Where are they now?
We highlight our alums on Wednesdays on social media.
- 2024
- Share your updates
Nov. 20, 2024
Kyle D’Auria (BFA ’13, 3D & Extended Media) runs a furniture-making business, Commoner Goods, in Portland, Oregon, while continuing to work as a multi-disciplined artist.
D’Auria’s Studio Art degree at the University of Arizona culminated with a 2013 solo exhibition, “Bildungsroman,” at The Steinfeld Warehouse in Tucson. It featured three video works, associated sculptures, an installation and a live performance.
“My woodworking journey began in 2014,” Kyle says, “during the maker movement and Portland Made era, establishing Deoria Made, supplying kitchen goods like cutting boards and knife blocks to knife shops, chefs, and boutiques. Over time, passion grew to furniture making, and in 2017, I started working under my own name, taking on custom furniture projects that allowed me to build a diverse portfolio of work.”
Established in 2023, Commoner Goods specializes in small-batch furniture and home goods. “It pays homage to itsy-bitsy businesses like (mine), embracing traditional processes and timeless craftsmanship reminiscent of a bygone era,” D’Auria says.
• Artist’s website: https://www.kyledauria.com/
• Company website: https://commonergoods.com/
• Instagram: @kyledauria and @commoner.goods
Nov. 13, 2024
Monica Baddar (BFA ’12, Photography, Video & Imaging) is an Egyptian American photographer specializing in fashion, lifestyle and narrative portraiture. She’s based in New York City and Los Angeles.
“Someone once told me I was a healer with a camera,” Monica says on her Instagram page.
Her clients have included Adam Selman Sport, Aviator Nation, Adidas Stella McCartney, Alo, Autum Cashmere, Bandier, BCBG, Beach Riot, Ellen Tracy, Fila, Gelmart, Gilt, Kevyn Aucoin, LesportsAC, Lululemon, Luvaj, Maison Marche, Naadam, Pe Nation, Q House of Basics, Rue La La, Savage X Fenty, The Giving Keys, Tucker NYC, Ulta Beauty, Veronica Beard and Weatherproof.
She started Monica Baddar LLC nearly 15 years ago while working on her Studio Art degree from the University of Arizona School of Art.
• Instagram: @monicabaddar
• Website: www.monicabaddar.com
• Facebook: Monica Baddar Photography
Nov. 6, 2024
Nic Daniels (BFA ’22, Illustration, Design & Animation) is an associate graphic designer for Disney Experiences in Winter Park, Florida.
After graduation, Daniels worked as an intern and then as a project hire for Disney Internships & Programs’ communications team. That job, which he called his “dream role,” turned permanent in May 2024.
Among his recent work, he designed a postcard backdrop for the community center of Flamingo Crossings Village, which houses Disney interns and cast members.
Before studying at the School of Art, Nic attended Tucson’s Sonoran Science Academy, where at age 14 he created the winning artwork in a Pima County anti-graffiti poster contest.
• Website: https://nicdaniels.com
• Instagram: @nicadaniels
Oct. 30, 2024
Kennady Schneider (BFA ’19; Photography, Video & Imaging) is a Los Angeles-based professional choreographer and dancer — and the movement consultant for “Anora,” which won the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Read a recent Marie Claire Q&A with Schneider, who tells how she collaborated with and trained lead actress Mikey Madison. “(The film) creates such a multilayered portrait of a dancer and displays a dancer’s story on such a human level,” Kennady said.
At the U of A, Schneider competed on the women’s gymnastics team and received her Studio Art BFA from the School of Art. Her 2018 portraiture series “#Black” won the Julia Margaret Cameron Award and was exhibited at the Gallery Valid Foto in Barcelona, Spain, in 2019. She earned her MFA in Film/Video and Photographic Arts from UCLA in 2022.
• Instagram: @kennschneider
• Website: https://www.kennadyschneider.com/
The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway, will start showing “Anora” on Nov. 1.
Oct. 23, 2024
Sadie Shaw (BFA ’19, Art and Visual Culture Education) is a Tucson Unified School District Governing Board member and community design administrator at Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona.
Shaw, who’s running for re-election on the TUSD board, is also founder and president of the Sugar Hill Community Land Trust. The historically black neighborhood was one of the only places black people in Tucson could purchase a home between World War II and the 1960s, according to the Sugar Hill Neighborhood Association.
