July 16, 2022 / Eye on the Collective
FAA’s Graduates in Residence of 2022
A look into the experience of the FAA's four Graduates in Residence for the 2021-2022 academic year.
This June The FAA welcomed a new class of graduates from our full-time painting and sculpture programs into the ranks of our nearly 500 alumni. However, for a few select students, graduation is not the end of the line of their time working and honing their skills at The Florence Academy of Art.
At The FAA there is a tradition of exceptional recent and new graduates being offered positions as Graduates in Residence (formerly known as the “Fourth Year Prize”). These students show exemplary talent and dedication to their studies as students and as Graduates in Residence are offered studio space to continue to improve their craft and build a body of work while gaining valuable teaching experience as assistant instructors and mentors.
Here at The FAA Collective, we would like to share with you a little more about our Graduates in Residence from January-June 2022: Amit Karo for the Sculpture program, and Francesco Bianchini, Phoebe Stewart Carter, and Louis Szápáry for the Drawing and Painting programs.
All of our artists in residence at The FAA are provided with studio space of the same high quality that other students and faculty are given on The FAA campuses.
Learn more about our Graduates in Residence for 2022 and their experiences below!
Amit Karo working on a life size torso
“Amit Karo is unique in the sense that he came to the academy with little to almost no experience. It was through patience, love of the art, and careful understanding of the process that he was able elevate the quality of his work from amateur to professional in less than three years. Often enough interested students feel skeptical about their experience or level of work and are hesitant to apply, but it is exactly students like Amit who the program is designed for.” – Mitch Shea, Director of the Sculpture program at The FAA.
Amit Karo
“The Prophet”
Clay
Life size
2022
As a Graduate in Residence, Amit’s studio space is in exchange for assisting with material lectures and casting a variety of historical and anatomical references for the Sculpture program’s collection. When asked about the experience, Amit Karo said “It has been exciting to start developing my own language using all of the tools that I acquired from my time as a student. I am enjoying my studio and freedom to explore while still having the opportunity to learn from my teachers and have more advanced conversations.”
To see more of Amit’s work please visit:
Instagram: @amitkaro
Francesco Bianchini working on his self portrait
Francesco Bianchini working on his self portrait
Francesco Bianchini was born in Milan, Italy, in 1995. He graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera with a thesis on Art History. Afterwards he began his studies at The FAA and is currently teaching in the Intensive Drawing and Advanced Painting programs at The Florence Academy of Art.
Francesco Bianchini’s final project
during his last trimester of
the Advanced Painting program
When asked about his experience as a teacher and resident artist, Francesco said that “It gave me the freedom to keep working hard in my personal studio and experiment for the first time with my own language of painting. Working as an assistant along with principal instructors has been a very important time for me as an artist, where I learned how to connect more with people that share the same passion for painting and teaching.”
To see more of Francesco’s work please visit:
Instagram: @francescobianchini.art
Phoebe Stewart Carter working on her final project
Phoebe Stewart Carter working on her final project
Phoebe Stewart Carter was born in Gloucestershire, England, and grew up between the UK and Maryland, USA. Phoebe began drawing and painting at a young age but felt the need to understand the medium technically before she wanted to use it expressively. In 2017 she joined artist Nick Beer in his studio in Salisbury, England. While in Salisbury she was introduced to academic drawing techniques that were taught through the 19th century. Being determined to further her education, she travelled to Italy in 2018 to begin intensive training at The Florence Academy of Art.
Phoebe Stewart Carter’s final project
during her last trimester of the
Advanced Painting program at FAA
Phoebe on her experience as a Graduate in Residence:
“To have spent the last 6 months as a Graduate in Residence at The Florence Academy of Art has been an enormous privilege and a rewarding learning experience. After graduating and walking forward from such an intensive program, I was given the freedom to explore my own concepts and artistic style, as well as the guidance of my previous teachers, functional studio space, and immersion into a working environment that has always been abundant with diligence and ambition.
The most valuable aspect of this residency has been the chance to teach others. Not only has this reinforced the knowledge learned previously, but it has also taught me new concepts and problem-solving strategies that I may have never discovered without the objective to assist somebody else. I will part from The FAA with a lot of gratitude for the people who taught me, being given the chance to teach others, and the opportunity to find my feet artistically before leaving the school.”
She says that the training she has received “armed her with an invaluable set of representational skills and opened the doors to an expanse of artistic knowledge of which she will continue to build upon.” In July 2022, she will be leaving FAA to pursue an artistic career independent from teaching.
To see more of Phoebe’s work please visit:
Website: www.phoebestewartcarter.com
Instagram: @phoebestewartcarter
Louis Szápáry working on his self portrait
Louis Szápáry working on his self portrait
Louis Szápáry was born in 1993 in Austria. From 2012-2018 he studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he received a Masters degree in Fine Art with a specialization in printmaking. He is currently a Graduate in Residence and Assistant Instructor at The Florence Academy of Art and has exhibited in various group and solo shows in Europe since 2013.
Louis’ time as a Graduate in Residence was limited to one trimester, rather than the 6 months that the others had. Accordingly, he chose chose to split his time in the studio between one ambitious painting (pictured below) and a few commissions. Louis says that he had been carrying around the ideas for the full length painting since last year, but knew it was too ambitious to start while still in the Advanced Painting program.
Louis Szápáry
“Die Fährte“ (The Spoor)
Oil on canvas
190 x 95 cm
For Louis, the experience as a resident artist at the academy as been instrumental in preparing him for a future as a professional painter. He says “Most clients don’t have the time to pose for many sittings, nor can they do so as well as professional models who have been posing for years at the school. This term has been a nice transition out of the comfort of painting humans that resemble rocks under self imposed time limits, into the messy field of pleasing clients while trying to make a good picture quickly […] A few years of being told to slow down in order to give meaning to the different stages of your work means that now, gradually [on my own], I can start to condense my approach and work faster. I quickly realized the importance of speed during my first few experiences painting portrait commissions from life.”
When asked about his experience on the teaching side of critiques he say “It has been a great privilege and in my opinion is one of the most valuable learning tools for an artist. Teaching someone else means that you need to be fully aware your own set of skills. In order to explain a concept, you need to have understood it to a level that you can communicate it in a way that best fits the person you are speaking with, or to ask them the right questions that make them arrive at a conclusion on their own. Many parts of my own process that had been subconscious for a while suddenly needed to be thought through and articulated, which in the end has benefitted me greatly.”
Overall he says “I am very pleased about the freedom to work in large studio spaces with excellent lighting, and with a large community of artists and teachers around me to interact with before I move back home. Thank you to the staff and faculty of The Florence Academy of Art for selecting me as one of the Graduates in Residence for 2022.”
To see more of Louis’ work please visit:
Website: www.louisszapary.com
Instagram: @louis_szapary
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