have been sold over the years. Their sons, Michael and Leo, have also helped illustrate many of the books. The Bear family is featured in many children's museum exhibits including a permanent one at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Adam W. Blackstone
UArts Class of 2004, BM, Instrumental Performance
Songwriter, Musician
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2014.
Adam W. Blackstone began playing drums when he was 6 years old and took up the bass guitar in high school "because no one else wanted to play the instrument." Today, he is one of the music industry's most sought-after bassists, and has added top producer and musical director to his resume as well. He has worked with the biggest stars in contemporary popular music, with playing, production and/or musical director credits with industry superstars such as Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, Maroon 5, Jill Scott and Joss Stone. Blackstone played a sold-out Madison Square Garden with Jay-Z and Beyoncé on what was then billed as the hip-hop mogul's farewell tour; with Rihanna on NBC's "Saturday Night Life"; and with Justin Timberlake at the 2014 Grammy Awards ceremony. He is the founder, along with his wife, of BASSic Black Entertainment, which provides live music production, music staffing, artist development and studio production, and whose clients include Eminem, Drake, Kanye West, John Legend, Pharrell Williams, Nicki Minaj, LL Cool J and many others.
- UArts Commencement Program, 2014.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Warren Blair
PMSIA Class of 1947, Advertising Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1959.
Warren Blair attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art where he received awards for distinguished achievement in design in 1947 and the Alumni Award in 1959. In addition, he received the Graphic Arts Industry of the Delaware Valley award in 1975 and the Man of the Year Award by the Art Directors' Club of Philadelphia in 1984. He served as president of the Art Directors Club and is a lifetime honorary member. He is a member of the prestigious American Watercolor Society and a lifetime honorary member of the Philadelphia Watercolor Club. He has exhibited widely, and most recently had a solo show in 2006 at The Goggleworks in Reading, Pennsylvania. He is internationally recognized for his 32 years of service as Corporate Design Director of SmithKline Corporation (now Glaxo) headquartered in Philadelphia. Blair has been retired for many years, and now lives at The Highlands of Wyomissing in Reading.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964)
PCM Class of 1921
Musician, Composer
Philadelphia Conservatory of Music Gold Medal, 1921.
Marc Blitzstein was born in Philadelphia in 1905 and exhibited talent for the piano at a young age. He studied under Alexander Siloti and attended the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music before continuing his studies overseas. His most notable achievement was his pro-union musical, The Cradle Will Rock, the inaugural performance of which was directed by Orson Welles and shut down by the Works Progress Administration (who funded the piece) before opening night. Blitzstein composed several other musicals and operas, including a translation of Bertolt Brecht's famous operetta, The Threepenny Opera.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Julius T. Bloch (1888-1966)
PMSIA Class of 1906, Certificate A, Industrial Drawing
Painter
Prize scholarship, 1906-1907.
Honorable mention, Henry Perry Leland Prize for best work in illustration, 1907.
Honorable mention, Henry Perry Leland prize for best work in illustration, 1908.
Julius T. Bloch was born in Germany and immigrated with his family to Philadelphia at a young age. Bloch attended the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before serving in World War I. When Bloch returned to Philadelphia he studied at the Barnes Foundation. Bloch was best known for his social realist paintings of working class and African American life in Philadelphia and the United States. His work attracted the attention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and the Works Project Administration, leading to his work being showcased around the world.
Image Source: Head Study (Self Portrait) c. 1940. Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Musa Brooker
UArts Class of 1995, BFA, Animation
Director, Animator, Writer, Producer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2022.
Musa Brooker (that's "moo-say") is a Los Angeles-based director, animator, writer and producer who has worked for clients such as MTV, McDonalds, Disney, Hasbro, Target, Honda, Netflix, Paypal and Google. When he's not tinkering on projects at his own small studio (Platypus Pictureworks), Brooker can be found at the award-winning animation house Six Point Harness, where he serves as creative director. Along with his degree from University of the Arts, Brooker holds an MFA in Experimental Animation from California Institute of the Arts, where he was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow.
Throughout his career, Brooker has animated, supervised or directed various elves, trolls, cake, cars, cereal, corn dogs, a sponge named Bob, a mystery-solving dog, tumbling leaves, cybernetic fowl, celebrities fighting to the death, a talking tree, a group of Bratz, a town of cougars, a tower of taste buds, robots in disguise, a super-powered sandwich, an aerobic egg, an atomic-powered super lizard, a pickled diva, a former First Lady, a Sith Lord and a Wookie. He has had the pleasure of animating sequences for The Simpsons, Community, the feature film Elf and a standup comedy special by Tig Notaro, in addition to commercials for Sonic Drive-in, Chipotle and Nabisco. He has directed animation sequences for ABC's black-ish, the Netflix Original series Waffles + Mochi, and an upcoming sequence for a returning hit Amazon Original series, as well as directing spots for Ziploc, Play-Doh and Lyft.
Brooker has been a selection committee member for the New York Animation Festival and the Annie Awards for ASIFA-Hollywood. He has written for The Animation Journal, appeared as a panelist at Comic Con, been a presenter at the Society for Animation Studies Annual Conference, and lectured at the Pictoplasma Conference and Festival of Contemporary Character Design and Art. Since 2010, Brooker has also been a faculty member at University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in the John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts
- UArts Commencement Program, 2022.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
John William Brown
PMSA Class of 1950, Advertising Design
Raymond A. Hollis Award of the W.H. Hoedt Studio for Excellence in Advertising Design, 1950.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1960.
Samuel Joseph Brown (1907-1994)
PMSIA Class of 1930, Diploma, Art
Painter, Printmaker
Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr. was born in North Carolina and moved to Philadelphia with his family in 1917. After graduating from the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art in 1930, Brown earned his MFA at the University of Pennsylvania. Following his graduation, Brown worked as an artist and sign-painter before becoming the first African American artist selected for the Public Works of Art Program, the first federal employment program for artists. Later, Brown worked for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project while teaching art in public schools in Camden and Philadelphia. Brown exhibited many works throughout the country with a particular focus on the lives of African Americans in the United States, and his art is held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, among many others.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Frederick Sands Brunner (1886-1954)
PMSIA Class of 1909, Diploma, Illustration
Illustrator
Certificate A, Industrial Drawing, 1906.
Henry Leland Prize, $25.00, offered by Mrs. John Harrison for the best work in illustration, 1907.
Certificate C, Illustration, 1908.
First honorable mention, Emma S. Crozer prize for best work in drawing, 1908.
First mention, Emma S. Crozer prize for best work in drawing, 1909.
Frederick Sands Brunner was born outside of Philadelphia in Boyertown, PA. After graduating from the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, Brunner studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Brunner then went on to become a prolific illustrator for magazine articles and covers as well as advertisements. Brunner created illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, The Ladies Home Journal, Coca Cola and many others. Brunner also created many paintings during World War II to support the war effort.
Image Source: Red Cross Serving the Children of the World, 1942. From collection of American Illustrators Gallery
Tom Butter
PCA Class of 1975, BFA, Printmaking
Sculptor
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1996.
Tom Butter was born in Long Island, New York in 1952. He received a BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1975 and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in 1977. He has been living and working in New York City since 1977. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, and his exhibitions have been reviewed in many major publications, including Art in America, Artforum, Arts, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. He received three National Endowment Grants and two New York Foundation for the Arts Grants. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Walker Art Center, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Butter teaches in the MFA Fine Arts Program at Parsons, the New School for Design, and in the Sculpture Department at Brooklyn College. He has also taught at RISD, Tyler, The University of the Arts, Harvard, Yale, Brandeis and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Recently, Butter has been conducting a series of in-depth artist interviews for Whitehot Magazine, an internet publication.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: S Machine, 2008. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Robert Capanna (1952-2018)
PMA Class of 1973, BM, Composition
Composer, Settlement Music School Executive Director
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1987.
Robert Capanna was born in Camden, New Jersey. After attending the Philadelphia Musical Academy he worked as a composer in addition to becoming director of the Kardon-Northeast branch of the Settlement Music School in 1976. In 1982 he became executive director of Settlement and expanded the school throughout Philadelphia until his retirement from the position in 2009.
Image Source: Clem Murray, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Janine Cappello
PCPA Class of 1986, BFA, Modern Dance
Dancer, Educator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1996.
Dancer Janine Cappello earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts in 1986. During that time, Cappello danced with the Philadelphia Civic Ballet, Ballet South of New Jersey, the New Jersey National Ballet, and Group Motion Multi-Media Dance Theatre. In Philadelphia, she studied with her mentor, Pat Thomas, as well as Ruth Andrien, Alexei Yudenich, Barbara Sandonato, Judith Jamison, and many other leaders in the field. In recognition of her talent, she subsequently earned a full scholarship for study at Peridance and a similar scholarship at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, both in New York. In 1990, Cappello was one of only two Americans accepted for study at London's Royal Academy of Dancing, where she earned her certification to teach the Academy's internationally-recognized curriculum of dance. She has taught at the Philadelphia Civic Ballet, The Children's Professional School in Connecticut, Villanova University, and Rutger's Camden College of Arts and Sciences. Returning to Philadelphia, she recently discussed career options in dance on a professional panel during Career Day ath the University of the Arts School of Dance, and also completed a choreographic residency at Point Breeze School in Turnersville, New Jersey, and institution unique for its orientation toward serious technique and concert dance, and for not participating in competitions.
Ken Carbone
PCA Class of 1973, Graphic Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1989.
Ken Carbone was born in Philadelphia and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art. He is the Chief Creative Director at the Carbone Smolan Agency and is among the nation's top graphic designers. He has worked with such noted corporations as Herman Miller, Christie's the W Hotel Group, Taubman, W.L. Gore, Morgan Stanley, Nonesuch Records, PBS and Tiffany & Co. In addition, his portfolio includes designs for the Musée du Louvre, MoMA, The Pierpont Morgan Library, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and The High Museum of Art in Atlanta among other culturally revered institutions. Carbone is also the author of The Virtuoso: Face to Face with 40 Extraordinary Talents; he regularly lectures and has been featured in numerous articles internationally. He is presently an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York and is a featured blogger for FastCompany.com. In addition to his design career, Carbone has been an avid guitarist for more than 40 years.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Jennifer Childs
UArts Class of 1990, BFA, Theater
Theater Director, Co-Founder of 1812 Productions
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2003.
Since her graduation from The University of the Arts Theater program only a dozen years ago, Ms. Childs has already achieved considerable recognition for her performances with numerous regional theater companies, including the Arden Theater, the Annenberg Center and the Contemporary American Theater Company. In 1996, she was awarded a Barrymore for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the Wilma Theater's production of Escape from Happiness. She has also received the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Theater Artist, "Best of Philly - Actress" awarded by Philadelphia Magazine, and "Artist to Watch" awarded by Seven Arts Magazine.
Ms. Childs is also the co-founder and co-artistic director of 1812 Productions, a Philadelphia-based theater company dedicated to comedy. She does extensive work with public school outreach programs and has taught at her alma mater, The University of the Arts, as well as the Arden Theater Company, the Walnut Street Theatre and the Freedom Theater.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Donald Chittum (1930-2020)
PCM Class of 1963, DM, Theory
PCM, Class of 1957, MM
PCM Class of 1956, BM
Instrumentalist, Music Theorist
University of the Arts Faculty Emeritus
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2004.
Dr. Donald R. Chittum received a Doctor for Music degree from the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music in 1963, and has remained connected to his alma mater for fifty-two years. Over that time, he has excelled as both a student and a teacher of music, working with Vincent Persichetti and Boris Koutzen, among others. Professor Chittum has participated in and influenced almost every step of the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music's transformation into the School of Music of The University of the Arts, in the capacity of Chairman of Composition and Theory, Director of Graduate Studies, Director of the School of Music, and esteemed faculty member.
In addition to his work at UArts, Professor Chittum has served as President of the Pennsylvania Music Teachers Association, Eastern Division President of the Music Teachers Association, National Chairman for Theory/Composition of the same Association, President of the Pennsylvania Center for Excellence in Education, and Director of the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, where he is now Director Emeritus. Professor Chittum continues to serve as a consultant to the State department of education and other educational institutions.
Professor Chittum's books and numerous articles on music theory and education have been published widely. His awards include Teacher of the Year from the Pennsylvania Music Teachers Association and the Beitzel Award for outstanding teaching from The University of the Arts.
Known to students and colleagues as "Doc," Professor Chittum is loved and revered by the UArts community.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Claude Clark (1915-2001)
PMSIA Class of 1939, Diploma, Industrial Art
Artist, Educator
Fourth Year student award in painting, 1938.
Claude Clark was born in Georgia in 1915 and moved to Philadelphia with his parents in 1923. In 1935 Clark attended the Philadelphia Museum School at art and following his graduation in 1939 received a fellowship at the Barnes Foundation. From 1939 until 1942 Clark worked with the Works Progress Administration in a graphic arts shop along with Raymond Steth and Dox Thrash. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Clark's work was in many solo and group shows, including being the second African American to have work displayed at the Barnes Foundation and winning a Carnegie Fellowship in 1950. Clark also began teaching art at Talladega College in Alabama before moving with his family to California, where he received an undergraduate degree from Sacramento State University in 1958 and his MA at University of California at Berkeley in 1962. For the remainder of his career Clark taught at Merritt College in Oakland while continuing to paint and write. Clark's work is held in prestigious collections such as the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution and many others.
Image Source: Artist's Website
Hilary Clark
UArts Class of 1998, BFA, Dance
Faculty Recognition Award, 1998.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2012.
Hilary Clark is a dancer, teacher and choreographer, performing in pivotal experimental dance and theater based work, touring nationally and internationally. She received a New York Dance and Performance Award (2008) for her work with Tere O’Connor (2004-2014), luciana achugar (2005- 2015), and Fiona Marcotty. She has also worked with Luke George, Jen Rosenblit, Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Young Jean Lee Theater Company, Jon Kinzel, Chemeki and Lerner, Larissa Velez Jackson, Keyon Gaskin and Gerard and Kelly. As a 2015 Artist in Residence at collective address (NYC), she explored the role and work of the dancer as well as developing Duet for/with/including Jen. Other creative residencies include Fresh Tracks and Studio Series (Dance Theater Workshop), and Dance and Process (The Kitchen). Her work has been shown at Roulette, Aunts, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, Dixon Place, Mt. Tremper Arts, Bennington College, DTW, and Painted Bride in Philadelphia. In 2013, she was invited by Stockholm University of the Arts, University of Dance and Circus (DOCH) in Stockholm, Sweden, to participate in the academic conference “Dancer as Agent.” Her work as performer and choreographer is documented in Jenn Joy’s book The Choreographic (MIT, 2014). Clark has taught at Chunky Move (Australia), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Pacific NorthWest College of Art (Oregon), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle, WA) Northern Vermont University and Movement Research (NYC). She is the owner of Citrine Pilates & Wellness and received a MFA at Bennington College.
Image Source: Royal Academy of Dance
Stanley Clarke
PMA Class of 1971, BM, Bass
Bassist, Composer
Grammy Award, Best Jazz Performance by a Group, "No Mystery", 1975.
BMI Film Music Award, Boyz n the Hood, 1992.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1993.
Grammy Award, Best Contemporary Jazz Album, "The Stanley Clarke Band", 2010.
Grammy Award, Best Jazz Instrumental Album, "Forever", 2011.
Stanley Clarke was born in Philadelphia and started playing music at a very young age. After studying violin and cello for a short period of time, Clarke began taking lessons in double bass at the Settlement Music School. He played his first jazz show at fifteen years old and eventually studied music at the Philadelphia Musical Academy. After leaving PMA, Clarke moved to New York City where he played bass with jazz greats before eventually forming the jazz fusion group Return to Forever with keyboardist Chick Corea. Return to Forever received many critical accolades as well as several Grammy Award nominations and two wins. Clarke has also had a prolific solo career both as an award winning solo musician as well as a composer for several films and television shows such as Pee Wee's Playhouse (1986), Boyz n the Hood (1991)–for which he won a BMI Film Music Award–Poetic Justice (1993) and The Transporter (2002) among many others.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collection
Edward Colker
PMSA Class of 1949, Diploma
Artist, Printmaker, Academic
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1991.
Ed Colker was born in Philadelphia in 1927 and graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art and New York University. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Florsheim Fund grantee, among other distinctions. His prints and portfolio editions, exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, are represented in collections including those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Harvard, Columbia and Yale universities, among others. A retrospective of his work, along with the catalogue Five Decades in Print, organized by the University of Arizona Museum of Art, toured the United States in 1998 and 1999 with final exhibitions in New York in 2003 and 2004. Most recent appreciations appeared in American Letters & Commentary, 2008, featuring his art in collaboration with poet Michael Anania. He has served as a founding provost of the University of the Arts, provost of the Cooper Union, provost of Pratt Institute and has been a consultant to universities, state boards, the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Information Agency/Department of State and the State of Israel's Council for Higher Education.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
McCauley "Mac" Conner (1913-2019)
PMSIA Class of 1937, Diploma
Commercial Illustrator
Fourth Year Award for Outstanding Work in Illustration and Decoration, 1937.
