University of the Arts graduate student Jenn Pascoe last week had her hard work rewarded by an LGBT grantmaking agency.
Sapphire Fund awarded Pascoe its $1,000 Tony Sparacino Memorial Scholarship in an April 11 ceremony at William Way LGBT Community Center.
Pascoe, 30, is nearing the end of her first year at UArts, where she is majoring in bookarts and printmaking.
A native of Oregon, where she received her bachelor’s degree in intermedia from Northwest College of Arts, Pascoe moved to Pittsburgh in 2008 for a post-college change of scenery. She worked at a nonprofit fine-arts print studio and undertook teaching gigs, but said she found herself reaching the limits of her undergraduate degree and decided to go back to school.
“I applied to a few different schools and I really wanted to move to Philadelphia because it’s such a huge print town and has a great history of printmaking,” she said.
Pascoe made the move here last summer after being accepted to UArts.
The busy schedule of graduate school has limited her ability to get too involved in the local LGBT scene, which she is eager to do.
Pascoe said she first began recognizing her sexual orientation in the fifth grade and came out in high school.
“I identify as queer, and I think the gender spectrum is very fluid,” she said. “It’s just always been very intertwined with my identity. I joke that every day is drag.”
Her coming-out experience was a gradual process, she said, one that was met with an eventually positive reception.
She began a gay-straight alliance at her high school, which was largely motivated by concern for LGBT allies.
“I started that in response to a lot of my straight friends being bashed because they were perceived as queer or gay or lesbian. It was just so wrong,” she said.
Her experiences in the LGBT community were a primary topic of conversation during her interview for the Sparacino scholarship.
The award is named after the late Tony Sparacino, an early Sapphire Fund board member and a local businessman and philanthropist. The scholarship is geared toward an LGBT or ally student pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in an art-related program.
Pascoe said she was on the lookout for financial-assistance options when she came across the scholarship.
“When you hit grad school, there really aren’t a lot of financial opportunities,” she said. “You get less grants from the government, less subsidized loans and it’s often crazy expensive. I was trying to find anything I could get my hands on to help alleviate my financial need and I discovered this in an email from a UArts financial advisor and I was like, ‘Aha, this is something I can do.’”
Pascoe said she didn’t have high hopes that she would be selected but, regardless, found the scholarship interview empowering.
“I went into it thinking that I’d give it my best but I knew there would also be a lot of other qualified people. But I walked away really happy because I got to sit there for an hour and talk about being radical, about being queer and an artist,” she said. “The interview was the day before my birthday and it just left me so pumped. It was so affirming and made me realize that I’ve always been the person I am. You can knock identity politics sometimes but there’s power behind that, and it’s pretty awesome to tell the world who you are and what you do and be proud of it.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].