Mario Scarlato (BFA '18) didn’t think PAFA was for him when he was deciding which art school to attend.

“After I graduated high school I spent a brief period at a drawing studio in the Lehigh Valley and it was pretty classical training,” Scarlato said. “I thought it was great but I kind of wanted to distance myself from that.”

Scarlato worried that the classical training of an academy like PAFA would be too restrictive and he wouldn’t be able to explore other interests. So the Northeast Pennsylvania native came to Philadelphia to enroll at The University of the Arts (UArts) and majored in Illustration.

But by his second year at UArts, Scarlato realized he was becoming more interested in painting and was running into a wall when it came to learning more.

“We did a little bit of painting but it was more of a week of acrylic painting and then a week of oil painting. I wanted to do something more thoroughly with it, really explore it,” Scarlato said. “People were pretty honest and said, ‘If you’re interested in painting then I would recommend going to PAFA.’”

He transferred to focus on figurative painting but realized that was just a jumping off point for his art.

“Even though I did end up coming here to do more figurative stuff I kind of fell out of it again but there were other options,” he said. “If you decide that you don’t want to focus in on something, you don’t have to. It worked out nicely.”

Things worked out so well that Scarlato’s classmates chose him to be the undergraduate student speaker at graduation. Being chosen as the voice of his class means a lot to Scarlato.

“We’re all in the same position so I’m not speaking from any authoritative experience like, ‘Okay, this is how I’ve made it.’ I’m focusing on different things that school has made me realize and something’s about memories about being here.”

His unconventional graduation speech told a story of going to a party at Temple University, a few subway stops away from PAFA. The absurdity of his words and laughs from the graduation audience fall in line with Scarlato’s art.

“I make work about stuff I find humorous. I try to not take it too seriously because I feel like that makes me afraid to do it and doesn’t even lead to better work,” he said. “You’ve got to free yourself up a little bit. A lot of my work explores the kind of absurd parts of human existence.”

His work continues to bloom, thanks to his professors at PAFA.

“I took classes with Didier William, the head of the MFA program, and EJ Houser which were really good,” Scarlato said. “Those classes kind of opened the doors for me and exposed me to stuff that I was a little familiar with but stuff that’s going on now that I feel more aligned with.”