McCauley "Mac" Conner was born in New Jersey and attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. While still a teenager, Conner had an illustration on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. During World War II, Conner was drafted and spent the war in New York City, where he illustrated training materials. After the war, Conner remained in New York City creating illustrations for publishing and advertising clients with the studio Neeley Associates that he co-created with William Neeley. While there, Conner created illustrations for Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, United Airlines, General Motors, and many others.
Above: Illustration by Mac Conner
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Jeannine Cook
UArts Class of 2005, BFA, Communications.
UArts Class of 2014, MFA, Art Education.
Writer, Educator, Bookstore Owner
UArts Alumni Service Award, 2023.
Jeannine Cook was born in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to the BFA and MFA Cook received from the University of the Arts, she also earned an MFA at Drexel University. In 2020 Cook published her first book of short stories and opened Harriett's Bookshop in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. In 2021 she opened Ida's Bookshop in Collingswood, NJ. Her stated goal for both of these establishments is to highlight and celebrate women authors, artists, and activists.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Alex Da Corte
UArts Class of 2004, BFA, Printmaking
Conceptual Artist
The American Color Print Society Award, 2004.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2021.
Alex Da Corte was born in 1980 in Camden, New Jersey and grew up in Venezuela before moving to Philadelphia to attend the University of the Arts. After graduating in 2004, Da Corte received his MFA from Yale in 2010. Since graduating, Da Corte has had many solo and group exhibitions throughout the world and has collaborated with artists such as fellow UArts alumnus Jayson Musson, Dev Hynes, and St. Vincent.
Image Source: Art21
Dan Dailey
PCA Class of 1969, BFA, Fine Art
Sculptor
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2007.
Dan Dailey was born in Philadelphia in 1947. In 1972 he received a Fullbright Fellowship to Italy where he worked at the Venini Glass Factory on the island of Murano. He has also received felloships from both the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. For 30 years, he has been an independent artist/designer for Cristallierie Daum, France. In 2000, he was honored with the Libensky Award, the fifth Artist Series release, by Chateau Ste. Michelle Vineyards and Winery, and in 2001 he was awarded the Master of the Medium Award by the James Renwick Alliance. Since 1971, he has participated in over 300 group juried and invitational exhibits and has had numerous solo exhibitions. He has completed more than 60 architectural commissions for various institutions and private residences, and his work is represented in more than 50 museum and public collections in the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan. He works primarily in his Kensington, New Hampshire studio with the help of his staff of assistants, and he is a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art where he founded the Glass Department in 1973.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Joe Dante
PCA Class of 1968, BFA, Photography (Motion Picture)
Film Director
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1993.
Joseph James "Joe" Dante was born in 1946 in Morristown, New Jersey. He studied at the Philadelphia College of Art and after graduating, he became a film critic for the Film Bulletin newspaper for which he later became the managing editor. He worked as an editor for such films as Grand Theft Auto before co-directing Hollywood Boulevard with Allan Arkush. His first full feature film, Piranha, was released in 1978. After the release of The Howling in 1981, he was noticed by Steven Spielberg for whom he directed the third segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983. His first really big hit, Gremlins, which was also produced by Steven Spielberg, was released in 1984. Dante would work with Spielberg again on Innerspace and Gremlins 2. Subsequent releases include Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), Small Soldiers (1998), and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). He was creative consultant on the TV series Eerie, Indiana (1991-1992) and directed five episodes; he played himself in the series finale. He also directed the Halloween 2007 episode of CSI: New York. Dante's latest film, the 3-D thriller The Hole, is slated to be released in 2010.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: The Movie Database
Nicola D'Ascenzo (1871-1954)
Attended PMSIA 1891-1893
Stained Glass Artist
Nicola D'Ascenzo was born in Torricella Peligna, Italy and immigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1882. He painted murals and attended night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before attending the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art in 1891. After his graduation he taught at PMSIA for a year where he met his wife, Myrtle Dell Goodwin. D'Ascenzo and Goodwin moved to Rome, Italy after their marriage, at which time D'Ascenzo opened D'Ascenzo Studios, which did interior design work for Horn & Hardart automats. In the early 1900s, D'Ascenzo was commissioned for stained glass installations, the craft for which he is most well-known. D'Ascenzo created stained glass windows for the Shakespeare Library and the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.; St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Francis de Sales Church in Philadelphia; and Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where D'Ascenzo and his family are buried.
Image Source: Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. D'Ascenzo Studio Archives.
John E. Davis (1947-2023)
PMA Class of 1972, BM, Music Theory
Musician
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1995.
John E. Davis was born in Philadelphia. After enlisting in the US Naval Academy with the Naval Academy Band, Davis attended the Philadelphia Musical Academy and graduated in 1972. Davis went on to be part of MFSB, the collective of studio musicians for Sigma Sound Studios who pioneered "The Sound of Philadelphia" with record producers Gamble and Huff. Davis also formed The John Davis Monster Orchestra which was best known for the disco song "Up Jumped the Devil."
Image Source: soulstrutter.blogspot.com
Osceola Davis-Smith
PMA Class of 1970, BM/BMED, Voice
Soprano
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2021
Osceola Davis-Smith was born in Camden, New Jersey. After graduating from the Philadelphia Musical Academy, Davis-Smith taught at public schools in Camden as well as Philadelphia. She was then invited to take part in the Metropolitan Opera Studio, a program for young opera artists to tour and perform at schools and festivals. Next, Davis-Smith made her debut at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" as Rosina. Following rave reviews in Europe, Davis-Smith became the first African-American Coloratura to perform the role of Queen of the Night in "The Magic Flute" on the Metropolitan Opera's stage.
Image Source: Watchfire Music
Emil DeJohn
PMCA Class of 1959
Fashion Designer
Philadelphia Fashion Week Charlie Scott Award for Excellence, 2011.
Emil DeJohn was born in Philadelphia. He studied art from a young age and eventually studied fashion at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art. After graduation, DeJohn traveled to New York City, where he worked as a designer for stars like Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, and Nancy Reagan's '"Just Say No" campaign. He work was sold at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, and was frequently featured in Vogue, The New York Times and other national publications. In 1976, DeJohn began teaching fashion design at Moore College of Art & Design, Drexel University, and the Art Institute of Philadelphia.
Image Source: Chestnut Hill Local
Boris Drucker
PMSIA Class of 1942, Advertising Design
Cartoonist
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1961.
Boris Drucker was born in Philadelphia, and graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts. He served in the Army during World War II, and after his discharge, interviewed at an advertising agency in Philadelphia where an executive advised him he was a cartoonist, not a graphic designer. His prolific career included published work in the Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, Family Circle and The New Yorker, as well as advertising campaigns for many corporate clients such as Bell Telephone and Philadelphia Savings Bank. In addition to cartooning, Drucker taught advertising and commercial art at his alma mater in the 1960s. He contributed to The New Yorker for three decades beginning in 1966, and eventually opened a studio in New York. His Archive, including hundreds of published works and approximately 12,000 rough drawings, is housed at Syracuse University's Special Collections Resource Center.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: "So far so good. Let's hope we win." 1988. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Sidney DuPont
UArts Class of 2013, BFA, Musical Theater
Actor
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2024.
Sidney DuPont is a 2022 Tony Award nominee, and originated the role of Washington Henry in Paradise Square at the Barrymore Theater. Originally from Philadelphia, he began his training at the Creative & Performing Arts High School (2009) and continued at the University of the Arts (2013). He made his Broadway debut in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical in 2015 and continued with the show’s first national tour and its Australian company. Other national tours in which he performed include Memphis and A Chorus Line. DuPont’s regional credits include the world premiere of Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical at American Conservatory Theatre, Paradise Square at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Man of La Mancha at the Shakespeare Theater, In the Heights at Geva Theatre, and Gypsy at North Carolina Theater.
His TV and commercial credits include FBI: Most Wanted (CBS) and Cartier. DuPont has also stepped behind the scenes as a director, a choreographer, a cinematographer, and an award-winning screenwriter.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Catherine Edelman
PCA Class of 1985, BFA, Photography
Photographer, Gallery Owner
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2018.
Catherine opened Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago in 1987 as a venue for contemporary fine art photography. Since its founding, it's become one of the leading galleries in the Midwest devoted to the exhibition of prominent living photographers, alongside new and young talent.
Debuting with the Ballad of Sexual Dependency by Nan Goldin, her gallery has shown everything from street photography (Susan Meiselas, Sebastiao Salgado, James Nachtwey) to fashion photography (Annie Leibovitz, Herb Ritts, Matthew Rolston) to traditional landscape images (Michael Kenna, Lynn Gessaman) to socially-conscious work (Richard Misrach, Jeffrey Wolin, Terry Evans, Allen Ginsberg) to images created as a springboard for story-telling (Joel-Peter Witkin, Elizabeth Ernst, Dan Estabrook).
Edelman is widely respected as a leader, educator and specialist in the field of contemporary photography.
- UArts Commencement Program, 2018.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Parke Emerson Edwards
PMSIA Class of 1915, Diploma, Normal art Instruction
Metalworker
Certificate A, Industrial Drawing, 1912.
Emily Leland Harrison Prize of $10.00 for work in wrought iron, 1912.
Certificate in Constructive Design and Modeling (Normal), 1913.
John J. Boyle Prize of $10.00 for general excellence in modeling [sculpture], 1913.
Emily Leland Harrison Prize of $10.00 for work in wrought iron, 1913.
Received scholarship for advanced study in Italy, 1913.
Normal Certificate, Surface Design and Color, 1914.
Honorable mention, Herbert D. Allman Prize for best design in wallpaper, 1914.
Emily Leland Harrison Prize of $10.00 for work in wrought iron, 1914.
Caroline Axford Magee Prize of $10.00 for Tiles, 1914.
Parke Emerson Edwards was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Before enrolling at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts, Edwards took classes by correspondence. At PMSIA, Edwards received a scholarship to study in Europe under Samuel Yellin. Edwards' education was interrupted when he was drafted into the Army Signal Corps in World War I, where he designed anatomy diagrams and aviation maintenance documents. When he returned to PMSIA after the war, Edwards received his diploma and created the metalwork shop and taught at the school. Edwards is best known for the metalwork he designed for various churches, residences and museums in the surrounding regions of Philadelphia.
Above: Wrought iron candlesticks designed and executed by Parke Emerson Edwards while a student
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Philip Eitzen (1928-2016)
PMSA Class of 1952, Diploma, Advertising Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1982.
Philip Eitzen was born in Abington, Pennsylvania. After serving in the Army, Eitzen studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. Upon graduating he worked for the advertising agency N.W. Ayer & Son, Inc. In 1971 he formed The Creative Department, Inc. in Philadelphia, his own advertising agency. Eitzen was a founder of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Philadelphia chapter; a member of the PCA Board of Trustees, and president of the PCA Alumni Board.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Teneise Mitchell Ellis
UArts Class of 2005, BFA, Jazz Dance
Stella Moore Prize for Four-Year Achievement, 2005.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2019.
Teneise Mitchell Ellis was born in Chesapeake, Virginia. After graduating from the University of the Arts, Ellis has danced with artists and companies such as Philadanco, Camille A. Brown, and Beyoncé as well as for shows including Saturday Night Live, Radio City Rockettes and Wicked the Musical.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Wesley Emmons
PMSA Class of 1954, BFA, Jewelry and Silversmithing
Silversmith, Jeweler
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1986.
As a young man, Wesley Emmons was greatly influenced by Japanese arts and culture during the three years he spent in Japan in the U.S. Army following World War II. When he returned to the U.S. he attended the University of the Arts, then known as the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. He graduated with a BFA in Jewelry and Silversmithing. After a three-year apprenticeship he set up his shop and showroom with his wife Ellen just a few blocks away from Broad and Pine and has been there ever since. While working to establish his own business he taught jewelry and silversmithing at the Philadelphia College of Art in the Continuing Studies Program. Emmons established a reputation for outstanding craftsmanship and design in fine jewelry, religious artwork, and award design. Recipients of awards designed by Emmons include: Martin Luther King Jr., who received a pectoral cross; George Jessel, who received the City of Hope Humanities Award; J. Robert Oppenheimer; and Mstislav Rostopovich who received the Curtis Institute of Music Award, a recent commission. Emmons is respected not only in artistic circles, but also in the Philadelphia civic and business communities. His workshop and retail showroom have been Center City fixtures for 50 years.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Wharton Esherick (1887-1970)
PMSIA Class of 1908
Woodworker, Printmaker
Emma S. Crozer Prize for best work in drawing, fourth honorable mention, 1908.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1957.
Wharton Harris Esherick was born and raised in Philadelphia. He studied drawing and printmaking at the Museum School for the Industrial Arts and received a scholarship to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. However, he made his mark in the art world with wood sculpture, applying the principles of modernism to functional objects to create furniture, furnishings and buildings that bridged the gap between art and craft. Esherick was the living link between the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century and the craft revival of the 1950s. He was dubbed the "dean of American craftsmen" by the later generation of craftsmen who followed in his footsteps. His work has been widely exhibited both during his lifetime and posthumously. His pieces are in many permanent collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian, and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. His greatest work of art is his hand-crafted home and studio, now the Warton Esherick Museum, a National Historic Landmark for Architecture located just west of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Above: Music Stand, 1962
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Robin Eubanks
PCPA Class of 1978, BM, Trombone
Trombonist
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2017.
Robin Eubanks was born in Philadelphia to a famous musical family which includes his brothers, guitarist Kevin and trumpeter Duane Eubanks, uncles pianist Ray and bassist Tommy Bryant, and his mother Vera Eubanks, a music educator. After graduating from the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts, Eubanks moved to New York City where he played trombone with artists such as Sun Ra, Art Blakey, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads, B.B. King, Barbra Streisand, and many others. Additionally, Eubanks was a tenured Professor of Jazz Trombone and Jazz Composition at The Oberlin College Conservatory and has taught at Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Walter Hunt Everett (1880-1946)
Attended PMSIA, 1899-1900
Artist, Illustrator
Mrs. George K. Crozer Prize for Drawing, $20.00, 1899.
Walter Hunt Everett was born in Haddonfield, New Jersey. He studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art for a short time before studying at the Drexel Institute of Art and the Brandywine School under the tutelage of Howard Pyle. Everett and other members of the Brandywine School, such as N.C. Wyeth, went on to create some of the most famous and iconic illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post as well as other serials, posters and books. In 1911, Everett returned to the PMSIA to help found the illustration department and educate many more young artists.
Image Source: walterheverett.com
David Ewing
PCA Class of 1968, BFA, Film
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2020.
David Ewing is a film and television editor and producer. He has worked for programs such as the Today Show, Nightly News, PBS, National Geographic, NBC Dateline as well as CNN, ABC News and CBS News.
Eugene Feldman (1921-1975)
PMSIA Class of 1942, Advertising Design
Printmaker
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1974.
Eugene Feldman was born in Woodbine, New Jersey and attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. He founded the Falcon Press printing company in 1948, and was appointed Director of Typography at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in 1956. He published several books, including Doorway to Portuguese and Doorway to Brasilia with Aloisio Magalhaes, The World of Kafka and Cuevas, designed by Louis Glessman, and The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn, with Richard Saul Wurman. In 1962, Feldman was appointed Associate Professor of Graphic Arts at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Research in Photo Offest Lithography in 1966; he received commissions from the Philadelphia Board of Education and the Haas Community fund, and he designed two books for the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Spotbook, A Portfolio of Animal Prints and Multiples, the First Decade.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Artist's Website
Ruth Fine
PMCA Class of 1962, BFA, General Arts
Painter and Printmaker
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1994.
Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History, 2023.
Ruth Fine was born in Philadelphia, and received her BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught drawing, printmaking, and design at PCA, Arcadia University, and the University of Vermont. Since 1972, Fine has served as a curator for the National Gallery of Art; she was with the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection in Jenkintown until 1980, and subsequently at the National Gallery in Washington. She has organized many prominent exhibitions and contemporary print workshops, has written numerous essays and articles and recently coordinated a national gifts program with art collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. Fine is also a painter/printmaker whose work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum Library in London, the Museum of the Book, the Hague, and the National Library of Canada, as well as Columbia University, Bryn Mawr College, Dartmouth College, the Boston Public Library, and IBM Corporation.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Kate Flannery
UArts Class of 1987, BFA, Acting
Actor
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2013.
