SPE Scholarship Winners Jamie Russel and Marie Mashyna

The SPE MA Board is happy to announce the 2012 National Scholarship winners for the National Conference in San Francisco, California.

Along with awarding the Adjunct Faculty, Graduate Student and Undergraduate Student Scholarships, we are extremely honored to recognize our friend Patrick Millard.

The Patrick Millard Scholarship has been awarded to two students from Point Park University. Patrick Millard served the SPE MA region as the Webmaster for 2011 and was active in SPE for a number of years. To celebrate his life and contributions to SPE, one scholarship was awarded by the SPE MA region and a matching second scholarship was generously donated by Point Park University.

We would like to thank Dr. Heather Starr Fielder of Point Park University for her help with the Patrick Millard Scholarship.

Additionally, we would like to thank SPE National for recognizing the contributions of Patrick Millard by donating a National Conference Registration to each Millard scholarship winner.

Enjoy San Francisco!

Sincerely,

Sonya A. Lawyer

SPE MA Secretary

Marie Mashyna:

Marie Mashnya is working towards her BFA in Photography at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Marrow is a rendering of something that is difficult to articulate. It is about those quick moments in life that are not always shared or acknowledged, the interior transitional moments between action and reaction. They are bursts of significant emotion that do not appear externally, but occur silently within. They are defining moments that last perhaps a quarter of a second but linger while we exhale and sometimes long after that.

-Marie Mashnya

The scholarship committee found her imagery particularly compelling and awarded her a Patrick Millard Scholarship for her work "Marrow".

Jamie Russel:

Jamie Russell is working towards a BFA in Photography at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This project was an experiment with letting go. After I began working with it, I began to embrace the uncertainty of the pinhole. I eventually let go of any control I had over the image making process and simply opened the shutter. While making the abstract images I finally accepted that I didn't have control.

- Jamie Russell

She was challenged by Patrick Millard to create and use a pinhole camera. The resulting body of work, "Letting Go", was selected for the scholarship award.