PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) faculty and graduates Joshua Koffman and Kate Brockman have placed 1st and 2nd respectively in the Grand Central Academy of Art (GCA) Sculpture Competition.

The GCA is part of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America in New York City. Koffman and Brockman were two of twelve international finalists selected to compete for the $10,000 award on the basis of their modeling ability and demonstrated aspirations to make beautiful, excellent classical sculpture. The competition was open to all figurative sculptors and the artists participated in a weeklong schedule of sculpting and events that encourage classical figurative sculpture. Finalists competed for four days to model a 32" figure from life with the model posing eight hours each day.

Joshua Koffman lives and works in Philadelphia where he studied and presently teaches at PAFA. A recipient of many distinguished awards including the National Sculpture Society's Elisabeth Gordon Chandler Prize, the Edmond Stewardson Competition Prize, and the Louise A. Cramer Sculpture Prize, his work appears in numerous private collections. In 2007, he and five colleagues co-founded The Philadelphia Traction Company, a collaborative workspace and art center in West Philadelphia, where Koffman continues to model, cast, and create.

States Koffman, "The Grand Central Academy set a bar of excellence for every one of the finalists. Being chosen as 1st place winner among so many talented and dedicated sculptors is truly an honor. The competition demanded a clear understanding of values and process."

Kate Brockman has been a dedicated figure sculptor in the Philadelphia area for the past seventeen years. She studied sculpture at PAFA where she currently teaches the figure. Brockman not only sculpts, but casts all her own work, in bronze, in her foundry in Philadelphia. She has enjoyed many solo shows in area galleries and museums.

Koffman and Brockman's achievements continue an ongoing, award-winning trend for PAFA graduates: earlier this year, of 3,600 artists, sculptors, the Dufala Brothers, won the National West Prize; MFA graduate and installation artist Constantina Zavitsanos was named one of nine winners of the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial 2008-2009 Wind Challenge prize; sculptor Jordan Griska was named one of fourteen recipients of the International Sculpture Center's 2008 Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards; painters Anne Seidman and Mauro Zamora were two of twelve artists awarded $60,000 Pew Fellowships in the Arts in 2008; and in 2007, MFA graduates Stephanie Beck and Andrew Patterson-Tutschka, were two of fifteen recipients of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, each receiving a grant in the amount of $15,000. The Academy was the only school of fine arts in the country where two of its students were given this national award in the same year.