Author: Michael Chesnick

The University of Arizona School of Art will have a strong presence this fall at the Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS) in Hermosillo, Mexico, where three interconnected exhibitions will examine the social, political, environmental and cultural landscapes that shape the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

School of Art Professor David Taylor’s “COMPLEX” will be accompanied by MFA alumna Mariel Miranda’s “El viento o el polvo, tal vez” (“The wind or the dust, perhaps”) and the group exhibition “Border as Network,” featuring work by nine graduate students who participated in Taylor’s fall 2024 field-study class.

Sponsors of the Hermosillo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS) include the University of Arizona’s Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry. Top photo: Professor Daylor Taylor flies a drone during his fall 2024 field-study class. (Photo by Lu Zheng)

With a collective opening reception on Sept. 4 at 7 p.m., the three shows will stay on view at MUSAS as part of FotoSeptiembre Sonora 2026 and through March 28, 2027, occupying the museum’s third-floor galleries.

Taylor’s “COMPLEX” — supported by a prestigious Graham Foundation grant — includes photography, video, audio, aerial imagery and installation as part of his ongoing investigation into border infrastructure, surveillance technologies and detention centers that have changed the region over the past two decades. Also featured is his multimedia installation “Panorama/Panopticon,” which focuses on Ambos Nogales and the increasingly monitored Sonoran Desert border region.  

“(The professor’s work) reveals the ways in which the logics of surveillance, containment and detention shape one another,” said curatorial contributor Ila N. Sharen, and simultaneously exposes the visible and invisible infrastructures that influence movement, perception and power.

Professor David Taylor’s “COMPLEX” includes photographs of the vast system of privately operated prisons that incarcerate thousands of migrants and refugees under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Miranda received her MFA in Studio Art in 2023. Her exhibition examines industrial ecosystems, labor and extractive economies through the experiences of people living and working in Tijuana’s Barrio Cumbres. Through installation, sculpture, video and speculative forms of inquiry, “El viento o el polvo, tal vez” highlights alternative futures emerging from the border region.

“(Her exhibition explores) alternative rhythms and subversive operations in which the working-class imagines, constructs and enables new horizons for the future,” curator Inari Reséndiz says.

Miranda’s similar 2023 MFA Thesis Exhibition installation, “The dust, or the wind, perhaps,” presented a speculative fiction installation invoking radical utopias founded in a Science Fiction workshop that she co-hosted with her brother, neighbors and friends in her Tijuana, Mexico, barrio.

Mariel Miranda (MFA ’23, Studio Art), with her 2023 MFA Thesis Exhibition installation.

The third exhibition, “Border as Network,” features current School of Art MFA students Beihua Guo and Porter McDonald and Humanities graduate student Lu Zheng, as well as recent MFA graduates Andrés Caballero, Benjamin Davis, Maya Jackson, Alexis Joy Hagestad, Semoria F. Mosley and Camille Trautman. The nine traveled throughout Arizona and Sonora during the fall 2024 semester.

Their research took them to religious sites, Indigenous lands, manufacturing facilities, farms, threatened ecosystems, agricultural enterprises and resource-extraction zones. They followed the Tucson-Nogales-Hermosillo corridor, viewing it as a regional network whose local conditions illuminate broader global dynamics and affect everyday life.

“The resulting works challenge simplified narratives of the border and instead reveal a landscape defined by continuity, complexity and interdependence” the museum said in a news release.

The students’ work also reflects Gloria Anzaldúa’s view of the borderlands as a place that is geographic, psychological and spiritual. Anzaldúa, who died in 2004, was an American philosopher and scholar of Chicana feminism, cultural theory and queer theory.

Professor David Taylor’s fall 2024 field-study class created border signs in different languages with the message:“Keep your passport | Guard your papers | Save your identity.” (Photo by Colin Blakely)

Mosley, a social justice-oriented photojournalist and now a School of Art adjunct instructor, said she spent the semester “trying to understand the desert from a spiritual point of view — how it’s continuously rebirthing itself and going through these renewal cycles.”

Jackson, a landscape-based, conceptual photographer, said it “would be powerful, even on a community level, for more people to have the experiences we had” to better grasp the borderlands’ beauty and challenges.

She and her fellow graduate students held a previous “Border as Network” exhibition in Tucson’s Pidgin Palace Arts in August 2025. Taylor also presented “COMPLEX” at Pidgin Palace in 2024.

As a whole, the three Hermosillo exhibitions bring together Taylor, Miranda and emerging artists from the School of Art to examine a region shaped by movement, labor, technology, migration, commerce and the environment.

Current graduate student Beihua Guo took this image of the U.S.-Mexico border during the fall 2024 field-study class.

For Taylor and his students, the exhibitions are an extension of research conducted across the borderlands. For exhibition visitors, they offer different perspectives on a region that is often reduced to a political boundary but is, in practice, much more interconnected.

“I grew up in Tucson and have been to a lot of these places before, but I was really excited to take the class because I wanted to see them through a new lens … and really understand the systems that make up the border,” McDonald said.

Taylor has described his broader borderlands work and semi-annual field class as an effort to ensure that people’s experiences do not disappear.

“(It’s) about unflattening the narratives of the U.S.-Mexico border and the Sonoran Desert borderlands,” he said.

