Polly Apfelbaum: For the Love of Una Hale

During a residency with Arcadia Exhibitions at Arcadia University, award-winning visual artist Polly Apfelbaum will create ceramic works influenced by Pennsylvania German art and culture. A Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize recipient whose work is held in numerous museums’ permanent collections, Apfelbaum uses found references associated with craft traditions to create sculptural objects and sprawling floor-based installations that convey the artist’s fascination with color, craft, gendered labor, and the everyday. The culminating exhibition will draw from work by American artist David Ellinger (1913–2003), whose paintings hung in Apfelbaum's childhood home in Abington, Pennsylvania, a short distance from Arcadia’s campus. New ceramic works will be contextualized by Apfelbaum's installation featuring a large hand woven rug and custom wallpaper. A related exhibition will display works by Ellinger, curated by Lisa Minardi, an expert in Pennsylvania German art history and director of Historic Trappe.

Additional unrestricted funds are added to each grant for general operating support.