UArts Unleashed Alumni Award for Excellence in the Arts, 2024.
Kate Flannery was born in Philadelphia. After graduating from the University of the Arts, Flannery worked in stage comedy with The Second City and other companies as well as performing solo and collaborative shows. She began working in film and television and was cast as Meredith Palmer in the hit NBC show The Office in 2005, a role for which she won two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Flannery has continued to act in a large number of films and television shows including Steven Universe, OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes and Young Sheldon among others.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Maurice Freed (1911-1981)
PMSIA Class of 1933, Diploma
Painter, Illustrator, Art Director
Elizabeth B. Roberts Prize, First-Year Work, Drawing from Costumed Model, 1930.
Elizabeth B. Roberts Prize, First-Year Work, Museum Research, 1930.
Second-Year Student Life Drawing award, 1931.
Third-Year Student Illustration award, 1932.
Cape Cod Summer School Painting award, 1932.
Third-Year Student Pen and Ink award, 1932.
Third-Year Student Still-Life Painting award, 1932.
Maurice Freed was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. After graduating from the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art, Freed studied at the Cape School of Art before traveling to Atlantic City, NJ and Paris, France to paint. In 1934, Freed became the director of Esquire magazine. Freed worked for Esquire as well as contributing to other magazines such as New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post and Fortune, before returning to France to devote himself to painting and fine art. Freed continued to travel around the world to paint while also teaching drawing and painting and serving as president of the Philadelphia Chapter of Artists Equity Association.
Image Source: Artist's Website
Allan R. Freelon (1895-1960)
PMSIA Class of 1916, Diploma, Normal Art Instruction
Artist, Educator, Civil Rights Activist
Certificate A in Industrial Drawing, 1913.
Certificate in Surface Design and Color (Normal), 1914.
Associate Committee of Women's Prize ($10.00) for original design in Mosaic, 1914.
Certificate in Constructive Design and Modelling (Normal), 1915.
Honorable Mention, John Harrison Prize for work in furniture, 1915.
Mrs. Joseph F. Sinnott Prize ($10.00) for the best executed piece of Garden Pottery in cement, 1915.
Allan Randall Freelon was born in Philadelphia. He received a four-year scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art where he began his studies in art education. After his graduation in 1916 he attended the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy before entering the army from 1917 until 1919. He then returned to Philadelphia where he taught in the Philadelphia public school system and became the first African American to be appointed to the school district's Department of Superintendence as Assistant Director of Art Education in 1921. Freelon received his Bachelor of Science degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1924. Freelon was most known for his painting and as a part of the Harlem Renaissance. His artwork was part of the first exhibitions of African American art in Harlem in 1921 and his paintings and sketches were exhibited throughout the United States.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Peter Freudenberg (1943-2023)
PCA Class of 1967, BFA, Painting
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2019.
Peter Freudenberg attended Clemson University and then the Philadelphia College of Arts where he graduated in 1967 with a BFA in painting. He then served in Vietnam where he was awarded the Bronze Star. After being discharged, Freudenberg founded Pine Street Studio, where he became most known for his designs for water tanks, most notably the "Peachoid" in Gaffney, South Carolina and the "Earthoid" in Germantown, Maryland.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Rudolf Freund (1915-1969)
PMSIA Class of 1936, Diploma, Industrial Art
Illustrator
Fourth-Year Student Prize for Pictorial Expression for Exceptional Work, 1936.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1966.
Rudolf Freund graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art in 1936 (his father, Rudolf, Sr., also attended PMSIA). He was a prolific wildlife artist whose meticulously detailed illustrations appeared in many books and magazines. Beginning with LIFE magazine in the 1940's, he was noted for his studies of insects and his recreations of extinct animal species. Many volumes of the LIFE Nature Library contain his illustrations, and he illustrated numerous nature books and guides including Butterflies and Moths: A Study of the Largest and Most Beautiful of the Insects, Wonders of the Sea, and A Guide to Familiar American Wildflowers. He was a member of the Sketch Club in Philadelphia and the Art Students' League in New York, and he worked as a preparatory at the American Museum of Natural History.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968)
PMSIA Class of 1898, Diploma and Teaching Certificate
Painter, Poet, Sculptor, Theater Designer
Honorable Mention, Mrs. George K. Crozer Prize, for the best work in modelling (sculpture), 1898.
Mrs. George K. Crozer Prize ($20.00) for the best work in modelling (sculpture), 1899.
First Prize, Mr. H. H. Battles Prize ($25.00) for a jardiniere, 1904.
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller was born in Philadelphia in 1877. She attended Girls' High School, where one of her art projects was selected to be shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. As a result of this recognition she won a four-year scholarship to PMSIA. After graduation, she traveled to Paris where she was mentored by Henry Ossawa Tanner, became lifelong friends with W. E. B. DuBois, and became the protege of Auguste Rodin. Rodin was impressed with Warrick's sculpting ability as was the rest of France, where she had many exhibitions of her work. Warrick returned to Philadelphia in 1903 where she was the first African American woman to receive a commission from the United States government, to create a series of tableaux for the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition. Warrick's sculptural work focused on themes of the African American experience, racism, feminism, horror and African heritage and identity. In addition to her sculptures, Warrick was also a prolific theater designer, director, and actress.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Joe Fyfe
PCA Class of 1976, BFA, Painting
Painter
Joe Fyfe was born in New York City in 1952. After graduating from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1976, Fyfe returned to New York City where he continued painting and exhibiting his work in both Philadelphia and NYC as well as around the world. In addition to painting, Fyfe teaches at Pratt Institute and writes for various art publications such as Art in America, Artnet, and Bomb magazine.
Margaret Garwood (1927-2015)
PMA Class of 1975, MM, Composition
Composer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2001.
Margaret Garwood is a 1975 graduate of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, where she earned her Masters Degree in Music Composition. Ms. Garwood had studied privately at the Philadelphia Conservatory and in New York, which enabled her to "pass off" all of the requirements of the entire undergraduate program by exam when she applied for the Masters Program. Only two students in the history of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts have accomplished that feat.
Ms. Garwood served on the faculty of the Philadelphia Musical Academy from the early 1950's to the late 1960's and became head of the piano faculty in 1978, teaching piano, chamber music and opera.
Ms. Garwood has written works for various chamber ensembles. Her song cycles have been widely performed in the United States, Canada and Europe. Her opera for youth, Joringel and the Songflower, commissioned by the Camerata Opera Theater, was recently performed at the Chautauqua Institute in New York. Other operas include Rappaccini's Daughter, The Nightingale and the Rose and The Trojan Women. Her song cycles include The Cliff's Edge (Songs of a Psychotic); Lovesongs: Five songs to poems of E. E. Cummings; Springsongs: Five Songs to poems of E. E. Cummings, and Six Japanese Songs for voice, clarinet and piano. Her most recent works are Tombsongs and Rainsongs, both commissioned and premiered by the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia. She is writing a third work in this trilogy called Flowersongs, which was commissioned by the Music Group of Philadelphia. Instrumental works include a Suite (for two pianos), A Joyous Lament for a Gilly Flower (for clarinet and piano), Soliloquy (for alto saxophone and piano), and Homages: a suite in four movements (for piano, violin and cello).
Ms. Garwood has been the recipient of three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; five fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, during the last of which she was named a Norton Stevens Fellow; and awards from American Society of Composers Authors and Publishes, the American Music Center, and the National Federation of Music Clubs. She has served on the Composer-Librettist's and Solo Recitalist's Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and on the selection panels for Opera America and Chorus America.
Image Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Marguerite Gaudin (1909-1991)
PMSIA Class of 1930, Diploma, Advertising Design
First Prize for Advertising Design, Fourth-Year Work, 1930.
Second Prize for Drawing from Life, 1930.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1960.
Marguerite Gaudin graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art. She began her career doing freelance commissions for the Curtis Publishing Company, including a monthly cartoon for Jack and Jill magazine called Finney the Office Goldfish. In 1931, she joined the WIllet Stained Glass Studios and, after ten years, became the principal designer. During her 60 years designing for Willet Studios she created windows for hundreds of churches and secular buildings, located in all 50 states and five foreign countries. Among her notable design achievements were the last six windows executed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City; façade windows for the St. Anselm's Meguro Church in Tokyo, Japan; and one of the largest faceted glass installations in the world, the 30,000 square feet of glass for the Museum of Science, a permanent building constructed for the 1962-63 New York World's Fair. Gaudin was also a highly skilled calligrapher, who designed hundreds of illuminated commemorative scrolls and widely-exhibited watercolors.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Grace Episcopal Cathedral, San Francisco, 1964. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Jackson Grace Gay
UArts Class of 1999, BFA, Theater
Theater Director
The THEAS-Theater Ensemble Award, 1999.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2008.
Jackson Gay is an award-winning theater director who graduated from the University of the Arts in 1999 with a BFA in Acting. She received her MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama.
Among her directing credits are Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie at the Guggenheim Museum as part of the Works & Process series; Lucy Thurber's Scarcity at the Atlantic Theater Company, where she previously directed Kia Corthron's Master Disaster and Rolin Jones' The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, which was selected as a 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Ms. Gay's guest directing and teaching credits include The Juilliard School, Yale University, The Guthrie Theater, Dartmouth College, Stern College for Women, Denver Center's National Theater Conservatory, Mount Holyoke College and New York University. She is the recipient of the Voice and Vision Envision Fellowship, the Jonathan Alper Directing Fellowship at Manhattan Theatre Club, the Williamstown Theater Festival Directing Fellowship and the Drama League's New Directors/New Works Fellowship.
Image Source: Artist's website
Sonia Gechtoff (1926-2018)
PMSA Class of 1950, BFA, Education
Abstract Expressionist Painter
Sonia Gechtoff was born in Philadelphia in 1926. An artist from a young age, Gechtoff attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art and graduated in 1950 with a BFA. After her graduation, Gechtoff moved to San Francisco where she began working alongside many other prominent abstract expressionist artists of the Beat Generation. She married Jim Kelly in 1953 and attained national recognition when her work was shown in the Guggenheim Museum's Younger American Painters show alongside artists such as Pollock and de Kooning. Gechtoff moved to New York City in 1958 where her work was exhibited in many galleries while she continued to paint as well as teach at various universities.
Image Source: ARTnews
Virginia Mason Gifford (1907-2003)
PMSIA Class of 1930, Advertising Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1963.
Virginia Mason Gifford was born in Connecticut and relocated to Philadelphia in 1917. She was a graduate of the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. Gifford was a member of the Board of Governors of the Philadelphia College of Art and served on the Alumni Board of Directors. She received the Alumni Medal of Merit in 1966. Her illustrations were published in Jack and Jill and Nature magazines and in The Evil Eye, authored by her husband, Edward S. Gifford, Jr., M.D. Her artwork also adorned the book jacket of Think Fink, a book of poetry by Newbold Dunn. Her prints were purchased by the Library of Congress and she had solo exhibitions at the Philadelphia Art Alliance and Fleischer Art Memorial. Her work was also shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Riverside Museum of New York.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Bernard Glassman (1923-1998)
PMSIA Class of 1947, Diploma, Advertising Design
Advertising Design Award, 1947.
First Honorable Mention, The Philadelphia Art Directors' Club Award, 1947.
Third Honorable Mention, W. H. Hoedt Studio Award, 1947.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1965.
Joseph Kramer (1922-2004), Theodore Miller (1922-1995), Morris Lomden (1923-1985), and Bernard Glassman (1923-1998) attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in the early 1940s, before the United States' involvement in WWII. All four served in the U.S. Army; Lomden and Glassman remained in Europe under the GI Bill to study painting after the war. Returning to Philadelphia, they continued their studies at the Museum School (Kramer graduated in 1947 and Miller graduated in 1943, both with diplomas in Advertising; Lomden and Glassman received diplomas in Advertising from the Continuing Studies program in 1947) and began freelancing as graphic designers in the late 1940s.
In 1953, the four men incorporated KramerMillerLomdenGlassman, which rapidly grew to become the largest and most recognized graphic design firm in the Delaware Valley. During the forty years of their partnership, the workd of KMLG appeared in articles in Print, Communication Arts, and Graphis. Their designs and films won many awards, including gold medals from the Philadelphia and New York Art Directors' clubs, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Neographics, and a Cine Golden Eagle.
Specializing in a variety of disciplines, the partners produced annual and corporate reports, logo and alphabet design, corporate identity, US postage stamps, collateral print and advertising design, signage, packaging, and promotional films. Their holiday cards were legendary in the Philadelphia advertising and marketing community for their humor and creativity.
All four men had an avocation for the fine arts, and continued to paint, carve, sculpt, and make independent films their entire lives.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Albert Gold (1916-2006)
PMSIA Class of 1938, Diploma, Illustration
Painter
Award for Outstanding Work in Illustration and Decoration, Fourth Year, 1938.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1978.
Albert Gold was born in Philadelphia, and graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. His lithograph, Market Workers, was exhibited at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. In 1942, Gold was awarded the coveted Prix de Rome, given annually by the American Academy in Rome, and the Decorated Order of the British Empire. He was drafted into the army and became one of three official combat artists in Europe. During the war, hundreds of his paintings were hung at the Pentagon, in museums in Paris and London, and at the Smithsonian Institution. After his discharge, he began his 37-year long teaching career at his alma mater, retiring in 1982 as head of the Illustration Department and Professor Emeritus. He received numerous awards and grants throughout his career, and his works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Library of Congress, the National Gallery in London, and the Musee Galliera in Paris, among others.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Sidney Goodman (1936-2013)
PMSA, Class of 1958, Illustration
Painter
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1971.
Faculty Member, 1960-78.
Sidney Goodman was born in 1936 in Philadelphia, and attended the Philadelphia College of Art from 1954 to 1958. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, The Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Percy M. Owens Memorial for a Distinguished Pennsylvania Artist, and NEA Fellowship, and an Award in the Visual Arts from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Goodman received an Honorary Degree in 1996 from the Art Institute of Boston and was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1998. He also received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Lyme Academy College of Art in 2007. He has had solo exhibitions in many institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Columbus Museum, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of numerous prominent museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Museum of Modern Art and The National Portrait Gallery.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Joseph Hirsch (1910-1981)
PMSIA Class of 1931, Diploma
Painter, Printmaker
Second Prize for costumed model, 1930.
First prize for drawing from life, memory sketches, 1930.
Second prize for illustration, third year work, 1930.
Prize for illustration, fourth year student work, 1931.
Alumni award, 1958.
Joseph Hirsch was born in Philadelphia in 1910. After graduating from the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art he moved to New York City, where he studied with George Luks who in turn introduced him to the Social Realism movement. After traveling to Europe, Hirsch returned to Philadelphia where he worked for the Works Project Administration and created murals for various buildings around the city. In 1942, Hirsch created the most popular poster in support of buying War Bonds for World War II and later worked as an artist and war correspondent in Florida, the South Pacific, North Africa and Italy.
After the end of the war, Hirsch continued painting Social Realist works relating to the struggles faced by African Americans and soldiers returning home. In this time period he also worked as a commercial artist and portrait painter in addition to teaching at several art schools throughout the country. In 1949, Hirsch was one of the founding members of Artists Equity, for which he was later blacklisted and denounced as a Communist sympathizer. As a result, the Hirsch family moved to Paris until 1955.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Cynthia Iliff Koehler
PMSIA Class of 1930, Diploma
Artist, Illustrator, Author
First Prize for Third-Year Work in Design, 1929.
Class of 1928 Prize for Highest Rating in the Senior Class, 1930.
First Prize for Fourth-Year Design and for Museum Research, 1930.
Annie E. Sinnott Memorial Fund European Travelling Scholarship, 1931.
Johnny Irizarry
PCA Class of 1983, BFA, Painting
Artist, Community Arts Activist
The Faculty Award, Painting and Drawing, 1983.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1999.
Since graduating from the Philadelphia College of Art with a BFA Degree in painting, Johnny Irizarry has been building cultural and educational institutions directed toward advancing Latino culture in Philadelphia. He has worked with students ranging from the very young in Head Start through college age, and has served as chief administrative officer of a bilingual charter school, program specialist for the School District of Philadelphia, executive director/CEO of The Lighthouse (a North Philadelphian settlement house), and executive director of a Latino arts and cultural community center, Taller Puertorriqueño, where many of his programs used the arts as an agent for social change, justice, and community development. Among Irizarry's many awards and honors are the Paul Robeson Social Justice Award and an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College. Irizarry currently serves as director of La Casa Latina, the Center for Hispanic Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Penn Arts & Sciences Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies
James P. Jamieson (1867-1941)
Attended PMSIA 1889-1891
Architect
James P. Jamieson was born in Falkirck, Scotland in 1867. He moved to Philadelphia in 1884 and began working with his brother at the architecture firm of R.G. Kennedy. In 1889 he began working for the firm of Cope & Stewardson and taking classes at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art. Jamieson became of full member of Cope & Stewardson and headed a project for Washington University's campus.
