Out of School: Art Students, Emerging Artists, & Cooperative Spaces

Sustaining an artist-run alternative space rooted in a collective practice over time requires a passing on of collective responsibility and opportunity to successive new generations of artists and curators. In this panel, we will discuss where alternative spaces like Practice Gallery live in relation to colleges and universities, and the role they play as young artists find their way in the arts ecosystem.

• How can collective spaces connect with students and other emerging artists?
• How can collective spaces demonstrate the philosophy and value of these spaces to young artists?
• As the education system becomes more driven by a desire for practicality and certainty, how do we reframe precarity, interdependence, and sustainability as necessary – and generative – states of being?
• And finally, in a post-COVID era in which students are often hesitant to venture beyond what’s on a syllabus, how can spaces better connect with students as an audience, and as future members and exhibiting artists?

https://www.practicegallery.org/

Jessica Beckwith
Philadelphia and New York based Installation artist Jessica Beckwith began her career in theater, studying at the National Shakespeare Conservatory in NYC and performing and directing regionally. Her curatorial practice includes her work as an artist/board member of Practice Gallery, where she has curated a number of exhibitions and installations. Mentioned in the New York Times for her “mystical theater” in Wholeness, an installation for Portal / Governors Island Art Fair, Jessica’s projections and multi-media installations have been included in exhibitions at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, The Woodstock Artist Association and Museum, Performa 13, Portal:Governors Island Art Fair, Galleria Ca D'Oro, and Hodjapasha Cultural Center, Istanbul.

David Hannon, he/him, is a curator, artist, and educator based in Philadelphia. He is currently completing a PhD in Digital Media, graduating in 2027 from Drexel University, and an assistant curator at PRACTICE Gallery. He has received an MFA in Visual Art from UMASS Amherst and a Bachelors in Art from Syracuse University. His work has been exhibited in Western Massachusetts; Kansas City, MI; Portland, Oregon; New York City, Boston and Philadelphia.

Instagram: @bagelqueen4u
Website: davidmccordhannon.com/

Maddie Jones Rodriguez is an artist living and working in Philadelphia, PA. She graduated with an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from Tyler School of Art & Architecture in 2025 and BFA in Painting from Texas State University in San Marcos Texas in 2021. She is an Adjunct Professor at Rowan College of Burlington County and a practicing member of the artist collective and gallery Grizzly Grizzly. Her work has been exhibited at Abington Art Center, Big Ramp, Practice Gallery, Icebox Project space among other galleries. Currently Rodriguez is an inaugural fellow at the Center for Art and Creative Exchange.

Instagram: @maddiejonesrodriguez
Website:maddiejonesrodriguez.com

Anna Varrell recently graduated from American University with BA in Art History, and is currently pursuing her MA in Italian Renaissance Art History at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on how art has been used to inspire somatic devotional practices. and how it can be better understood via the lens of contemporary performance art. Varrell has worked as an intern at the House of the Temple Museum in D.C. since 2024, simultaneously interning with Practice Gallery since 2025.

Margaret Pezalla-Granlund (moderator)
Margaret Pezalla-Granlund received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She was awarded a McKnight Fellowship and a Jerome Travel Grant to the archives of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ and the Velaslevansky Panorama and the Museumu of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, CA. She has exhibited both locally and nationally, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Santa Monica Museum, and at Burnett Gallery in Minneapolis. Her work was included in the 2015 Midwest Biennial at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis. She is currently the director of The College of New Jersey Art Gallery. She is an artist/member of the curatorial co-op, Practice Gallery in Philadelphia, PA.

The Parallel Play Symposium, presented as part of the six-week Collective Futures festival, is a two-day gathering of artists, scholars, organizers, and cultural workers exploring the practices, histories, and conditions that sustain collective cultural production. Through free panels, workshops, and performative presentations, participants will examine the cultural significance of collective art-making and artist-run spaces while sharing strategies for building and maintaining collaborative cultural infrastructures.

Organized around thematic tracks—including How To: Collective Tools & Tactics, Relational Infrastructures, “Have You Seen the ___?”: Memory and Collective Spaces, and Playground: Place, Ecology & Entanglement—the symposium will feature workshops, panels, performances, and conversations presented by ATUOMAT Collective, Luster Gallery + Studio, Obvious Agency, Vox Populi, Termite TV Collective, All Mutable, FORTUNE, FJORD, Big Ramp, Da Vinci Art Alliance, cinéSPEAK, Practice Gallery, and many other collaborators.

Registration is required for each session.