“I advocate for the arts, education and equitable community development in Tucson,” Shaw says on her LinkedIn page. “I’m dedicated to creating vibrant, sustainable neighborhoods through creative leadership and community engagement.”
• Instagram: instagram.com/shaw4tusd/
• Facebook: Sadie Shaw for TUSD
Oct. 9, 2024
Jake Polishook (BFA ’21, Studio Art) is a digital designer in Los Angeles for Arsonal Design, where he creates marketing campaigns for movie and television networks such as NBCUniversal, Paramount+, HBO, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, MGM, Lionsgate, AMC, Showtime, STARZ and History Channel.
He specializes in custom motion graphics, animations and static graphic design to promote movie and television campaigns. Polishook also produces key art, progressive trailer cuts, animations, website takeovers, gifs and social media assets for various campaigns.
- Website: https://www.jakepolishook.com/
- Instagram: @jakepolishook
Sept. 25, 2024
Ukiah Hoy (BFA ’16, Art & Visual Culture Education) is a Tucson-based artist who teaches art at Palo Verde High Magnet School.
After graduating from the School of Art, Hoy began teaching visual arts at Cholla High School, where the Women’s Caucus of the National Art Education Association awarded her the Carrie Nordlund pre-K-12 Feminist Pedagogy Award.
“Feminism is an ideology that values equality regardless of gender,” Hoy told the Arizona Daily Star in 2018. In her application for the award, Hoy praised Art and Visual Cultural Education as a fundamental subject of study, writing: “Being able to think critically is essential to thriving as an individual, and I have confidence that art education is the conduit that can facilitate this process.”
Hoy has collaborated with the Tucson Museum of Art’s education team and enjoys making her own art — sculptural works that play with the relationship between rigid materials such as steel, and delicate biological structures such as insects and birds.
• Instagram: @mrs_hoy_artroom and @oldcanoedesigns
• Q&A with Tucson Gallery: https://thetucsongallery.com/artists/ukiah-hoy/
• Arizona Daily Star profile: https://tinyurl.com/55hda3hu
Sept. 18, 2024
Pia (Salonga) Zaverukha (BFA ’09, Studio Art) is celebrating 11 years as the marketing and communications specialist for the town of Oro Valley.
Pia designed the town’s 50th anniversary logo, turning it into 19 colorful road signs, reusable bags, postcards, coasters, stickers and clothing.
“We wanted something very different for the sign. Bright, like I want it, but palatable,” Zaverukha told Tucson Local Media’s Dave Perry in a recent profile: https://tinyurl.com/SOAPia09
“In my humble opinion, Pia is the MVP of our division,” Oro Valley public information officer Jeffery Hidalgo told Perry. “Her ability to stay cool, calm, collected and always kind under pressure is remarkable. And her strong understanding of effective design and awareness of current trends set her apart.”
Pia grew up in Oro Valley after coming to the U.S. with her family from the Philippines. A Salpointe Catholic High alumna, she also worked as an after-school art teacher with KidzArt after graduating from the School of Art.
Sept. 11, 2024
Dr. Eric Avery (BA ’70, Art) is an artist/printmaker who became a physician during the Vietnam War and now lives on the U.S.-Mexico border in San Ygnacio, Texas.
After graduating from the University of Arizona School of Art, where he studied under Andrew Rush, Avery received his medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, where he later became a professor, and completed his psychiatry training at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
For 40 years, Avery has worked at the intersection of visual art and medicine, including as a refugee coordinator for Amnesty International. His social content prints explore issues such as human rights abuses, and social responses to disease (specifically HIV and emerging infectious diseases), death, sexuality and the body. “In a career that stretches across a catastrophic half-century of health crises and wars, Avery applies his activist and empathetic social conscience to all he does,” Hyperallergic wrote about Eric in a recent profile, “Eric Avery’s Healing Art.”
“I’m a social content artist, so things that happen around me find their way into making my work. I learned this in Somalia, where I was a doctor with thousands of starving children,” Avery told Arizona Illustrated for a January 2024 video profile. “That’s when I began making prints as way to help myself to feel better. … I began making art in the space between art and medicine.”
Avery is active in border issues and helped paint a “No Border Wall” street mural in Laredo, Texas, in 2020. “Educating people about what’s happening on the border is a social function of art to educate,” he said.
