What drives cultural practitioners to experiment, discover, and create?
In our ongoing artist interview series, we illuminate the distinctive artistic practices, influences, and creative challenges of our Pew Fellows, who represent a diversity of perspectives and creative disciplines.
Lighting designer Maria Shaplin (2019) spoke to us about the works that shaped her approach to her own practice, what makes Philadelphia’s artistic community distinctive, and how her theater background comes in handy with a new baby.
Tina Satter spoke to us about her plans for the residency, how her athletic career influenced her approach to theater, and how the pandemic may have given her more freedom in her practice.
Poet Kirsten Kaschock spoke to us about her daily writing routine, how her dance background informs her poetry work, and why she doesn’t believe in procrastination.
Writer Imani Perry (2019) spoke to us about her search for humanity in her research, the ethical considerations that drive her work, and what makes Philadelphia a “Blackness-of-all-sorts kind of place.”
Dancer, choreographer, and educator Dinita Clark (2019) spoke to us about her lifelong interest in dance, the current issues she is addressing in her work, and what makes Philadelphia’s dance community distinctive.
Based in San Francisco, theater performer, director, teacher, and writer Rhodessa Jones is a Fellow-in-Residence who will begin her one-year residency in Philadelphia next year.
“You would deal with the catalogue as you would normally deal with a catalogue, except the sites of the exhibition were Niagara Falls or The Hague or wherever the artists were working. In that sense, it was like a catalogue for a world exhibition.”
The Center's new publication, Site Read: Seven Curators on Their Landmark Exhibitions, published by Mousse Publishing, is an anthology of essays from exhibition makers who illuminate the site-based innovations in now-iconic exhibitions they organized.
Visual artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase (2019) spoke to us about their art-making routine and the artists, early experiences, and aspects of Philadelphia culture that most influence their work.