Lola Panco Earns Dedalus Foundation Grant and MASS MoCA Residency
Lola Panco, Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing in Appalachian State University's Department of Art, has received two significant honors in support of her studio practice: a grant from the Dedalus Foundation's Alumni Fund and a 2027 artist residency at the Studios at MASS MoCA.
The Dedalus Alumni Fund jury awarded Panco $3,000 to cover materials costs for the creation of a new body of work. The fund offers targeted, ongoing support to outstanding past Dedalus awardees who continue to pursue ambitious artistic and scholarly projects. Panco was named a recipient of the foundation's Master of Fine Arts Fellowship in Painting and Sculpture in 2024, and the new grant extends that support as her work develops.
Panco has also been selected for an artist residency at the Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, where she will work on campus in March 2027. Set in the Berkshire Mountains, the program has hosted more than 1,000 artists and writers at all career stages since 2015. It runs year-round, welcoming up to ten residents at a time for stays of two or four weeks, and primarily supports visual artists and writers across disciplines.
Born in Minsk, Belarus, Panco studied at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts before moving to the United States in 2012. She earned a BFA from Salisbury University and an MFA in Studio Art from Arizona State University in 2024. Her large-scale oil paintings, shaped by the post-Soviet landscape of her homeland, explore how social and political upheavals reshape our relationship with the environment, turning it from a source of leisure and resource into one of shelter and survival. Through cityscapes, vegetation, and light, her work reflects on the endurance of living beings, the fragility of ecosystems, and the natural cycles of life and death.