- Avery’s website: www.docart.com
- Hyperallergic magazine profile: https://tinyurl.com/yj549f6n (see link in our bio)
- AZPM video profile: https://tinyurl.com/36eacpzv
Sept. 4, 2024
Maria Bressler (BFA ’15), a multidisciplinary artist from Shelton, Washington, and the new Artistx Invitadax in Residence at KOIK Contemporary, an art gallery in Mexico City.
- Instagram: @mmbressler https://www.instagram.com/mmbressler/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-bressler-b89937151/
Aug. 28, 2024
Roslyn Norman (Studio Art Minor, ’20) is a designer at Tucson-based Creative Machines Inc. She served four years in the Marine Corps, including a stint forecasting weather in Japan. Norman used the GI bill to take classes at Pima Community College and the University of Arizona, where she received a mechanical engineering degree with a focus on robotics. For her School of Art minor, she took Digital Fab and Immersive Art from Associate Prof Joe Farbrook.
“A lot of people don’t see the creative side of engineering, but that’s really what it is: You have to creatively problem-solve to make something better than what you started with,” Norman said in a 2018 College of Engineering interview.
In 2023, she joined Creative Machines, where she creates mechanical models and construction drawings using Solidworks CAD software. The design and fabrication firm specializes in the engineering and construction of engaging objects and experiences for public spaces, business enterprises, museums and learning centers. Roslyn also is a community liaison for the Second Sky Science Garden and Social Club.
Aug. 14, 2024
Io Palmer (MFA, ’00) is a professor and Ceramics/Foundations coordinator at Washington State University in Pullman. Her artworks explore the complex issues surrounding class, capitalism and societal excess. Trained originally as a ceramicist, Palmer uses a variety of processes and materials, including fabric, steel, sound and wood.
Palmer was born on Hydra, a motor-less Greek island off the coast of the Peleponesse. “The first seven years of her life were spent among the donkeys, the fishes, the clear blue Mediterranean sea and the jazz music my parents listened to,” she said on her website. She received her BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art before getting her MFA from the University of Arizona School of Art.
Io has been featured in several national and international exhibitions, including Dakart-International Arts Biennial, Dakar, Senegal; Working History, Reed College, Portland, OR; Hair Follies, Concordia University, Montreal; and Rush Gallery, New York City, NY. She’s had solo exhibitions at the Boise Art Museum, ID; PDX Airport, OR; York College, CUNY, Jamaica, NY; Deluge Contemporary, Victoria, BC; The Art Gym at Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, OR.
Palmer has participated in several artist residencies including the Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi, India; the Santa Fe Art Institute, NM; Art Channel, Beijing; and the Ucross Foundation, Clermont, WY. Io received an Idaho Commission on the Arts Grant in 2014 and a Fulbright Nehru Research Grant to India, 2018-2019. She received an Artist Trust Gap Grant in 2021 and an Artist Trust Fellowship in 2023.
• Website: https://iopalmerart.com/work
• Instagram:@io.palmer
• Image: Io Palmer with her work, “Window Dressing.” Courtesy of her website
Aug. 7, 2024
Andrea Reynosa (MFA ’94) is an artist, activist and farmer who co-founded the Smack Mellon arts organization in Brooklyn, New York, which supports emerging, under-recognized mid-career and female artists in the creation and exhibition of new work.
After receiving her graduate degree from the University of Arizona School of Art with an emphasis in sculpture, Andrea later settled in Narrowsburg, NY, generating numerous projects and programs that interact with the environment, community and family. She established SkyDog Farm in 2000, a lifestyle experiment involving stainable agriculture, permaculture, heirloom gardening, child rearing and forest stewardship.
She became a legislator and grant writer for the Town of Tusten, where she served as a councilwoman in 2012. She also allowed the Big Eddy Farmstand project to develop into a dynamic experiment involving sustainable food production, the cultivation of a rural youth workforce and an increase in local environmental awareness.
Andrea received Pollock-Krasner and Headlands fellowships, and she created a demonstration “chinampa” on SkyDog Farm through her interaction with “chinamperos” and agriculturists in Xochimilco, Mexico exploring traditional Meso-American farming technology innovated before Aztec times.
Website: https://www.andreareynosa.com/
Instagram: @andreareynosa
July 31, 2024
Ben Rosenthal (BFA ’18, Studio Art) is a senior graphic designer for Guru and based in Phoenix.
