SDA-WA Group Event Grant applications are due at midnight on October 1, 2018. Our jurors (Pat Herkal, Claire B. Jones, Roberta Nelson and Francesca Penchant), fiber artists with varied careers, volunteered to be on the panel to support you, SDA-WA members! To help you get to know them better, here is the last of all four bios.

Francesca Penchant is a multidisciplinary artist known for her dark, self-portrait photographs. She grew up in a bi-ethnic family, with a Nuyorican mother and a white father, which inspired her to make emotional portraits of outsiders using various media (craft, costume, photography, digital media). “Growing up, I hungered to see people who were different. So, presenting people who are different is something I want to do in the portraits I make.” One example is a remake of Diane Arbus’s portrait Puerto Rican Woman with a Beauty Mark, in which the subject’s makeup-strewn face has an alienated expression.

Francesca has exhibited her work throughout the West Coast. She has a Certificate in Fiber Arts from the University of Washington, an MFA in graphic design from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and two BAs, in art history and English, from Pitzer College in Claremont, California. She lives in Seattle.