David Snyder and Christine Welch named emeritus faculty at PCA&D

The late David Snyder (posthumously emeritus appointment) and retired faculty member Christine Welch have been named emeritus faculty at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design.

David Snyder was a one of the original founders of PCA&D in 1982, and taught for over 30 years in the Fine Art and Foundation departments.

“Dave Snyder was a powerful influence on the success of the College,” said Mary Colleen Heil, PCA&D President. “He was an excellent teacher and artist and was deeply committed to his work and his students.”

He worked in a variety of media throughout his career, including oil, relief prints, drawings in graphite and pastels, sculptures and multi-media pieces. His teaching philosophy was that students must be “brave” and “curious,” must “learn and understand visual language,” “respect art history,” and “be productive,” all expectations which were self-evident in his own work. Snyder was a graduate of York Suburban High School and the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Photo by Christine Welch.

Christine Welch, retired professor and former Chair of the Photography Department, taught at PCA&D for more than 30 years. She has exhibited her work throughout the Northeast, including solo exhibits at O.K. Harris Fine Art (New York, NY.), The Phillips Museum of Art (Lancaster, PA) and P.A.B.A. (New Haven, CT). Her work has been included in shows at The Painted Bride, (Philadelphia, PA), and “Outside the Centers, On the Edge” (2006-2007 traveling exhibit including Erie Museum of Art, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art and several Pennsylvania colleges).

Welch’s prints are in the permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, (Washington, D.C.), The Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA) The Johnson and Johnson Corporate Collection, Haverford (Haverford, PA) and Franklin and Marshall (Lancaster, PA) colleges and The Lancaster Museum of Art (Lancaster, PA). In 2010 she was included in the Print Center’s International Photography Invitational and was given the Florence Whistler Fish Award for Photography.

Her first book of images, Commonplace, was published in 2004 by The Center for American Places (Harrisonburg, VA.). Welch holds an MFA in Photography from the University of Delaware and a BA from Franklin and Marshall College. She retired in 2015.

(Top art: Work by David Snyder)