He recently saw some of his designs/animations for Nalgene Water Bottles hit the big screen(s) in Times Square in New York City as Guru designed an 18-story digital billboard! The ad campaign earlier appeared in USA Today.
Before joining Guru in August 2022, Rosenthal was a graphic designer/artist for Carvana and Herff Jones.
“I consider myself a design chameleon, able to adapt my style, influences and approaches to find the solution best fit for the problem at hand,” Ben says on his website: “Outside of work, you can find me slowly checking off boxes on my ‘shows/movies to watch’ list or vacuuming dog hair.”
- Instagram: @benjaminrosenthal
- Website: https://benrosenthal.co/
July 24, 2024
Franzie Weldgen (MFA ’99) is an artist, cartoonist, painter and professor in the Fine Arts department at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. He was among six art educators selected for Cornell University’s 2023-24 Community College Internationalization Fellows cohort at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
He’s a former adjunct professor at the University of Arizona School of Art, where he designed and taught a course titled “Comic Books and Sequential Art.” In a 2003 profile, former Tucson Museum of Art curator Julie Sasse (PhD ’13) wrote:
- Painting: “And They Called It Macaroni” (acrylic and spray paint)
- Instagram: @fweldgen
- Website: franzieweldgenart.com
July 17, 2024
Kareem-Anthony Ferreira (MFA ’20) is an artist in Hamilton, Ontario, who explores patterns of personal, familial and social identity within black portraiture through a combination of painting and collage.
Ferreira, a first-generation Canadian with Trinidadian heritage, builds richly textured compositions from an assemblage of textiles, paper and paint applied to unstretched canvases.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts recently acquired Ferreira’s painting “Kyle’s First Birthday” (pictured here), which is based on a 1987 photograph of his older brother taken in Trinidad and Tobago a year before Kareem-Anthony was born.
“Kareem-Anthony’s paintings … are at once intimate and universal,” writes curator Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre in a recent essay about Ferreira and the painting at https://tinyurl.com/3cuu5xdd
Ferreira followed in the footsteps of his father, Roger Ferreira, by studying painting at McMaster University and then pursuing grad studies at the University of Arizona School of Art. In 2022, the father-son duo was featured in the exhibition Gatherings at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Instagram: @kareemanthony.artist
Websites: https://kareem-anthonyferreira.com/ and https://towards.info/ … Youtube profile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVtyEl9k54M
July 10, 2024
Mary Meyer (MFA ’05, Sculpture) is a sculptor and mixed media artist based in the Phoenix area whose work utilizes systems of carved components that investigate the intimate connections between human anatomy and botanicals.
Meyer started The Leaf Connection, a community engagement art project that invites people to engage with nature and share observations (images) of leaves within the urban desert of metro Phoenix using the social platform iNaturalist. Starting in August, she will be installing a vast wall of clay leaves for a scheduled exhibition at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix this fall.
“The ceramic leaves are mapped out to reflect the Phoenix metropolitan area and illustrate the diversity of plants and people in our desert home,” Mary says.
Originally trained in stone carving, she is drawn to meditative processes and materials such as clay, wood, and metal that foster the intuitive exploration of form. Meyer grew up in the Midwest and has lived in Arizona for over 28 years. She holds a BFA in sculpture from Arizona State University where she studied foundry casting methods and metalworking.
She completed her graduate studies in 2005 at the University of Arizona School of Art, where she received the MFA Fellowship for her work with large mixed media installations.
Instagram: @marymeyerstudio
Website: www.marymeyerstudio.com
Arizona Arts The University of Arizona Arizona Alumni Desert Botanical Garden Mary Meyer Studio
July 3, 2024
Gregory Sale (MFA ’95) is a Professor of Expanded Arts and Public Practice at Arizona State University.
“As a socially engaged artist, I create and coordinate large-scale and often long-term public projects, collaborating with individuals and communities on aesthetic responses to social challenges,” he says on his website. “My most well-known projects focus on issues of mass incarceration, illuminating the complexities of justice, democracy, and how we care as a society.”
Sale helped form the Future IDs Art and Justice Leadership Cohort to support justice reform. In 2019, his project “Future IDs at Alcatraz” (2019) featured 42 individually designed, ID-inspired artworks that were enlarged and printed on vinyl at Alcatraz Island in conjunction with the National Park Service.
The project resulted in ongoing community programs with performances, workshops, and roundtable discussions, building an ever-widening sphere of connectivity among those who care about social justice and reentry back into society.