Judith Jamison
1964, Dance, attended PDA college program at PMA
Dancer, Choreographer
1986, UArts Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts
1999, Emmy Winner, Outstanding Choreography
1999, Kennedy Center Honoree
2001, National Medal of Arts
2009, TIME 100: The World's Most Influential People
2010, Honored by First Lady Michelle Obama at the first White House Dance Series event
Judith Jamison was born in Philadelphia in 1943. She began dancing at age six and studied various styles and techniques before attending the Philadelphia Dance Academy, where she studied with Nadia Chilkovsky and took classes in Labanotation and kinesiology along with her dance studies. In 1964, Agnes de Mille invited Jamison to perform for a work she was choreographing for American Ballet Theatre. After the run of performances, Jamison was asked by Alvin Ailey to join his dance company. Jamison toured the world with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater until her departure in 1980, after which she performed on Broadway, taught master classes, and began choreographing her own works. In 1988, Jamison once again joined the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater as an artistic associate and became artistic director in 1989 after the death of Ailey.
Image Source: Getty Images, â“’ WireImage
Philip Jamison (1925-2021)
PMSA Class of 1950, Diploma, Illustration
Painter
Elizabeth B. Roberts Award for Excellence in Second-Year Painting, 1949.
Philip Jamison was born in Philadelphia in 1925. He was drafted into the Navy during World War II, after which he returned to Philadelphia and attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. After graduating, Jamison became well known for his watercolor paintings of landscapes and flowers which have been exhibited in galleries including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Air and Space Museum.
Image Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Renee Jaworski
UArts Class of 1994, BFA, Modern Dance
Dancer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2010.
Renée Jaworski '94 (Modern Dance) is the rehearsal director and artistic associate for Pilobolus Dance Theater. After receiving her BFA from the University of the Arts, she connected with Moses Pendleton, founder of the MOMIX and Pilobolus dance companies, performing and teaching throughout the world with MOMIX. In 1997, she took a brief hiatus to give birth to her daughter. Returning to her career, she created and performed her own work in Philadelphia while working for Group Motion and touring part time with MOMIX. 1998 brought Renée to NYC where she began working with Carolyn Dorfman. She has been working with Pilobolus since 2000, performing, creating, teaching, directing, associating and, most recently, coordinating residencies for the Pilobolus Institute.
- UArts Commencement Program, 2010
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
John Jesurun
PCA Class of 1972, BFA, Sculpture
Writer, Director
John Jesurun was born in 1951 in Battle Creek, MI. After receiving his BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art, Jesurun continued to study sculpture and receive an MFA from Yale University in 1974. After graduating, Jesurun worked for CBS and then for the Dick Cavett Show. His most well-known work is the live serial play Chang in a Void Moon, that has been running since 1982. Jesurun's has directed more than 25 other pieces that have been shown worldwide, and has taught at various universities.
Image Source: Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Daniel Joseph
UArts Class of 2006, BS, Industrial Design
Disney Imagineer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2017.
Before Daniel Joseph graduated from The University of the Arts he began working towards his life-long dream of working for the Walt Disney Company. In his senior year Joseph won Disney's annual ImagiNations Design Competition with a design for the defunct Disneyland attraction "The People Mover". After graduation he moved to Los Angeles and began working for companies that worked with Disney before attaining an internship at Walt Disney Imagineering, which eventually led to a job in their Special Effects and Illusions department. Since then, thirteen of his designs have been patented and he has been recognized for his work throughout the industry.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Edward Kalehoff
PMA Class of 1969, BM, Composition
Composer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1997.
When you hear the theme of "Monday Night Football" or "American Journal," when you hum a riff from "NFL Films" or "West 57th Street," when you can't forget jingles from McDonalds, Kodak, or Pepsi, you're experiencing the work of Edd Kalehoff, a 1968 graduate of the Philadelphia Musical Academy. The Academy was a forerunner of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, now a part of The University of the Arts.
Kalehoff has also been a pioneer in the development of electronically-assisted music. As he notes in a recent issue of Mix magazine, "There's a real irony to the position I find myself in these days. When I came to Manhattan 25 years ago, I was the fair-haired boy who had a Moog synthesizer, which was all the rage. There were only a few Moogs in town at the time, and I might have been the only person who was on the session scene who could actually play the thing." Today, in a world full of would-be creators of digital music, Kalehoff remains a pioneer because of the creativity he brings to the work. "When a producer calls me, it's generally because they want me to contribute something that is personally mine to a project ... Regardless of whether you're working on the client's time or your own, you always want to put your name on the best-sounding product possible. This is an adventure, not a career!"
Image Source: Artist's website
Jerome E. Kaplan (1920-1997)
PMSIA Class of 1947, Diploma
Lithographer
Henry Pepper Leland Fund Award for black and white mediums, lithography, 1947.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1964.
Jerome Kaplan grew up in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts. Kaplan began teaching lithography the fall after graduating and intaglio in 1955, and was appointed Professor and Chair of the Printmaking Department in 1965. He taught until he retired as Professor Emeritus in 1987. He was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961 and the Tamarind Fellowship in 1962; he received the Philadelphia College of Art Alumni Award in 1964 and was selected as one of the Outstanding Educators of America in 1972. Kaplan had 21 solo exhibitions between 1950 and 1994 when a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at The Print Club in Philadelphia. His work is represented in permanent collections in this country and abroad including the Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Yale University of Art Gallery; The Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; the British Museum; and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Paul F. Keene, Jr. (1920-2009)
Attended PMSIA from 1939-1941
Painter
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1972.
Faculty member, 1964-1968.
Paul Keene was born in 1920 in Philadelphia, and enlisted in the army in 1941. He graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in 1942 and received an MFA from Temple University Tyler School of Fine Arts. He also studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, where he became a part of Gallery 8, and exhibited with Picasso and Leger at the Salon de Mai. He received Whitney Fellowships in 1952 and 1954, which allowed him to direct courses ant the Centre D'Art in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Keene taught at the Philadelphia College of Art from 1964-1968, and at Bucks County Community College from 1968 to 1985, where he helped to establish a new art department. He retired from teaching in 1985. His work is in many permanent collections, including the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the British Museum, the Nigerian National Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A solo exhibition is planned for 2010 in the Woodmere Museum of Art.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Ric Kidney
PCA Class of 1975, BFA, Film
Film Producer and Director
Silver Star Alumni Award, 2003.
Richard "Ric" Kidney has worked in the motion picture industry for more than 30 years since his graduation from the Philadelphia College of Art with a BFA degree in Photography and Film. In 1981 he was accepted into the Directors Guild of America and has had a prolific career in the industry. He is also a member of the Screen Actors Guild. Kidney has produced many notable and award-winning films, including: Other People's Money (1991); Six Degrees of Separation (1993); Legally Blonde (2001); Life or Something Like It (2002); Four Brothers (2005); Shooter (2007); Imagine That (2009) and Salt (to be released in summer 2010). Kidney received the Silver Star Alumni Award in 2003.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Elle King
UArts Class of 2012, BFA, Multidisciplinary Fine Arts
Singer, Songwriter, Actress
Elle King was born in 1989 in Los Angeles, CA. King began playing guitar and banjo in her teen years. After graduating from high school in New York City, King studied painting and film at University of the Arts. Upon completion of her degree, King released her first EP in 2012 and then toured or performed with artists such as Dashboard Confessional, Train, and Ed Sheeran. King released her debut album, Love Stuff, in 2015. The lead single from the album, "Ex's & Oh's", reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and received two Grammy nominations for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song.
Image Source: Red Light Management via The San Diego Union-Tribune
Joseph Kramer (1922-2004)
PMSIA Class of 1947, Advertising Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1965.
Joseph Kramer (1922-2004), Theodore Miller (1922-1995), Morris Lomden (1923-1985), and Bernard Glassman (1923-1998) attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in the early 1940s, before the United States' involvement in WWII. All four served in the U.S. Army; Lomden and Glassman remained in Europe under the GI Bill to study painting after the war. Returning to Philadelphia, they continued their studies at the Museum School (Kramer graduated in 1947 and Miller graduated in 1943, both with diplomas in Advertising; Lomden and Glassman received diplomas in Advertising from the Continuing Studies program in 1947) and began freelancing as graphic designers in the late 1940s.
In 1953, the four men incorporated KramerMillerLomdenGlassman, which rapidly grew to become the largest and most recognized graphic design firm in the Delaware Valley. During the forty years of their partnership, the workd of KMLG appeared in articles in Print, Communication Arts, and Graphis. Their designs and films won many awards, including gold medals from the Philadelphia and New York Art Directors' clubs, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Neographics, and a Cine Golden Eagle.
Specializing in a variety of disciplines, the partners produced annual and corporate reports, logo and alphabet design, corporate identity, US postage stamps, collateral print and advertising design, signage, packaging, and promotional films. Their holiday cards were legendary in the Philadelphia advertising and marketing community for their humor and creativity.
All four men had an avocation for the fine arts, and continued to paint, carve, sculpt, and make independent films their entire lives.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
George Krause
PMSA Class of 1958, Advertising Design
Photographer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1970.
George Krause was born in Philadelphia in 1937 and attended the Philadelphia College of Art on a scholarship. He received the first Prix de Rome and the first Fullbright-Hayes Fellowship ever awarded to a photographer, as well as two Guggenheim Fellowships and three grants from National Endowment for the Arts. In 1993 he was the first photographer selected Texas Artist of the Year. Krause's photographs are found in the world's major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Library of Congress, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. In 1999 he retired from the University of Houston, where in 1975 he founded the photography program. He now lives in Wimberley, Texas with his partner Elizabeth White and their two dogs and five cats.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Artist's website
William G. Krebs
PCA Class of 1966, Interior Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1988.
William Krebs grew up in Princeton Junction, New Jersey before moving to Philadelphia to attend the Philadelphia College of Art. He attended Cornell University Graduate School and spent one of his two years of military service in the Corps of Engineers in Vietnam. In 1971, he joined Interspace Incorporated as a designer; he acquired the Philadelphia Office of Interspace in 1990 and led the firm until 2000. He was Managing Principal of Cathers & Associates, and architectural, interior design and landscape design firm in Malvern, Pennsylvania until February 2009, when he became Principal of MGZA Architecture. He is currently involved in a variety of project types ranging from historic restoration and adaptive reuse, to corporate interior design and workplace consulting. In 2008, after more than 20 years of service, he retired from the Board of Trustees of the University of the Arts. He and his wife, Jeanne, have spent several years designing their current home that they had constructed in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Atrium TRW Headquarters Building. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Joseph Krush (1918-2022)
PMSIA Class of 1939, Diploma, Illustration
Illustrator
Award for Outstanding Work in Illustration and Decoration, Second-Year Students, 1937.
Award for Distinguished Work in Drawing, Second-Year Students, 1937.
Award for Work in Water Color, 1937.
Award for Outstanding Work in Illustration and Decoration, Third-Year Students, 1938.
Award for Work in Water Color, 1938.
Scholarship Award to the New York World's Fair, 1939.
Henry Perry Leland Award for Graphics and Pen and Ink Drawing, 1939.
Thornton Oakley Gold Medal Award, 1939.
Joseph Krush was born in Camden, NJ in 1918. He met his wife Beth on the first day of class at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art and married soon after graduation. During World War II, Krush worked as a graphic designer for the Office of Strategic Services and as a courtroom sketch artist during the Nuremberg Trials. After the war, Krush returned to Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he and his wife worked together illustrating books for Harcourt, Brace. They are most well-known for illustrating the five Borrowers books by Mary Norton.
Image Source: Michael Bryant, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Elaine Kurtz (1928-2003)
PMSA Class of 1950, Diploma, Advertising Design
Painter
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1977.
Elaine Kurtz was born in Philadelphia, and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art. In the years following graduation, she earned her living as a free-lance illustrator. Twice the Philadelphia Art Directors Club awarded her their gold medal and three times Certificates of Merit for illustration. For four years she taught drawing at her alma mater. In 1966, Kurtz and her family moved to Washington, D.C. where she became a full-time working painter. Her first of five solo exhibitions came in 1970 at the Philadelphia Art Alliance and she won her first painting award the same year in the Annual Painting Show of the Cheltenham Art Center. Since 1970, her paintings and prints have been shown in more than 50 group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, and are house in numerous collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art Painting and Print Collections.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Jacob Landau (1917-2001)
PMSIA Class of 1938, Diploma, Illustration
Printmaker
Prize for Pictorial Expression for Exception Work, Second-Year Students, 1936.
Award for Distinguished Work in Drawing, Second-Year Students, 1936.
Award for Distinguished Work in Painting, Second-Year Students, 1936.
Award for Outstanding Work in Illustration and Decoration, Third-Year Students, 1937.
Award for Distinguished Work in Drawing, Third-Year Students, 1937.
Award for Outstanding Work in Illustration and Decoration, Fourth-Year Students, 1938.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1985.
Jacob Landau was born in Philadelphia where he studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art from 1935 to 1938. He lived most of his adult life in Roosevelt, New Jersey, and had a distinguished career as Professor of Art at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, from which he retired as Professor Emeritus, and immersed himself in the town's artistic community, along with such noted artists as Ben Shahn. The art Landau created, from lithographs and paintings to monumental stained-glass windows for Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, gained him an impressive reputation. Many of his works are included in the permanent collections of the world's finest museums, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. In addition, Landau received numerous awards and grants, including the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Guggenheim and Tamarind Fellowships. His work has been exhibited extensively in Europe, Mexico, South America, and throughout the United States in over 30 solo and 200 regional and national group shows.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Irene Laverty
PMSIA Class of 1929, Fibers
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1961.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Leonard Lehrer (1935-2018)
PMSA Class of 1956, Diploma, Illustration
Printmaker
Outstanding Achievement, Drawing, Fourth-Year Students, 1956.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2011.
Leonard Lehrer is an award-winning painter and printmaker. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and many other institutions. Lehrer was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Printmaking from the Southern Graphics Council International in 2009.
A Fullbright Scholar, Lehrer received his BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) in 1956 and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. He served as co-director of the Foundation Program at PCA. Lehrer has also led the schools or departments of art at the University of New Mexico, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Arizona State University, and New York University; he served as dean and associate provost at Columbia College Chicago; and he is currently a visiting professor and director of the Printmaking Convergence Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Lehrer is a Founding Trustee of the International Print Center New York, and was a member of the original College Art Association Committee charged with developing national guidelines for the MFA and the BFA degrees.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Tina Leser (1910-1986)
Attended PMSIA
Fashion Designer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1955.
Tina Leser was born Christine Wetherill Shillard-Smith in Philadelphia. She studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and the Sorbonne in France. She traveled through Asia, India and Africa as a child, and lived in Hawaii after her first marriage in 1931. In 1935, Leser opened a shop in Hawaii, selling high-quality clothing of her own design, and in 1941, she opened her own firm in New York. In 1943, she joined the Edwin H. Foreman sportswear firm as a designer, where she remained until 1953; she then designed for her own firm, Tina Leser, Inc., until a brief retirement from 1964 to 1966. She retired permanently in 1982. Leser received many awards, including the Neiman Marcus and Coty Awards in 1945, the Sports Illustrated Sportswear Design Award in 1956, and the Philadelphia Festival of the Arts Fashion Award in 1962.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Madras Dress, Late 1940s-1953. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Frances Madeline Lichten (1889-1961)
PMSIA Class of 1907, Applied Art
Certificate A, Industrial Drawing, 1904.
Honorable Mention, Elizabeth Duane Gillespie Prize in Industrial Drawing, 1904.
Certificate B, Applied Design, 1906.
Pooley Prize, $20.00, for group of studies in Interior Decoration, 1906.
Honorable Mention, Emma S. Crozer Prize for Modelling, 1907.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1959.
Frances Lichten was born in Bellafonte, Pennsylvania, and studied design and interior decoration at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, graduating with the class of 1970. She originated the idea for the Index of American Design, a federal art project which specialized in making a careful pictorial record of the folk arts of Pennsylvania, and served for over five years as the Pennsylvania State Supervisor. The Index is now housed in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. She was an authority on Pennsylvania folk art, and published a book in 1946, The Folk Arts of Rural Pennsylvania, illustrated with her own drawings and paintings, for which she won the annual award from the National Art Club. In the 1950s Lichten served as archivist for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, as a consultant for Colonial Williamsburg, and as a research associate of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the Frances Lichten Research Collection is currently housed. The Research Collection contains illustrations, Victorian paper artifacts, and records of the social standards of the era. She published numerous books, including Pennsylvania German Chests, Folk Art Motifs of Rural Pennsylvania, and Decorative Art of Victoria's Era.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Folk Art of Rural Pennsylvania, Bonanza Books, New York, 1946. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Morris Lomden (1923-1985)
PMSIA Class of 1947, Advertising Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1965.
