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The Environmental Art Program at The Schuylkill Center is pleased to announce our new Artist-in-Residence for 2010. Jeanne Jaffe is a celebrated Philadelphia sculptor and Chairman of the Fine Arts Department at the University of the Arts.

Jeanne Jaffe�s residency at The Schuylkill Center explores the theme of animals and their symbolic meaning in fairy tales and folklore. Fairy tales and myths often use animals to stand in for human characteristics or as psychological energies and archetypes, appearing as human helpers, predators, tricksters, creatures of transformation, and many other aspects of human nature.

Using the resource of the Schuylkill Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, Jeanne will study the native animals of Eastern Pennsylvania and research the place of animals in mythology, and fairytales, and particularly in Native American folklore. From this research, she will develop a body of work to be shown at The Schuylkill Center as part an outdoor exhibition that she will curate on the same theme for spring 2011.

Jeanne�s residency will also include a project with the students of the Green Woods Charter School. Along with the GWCS teachers, Jeanne will develop art activities that integrate learning about animal species� habitat and behavior, through mythology and performance. The children will explore their own relationships with and thoughts about animals through story telling, drawing, and mask making. Creating their own stories and story boards about a group of animals and their lives, the children will then create a performance piece using mask, puppets, dialogue, and sound. The finished piece will be an afternoon of performances to be presented at the end of the 2010 school year.

About Jeanne Jaffe:

Jeanne Jaffe is the recipient of individual fellowship grants from the Gottlieb Foundation, the Mid Atlantic/NEA, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Leeway Foundation, the Virginia A. Groot Foundation, and has recently completed a three-month artist residency in Japan.

Works by Ms. Jaffe have been exhibited both nationally and internationally at such places as The Kitchen, Delaware Art Museum, Hillwood Art Museum, Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island, Michener Art Museum, The Royal Scottish Academy of Edinburgh, Scotland, Museum Rijswijk in Holland, Language Plus in Quebec, London Craft Council Gallery in England, and Gallery Joe in Philadelphia. Her work has been reviewed extensively, including in Art in America, The New York Times, and Sculpture Magazine.

Ms Jaffe has had artist�s residencies fellowships at Yaddo Artists Colony, Rutger�s Innovative Printmaking Workshop, New Jersey Printmaking Council, Yellow Springs Institute, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a Professor and Coordinator of Sculpture at the University of the Arts. She has also taught at Tyler School of Art and Swarthmore, as well as in a multi-disciplinary program at the Annenberg Center Arts in Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

View Jeanne’s work here: www.jeannejaffe.com