Sale is continuing his research this month in his third artists-in-residence at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California.
– Instagram: @gregory_sale … https://www.instagram.com/gregory_sale
– Website: https://gregorysaleart.com
June 26, 2024
Tori Arpad-Cotta (MFA ’96, Studio Art) is an associate professor of ceramics and chair of the Department of Art + Art History at Florida International University in Miami.
Her site-based practice includes work as Artist-in-Residence in AIRIE, Everglades National Park, and Land Arts of the American West, a field-study program at University of New Mexico. She received a Florida State Cultural Council Artist’s Fellowship and NCECA Emerging Artist Award.
Exhibitions include the Shumen Biennial, Bulgaria and others internationally since 1996. Her work is featured in Land Arts of the American West by Bill Gilbert & Chris Taylor, Confrontational Ceramics by Judith S. Schwartz, and Ceramics: Mastering the Craft by Richard Zakin.
She teaches Installation Art, a collaboration with the Wolfsonian-FIU culminating with an exhibit of student art in Miami’s Design District each spring semester.
“Although the term ‘visual’ is often applied, art is hardly limited to what we can see,” Arpad-Cotta says, “and I would argue that the best art communicates far beyond mere surfaces, putting us in touch with the deepest sense of what makes us human. Whether we look back to images marked in the recesses of caves, to clay moved by fingers and thumbs, or ahead to technologies with impacts not yet fully evident, making is an integral part of who we are.”
Tori’s instagram: @arpadcotta … https://www.instagram.com/arpadcotta/
June 19, 2024
Elizabeth Burden (BFA ’07, Studio Art) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tucson who blends studio work with social practice.
• Burden’s website: https://elizabethburden.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/burdenelizabeth/
June 12, 2024
Chris McGinnis (MFA ’10, Painting & Drawing) is the founding director and chief curator of Rivers of Steel Arts in Pittsburgh. He leads a team of creatives working to reimagine the city’s urban-industrial legacy through the lens of visual art and placemaking.
Raised in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Chris says in his website bio that his paintings channel “curious and romantic depictions of regional industry derived from an understanding of how industrialized society has influenced a sense of what it means to be American.”
“As a child I developed romantic notions of America’s industrial past that were typified for me, by the ruins of a 19th century tannery located near my family cabin in Elk County Pennsylvania,” Chris says.
McGinnis has created projects for the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, SPACE Pittsburgh, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art and The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, among others.
- Instagram: @productivemachine and @riversofsteelarts
- Websites: https://chrismcginnisart.com and https://riversofsteel.com
Image: “Radiant Organon” (2022), oil on canvas, 48×78, part of his “Productive Machine” project
May 15, 2024
Cristina Cárdenas (MFA ’90, Printmaking). Born and raised in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, the award-winning painter, printmaker and ceramist is based in Tucson.
From her Mexic-Arte Museum bio: “My draftsmanship, iconography, artistic forms, color and style are derived from Mexican neo-figurative expressionism, which I learned from academic training at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Escuela de Artes Plásticas, in combination with the training I received in the University of Arizona. I am a recipient of grants and fellowships: The Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Award Residency at Claude Monet Museum in Giverny, France; NEA/WESTAF Regional Fellowship for Visual Artists; and Great Walls Unlimited, SPARC, Venice, CA, among others.
“Due to my personal history as an immigrant, the recurring theme in my work responds to and communicates relevant political and personal impressions, such as the right for immigrants to have a path to American citizenship. My work is an exploration of immigration/migration and its effects on culture, family, the loss of los ausentes (the ones who left their homelands and are considered missing in their physical absence, but not in their psychological presence) and the individual in these times of racism. I also represent with images the timeless human phenomena of deconstructing female stereotypes, echoing themes of divided families, struggle, strength, and success. I create from the perspective of a woman artist born “al otro lado” that has now lived and worked in the border region of Tucson (since the 1990s).”
May 8, 2024
Aaron Miller (MFA ’09, Printmaking) is a professional furniture maker and operates Aaron Miller Woodworks (AMWW) out of Brooklyn, New York.
From his website, www.aaronmillerwoodworks.net: “Inspired by a long-standing family tradition of furniture making, I have made it my mission to design and build furniture that will give the owner pleasure for generations.
“Creating furniture has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father taught me how to build furniture and instilled a forceful work ethic in me, which I carried into my formal education.