Joseph Kramer (1922-2004), Theodore Miller (1922-1995), Morris Lomden (1923-1985), and Bernard Glassman (1923-1998) attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in the early 1940s, before the United States' involvement in WWII. All four served in the U.S. Army; Lomden and Glassman remained in Europe under the GI Bill to study painting after the war. Returning to Philadelphia, they continued their studies at the Museum School (Kramer graduated in 1947 and Miller graduated in 1943, both with diplomas in Advertising; Lomden and Glassman received diplomas in Advertising from the Continuing Studies program in 1947) and began freelancing as graphic designers in the late 1940s.
In 1953, the four men incorporated KramerMillerLomdenGlassman, which rapidly grew to become the largest and most recognized graphic design firm in the Delaware Valley. During the forty years of their partnership, the workd of KMLG appeared in articles in Print, Communication Arts, and Graphis. Their designs and films won many awards, including gold medals from the Philadelphia and New York Art Directors' clubs, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Neographics, and a Cine Golden Eagle.
Specializing in a variety of disciplines, the partners produced annual and corporate reports, logo and alphabet design, corporate identity, US postage stamps, collateral print and advertising design, signage, packaging, and promotional films. Their holiday cards were legendary in the Philadelphia advertising and marketing community for their humor and creativity.
All four men had an avocation for the fine arts, and continued to paint, carve, sculpt, and make independent films their entire lives.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Charles Long
PCA Class of 1981, BFA, Painting
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2008.
Charles Long was born in 1958 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and received his BFA from the University of the Arts. In 1980 he attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York City, and received his MFA from Yale University. He is an internationally exhibited artist with over 30 solo shows, and his work has been included in many significant museum exhibitions such as the 1997 and 2008 Whitney Museum Biennials; "Open Ends" at The Museum of Modern Art and "The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas" at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Grants, two Pollock-Krasner Grants, a Louis Comfort Tiffany grant and the Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has collaborated with pop musicians and with the renowned choreographer Merce Cunningham. Long is represented by Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica California, and the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York. He has taught at the California Institute of the Arts, Harvard University and the University of California, Riverside, where he is presently the Chair of Visual Art.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Brett Cody Rogers, Magasin III
Chien Chien Lu
UArts Class of 2017, MM, Jazz Studies
Vibraphonist
Chien Chien Lu moved to Philadelphia to study jazz at University of the Arts in 2015 after earning a Masters in Classical Music from Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan. While at UArts, Lu learned from Tony Miceli and graduated with a Masters of Music in Jazz Studies. After her graduation, Lu continued to perform locally as well as attend the Banff Jazz Residency. Lu has been noted as one of the 10 Emerging Jazz Artists of 2023 by the Recording Academy and her debut solo album, The Path, was widely lauded.
Image Source: Artist's website
Xenia Matthews
UArts Class of 2021, BFA, Film
Filmmaker
Xenia Matthews is from Melbourne Beach, FL. She moved to Philadelphia to attend University of the Arts, from which she graduated in 2021 with a BFA in Film. Matthews directed her first two short films while at UArts and won Indie Mepmphis’s Departures Shorts Jury award for her thesis film, A Few Things I’m Beginning to Understand. Her 2022 short film OURIKA! had been shown at film festivals across the country.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Alphonse Mattia (1947-2023)
PCA Class of 1969, BFA, Dimensional Design
Furniture Designer, Woodworker, Educator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2010.
A nationally-recognized educator and studio furniture maker, Alphone Mattia has work in many private collections and in the permanent collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Yale University Art Gallery; and the Phillip Morris Corporation.
He teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. Mattia dismisses the dichotomy between functional and nonfunctional objects, preferring instead the concept of "usefulness," the conveying of meaning and emotion along with utility. He is the co-founder of Smokestack Studios in Fall River, Mass.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Noel Mayo
PMCA Class of 1960, BS, Industrial Design
Industrial Designer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1973.
Noel Mayo was the first black graduate to receive a BS in Industrial Design from the Philadelphia Museum College of Art in 1960. He later became Chair of the department, making him the first African-American chairperson of an Industrial Design program in the United States. He held that post for eleven years and was awarded an honorary DFA degree from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1981. Since 1989, he has been an Eminent Scholar in Art and Design Technology and Professor of Industrial Design at the Ohio State University. Mayo has written for various journals including Innovation, The Wall Street Journal, Industrial Design, Arts Advocate, and The Minority Business Journal. He is the owner and president of Noel Mayo Associates in Philadelphia, the first African-American industrial design firm in the United States. The firm's clients include NASA, IBM, the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture, Black and Decker, the Museum of American Jewish History and the Philadelphia International Airport. He has been instrumental in establishing various mentoring programs for minorities and establishing a directory of minority professionals in industrial, graphic, interior and architectural design.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Artist's Website
William R. McCann
PCPA Class of 1980, BFA, Trumpet
Trumpeter, Programmer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1998.
Bill McCann graduated cum laude from Philadelphia College of Performing Arts in 1980, with a degree in trumpet performance, jazz emphasis. Blind since age six, Bill McCann received his first trumpet on his ninth birthday, and has hardly put it down since that time. Since 1977, he has been composing, arranging, and performing professionally, including completing a 1992 commission for the Glassboro Jazz Festival studio orchestra for his work, The Magic Moment is Now. He also scored the themes for a promotional video for Philadelphia's Associated Services for the Blind, and Saint Lucy Day School. Mainstream, an inspirational documentary on McCann that showcases his music, was first aired in 1989 on Philadelphia's public television station, WHYY.
Particularly notable, however, is McCann's work and company, Dancing Dots Braille Music Technology, and his proprietary software, Goodfeel. This particularly innovative program, released in 1997, automates the production of Braille music scores, converting the same files used to prepare the printed scores into Braille music. Before such a program, blind musicians-including McCann himself, when in school-had to laboriously search for the few scores available in Braille, or secure the help of others in transcribing music notation to Braille. It also put them at a tremendous disadvantage at auditions, for example, when they needed a piece in Braille quickly. With Goodfeel, the playing field for these musicians is leveled, and they can translate music into Braille at very affordable rates. McCann, and Dancing Dots look forward to bringing other new products to market in the future so that persons with disabilities can access the information they need, thereby widening their opportunities and enriching their lives.
Image Source: American Foundation for the Blind
Seymour Mednick (1927-2018)
PMSIA Class of 1948, Diploma
Photographer
Brother of Sol Mednick
Honor List, sophomore year, 1946.
Award in Advertising Design, 1946.
First Honorable Mention, Philadelphia Art Directors' Club Gold Medal Award, 1948.
Seymour Mednick was born in Philadelphia in 1927 to a family of photographers. After graduating from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, Mednick used photography to help create advertising campaigns for clients such as Campbell Soup, DuPont, Pepsi and many others. He received great praise for his work from groups such as the Philadelphia Art Directors Club, the New York Art Directors Club and the New York Society of Illustrators. Mednick is also well-known for his photographs and portraits of the annual Mummers Parade in Philadelphia on New Year's Day.
Image Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Sol Mednick (1916-1970)
PMSIA Class of 1939, Diploma, Advertising Design
Photographer
Associate Committee of Women Scholarship Award to the World's Fair, 1939.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1958.
As a boy growing up in Philadelphia, Sol Mednick was raised in the atmosphere of his father's photography studio, and taking pictures was a natural part of his childhood. When he later enrolled at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, there were no photo classes, so he studied design and graduated with the class of 1939. His greatest influence at PMSIA was Alexey Brodovitch. Mednick opened a photography studio in New York in 1949, where he did work for magazines and advertising agencies. In 1951, he began teaching at the Philadelphia College of Art and founded the Photography Department (which has evolved into the present Media Arts Department). He assembled a collection of photographs by well-known artists to use as teaching aids in the classroom, and he received the College of Art and Design Alumni Award in 1955. He was also a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education. Sol died unexpectedly on a trip to Paris, but his name and memory live on at the University of the Arts through the Sol Mednick Gallery, Philadelphia's only endowed gallery dedicated specifically to photography.
C. Samuel Micklus
PCA Class of 1966, BS, Industrial Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2000.
Dr. C. Samuel Micklus was raised in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He received a BS degree in Industrial Design from the Philadelphia College of Art, an MA from Trenton State College and an EdD from New York University. He is a professor emeritus of Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey where he taught for 24 years. He has spoken at conventions and presented creative problem-solving workshops in 49 states in the U.S. and fifteen countries abroad. Micklus has written a number of books and magazine articles, and his work has appeared in numerous magazines including Smithsonian, National Geographic World, The Rotarian, Think Magazine, Family Circle and People Magazine. He was the recipient of The Garden State Pioneer Award, and the National Association for Gifted Children's E. Paul Torrance Creativity Award. His primary work has been in areas of creativity and design. He formed Creative Competitions, Inc., which developed the Odyssey of the Mind program. The Odyssey of the Mind was featured on several television specials internationally. Micklus lives with his wife Carole, in Bradenton, Florida.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Odyssey of the Mind Team Packets. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Theodore Miller (1922-1995)
PMSIA Class of 1947, Advertising Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1965.
Joseph Kramer (1922-2004), Theodore Miller (1922-1995), Morris Lomden (1923-1985), and Bernard Glassman (1923-1998) attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in the early 1940s, before the United States' involvement in WWII. All four served in the U.S. Army; Lomden and Glassman remained in Europe under the GI Bill to study painting after the war. Returning to Philadelphia, they continued their studies at the Museum School (Kramer graduated in 1947 and Miller graduated in 1943, both with diplomas in Advertising; Lomden and Glassman received diplomas in Advertising from the Continuing Studies program in 1947) and began freelancing as graphic designers in the late 1940s.
In 1953, the four men incorporated KramerMillerLomdenGlassman, which rapidly grew to become the largest and most recognized graphic design firm in the Delaware Valley. During the forty years of their partnership, the workd of KMLG appeared in articles in Print, Communication Arts, and Graphis. Their designs and films won many awards, including gold medals from the Philadelphia and New York Art Directors' clubs, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Neographics, and a Cine Golden Eagle.
Specializing in a variety of disciplines, the partners produced annual and corporate reports, logo and alphabet design, corporate identity, US postage stamps, collateral print and advertising design, signage, packaging, and promotional films. Their holiday cards were legendary in the Philadelphia advertising and marketing community for their humor and creativity.
All four men had an avocation for the fine arts, and continued to paint, carve, sculpt, and make independent films their entire lives.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Earl Burns Milliette
PMSIA Class of 1913, Industrial Drawing, Constructive Design and Modeling
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1958.
Earl Milliette was born in Philadelphia, and graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. He taught for many years and was the Director of the Division of Fine and Industrial Arts in the School District of Philadelphia. He gave the 1946 commencement address at his alma mater.
Myra Mimlitsch-Gray
PCA Class of 1984, BFA, Crafts
Metalworker
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2001.
Myra Mimlitsch-Gray received her BFA from Philadelphia College of Art in 1984 and her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1986. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including Individual Artist Fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation (1995), the National Endowment for the Arts (1994), and the New York Foundation for the Arts (1997, 2005). In 1998 she was awarded a Chancellor's Medal for Excellence in Teaching at the State University of New York. She has lectured and exhibited her work widely in the U.S. and abroad. Recent shows include: anti/icono/clastic, a solo exhibition at Wexler Gallery, Philadelphia; "Raising the Bar" at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, Scotland; Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales; Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough, England; and "True Grit: Frames, Fixations and Flirtations" at the McColl Art Center, Charlotte, North Carolina. She was a featured speaker at the 2009 Society of North American Goldsmiths conference in Philadelphia. Mimlitsch-Gray's work is included in numerous public collections including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Artist's Website
Diane Monroe
PMA Class of 1975, BM, Violin
Violinist
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2002.
Diane Monroe, a graduate of The University of the Arts, has created a special niche for herself in a crowded market of musical performers: she happily and successfully inhabits the worlds of both jazz and classical music, bringing her own sensibility to each. Whether in live concerts, on CD's or in music written for films, her performances are fresh and improvisational, and uniquely her interpretations. A native of Philadelphia, Diane Monroe often performs in New York City, where she was concertmaster in the Broadway production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Known as a gifted soloist with chamber music ensembles there, Ms. Monroe is also a first violinist with the Uptown String Quartet. She is a frequent performer at such renowned festivals such as Marlboro, Caramoor, Sitka, North Sea Jazz, Mellon Jazz, New Music America, Bach Aria Festival and Institute, and The Quartet Program, not to mention Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Camp. With famed cellist, YoYo Ma, Monroe performed Henry Cowell's string quartets at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; she has appeared with the Ethos Percussion Ensemble in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and as a guest soloist at Symphony Space in New York City.
As a reviewer in The Philadelphia Inquirer noted of Monroe "The stylish fingerslides of her jazz-violin style (think Stephane Grappelli with lots of funk) gave extra personality to her work and other composers' works. Compositionally, on evidence of her uptempo Vibes and Groovin' Roots, she walks lines so fine as to be invisible, with interplay too intricate and textured to be improvised but too spontaneous not to be. Don't ask, just enjoy. Her remarkable solo-violin piece Spiritual, Blues and Beyond jumps off from Bach and rampages through blues and Paganinian virtuosity seamlessly."
Image Source: Artist's website
Kevan Moss
PCA Class of 1970, BS, Environmental Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1984.
Kevan N. Moss, born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1948, received her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design from the Philadelphia College of Art after study at Southern Illinois University. Since 1988, her firm, Kevan Moss Design, has provided exhibit planning and design to museums, galleries, historic sites and universities and consultation on architectural and artistic projects for small, community-based agencies and non-profit organizations. In 1993-94, she was a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Prior to establishing her own design firm, she directed the Gallery Association of New York State, a cooperative that promoted the sharing of artwork among museums and visual arts organizations. Her past projects include permanent and temporary exhibits at American on Wheels, Allentown, Pennsylvania; Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York; Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; Saratoga Automobile Museum; National Museum of Racing, Saratoga Springs, New York; Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York; The Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts; Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore; and Justin Smith Morrill Homestead, Strafford, Vermont, which was awarded a Certificate of Commendation by the American Association of State and Local History.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Don Moyer
PCA Class of 1970, BFA, Graphic Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2006.
Don Moyer was born in 1948 and grew up in central Pennsylvania. He received a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art and an MFA from Yale University. Since 1970, he has worked as a graphic designer in Philadelphia, Toronto, New Haven, and Pittsburgh. In 1980, he helped start the Pittsburgh-based communication planning and design firm now known as ThoughtForm. With his partners Reed Agnew and Grant Smith, he received the AIGA Fellow award in 2008. Moyer lives in Pittsburgh where he leads design projects at ThoughtForm. His professional focus is writing and designing Foglifters©–visual explanations of complex topics–for corporate clients. Since 2004, he has also created one-page visual essays each month for the Harvard Business Review.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Calamityware
Zoë Mozert (1907-1993)
Attended PMSIA 1926-1928
Illustrator, Pin-up Artist
Zoë Mozert was born in 1907 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her family moved multiple times in her childhood before settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania. While at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, Mozert studied with Thornton Oakley and began modeling and creating window displays. After graduation Mozert moved to New York City and began creating illustrations for pulp and glamour magazines. Throughout the years, Mozert would also create illustrations for magazines, pin-up models, and movie posters.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Joseph Musso
PMCA Class of 1963, BFA, Illustration
Illustrator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2004.
Art Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, 2017.
Joseph Musso received a BFA from the Philadelphia Museum College of Art. He was President of the Motion Picture Illustrators and Matte Artists for 30 years until its merger into the Art Directors Guild (ADG) in 2008. He now serves on the ADG's executive board. He has also been a member of the Art Directors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 30 years. His recent films include Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, Disney's The Santa Clause 3, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the forthcoming Steven Spielberg/Dreamworks' Hard 10. He has worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Irwin Allen, Frank Sinatra and John Huston, among others. Musso devotes an equal amount of time to researching and painting historical subjects, as well as collecting historical artifacts. He has been a guest speaker on the History Channel, the Outdoor Channel, the Public Broadcasting System and the Arts & Entertainment Network, and was made an Honorary Colonel by the governor of Kentucky for his historic research. His art, historic artifacts and movie memorabilia have been displayed in numerous museums, including The Texas State History Museum and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Art Directors Guild
Jayson Scott Musson
UArts Class of 2002, BFA, Photography
Artist
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2013.
