An innovative approach to the traditional high school senior portrait has earned Studio Incamminati the Promise Award from Camden's Urban Promise Academy. More importantly, the program has given these youths the rare - and empowering - experience of sitting for a portrait artist, something usually reserved for the rich, famous and powerful.

Carolyn Gabbe can do lots of things. She has been a classical ballet dancer and a nonprofit strategic planner. She’s done set and costume design. But, of all those things she can do, there is just one thing she says must do.
“I can’t not paint.”

Instructor Dan Thompson proved once again that art is a universal language.

Thompson, invited to China by The Artists Association of Liaoning Province, was a lecturer and workshop leader at "DIALOG-PEAK,” a symposium on realist art. Although translators were assigned, Thompson found that, with his long-form painting demonstration done over five mornings, it was the picture that told the story.

International realist art conference hears
presentation on Face to Face project

Studio Incamminati Teaching Fellow Alisyn Blake brought and intimate and emotional context to her work with Face to Face: The Craniofacial Portrait Project during her presentation "Painting from the Inside Out" at The Representational Art Conference, California Lutheran University, March 3, 2014.

Nelson Shanks' portrait of Pope John Paul II
remains an enduring legacy of beloved pontiff

It’s not easy to impress artist Nelson Shanks. He has created portraits of presidents, queens and Supreme Court justices. But, one subject stands out vividly among the many luminaries.
"I was in total awe,” said Shanks of Pope John Paul II, who will be canonized this Sunday. “Struck by the holiness of the man."

Philadelphia Museum of Art's Joseph Rishel
to receive Studio Incamminati Founder's Award

Joseph Rishel, the Philadelphia Museum of Art ‘s distinguished curator, scholar and author, will receive the 2014 Founder’s Award from Studio Incamminati, School for Contemporary Realist Art. The award recognizes an individual for long-time contributions to the arts in Philadelphia. Rishel, the museum’s Gisela and Dennis Alter Senior Curator of European Paintings and Sculpture and the Curator of the Rodin Museum, certainly qualifies.

 

Rowan family receives Founders' Day award,
working together to make philanthropy a family affair

The Rowan Family received Studio Incamminati's 2015 Founders' Award at a ceremony during the school's 13th Anniversary Celebration at Glen Foerd on the Delaware. The Rowans have been praised as "among our nation's most generous philanthropists."

Nelson Shanks, who passed away Friday, Aug. 28, garnered world renown for his paintings of international luminaries ranging from a princess and presidents to opera singers and Supreme Court justices. However, as much as his art, he wanted his legacy to be Studio Incamminati, School for Contemporary Realist Art, which he founded with wife Leona. “Studio Incamminati’s purpose,” he once said, “is to produce great competence and the great painters of the next generation.”

For Studio Incamminati Fellows Rachel Pierson and Dan Mahlman, teaching in Project Homes Art Program for men and women recovering from homelessness, was a perfect fit.

For participant Darlene Allen, it was a pleasant surprise.

“I thought I wouldn’t like it, but I did,” she said. “I really got into the drawing.”

It was a night for dining and dancing and laughter.

But, mostly, it was a chance look to the future.
Studio Incamminati's signature support event, "Nelson Shanks: His Vision in Our Hands," brought hundreds to the iconic Ballroom at the Ben for a celebration of the school's accomplishments and glimpse of things to come.