“With a masters degree in fine art printmaking I have married my building knowledge with a creative and luxurious design sensibility.”
Instagram: @aaron_miller_woodwork,
April 17, 2024
Sophia Meshel (BA ’21, Art History) works at the Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale as an art consultant, executive assistant and registrar.
Meshel was just accepted into the Art Business online master’s program at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art for the fall 2024 semester. Congrats!
“Oh, my goodness, I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am of you,” said Dr. Sandra Barr, one of Sophia’s instructors at the School of Art.
April 10, 2024
Midwest-born artist Michael Campbell (MFA ’98, Studio Art), now working in the Northwest and Bay Area, “explores our connection to the mysterious fungi kingdom” through sculpture and mixed media,” Campbell says.
“I’m curious about death and what lies beyond. As decomposers of dead, organic matter, mushrooms are symbols of the imminent life and death process. They release enzymes to feed on dead, organic matter. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition; an organism that cleans and clears away dead matter and an entheogen that, when ingested, brings about transcendent states of consciousness.”
Campbell’s upcoming solo show “The Wilding” runs from May 11 to June 6, 2024, at the Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco. @michaelcampbellart
March 27, 2024
At 17, Elisa Jimenez (MFA ’90, Studio Art) “manifested a dream to make art her life and life her art,” according to The Remix, a New York City podcast. She’s now a well-known interdisciplinary artist, primarily in fashion design but also including writing, drawing, painting, performance art, photography and art installation. Elisa’s main ongoing project is called “The Hunger World,” a world of marionettes ranging from 2 inches to 30 feet in height.
She is the daughter of graphic designer Vicky C. Balcou and the late renowned sculptor Luis Jiménez, whose “Man on Fire” retrospective inspired University of Arizona School of Art Assistant Professor Alejandro Macias’ work and his own “Man on Fire” painting. In 2007, Elisa was a contestant on the fourth season of “Project Runway,” a reality show on Bravo in which fashion designers compete against each other. In 2012, she appeared on “Project Runway: All Stars.”
From her website, elisajimenez.com: Vogue discovered Jimenez as “the scoop” and consistently has acknowledged her as being at the forefront of the new avant-garde as well as one of the top 10 American Designers in the independent realm. Her designs have appeared in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Dutch, Black Book, Paper Mag, Jane, and Trace. She has worked for a number of actors, musicians, films and television programs, including: Melissa Auf der Maur, Cher for her Believe album, Jennifer Connelly for her character in Requiem for a Dream, Marisa Tomei, Courtney Love, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City, Pink, Cameron Diaz, and art photographer Cindy Sherman. Jimenez was invited to be in the Barbican Gallery’s exhibit and bookRapture: “Art and Fashion Since the 1970s,” curated by Chris Townsend of London.
March 20, 2024
Miami-based artist Brookhart Jonquil (BFA ’07, Studio Art; BA ‘07, Art History) uses glass, water and other optical materials to create a perceptual world that both embraces and transcends physicality, such as his “Groundless” solo exhibition, which is on display at the Musuem of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida, through April 14, 2024. The installation includes a sculpture, “E)A)R)T)H),” an expanded polystyrene globe centered within five pieces of mirror glass that encourages viewers to consider their relationship to the planet.
See his work on Instagram at @br00khart and at brookhartjonquil.com
According to his website bio, Jonquil “draws from spiritual practice, ecology and cognitive science, as well as embodied practices such as martial arts, balancing techniques, and time spent in wilderness. His work explores the underlying principles that create peace and dynamic stability in living systems, whether that be a society, an ecosystem, or an individual being.”
Brookhart’s projects have been commissioned by the Bass Museum of Art, the De la Cruz Collection, MoCA Tucson, Vizcaya Museum, St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Art, and the Cornell Art Museum. Additionally, he has created multiple public works for the City of Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County.
After earning his BFA degrees from the University of Arizona School of Art, Jonquil received his MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010.
Image: Groundless, 2023, Mirrors, steel, acrylic paint, enamel paint; 41.5in x 44.5in x 6in (courtesy of Brookhart Jonquil’s website)
March 13, 2024
Where are they now? Wednesday: David Contreras (BFA ’16, Art & Visual Culture Education; BFA ’16, Studio Art – 2D Studies). A native Tucsonan, David teaches art at Challenger Middle School in the Sunnyside Unified School District and volunteers at Raices Taller 222 Art Gallery & Workshop with exhibition openings, printmaking workshops, viewing times and community outreach.