UArts Distinguished Alumni Award, 2023.
Jayson Scott Musson was born in the Bronx, New York in 1977. After attending the University of the Arts and receiving an MFA at the University of Pennsylvania, Musson first attracted public attention with a series of humorous videos about the art world entitled ART THOUGHTZ. Since then, Musson has risen to prominence as a multidisciplinary artist with solo and group exhibitions at galleries such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitechapel Gallery, Gallery Perrotin and Grimmuseum.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Edith Neff (1943-1995)
PCA Class of 1965, BFA, Fine Arts
Painter
Edith Neff was born in Philadelphia in 1943. After graduating from the Philadelphia College of Art, Neff taught there for many years before eventually joining the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Neff was most well-known for her large-scale realist paintings and murals depicting the people and scenes of Philadelphia.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Eileen Neff
PCA Class of 1972, BFA, Painting
Artist
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2002.
Eileen Neff was born in Philadelphia in 1945. She received a BA from Temple University in 1967, a BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1972, and an MFA from Tyler School of Art in 1974. She is a photographer, installation artist and writer based in Philadelphia. Her work has been exhibited at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art and Vox Populi, Philadelphia, and Artists Space, New York, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a Leeway Foundation grant, and Artists' Residencies at The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia. She is represented by Locks Gallery in Philadelphia. She also writes art reviews for ARTFORUM International Magazine. Neff is currently a faculty member in the Fine Arts Department in the College of Art and Design at the University of the Arts.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Libby Newman (1922-2023)
PCA Class of 1980, BFA, Printmaking
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2020.
Libby Newman was born in 1922. She became certified in dental hygiene at the University of Pennsylvania and then enrolled in the Philadelphia College of Art in 1980. After her graduation, Newman worked prolifically as a painter, printmaker, and textile artist, with works in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as various galleries around the world. Newman was also the founding director and curator of the Esther Klein Gallery at the University City Science Center, was heavily involved as a leader of the Artists Equity Association, and a panelist for the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Jeffrey Page
UArts Class of 2002, BFA, Jazz Dance
Director, Choreographer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2022.
Jeffrey Page is a choreographer and an opera and theater director of both classical and contemporary works. He has directed numerous projects in Tokyo that received Yomiuri Award nominations, including Best Musical. Page is the first African American to be named the Marcus Institute Fellow for Opera Directing at the Juilliard School. He serves as guest faculty and has directed and choreographed for its Theater and Opera departments. Page maintains a faculty lectureship in Harvard University's Theater, Dance and Media department. He has also been nominated for an Emmy Award and has won an MTV Video Music Award for his work with Beyoncé, whose creative team has included him for more than 12 years. His work was featured on Beyoncé's The Formation World Tour, in her historic Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival performance, and in two of her HBO specials. In addition to his work with Jazmine Sullivan for more than 10 years, Page was associated creative director for Mariah Carey's Sweet, Sweet Fantasy European Tour. He has also been a featured choreographer on Fox's So You Think You Can Dance.
At the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, Page was in the original, award-winning Broadway cast of Fela! He worked alongside Tony-Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori to choreograph the hit Broadway musical Violet, starring Sutton Foster, at Roundabout Theatre Company. At Barrington Stage Company, Page received glowing reviews as the choreographer for Company. He also won a 2016 Berkshire Theater Award for his work on Broadway Bounty Hunter.
In 2016, Page established Movin' Legacy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the ethnology and documentation of contemporary and traditional dance from Africa and the African diaspora. Page holds a Master of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in Directing from Columbia University in New York City and has been awarded the Chuck Davis Emerging Choreographer Fellowship from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Most recently, he directed and choreographed the first Japanese version—and critically acclaimed production—of Everybody's Talking About Jamie and Ain't Misbehavin' for both Barrington Stage Company and Geva Theatre Center. With Diane Paulus, Page is director and choreographer for the upcoming Broadway revival of 1776.
- UArts Commencement Program, 2022.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Irving Penn (1917-2009)
PMSIA Class of 1938, Diploma, Design Lab
Photographer
Third-Year Student Award for Outstanding Work in Design Laboratory, 1937.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1955.
Irving Penn was born in 1917 in Philadelphia and graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art in 1938. His drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he also painted. He worked for many years doing fashion photography for Vogue magazine, using his unique, austere technique to photograph such subjects as Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky, and Marlene Dietrich. He has published numerous books including the recent A Notebook at Random, which offers a generous selection of photographs, paintings, and documents of his working methods. The permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum possesses a silver gelatin print of Penn's The Tarot Reader, and the Irving Penn Archives, a collection of personal items and materials relating to his career, are held by the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. Penn has had recent exhibitions at the J. Paul Getty Museum (2009), the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City (2008), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (2005) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2002).
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Above: Photograph by Irving Penn while a student at PMSIA
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Joseph Pennell (1857-1926)
PMSIA
Illustrator, Printmaker
Member of the first class of PMSIA, 1877.
Joseph Pennell was born in Philadelphia in 1857. He attended the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art until his expulsion in 1879, after which he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, studying under Thomas Eakins and others. After graduation, Pennell opened his own studio and moved to London, England where he made illustrations for magazines and taught art. During World War I, Pennell created posters to drum up support for the war effort after the United States' entrance into the war. Pennell traveled the world making illustrations for popular magazines and books.
Image Source: Library of Congress
Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987)
PCM Class of 1941, MM; Class of 1945, DM
Composer, Teacher
Philadelphia Conservatory of Music Faculty Member, 1939-1962.
Vincent Persichetti was born in Philadelphia in 1915. He began performing and composing music at an early age and had his first performance of his own compositions at the age of 14. He received his bachelor's degree from Combs College of Music in 1936 and began teaching there immediately after. Persichetti obtained a master's degree from the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music in 1941 and a doctorate in 1945 while heading the theory and composition department and the department of postgraduate study. In 1947, Persichetti also began teaching at the Juilliard School where he taught many acclaimed composers. Persichetti was himself a prolific and well esteemed composer, known for his collection Hymns and Responses for the Church Year as well as nine symphonies, four string quartets, and a wide variety of piano and wind band compositions.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Jerry Pinkney (1939-2021)
Attended PMSA
Illustrator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1992.
Jerry Pinkney was born in Philadelphia in 1939 and studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. He has illustrated over 100 children's books since 1964, which have been translated into 11 languages and published in 14 different countries. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors for his body of work, including five Caldecott Honor Medals, five Coretta Scott King Awards and there Coretta Scott King Honor Awards. In 2003, he received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University and in 2006, the Original Art's Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Illustrators in New York. Pinkney has also had over 30 solo exhibitions and over 100 group shows in the United States, Japan, Russia, Italy, Taiwan, and Jamaica. He has illustrated for a wide variety of clients, and was appointed to serve on the U.S. Postal Services Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee from 1982 to 1992. He also illustrated and designed the White House Christmas Program in 2001. He lives with his wife, author Gloria Jean, in Westchester County, New York.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Library of Congress
Gertrude E. "Trudy" Pitts (1932-2010)
PMA Class of 1953, BM, Teacher's Certificate
Jazz Musician
Gold Medal Piano Award, 1950.
Trudy Pitts was born in Philadelphia in 1932. She studied music and music education at the Philadelphia Musical Academy, Temple University, and Juilliard. After graduation, she worked on the musical Raisin and was then inspired to work on her own musical career by her husband. Throughout her career she was lauded for her skill as a jazz organist and worked with various famed jazz musicians such as Grover Washington, Jr., Etta James, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others.
Image Source: Andrew Lepley/Redferns/Getty Images
Henry C. Pitz (1895-1976)
PMSIA Class of 1918
Illustrator, Educator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1956.
Henry C. Pitz was born in Philadelphia. In 1914, he graduated from West Philadelphia High School with a prize in history and a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art. After returning from World War I, he taught there, where, for 26 years, he was the head of the Department of Pictorial Expression, later to be called the Department of Illustration. In addition to teaching illustrators and painters such as Albert Gold, Sidney Goodman Helen and William Hamilton, Paul Keene, Joseph and Beth Krush, Edward Smith, and Howard Watson, he illustrated over 200 books with subject matter ranging from fairy tales to literature classics such as The Chronicles of Froissart and Dickens' Dombey and Son. Pitz also wrote numerous articles and books on art and artists, including about 100 articles for American Artist magazine. His prize-winning history, The Brandywine Tradition, published in 1969, was on the best-seller list for 10 weeks. He received the Alumni Gold Medal from PCA in 1956, and the Silver Star Cluster in 1957.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Mary Elizabeth Price (1877-1965)
PMSIA Certificate A, Industrial Drawing, 1898; Normal Certificate, Teacher's Course, 1899; Certificate C, Illustration, 1900.
Painter
Mrs. George K. Crozer Prize of $20.00 for the Best Work in Drawing, 1900.
Mary Elizabeth Price was born in 1877 in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Her family moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania when she was young. Price studied art at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts between 1896 and 1907. After her graduation from these programs, Price taught art in public schools in New York. Price is most well known as a member of the Philadelphia Ten, a group of women artists who worked and exhibited art together starting in 1921.
Image Source: Jim's of Lambertville
Walter F. Price (1857-1961)
Attended PMSIA, 1892-1894
Architect
Walter F. Price was born in Swarthmore, PA in 1857. He received a diploma from Haverford College and a master's degree from Harvard before attending the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art for two years in the 1890s. After visiting Europe, Price decided to become an architect and joined the firm of his two brothers, Frank L. and William L. Price. In 1902, Walter Price made a name for himself with his work for Haverford College. Price was well also well known as an expert on Friends meetinghouses and designed several throughout his career.
Stephen Quay
PCA Class of 1969, BFA, Film
Timothy Quay
PCA Class of 1969, BFA, Illustration
Filmmakers
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2009.
Stephen and Timothy Quay, identical twin brothers, were born in Norristown, Pennsylvania in 1947. Stephen graduated with a degree in film and Timothy with one in illustration. The Quays moved to London to attend the Royal College of Art, where they met Keith Griffiths, a fellow student who subsequently became their producer, a role he continues to occupy to this day. Together, Griffiths and the Quays established a film company, Atelier Koninck. Their animated shorts include Streets of Crocodiles (1986), The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) (1990) and Phantom Museums (2003). The Quays have made two feature-length films, Institute Benjamenta (1995) and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005). The Quays have also directed music videos (for Peter Gabriel, Michael Penn, Tom Waits and Pere Ubu) and commercials (from Slurpee, Nikon and Kelloggs to Partnership for a Drug Free America). One of their most recent projects, Eurydice: She So Beloved (2007), combines film, opera, dance, sculpture and painting. The Quay Brothers reside and work in England, and are currently working on an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's short story, The Mask.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Florence Quivar
PMA Class of 1967, BM, Voice
Mezzo-soprano
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1994.
Florence Quivar was born in Philadelphia in 1944. She began studying piano and voice as a child and sang in church from a young age. Quivar fell in love with opera after seeing the Metropolitan Opera touring company and enrolled in the Philadelphia Musical Academy. After graduation, Quivar attended Juilliard for a short time before returning to Philadelphia where she made her professional debut in 1976. Quivar went on to experience much success as a soloist and as part of companies, performing around the world as well as highlighting the works of African American composers and composers of new music.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Stanley L. Reckless (Zbytniewski) (1892-1955)
PMSIA Class of 1910, Certificate A
Painter
Mrs. J. L. Ketterlinus Prize ($10.00) for the best design for a cover of the Museum Bulletin, 1911.
Stanley L. Zbytniewski was born in Philadelphia in 1892. He adopted the surname Reckless prior to deciding to pursue a career in art. After attending the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Art in 1910, Reckless attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. While at PAFA, Reckless won a scholarship to study at Académie Julian in Paris, France. After the end of World War I, Reckless returned to the United States and continued his art career.
Clayton Reilly
UArts Class of 2006, BM, Instrumental Performance; Class of 2021, MAT, Music Education
Musician, Producer, Educator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2023.
Less than a year after graduating from University of the Arts with his Bachelor of Music, Clayton Reilly BM '06 (Instrumental Performance), MAT '21 (Music Education) was selected as a touring member of Corrine Bailey Rae's band. His hard work and dedication to his craft continued to pay off, as he spent the following five years on the road with musician, singer and songwriter John Legend. That incredible opportunity enabled Reilly to perform alongside notable artists such as Patti LaBelle, Stevie Wonder and Natalie Cole. In addition, he appeared with Legend's band at famous arenas around the world, on morning and late-night talk shows, and at President Barack Obama's Second Inaugural Ball.
Working with John Legend also opened the door for Reilly to learn more about life on the other side of the studio wall. In 2010, he co-founded and became CEO of Philly Phatboi Entertainment LLC. Reilly was also signed as a producer to BMG Chrysalis/Homeschool Records in a joint venture with Legend, and he worked with countless artists as a producer, a vocal arranger and a songwriter. His first Grammy nomination, in 2011, was in the Best R&B Album category for Ledisi's Pieces of Me. Two more followed in 2012 for Best Urban Contemporary Album for Miguel's Kaleidoscope Dream and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for John Legend and Ludacris' "Tonight (Best You Ever Had)," the latter of which went multi-platinum after spending seven weeks at the top of the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. Additionally, it earned him Soul Train's Ashford & Simpson Songwriter's Award. Fresh from that success, Reilly began working with Ne-Yo, who also served as his manager through Compound Entertainment from 2012-2015. During that time, he produced three songs on Ne-Yo's R.E.D. album: "Unconditional," "Jealous" and "Forever Now." Since then, Reilly has participated in panels for the Recording Academy, for which he is also an active voting member.
After returning to University of the Arts to earn his Master of Education degree, Reilly accepted a position with the Bethlehem School District (BASD) in Pennsylvania in 2022. His positive experiences as a student in the BASD gave him the confidence he needed to pursue music professionally, and now he hopes to inspire the next generation in his role as an elementary music teacher. When Reilly is not performing in the classroom, he can be heard at various venues all over the Lehigh Valley and abroad, working as a solo jazz artist, a studio musician, a music producer and a collaborator. He is grateful for all the lessons he learned and connections he made at UArts, and he is deeply honored to be one of this year's Silver Star Award recipients.
- UArts Commencement Program, 2023.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Richard H. Reinhardt (1921-1998)
PMSIA Class of 1947, BAA, Education
Metalworker
Honor List, Freshman Year, 1940.
Honor List, Sophomore Year, 1941.
Award in Teacher Education, 1946.
Alumni Association Prize for Outstanding Achievement, 1947.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1975.
Named Professor Emeritus, 1986.
Richard Reinhardt was born in Philadelphia in 1921, and educated in the city's public schools, but it was the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art that set him on his life's path. He studied with Virginia Cute Curtain and sneaked into Douglas Gilchrist's classes to teach himself how to make jewelry for his wife, Hazel. When World War II began, he became a patent draftsman for the Budd Company, enlisted in the Marines and went to Guam as a Drill Sergeant. At war's end, he returned to teach the GIs at the PMSIA and studied with Baron Erik Fleming and the Handy and Harmon Workshops for two summers in a row. Armed with that education, he helped establish the Crafts Department at the newly minted Philadelphia College of Art as well as the Industrial Design Department. He became Dean of the College, then returned to teach when his former student and much revered colleague, Olaf Skoogfors, suddenly died. Reinhardt's sterling silver jewelry is now in the collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Smithsonian Institution; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and The Helen Drutt Collection. His legacy includes a loving family and many alumni who are successful in their own right: Myra Mimlitsch-Gray, Robert Oppecker, Hratch Babikian, Todd Noe and Doug Bucci among them.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Anne Estelle Rice (1877-1959)
PMSIA Class of 1897
Painter, Illustrator
Certificate A, 1896.
Certificate B for the Course in Decorative Painting and Applied Design, 1897.
2nd Place, Mrs. George K. Crozer Prize for Modelling [Sculpture] in the amount of $10.00, 1897.
Anne Estelle Rice was born in Conshohocken, PA in 1877. Rice first studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and then attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. After graduating, Rice began contributing illustrations to various well-known periodicals such as Harper's and the Saturday Evening Post. She traveled to Paris in 1905 and developed her painting style there while continuing to illustrate for magazines and also create murals for the Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia. Continuing from the 1910s onwards, Rice held solo shows of her paintings to critical renown, her most well-known piece being her 1910 painting "The Egyptian Dancers".
Image Source: The Egyptian Dancers, 1910. Brooklyn Museum.
William Seltzer Rice (1873-1963)
PMSIA Class of 1895
Block Printmaker, Watercolor Artist
Certificate A, 1894.
