Carversville sculptor Patrick Strzelec receives Educator of the Year award

Carversville resident Patrick Strzelec has received the 2020 Outstanding Educator Award from the International Sculptor Center.

 

Strzelec is a sculptor and a professor at Rutgers University. He has been a resident of Carversville for the past 30 years.

 

The International Sculpture Center (ISC) established the Outstanding Educator Award program in 1996 to recognize individual artist-educators who have excelled at teaching sculpture in institutions of higher learning. An exemplary career, combining personal studio practice, and measurable academic performance, form the evaluative basis of this award.

 

Successful candidates for this award are masters of sculptural history, theory, processes and techniques, who have devoted a major part of their careers to the education of the next generation of artists and to the advancement of the sculpture field as a whole.

 

The International Sculpture Center (ISC) is a member-supported, nonprofit organization founded in 1960 to champion the creation and understanding of sculpture and its unique, vital contribution to society. Members include sculptors, collectors, patrons, architects, developers, journalists, curators, historians, critics, educators, foundries, galleries, and museums.

 

The 2020 program received an exceptional number of nominations: 79, from 25 institutions of higher learning nationally and internationally.

 

Successful candidates have 20-plus years of teaching at an institution of higher learning, have a considerable body of work, and should be knowledgeable in the history, theories and innovations that compose the subject of sculpture. The ability to articulate this knowledge in the identification and promotion of each student’s creative potential defines the spirit of the ISC Educator Award.

 

Strzelec works in various processes and materials, often relating to the gaps between seeing, knowing, recognizing and remembering. Strzelec attended the Art Institute in Chicago, received a BFA from Southern Illinois University, and an MFA from Rutgers University.

 

Strzelec has been a recipient of numerous awards and grants in sculpture, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Italy, the Ballinskelligs Project in Ireland, National Endowment for the Arts, and numerous New Jersey State Council for the Arts grants. Recently he received the Presidential Award for Teaching Excellence and the Chancellor Scholar Award, both at Rutgers University.

 

Strzelec’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, with solo shows at the Michael Schultz Gallery, Berlin, Germany; EKWC, Oisterwijk, Netherlands; American Academy in Rome, Italy; Jay Grimm Gallery, Gary Snyder Fine Arts, Barbara Toll Fine Arts, and Garth Greenan, New York City; OH&T Gallery, Boston; and Grounds For Sculpture, Mercerville, N.J.

 

Selected group shows include American Academy of Arts and Letters, N.Y.; Art Koln, Koln, Germany; Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; Miami Basel, Miami, Fla.; and the Beth DeWoody Inaugural Exhibition, at The Bunker, West Palm Beach, Fla.

 

Some commissions include The Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C.; the city of Princeton, N.J.; Berlin, Germany; Rutgers University, Piscataway, N.J.; Dickenson College, Carlisle, Pa. His work can be found in public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe.