Fleisher presented longtime faculty member Louise Clement-Hoff with the 26th Founder’s Award on Tuesday, June 16, 2015. Louise was joined by past and present students, faculty, board members, supporters, and staff to celebrate her profound impact on our institution and the arts in Philadelphia. During her remarks in the Sanctuary, executive director Liz Grimaldi presented Louise with a color woodcut print of Fleisher’s facade created by fellow teaching artist Jeff Dentz. Louise also received a citation from Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, presented by Helen Haynes, the city’s chief cultural officer.

The Founder’s Award recognizes individuals whose significant commitment to providing access to the arts, promoting excellence in creative expression, and enriching Philadelphia’s cultural resources reflects the values of our founder, Samuel S. Fleisher.

Louise has been a member of Fleisher’s faculty since 1954, having taught figure drawing, still life composition, sculpture, and painting. She remains a cherished instructor, teaching oil painting to the parents of students enrolled in Fleisher’s venerable Saturday Young Artists Program.

Louise also teaches figure drawing courses at Philadelphia’s Hussian School of Art. She previously served as an adjunct professor of art at West Chester University and for 18 years taught still life drawing at Woodmere Art Museum.

“I was in preschool, four or five years old,” Louise says of how she became an artist, “A friend of my dad’s came to our house and looked over my shoulder and said ‘Louise, you’re an artist!’ That was the first time I’d heard that word, but I looked up at him and said, ‘Yes, I am an artist’ not knowing fully what an artist meant. But from then on, without a doubt, I knew who I was. I was emphatically an artist.”

Louise received her bachelor of fine arts from the Philadelphia College of Art – now the University of the Arts – with additional studies at Fleisher, the Barnes Foundation, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Tyler School of Art.

Her work, predominantly figurative, was honored with an impressive retrospective exhibition that surveyed 20 years of her work at West Chester University’s McKinney Gallery in 1998. Another large exhibition of her oil paintings, pastels, and drawings was shown at the Atlantic City Art Center in 2000. In addition, she received a Fred & Naomi Hazell Faculty Fellowship and exhibition at Fleisher and was included in the Senior Artists Initiative exhibition at the Woodmere Art Museum. Louise has also shown her paintings at the Hahn Gallery and Atlantic City Art Center.