Henry Perry Leland Prize, 1894.
Certificate B, 1895.
Associate Committee of Women's Second Prize for Wallpaper, 1895.
Weil & Taws Prize, 1895.
William Seltzer Rice was born in Manheim, PA in 1873. After graduating from high school, Rice studied first at the Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle before attending the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art. In 1900, after completing his studies, Rice moved to Stockton, California. While in California, Rice taught art at public schools and was introduced to members of the Arts and Crafts movement. Rice worked mainly in wood and linoleum block printing and achieved renown and success in the art world.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Brittanie Michelle Richardson
UArts Class of 2009, BFA, Theater Arts
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2015.
Brittanie Michell Richardson is the founder of Art & Abolition. After graduating from University of the Arts in 2009, Richardson performed in the United States and South Africa. While in South Africa she launched an art therapy program. She then moved to Mtwaba, Kenya where she worked to provide rehabilitation to child survivors of sex slavery. She then founded Art and Abolition to use her experience in art education and rehabilitative experience to educate and empower children.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Ben Rose (1916-1980)
PMSIA Class of 1938
Photographer
Ben Rose was born in 1916 in Philadelphia. He studied photography at The Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art under Alexey Brodovitch. After his graduation Rose worked for the N. W. Ayer advertising agency as well as an editorial photographer for various magazines. In the 1940s and 1950s, Rose became known for his abstract photography of urban landscapes. In addition to his photography, Rose also taught at PMSIA and Parsons School of Design. Rose was president of the American Society of Media Photographers from 1962 until 1965.
Image Source: Self-Portrait with Cirkut Camera, Woodmere Art Museum
Kathy Rose
PCA Class of 1971, BFA, Film
Video Artist, Performance Artist, Animator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1997.
Kathy Rose received a BFA in Film from the Philadelphia College of Art, and an MFA in Animation from the California Institute of Arts. Rose received a Guggenheim in Performance Art in 2003, and has been awarded numerous grants including six NEA grants, three grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. Her performances have been held in the Museum of Modern Art; Kennedy Center; Lincoln Center; Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris; Walker Art Center; The Kitchen; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; and Akademie die Kunst, Berlin, among others. Video installation exhibitions have been held at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Aldrich Museum. Rose's recent videodance works have been shown in the American Dance Festival, Il Coreografo Elettronico in Naples, Dance on Camera at the Lincoln Center, and at videodance festivals in Toronto, Johannesburg, Philadelphia, Budapest, and Milan. PRINT magazine and The New York Times, among others, have published reviews of her performance work. She is currently a Master Lecturer in Media Arts at the University of the Arts.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Kleopat'Ra, excerpt from performance, 2009. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Arnold Roth
PMSA Class of 1950, Diploma, Illustration
Cartoonist, Illustrator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1968.
Arnold Roth was born in Philadelphia in 1929. In 1946, he was awarded a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, from which he graduated in 1950. He then joined with the originators of MAD Magazine to work on Trump and Humbug magazines. From 1959 to 1961 he did a syndicated Sunday comic feature Poor Arnold's Almanac which he revived in 1989 as a daily panel and Sunday comic. His work has appeared on record sleeves and in many major publications, including Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Time, Playboy, The New Yorker and, most notably, Punch (London), where he was honored to carve his initials into their fabled table. He has illustrated many books, and authored A Comick Book of Pets, A Comick Book of Sports, Pick a Peck of Puzzles, and Arnold Roth's Crazy Book of Science. Roth has received numerous honors and awards, including the Reuben Award (Cartoonist of the Year) in 1984 and the Best Illustrator Cartoonist no less than 13 times from 1976 to 1989. He lectures widely and continues to play the saxophone. He and his wife Caroline (Wingfield) (PMSIA alumna) live in New York City and have two musician sons, Charles and Adam.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Charles Santore (1935-2019)
PMSA Class of 1956, BFA, Illustration
Illustrator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1979.
Charles Santore was born in Philadelphia in 1935 and attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. After graduating, he worked as an illustrator for many top advertising agencies and numerous leading magazines. Since 1986, he has illustrated children's books, including The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Other Cherished Stories, Aesop's Fables, The Wizard of Oz, and many others. He is also the author and illustrator of William the Curious: Knight of the Water Lilies; A Stowaway on Noah's Ark; Three Hungry Pigs and the Wolf That Came to Dinner; and The Silk Princess. He has received numerous awards, including the Society of Illustrators' Award of Excellence and the prestigious Hamilton King Award. His illustrations for Aesop's Fables were the inspiration for a series of Merrill Lynch TV commercials aired during the 1993 Winter Olympics, and he is the subject of a 1997 documentary, Charles Santore Illustrates the Wizard of Oz. He has had major exhibitions at the Brandywine River Museum and the National Heritage Museum in Massachusetts.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Pearl B. Schaeffer
PCPA Class of 1979, MFA, Dance
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1992.
Pearl B. Schaeffer received her bachelor's degree in Education from Drexel University before attending the University of the Arts, where she obtained an MFA in Dance. After her graduation Schaeffer taught English and dance at Temple University, UArts, and to K-12 students. Schaeffer is currently the CEO of the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, a program that helps create art education programs for Pre-K-12 schools in the Philadelphia region.
Image Source: Metro Philadelphia
Susan Gertrude Schell (1891-1970)
PMSIA
Painter, Educator
Miss Lea First Prize for Work in Water Color Painting, 1917.
Susan Gertrude Schell was born in 1891 in Titusville, PA. She attended West Chester State Teachers College, the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. After her graduation, Schell returned to PMSIA where she taught for 30 years. Schell was also a member of the Philadelphia Ten, a group of female artists who often exhibited together, in the 1930s and 1940s.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Thomas F. Schutte
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1983.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Edgar Viguers Seeler (1867-1929)
PMSIA Class of 1890
Architect
Richards Prize for the Best Drawing in Pen and Ink, 1886.
One-Year Scholarship for Excellence, 1886.
Edgar Viguers Seeler was born in Philadelphia in 1867. After graduating from the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art, Seeler attended MIT and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he studied architecture. When Seeler returned to Philadelphia, he founded an architectural office and taught architectural design at the University of Pennsylvania. Seeler's most well-known buildings are the Curtis Building, the Penn Mutual Life Building, and the Philadelphia Bulletin Building.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Charles Sheeler (1883-1965)
PMSIA Class of 1902
Painter, Photographer, Filmmaker
Certificate A in Industrial Drawing, 1901.
Certificate B in Decorative Painting and Applied Art, 1902.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1957.
Charles Sheeler was born in Philadelphia, and attended the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art from 1900 to 1903, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under William Merritt Chase. He found early success as a painter and exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery. He took up commercial photography around 1912, focusing particularly on architectural subjects. A self-taught photographer, he learned his trade on a five-dollar Brownie camera. He moved to New York City in 1919 and the next year collaborated with the photographer Paul Strand on the film Mannahatta. Sheeler received recognition for both his paintings and his photography, which were made in the clear-focus, highly detailed Precisionist style. He was hired by the Ford Motor Company to photograph and make paintings of their factories, and in 1940, Fortune Magazine published his "Power Series" of six paintings. Both The National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and The Museum of Fine ARts in Boston have hosted retrospective exhibitions of his work in recent years.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Edward E. "Harry" Shenton (1895-1977)
PMSIA Class of 1917, Industrial Drawing
Illustrator
Honorable Mention, Mrs. J. L. Ketterlinus Prize for Sketches Made in Service A.E.F.
Edward E. Shenton was born in Pottstown, PA in 1895. He grew up in West Philadelphia and attended the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art in 1916. In 1917 he joined the Army and served in France during WWI. When he returned to Philadelphia he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and won two scholarships to study in Paris, France. After his education, Shenton made a name for himself as an illustrator of over 130 books and as the house illustrator of Scribner's magazine.
Image Source: Hands of Ned, Barbara and Me, collection of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Piper Shepard
PCA Class of 1985, BFA, Fibers
Fiber Artist
Leon C. Bunkin Award in Fibers, 1985.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2015.
Piper Shepard attended the University of the Arts where she earned a BFA in Fiber and the Cranbook Academy of Art in Michigan where she earned an MFA in Fiber. Shepard works with cloth and paper, creating filigree through cutting and constructing patterns. She has shown her work at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Delaware Art Museum, and many others. She has also taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art since 1994.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Clyde F. Shuler (1892-1969)
PMSIA Class of 1912, Interior Decoration
Architect, Industrial Designer
Certificate A, Industrial Drawing, 1911.
Certificate in Interior Decoration, 1913.
Miss Lea Prize ($10.00) for Best Work in Watercolor, 1913.
Clyde F. Shuler was born in Pottstown, PA in 1892. He attended the Pennsylvania museum and School of Industrial Art and earned his diploma in 1921. After his graduation he designed rennovations for several houses before working for the offices of Price & McLanahan and then Ralph Pencker. Later in his career, Shuler opened his own practice in Philadelphia, focusing primarily on residential architecture. In addition to his work as an architect and designer, Shuler taught at the Philadelphia College of art as the director of the Industrial Design department.
Image Source: Industrial Designers Society of America
Barbara Silverstein
PMA Class of 1969, BM, Piano
Conductor, Artistic Director
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1988.
Barbara Silverstein was born in Philadelphia in 1947. After graduation from the Philadelphia Musical Academy, Silverstein became the artistic director and conductor for the Philadelphia Opera Theater. She has also translated several Italian, French, and German operas into English.
Image Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
John Ray Sinnock (1888-1947)
PMSIA Class of 1913, Diploma, Normal Art Instruction
Chief Engraver for the U.S. Mint, 1925-1947
Certificate A, Industrial Drawing, 1910.
Honorable Mention, Elizabeth Duane Gillespie Prize for best work in Drawing, 1910.
Certificate B, Surface Design and Color (Normal), 1911.
Mrs. Thomas S. Harrison Prize, $15.00, for Wrought Iron, 1911.
Certificate C, Constructive Design and Modelling (Normal), 1912.
Mrs. Joseph F. Sinnott Prize, $10.00, for the Best Executed Piece of Garden Pottery in Cement, 1912.
Honorable Mention, Charles J. Cohen Prize for Design for a Fountain, 1912.
Mrs. Francis Forbes Milne Prize, $10.00, for Original Design in Decorative Landscape, 1913.
Scholarship for Advanced Study in Italy, 1913.
John Ray Sinnock was born in 1888 in Raton, NM. He moved to Philadelphia and studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial art and earned his diploma in 1913. After graduation, Sinnock joined the Philadelphia Sketch Club and Philadelphia Alliance and developed his reputation as a sculptor and engraver. He taught at PMSIA and Western Reserve University before applying to work at the US Mint, where he was hired as Assistant Chief Engraver. After the death of Chief Engraver George T. Morton in 1925, Sinnock became the eighth Chief Engraver of the US Mint. As Chief Engraver, Sinnock designed or oversaw the design of many medals and coins. Most notably, Sinnock sculpted the plaster models for Elizabeth Will's design of the Purple Heart military medal and designed the Roosevelt Dime and Franklin Half Dollar.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Olaf Skoogfors (1930-1975)
PMSA Class of 1953, Diploma, Silversmithing and Jewelry
Metalsmith
T. B. Hagstoz and Son Silversmithing Award, 1953.
Dean's List, 1951-1952.
Chair of Crafts Department, 1971-1975.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1976.
Olaf Skoogfors was born in Bredsjo, Sweden, and moved with his family to the United States in 1940. He attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art where he studied with Virginia Wireman Cute and Richard Reinhardt. After two years in the army, he attended the Rochester Institute of Technology. He won numerous awards while still a student. In 1959, he set up a studio producing limited edition and custom jewelry, commissions for hollowware, and ecclesiastical metalwork. He became Chair of the Crafts Department in the Philadelphia College of Art and was a founding member of the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG). He was also active in the World Craft Council and exhibited nationally and internationally. His work is included in the permanent collections of museums in the United States and Europe.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Images Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Leslie Smolan
PCA Class of 1975, BFA, Graphic Design
Graphic Designer
Art Directors' Club Gold Medal, 1975.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1989.
Leslie Smolan is the co-founder of the Carbone Smolan Agency and Director of Creative Strategy for the firm, which is the creative force behind some of the world's most celebrated brands. She has been internationally recognized for her work in brand identity, publishing, and marketing communications. Recent projects include a global brand strategy and identity system for her longstanding client, Morgan Stanley, and a branding, marketing and sales campaign for Nizuc, a new ultra-luxury resort and residences on the Riviera Maya. In 1998, she was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), a select group of world-class designers. Smolan has been widely awarded and published. In 1993 she authored The Hat Book (Nan Talese/Doubleday) that won every major design award including the AIGA 50 Great Books show and the Leipzig Book show. And in January 2006, her views on the disastrously poor information design of the U.S. healthcare system were published in the Op-Ed section of the Washington Post.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Fredric Snitzer
PCA Class of 1973, BFA, Sculpture
Sculptor, Gallery Owner
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2016.
Fredric Snitzer was born in 1950 in Philadelphia. He graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art and later earned his MFA from Penn State University. Snitzer moved to Miami, FL and opened his first gallery there in 1977. Over the decades Snitzer has opened five further galleries in the Miami area. Snitzer has served on the selection committee for Art Basel for more than a decade and has supported arts and art schools in the Miami area.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Evan Solot
PCA Class of 1967, BM, Trumpet and Composition; Class of 1975, MM, Composition
Composer, Musician, Educator
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2011.
The work of composer Evan Solot, a University of the Arts professor and Composition department chair, has earned accolades and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and the American Composers Forum, to name just a few. A Fullbright Scholar, he composes for orchestras, jazz groups, pop recordings, dance, theater, film and commercials, collaborating with poet Sonia Sanchez, playwright Ntosake Shange, Stevie Wonder, and University alumni including bassist Stanley Clarke '71 (Bass) and choreographer Judith Jamison '64 (Dance). His music has been performed by leading jazz and pop performers including Randy and Michael Brecker, Kurt Elling, Mel Torme and Ben Vereen.
A former trumpet player, Solot toured with Bette Midler, Burt Bacharach, Frank Sinatra and Lou Rawls, and served as lead trumpet in more than 50 Broadway shows.
His music underscored the award-winning documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" and is a part of Naxos Records' American Essentials series with the Chestnut Brass. He also orchestrated the new NBC Nightly News Theme. Solot earned B.M., and M.M. degrees from the Philadelphia Musical Academy, now the University of the Arts.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Evelyn Copelman Spivak
PMSIA Class of 1941, Illustration
Illustrator
Henry Perry Leland Fund Award for Pen and Ink and Black and White Mediums, 1941.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1980.
Evelyn Copelman Spivak graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art and later served on the Board of the college. She had a long career in children's book illustration, and was a young artist at the Harrison advertising agency when Mr. Harrison literally threw a copy of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz on her desk and told her to get to work making new drawings. Her now famous illustrations were published in 1944, and in a revised edition in 1956. In 1995, she was made an honorary member of the International Wizard of Oz Club at the group's annual Munchkin Convention. Her illustrations also appeared in the Our New Friends books featuring Dick and Jane and We Were There with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, along with dozens of other books. After retiring from illustration in the 1960s, she became an interior designer.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: The Wizard of Oz frontispiece, Bobbs-Merrill Company c. 1956. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Lucas Steele
UArts Class of 2001, BFA, Musical Theater
Musical Theater Actor
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2018.
Lucas Steele is an award-winning musical theater performer who earned a 2017 Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the role of Anatole in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.
The show was a sung-through musical adaptation of a 70-page segment from Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Steel won the Lucille Lortel Award fro Best Actor in a Musical for playing Anatole in the Off-Broadway version ofthe musical. He also starred with Tony winner Alan Cumming, Cyndi Lauper and Ana Gasteyer in Threepenny Opera, staged at the famed Studio 54.
- UArts Commencement Program, 2018.
Image Source: uarts.edu
William Stephens
PMSA Class of 1955, BS, Industrial Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1969.
After graduating from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, William Stephens started working at the Knoll design company as an assistant prototype builder. He soon became one of their top designers. In 1967, he headed a four-man team with Don Albinson and Andreas Christen to research and develop Knoll's office landscape systems. He designed the popular 1305U armchair and worked on the research and tooling of the Pettit laminated wood chair and the development of the wood Stephens chairs. In 1973, he designed The Stephens System, which capitalized on the dominant trend during the 1970s and 1980s toward open offices, as opposed to walled-in spaces.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: Stand-up Desk, 1992. From Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Jeffrey Stern
PCA Class of 1975, BFA, Film
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2014.
