Two Philadelphia artists are among 50 winners of $50,000 United States Artists Fellowships. From WHYY’s Arts and Culture Desk, Alex Schmidt profiles the artists and gets their reactions to the great news.

Judith Schaechter, a stained glass artist, is one of the Philly winners. She says that though she has no specific plans for the no-strings-attached prize, it will enable her to do something important.

Schaechter: “People who purchase the work are looking for something recognizable as my own, and this will allow me to experiment and make atypical work, which is really crucial in every artist’s development.”

The other Philadelphia winner, visual and installation artist Terry Adkins, says the funds will be used to complete a project on musician Charlie Parker that he had been forced to put on hold. He explains that it’s about the musician’s return to his hometown of Kansas City.

Adkins: “It will be a piece that’s like an organism of drum cymbals that are programmed to strike each other at random and in patterns, a circular 9-ft diameter. They’re put together in the fashion of armadillo scales. They feather each other and interact with each other.”

A goal of the privately funded, three year-old U.S. Artists Fellowship is to track how artists use no-strings-attached contributions 6 months, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years after receiving them. In the first year, 60% of artists put the money into equipment and 80% put it into new work.