“As a teacher, David loves sharing his knowledge by exposing his students to many different forms of art making while at the same time teaching them how to be resourceful by using found materials,” according to his Raices Taller website bio. “As an artist, David is a passionate printmaker and large-scale painter and is always seeking creative ways to bring elements of his imaginative ideas into his work.”
March 6, 2024
Jenny Day (MFA ’14, Painting) is an artist who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her solo exhibition, “Okay with the Distortion,” is on view now at the Ferrara Showman Gallery in New Orleans through April 6 (https://www.ferrarashowman.com/exhibitions/jenny-day3). It includes paintings, ceramics and mixed media sculpture.
“Time has been a persistent concern in my work,” Day told the gallery. “Time and biophilia, a lifelong love for the natural, a drive to explore the human relationship to the encompassing world.”
Her recent exhibition record also includes Arte Laguna in Venice, Italy, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Korea, Museum of Art Fort Collins, Mesa Arts Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Blue Star Contemporary Museum in San Antonio, TX, Alabama Contemporary in Mobile, AL, and Elmhurst Museum in Chicago, IL.
Before getting her MFA at the School of Art, she earned an BFA in Painting from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz.
Image from “Okay with the Distortion.” Photo courtesy of Mike Smith
Feb. 28, 2024
Based in Los Angeles, Christine Frerichs (BA ’02, Painting & Drawing, Minor in Spanish) is an associate professor of Painting, Drawing & Color Theory at the East Los Angeles College Department of Art.
Her landscape paintings shimmer with concentric waves of energy and radiant light, while her interior portraits are closely observed paintings that frame her home and studio, reviewers have said.
Frerichs has exhibited at ACME, CB1 Gallery, Kaycee Olsen Gallery, Klowden Mann and Young Art in Los Angeles, Duchess Presents in Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, among others. Her work has been reviewed by ArtForum and The Los Angeles Times, among others, and published in New American Paintings.
She received her MFA from U.C. Riverside in 2009, and taught at U.C. Riverside and U.C. Irvine, and was a Senior Lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design.
View Christine’s website at christinefrerichs.com
Image: “Wet Moon, Clear Path (Tucson),” (2017) Copyright Christine Frerichs
Feb. 14, 2024
Jenny Siegfried (BA ’05, Art History/Studio Art/Classics) is a special education teacher at Kennedy Middle School in Natick, Mass., and an illustrator and mixed media artist “who feels most at home” on a mountain-side trail with her watercolors and sketchbook.
“I believe that art is a pause to breathe deeply, and a way to document the beauty in nature; most importantly, art is a necessary voice to elevate and unify,” Siegfried said.
A past Artist in Residence for the National Park Service, she also participated in her first corporate art collaboration with Merrell Outdoor Gear and Footwear.
From Jenny’s website — https://www.jennysiegfried.com: “When I’m not teaching special education to my favorite middle school scholars and students, my love of hiking and illustration keeps me on the trail and making art in the outdoors. I’ve partnered with local and national outdoor organizations to organize art-making experiences on local trails. I’ve also lectured on the importance and value of creative experiences from city to trail at a variety of venues, including the REI “Force of Nature” Women’s Speaker series and at Harvard University.”
School of Art faculty member Sandra Barr, who had Jenny in three classes, said: “Besides everything Jenny has accomplished as an artist, she is an empathetic, thoughtful, smart, human being who is teaching others.”
Follow Siegfried on Instagram: @jennyalissa
Jan. 31, 2024
Aili Schmeltz (MFA ’03, Sculpture) is a sculptor and painter who splits her time between Los Angeles and the High Desert of California.
According to her website bio, her work is informed by environmental, philosophical and architectural histories of the American West. Current series of works include CA Women, mixed media textile paintings that honor women of California who have furthered equality and justice in a wide range of communities and a series of Cairn ceramic sculptures, which use modular building and historic architectural languages to create futuristic monument/relics.
Schmeltz also is a lecturer at the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles Mission College and the Los Angeles Community College District.
Website: ailischmeltz.com
Instagram: ailischmeltz
Latest exhibition: Cairn 24 at Lancaster (California) Museum of Art and History — MOAH @moahlancaster
On View January 13 – April 14, 2024