Jeffrey Stern is an Emmy Award-winning sound editor who has worked on more than 100 films, including “Silence of the Lambs,” “School of Rock,” “Goodfellas,” “The Untouchables,” “American Splendor,” “Chicago,” “Casino” and “The Cove,” which won the Academy Award for best feature-length documentary in 2009. Stern was the dialogue editor on the team that won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series for the HBO hit “Boardwalk Empire.” He was previously nominated for Emmys for his work on the show in 2012 and for the documentary “Joni Mitchell: A Woman of Heart and Mind.” He has worked on films helmed by such legendary directors as Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Robert Altman and Woody Allen. Stern is also an assistant professor of professional practice at the University of Miami School of Communication. He has served as a filmmaker in residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts and as an adjunct professor at the New School in New York City.
Katherine D. (KaDee) Strickland
UArts Class of 1998, BFA, Theater
Actress
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2006.
KaDee Strickland graduated from The University of the Arts with a BFA in theater in 1998. In the short time since receiving her diploma, the Georgia native has made a name for herself as one of Hollywood's rising stars.
Most recently, Strickland has appeared in The Grudge (2004) and Fever Pitch (2005). Strickland's first lead role came when producer Doug Belgrad saw the dailies of her scene from Something's Gotta Give. Impressed by her work, he cast the actor opposite Johnny Messner and Morris Chestnut in the jungle-set horror film Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, the sequel to 1997's Anaconda. Strickland played an accomplished research scientist who travels to Borneo as part of an expedition team searching for a species of plant that is rumored to have life-extending properties.
Strickland's career began with a brief appearance as a ghost in The Sixth Sense in 1999, a two-line part that she received writer and director M. Night Shyamalan while reading lines for those auditioning for the film. But her big break as she calls it, came in 2003 when she appeared in Woody Allen's romantic comedy Anything Else. She followed that role up with parts in Something's Gotta Give (starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton), a major critical and commercial success, and The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman.
Strickland, who counts among her influences Jessica Lange, Holly Hunter, Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda, will be seen next in the Richard Gere crime thriller movie The Flock and in the television series Laws of Chance, each of which is in post-production.
Image Source: The Movie Database
Ron Tarver
UArts Class of 2017, MFA, Studio Art
UArts SIlver Star Alumni Award, 2024.
Photographer
For nearly 50 years, photographer Ron Tarver’s work has explored facets of the Black community. Throughout his career he has produced photo essays on subjects ranging from double-Dutch jump rope to the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. His exhibitions have explored Black architectural legacy and the experiences of Black veterans, and his most recent project appropriates images his father made in the 1940s-1950s to comment on the current racial climate. His broad range of works shows his love for the medium relating to the community at large and the deeply personal.
Tarver received a BA in Journalism and Graphic Arts from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and an MFA from the University of the Arts. He is an associate professor and interim chair of Art at Swarthmore College. He is a Guggenheim and Pew Fellow. Before joining the faculty at Swarthmore, he had been a staff photojournalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 32 years, where he shares the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his work on a series documenting school violence in the Philadelphia public school system. During his time at the Inquirer, he was nominated for three Pulitzers and honored with awards from World Press Photos, the Sigma Delta Chi Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Photographers Association/ University of Missouri Pictures of the Year, as well as other national, state, and local honors.
In addition to his newspaper publications, Tarver’s work has appeared in National Geographic, Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Ebony, Jet, Black and White Magazine, Huffington Post, and Hyperallergic. He is a co-author of the book We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans, published by HarperCollins in 2004, which was accompanied by a traveling exhibition that debuted at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Tarver’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over 30 solo and 50 group exhibitions. It is included in many private, corporate, and museum collections, including the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg; Oklahoma History Center; and many other corporate and private collections. His work is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery in New York and Grand Image in Seattle.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Vincent J. Trombetta
PMA Class of 1965, BM, Saxophone
Saxophonist
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2007.
Vincent J. Trombetta received a bachelor of music degree from the Philadelphia Musical Academy (now The University of the Arts) in 1965. A woodwinds, composer and recording artist, Mr. Trombetta also studied at the Philadelphia Conservatory and the Juilliard School.
Shortly after graduation, the Philadelphia native began working as composer, arranger and woodwind player on the famed Mike Douglas Show, a gig that would last for 18 years. In 1967, Mr. Trombetta launched the saxophone program at the Philadelphia Musical Academy and served as department head and composition instructor for 10 years. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the saxophone major at The University of the Arts.
Mr. Trombetta has taught musicians as diverse as Michael Brecker, Stanley Clarke and Bob Malach and has recorded and performed with some of the world's most talented artists, including Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, John Lennon and Phil Woods.
Mr. Trombetta has composed and arranged numerous works for both television and film and has over 350 published compositions to his credit. His solo and ensemble work can be heard on thousands of recorded hours in television and motion picture soundtracks. His performance credits include Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Father of the Bride, A League of Their Own and Bugsy.
The Trombetta legacy is strong at UArts. Each spring, the Vince Trombetta Saxophone Award is given to a deserving music student. His oldest son, Vincent Trombetta, Jr., is a UArts alumnus and works in Los Angeles as a musician. The elder Trombetta's third child, Nicolas, earned his bachelor's degree in saxophone performance in 2006.
An integral part of the negotiations of every American Federation of Musicians national contract for the past 15 years, Mr. Trombetta was elected Vice President of Professional Musician's Local 47 in 2005 and continues to serve in that role.
Image Source: Discogs
Riitta Vainio (1936-2015)
PMA Class of 1962, Diploma, Dance
Dancer, Choreographer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2005.
Riitta Vainio, a native of Finland, graduated from the Philadelphia Dance Academy in 1962 with a diploma in dance. Vainio is best known as the pioneer of Finnish contemporary dance and her works have been performed throughout the country.
A multifaceted artist, developer of Finnish and European contemporary dance and an educator, Vainio founded Riitta Vainio's School of Modern Dance and the Finnish Institute of Modern Dance Art. She has taught numerous courses on modern dance and gave the first modern dance performance ever in Finland, which was seen by 1.5 million people through a live television broadcast.
During her career, Vainio has choreographed about 1000 pieces, ranging from three minutes in length to three hours. She has received many medals and awards, including the Pro Finlandia in 2004, the most prestigious award an artist can receive in Finland.
Riitta Vainio will turn 70 next year and is in the middle of a strong creative phase. She is currently preparing her new choreography Äiti (Finnish for 'mother'), to premier in Helsinki.
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Dana P. Vaughan (1899-1983)
PMSA c. 1920
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1960.
Dana P. Vaughan was born in Middleboro, Massachusetts, and attended the Massachusetts School of Art and the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. He also studied at Harvard and Brown Universities, the Beaux Arts of New York, the University of Upsala in Sweden, and in Kyoto, Japan. Vaughan taught at the Rhode Island School of Design for five years and was Dean of the college for ten years. From 1942 to 1945, he was director of the Trenton School of Industrial Arts; he then moved to the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York where he was the head of Art and Architecture until his retirement in 1963. At Cooper Union he was largely responsible for upgrading the arts and architecture curriculum into a Bachelor of Arts program. From 1945 to 1946, Vaughan was President of the Eastern Arts Associations, and in 1957, Moore Institute of Philadelphia awarded him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts. He enjoyed renovating homes, and a year before his death he bought and renovated a cabin in Orford, New Hampshire.
German Vazquez
UArts Class of 2020, BFA, Photography
Photographer
German Vazquez was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. After graduating from the University of the Arts, Vazquez worked as a professional editorial and artistic photographer. Vazquez's photography has been published by clients such as Condé Nast, Apple, and Smithsonian Magazine among others. He has also showcased his work as part of several group and solo exhibitions.
Image Source: University of the Arts
Brian T. Vernon
UArts Class of 1992, BFA, Dance Education
Dancer, Educator
Prize for Outstanding Student Teacher, 1992.
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2000.
Brian T. Vernon is a stunningly energetic alumni. In 1992, he earned his BFA in Dance Education, with an emphasis on Jazz, Theatre, and Tap. He went on to earn an MFA in Dance Education from the University of California at Irving two years later, with a focus on Teaching and Administration. Upon completing that program, he received the university's most prestigious distinction, the Chancellor's Fellowship Award. He currently serves on the faculty of Colorado's Mesa State College, where he recently earned tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor of Dance.
If his teaching alone were all he had accomplished since graduation, that would be enough. However, he continues to be an active practitioner, leader, and advocate of dance in the United States and worldwide. As a Colorado state representative for the International Tap Association, Brian Vernon has received numerous awards, honors, and recognition, and was recently included in several "Who's Who" publications. While all of his activities are interesting, particularly notable are his annual trips to South Africa, where he teaches and choreographs in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and in several financially impoverished townships.
Brian Vernon remains active in American venues as well. Among his credits in the Musical Theatre are A Chorus Line, Ain't Misbehavin (where he served as assistant, director, choreographer, and leading performer), and performances with the original Broadway cast and company in an international touring production of Black and Blue. He has also choreographed or directed Anything Goes, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Guys and Dolls, 42nd Street, My Fair Lady, and Jesus Christ Superstar. At a young age, Brian Vernon continues to actively teach and perform constantly in other musicals, television commercials and programs, and films, serving as a living embodiment of the best in contemporary dance.
Image Source: UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts
Marguerite Walter
PMSIA Class of 1938, Diploma, Teacher Training
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1981.
Marguerite Walter graduated in the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art's class of 1938 with a diploma in teacher training, after being awarded first prize for work in teacher training in 1937. She was delegated by the Philadelphia Board of Education to serve as an Art Supervisor to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's educational staff.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Martha Walter (1875-1976)
Studied at PMSIA from 1895-1898
Painter
Certificate A, 1896.
Honorable Mention, Henry Perry Leland Prize given by Mrs. John Harrison for Work in Pen and Ink, 1896.
Second Prize for Best set of Drawings in the Course of Industrial Drawing, $20.00, 1896.
John T. Morris Prize of $10.00 for Drawing of Details of the Human Figure, 1897.
Jacob H. Weil Prize of an Outfit of Oleo Water-Colors for Best Sketch in Water-Colors from Life, 1897.
Honorable Mention, Mrs. George K Crozer Prize Offered for the Best Work in Drawing, 1898.
Martha Walter was born in Philadelphia in 1875. After attending the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she studied under William Merritt Chase. While at PAFA, Walter was awarded a scholarship to further her studies abroad; traveling and exhibiting her work in Europe and North Africa. She returned to the USA and continued painting while teaching at Chase's New York School of Art.
Image Source: Motherhood, 1915. From Wikipedia.org
André Watts (1946-2023)
PMA Class of 1963
Pianist
University of the Arts Medal, 1988.
André Watts was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1946. Watts began studying the violin and then piano while in Germany and then moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1952. Watts made his piano performance debut at age nine, winning a competition to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra Children's Concerts. Watts then enrolled in the Philadelphia Musical Academy and graduated in 1963. In his last year at PMA, Watts took part in a competition to play in Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concert Series with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. After the success of the performance, Bernstein asked Watts to again play with the Philharmonic, filling in for renowned pianist Glenn Gould. Watts completed his studies at PMA while continuing to record and perform and then attended the Peabody Institute, where he earned his Bachelor of Music Degree. Watts continued to perform until 2019, while also teaching at Indiana University.
Image Source: Wikipedia.org
Susan Welchman
PCA Class of 1970, BFA, Photography
Photographer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2005.
Susan Welchman graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1970 with a degree in photography and then went to work as a staff photographer at the Philadelphia Daily News. After four years as photo editor at the New York Post, she accepted a position as Illustrations Editor at National Geographic Magazine and has been making stories there for nearly 30 years, now as Senior Photo Editor. In 1995, Welchman created the Flashback section for the magazine, featuring images from the archives. In 2000 she created another new section, ZipUSA, and now is the editor of Yourshot for the ng.com web site. In addition, Welchman has had responsibility for innumerable stories, including stories on Slavery, Caffeine, Fat, Australia, Marco Polo, Somalia, Manhattan and Dreamweavers, which was the first story in the magazine's history to utilize all digital photography. She has also edited special publications including Swimsuits–100 Years of Pictures, 100 Best Pictures, the 100 Best Vintage Photographs and most recently the Yourshot book. Susan Wlechman received the Silver Star Alumni Award for her work in the field of photo editing.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Neil Welliver (1929-2005)
PMSA Class of 1952, BFA, Education
Painter
Anne E. Sinnott Award for Excellence in the Art Education Course, 1952.
Neil Welliver was born in Millville, PA in 1929. After receiving his BFA from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, Welliver attended Yale University and received an MFA. After the completion of his education, Welliver taught art at Cooper Union, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1960s, while teaching at Yale, Welliver traveled to Maine where he created his most well-known paintings of the landscapes and scenes he encountered there.
Image Source: Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
Alina Wheeler (1948-2023)
PCA Class of 1970, BFA, Illustration
Designer
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 2012.
Alina Wheeler was born in 1948 in South Orange, NJ. After graduating from the Philadelphia College of Art, Wheeler co-founded the graphic design firm Katz Wheeler in 1980. In the same year she was a founding board member of AIGA Philadelphia and became its president in 1985. In 2003, she published the book Designing Brand Identity, an important work in the world of graphic design.
Image Source: Ed Wheeler, the Authors Guild
Deborah Willis
PCA Class of 1975, BFA, Photography
Photographer, Curator, Author, Scholar
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1995.
MacArthur "Genius" Award, 2000.
Exposure Group's Award for Lifetime Achievement in Photography, 2002.
Deborah Willis was born in Philadelphia and received a BFA from The Philadelphia College of Art, an MFA from the Pratt Institute, an MA from City College in New York and a PhD from George Mason University. A 2005 Guggenheim and Fletcher Fellow, a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, a 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award, as well as an artist, she is one of the nation's leading historians of African-American photography and curators of African-American culture. Her work has been in numerous major exhibitions, including: Progeny at Columbia University Wallach Gallery; Double Exposure at Wadsworth Antheneum, Hartford; A Sense of Place: Contemporary African-American Art at the University of Pittsburgh; and African Queen at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Among her notable book projects are Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers–1840 to the Present, Barack Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs, and Posing Beauty: Images of African Americans from 1890 to the Present. Named among the 100 Most Important People in Photography by American Photography Magazine, Willis is Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
Loveis Wise
UArts Class of 2018, BFA, Illustration
Illustrator
UArts Young Alumni Award, 2023.
Loveis Wise was born in Washington, D.C. Almost immediately after graduating from The University of the Arts, an illustration of theirs was selected for the cover of The New Yorker, bringing them national renown. Since then, Wise has worked as a freelance illustrator for clients such as Google, Harper Collins, Apple, Dr. Marten, L'Oréal, The New York Times, and countless others. Wise has also illustrated several children's books.
Samuel Yellin (1884-1940)
Attended PMSIA 1906
Ironworker
Special Prize of $10.00 by the Principal for Group of Work in Wrought Iron, 1906.
Bok Prize, 1925.
PMSIA Alumni Association Gold Medal, 1931.
Samuel Yellin was born in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine in 1884. He emigrated to the United States in 1906 and attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Art. He shortly thereafter began teaching at PMSIA while operating his own metal shop in the city. Samuel Yellin Metalworkers created iron fixtures, furniture, and hardware for buildings of all types throughout the country.
Image Source: Chicago Silver
Peggy Turner Zablotny
PCA Class of 1970, BS, Industrial Design
Stephen M. Zablotny
PCA Class of 1970, BS, Industrial Design
UArts Silver Star Alumni Award, 1987.
Stephen M. Zablotny graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1970 with a BS in Industrial Design. He met Peggy Turner in freshman year and again in the ID department, where they made plans to someday have a design firm together. They married in 1971 and in 1976 started Z Studio, which focuses on exhibition and graphic design as well as many other design capabilities. Zablotny always had an interest in theater and techniques of presentation which led naturally to exhibition design. He was fortunate to have been hired as a designer, while a sophomore, by General Exhibits of Philadelphia. His first assignment was to research and write a report on the future of exhibits in trade shows and museums. This started a direction in his design career that continues today: the desire to explore and research new techniques in presentation and production methods. Stephen served as the technical director and is currently the graphics and publications designer and resident set designer for The Vineyard Playhouse. In 1994, Peggy started to experiment with pressing flowers from her garden on Martha's Vineyard where they spent much of their time. Her love of gardening and design combined to create her unique botanical collage compositions. Her first show in 1996 was at the Field Gallery in West Tisbury, and she is represented by numerous galleries in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California. She continues to create and exhibit her work, and has many publications and collectors to her credit. The Zablotnys are currently residents of Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, where they continue their design and exhibit work from Z Studio on Martha's Vineyard.
- Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition
Image Source: University of the Arts Digital Collections
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