August accomplishments of note
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Wednesday, September 8th, 2021
- PCA&D has awarded Research and Practice Grants to five members of the faculty for ongoing projects: Shwarga Bhattacharjee (2D Design Adjunct) participation in the Chautauqua Visual Arts Residency Program in Chautauqua, N.Y.; Adam Del Marcelle (Graphic Design Adjunct), project and documentary presentation to the Attend (to) Futures Conference this fall in Cologne, Germany; Troy Hollman (Photography & Video,), equipment to capture electroencephalogram-generated data for experiential art; Yixuan Pan (Fine Art Adjunct), Wind Fellowship for InLiquid Arts Exhibition (see below); and Eric Weeks (Chair, Photography & Video), Twentysix Wawa Stores publication.
In addition, 15 faculty members were awarded Professional Development grants this spring: Paul Rider (Photography & Video, alternative practices research); Aaron Thompson (Foundation assistant professor, alternative painting teaching techniques); and Center for Teaching & Learning Series 2021 grants to Pam Barby, Becky Blosser, Caitlin Downs, Sheri Hanson, David Johanson, Bill Mammarella, Yixuan Pan, Justin Phillips, Aaron Thompson, Jason Ward, Natasha Warshawsky, Eric Weeks, and Robert Young. - Not Another Broad a one-night-only exhibition featuring the work of Class of 2021 members Meranda Hall (Fine Art) and Nicole Denzler (Photography & Video) took place Sept. 8 at Tellus, 24 E. King St., in downtown Lancaster. Hall says that Not Another Broad is “an extension of our senior thesis work. It highlights feminist ideals and the way the outside world is still evolving and seeing women for the strong, powerful people they are.”
- Tom Newmaster, an adjunct instructor in Graphic Design, has published an article with BRAND United, an industry resource for brands, agencies, and designers. How to Leverage Consumer Opinions in Package Design addresses how Newmaster uses data in the classroom at PCA&D. It outlines a recent partnership with Designalytics which used that firm’s expertise in consumer-driven data to give real-world feedback on a student project in Newmaster’s class. “By including these professional researchers on student work,” Newmaster writes, “my class could get exposure to the kind of rigorous consumer studies that they would one day encounter in their design careers.” Learn more about the project and read Newmaster’s article here.
- Yixuan Pan was named a Wind Fellow, one of 10 honored by InLiquid and The Dina Wind Art Foundation for artistic excellence in a variety of visual art mediums. Pan teaches in the Fine Art department at PCA&D, and her work addressed the complexities of operating almost exclusively in a foreign language in her personal and professional life. She currently is expanding on “ideas of collective miscommunication and cultural dislocation.” Learn more about Pan’s Wind Fellowship work here, and follow her here.
- Paul Rider, Photography & Video Adjunct instructor, has been named a finalist in Klompching Gallery’s Fresh 2021 Annual Photography Exhibition. The Brooklyn gallery selects 20 finalists in its international competition. In his project statement for Forever, the Klompching collection of images, Rider notes that, The cacophony of plastic that exists in our world is what is being explored through the imagery. The images are created similar to the process created by William Henry Rox Talbot with his photogenic drawings in The Pencil of Nature. While Talbot was using natural elements to create his imagery, these images are using the manmade material of plastic. With Talbot’s process, the images were an artistic document of an ephemeral object. These images are slightly the reverse, an artistic creation utilizing objects that will outlive us, and most likely the process the images are created with.
Rider has taught at the university level since 2003, and you can see more of his work at prphoto.org. - Chase Rusinko ’22, Graphic Design, and Skylar Cordiano-Mooney ’23, Animation & Game Art, created the T-shirt design chosen as the 2021 Student Orientation shirt winner in PCA&D’s annual competition. The inspiration, Rusinko says, came from “some recent study in mythology, specifically with Daedalus, the Greek craftsman. I’ve been playing a game called ‘Hades’ recently, and studying up on some lore throughout the game itself and on my own time.” Rusinko did the original design/plan, he says, Cordiano-Mooney fleshed out the illustrations, and then Rusinko went back in to finalize and style it all in vector form. All incoming students received a free shirt during the Aug. 16-20 Orientation Week.