{"id":108373,"date":"2026-02-08T10:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T10:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/108373\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T10:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T10:56:07","slug":"philadelphia-artist-makes-regional-debut-at-rowan-university-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/108373\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia artist makes regional debut at Rowan University gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shimoyama started at Penn State with a focus on life sciences, with a trajectory toward pre-med, but he eventually changed to art. Before getting to the university, he hadn\u2019t considered art as a career path. Growing up, there weren\u2019t any examples of full-time professional artists in his life, so it didn\u2019t seem possible.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wasn\u2019t in New York, seeing art galleries and contemporary artists working in that capacity very much, so I really hadn\u2019t had the vision for it before I got to school,\u201d he said.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-730984\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/devon-shimoyama-profile-020326.jpg\" alt=\"Artist Devan Shimoyama stands for a photo with his arms folded\" width=\"999\" height=\"888\"  \/>Artist and Philadelphia native Devan Shimoyama. (Credit: Zachary Riggleman)\n<\/p>\n<p>After changing his major, he began to see other Black artists in the profession. Artists like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moma.org\/artists\/28097-wangechi-mutu\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wangechi Mutu<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/mickalene.herokuapp.com\/works\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mikalene Thomas<\/a> inspired Shimoyama to explore different modes of artistic expression.\n<\/p>\n<p>He graduated from Penn State in 2011 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting and from Yale University School of Art in 2014 with a Master of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking. Shimoyama\u2019s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States.\n  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shimoyama started at Penn State with a focus on life sciences, with a trajectory toward pre-med, but he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[52007,69,71,70,18588],"class_list":["post-108373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-black-artists","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-rowan-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}