Katherine Wirick’s artistic exploration of sequential narratives and graphic novels runs the gamut from family tragedy and political protest to historical drama and baseball.
Steven Dufala and Billy Blaise Dufala are prolific multidisciplinary artists whose work defies categorization and extends from sculpture and drawing to theater, music and performance art.
Emily Erb [MFA '12] was a 2017 recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Foundation Grant, which is awarded to emerging artists "who represent the highest artistic promise of the coming generation."
Ana María Gómez López left a career in forensic anthropology to become a visual artist, a journey that began at PAFA and continues in her current home of Berlin.
“We are poets in clay. We capture something that has its own identity. My philosophy was poetry, it was excellence, and it was that the truth comes from nature.”
The way Emily Diehl and Peter Haarz see it, being a printmaker is part of an artistic lineage rooted in their time at PAFA with lithography teacher Ron Wyffels.
Lowry Burgess contributes to the history of PAFA alumni who have had a profound effect on the art world not only through their artistic works, but also because of their ideas about art.
“My time at PAFA helped me find my creative center and give me confidence, so that as I sometimes radically change my approaches to art making and even my definitions of art, something stays consistent in me.”
Raymond Saunders’ influence on American art since his graduation from PAFA has been profound. While his work as an artist is at the forefront, Saunders also changed perceptions within the art world with his words.
About PAFA
Founded in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is the United States’ first school and museum of fine arts. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, PAFA offers a world-class collection of American art, innovative exhibitions of historic and contemporary American art, and educational opportunities in the fine arts. The PAFA Museum aims to tell America's diverse story through art, expanding who has been included in the canon of art history through its collections, exhibitions, and public programs, while classes educate artists and appreciators with a deep understanding of traditions and the ability to challenge conventions. PAFA’s esteemed alumni include Mary Cassatt, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, William Glackens, Barkley L. Hendricks, Violet Oakley, Louis Kahn, David Lynch, and Henry Ossawa Tanner.