More info

• Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS) directions
• 2026 FotoSeptiembre Sonora

Celebrating its 20^th season, the University of Arizona School of Art’s Visiting Artists and Scholars Endowment (VASE) lecture series will feature Dario Robleto, Cara Romero, Ana María León and Jorge Lucero in 2026-27.

The free, hour-long VASE presentations will be held at the Center for Creative Photography auditorium, 1030 N. Olive Road.

“VASE creates a space of encounter where artists, architects and scholars meet our students in the fertile ground between disciplines,” Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi said.

Dario Robleto

• Date: Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
• Lecture title: “Ancient Beacons Long for Notice”

Robleto will discuss his interdisciplinary approach to crafting and conveying messages of emotion and identity into the cosmos, a kind of “humanities off-planet.” He is an American artist, writer and filmmaker based in Houston. His work has been exhibited widely and held in prominent collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Menil Collection and the National Gallery of Art. “Ancient Beacons Long for Notice” also is a film by Robleto — the third installment in a trilogy exploring the history and legacy of the Golden Record, a cosmic time capsule attached to NASA’s Voyager I and II space probes.

Cara Romero

• Date: Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
• Lecture title: “Photography as Praxis”

Renowned artist/photographer Cara Romero will give a career-spanning talk about the making of a contemporary Native artist, from her training at the Institute of American Indian Arts to founding the Cara Romero Gallery and Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero’s work — held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA — moves fluidly between fine art, documentary and cinematic staged photography, grounded in Chemehuevi epistemology, traditional ecological knowledge, and Indigenous futurism.

Ana María León

• Date: Thursday, Feb. 25, 2027, 5:30 p.m.
• Lecture title: “Spatial Solidarities at Dawson Island, 1889 & 1973”

León is an associate professor of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her newest book is titled “Spatial Solidarities: Architecture and Resistance in 1970s.” She will talk about Chile’s Dawson Island, the site of a detention and torture center for political prisoners of the Pinochet dictatorship, which violently took over the country in 1973. León will examine the similarities between the settler colonial Chilean state at the end of the 19th century and the dictatorship of the late 20th century, as well as spatial forms of solidarity mobilized by the individuals imprisoned by the regime to resist its violence and reclaim their agency. Her talk is co-sponsored by the College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture.

Jorge Lucero

• Date: Thursday, March 25, 2027, 5:30 p.m.
• Lecture title: “No Wasted Moves: On the Pliability of Teaching as a Creative Practice”

The Chicago artist and professor will expand on the pliability of a fully integrated teaching and creative practice. Showcasing major projects from the last 25 years, Lucero aims to present the possibility that conceptual art permissions open a path for rethinking how we test the expressive and inquiry potential of everyday institutions and materials we come in contact with. Lucero is a professor of Art Education in the School of Art & Design and a senior associate dean at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to working in higher education, he served as a high school art teacher at the Chicago Public School District.

About VASE

The School of Art focuses on bringing diverse artists and scholars from around the world to our campus. These artists and scholars bring their own unique influences to the program by engaging with community members, students, and faculty through salons, lectures and exhibitions.

The VASE series is made possible by the School of Art Advisory Board Visiting Artists and Scholars Endowment, the National Endowment for the Arts, the School of Art, the College of Fine Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence, the Center for Creative Photography and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Tucson.

Go to vase.art.arizona.edu for more details about the artists and scholars.

The 2026 Arizona Biennial features six artists with University of Arizona School of Art ties, including MFA student Sheldon Patten and Professor Sama Alshaibi from the school’s acclaimed Photography, Video & Imaging program.

Joining them among the 31 artists chosen are School of Art alums Claire Fall Blanchette (MFA ’25), Eli Burke (PhD ’25), Mary Meyer (MFA ’05) and Anh-Thuy Nguyen (BFA ’10).

The 39th Biennial, the longest-running statewide juried exhibition in Arizona, is on view from May through September 2026 at the Tucson Museum of Art — juried by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, executive director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley.

“Serving as a juror for the Arizona Biennial was a genuinely exciting opportunity to take in the creative breadth across the state and deepen my sense of what’s happening in the Southwest,” Rodrigues Widholm said.

Meet the six SOA-related artists and their Biennial work (photos courtesy of the artists):

Sheldon Patten

“Clothesline Randolph, AZ”
“Cotton Fields Randolph, AZ”
“SRP Randolph, AZ”
All inkjet print on premium matte cotton paper, 2025

Sheldon Patten

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Artist statement: I create visual documentary work that examines identity, representation and structural inequality. Centered in Randolph, Arizona, this project investigates environmental racism and socioeconomic disinvestment affecting one of the state’s oldest historically Black communities. Established through Arizona’s cotton industry, Randolph was later annexed by the surrounding city of Coolidge and encircled by industrial development and hazardous infrastructure. The work considers how vulnerability and endurance coexist within systems of inequity, centering intimate human experience to reveal the beauty and continuity of collective resilience. I document how land, memory, and belonging endure despite displacement and political marginalization.

Bio: Patten is a lens-based artist from Toronto entering his second year of the MFA program at the School of Art. Using portraiture and visual documentary, he represents the impacts of displacement, environmental harm and resource scarcity imposed on historically Black and Caribbean communities. His earlier work — “Like a Rose”— examines the intimate bond between the artist and their mother as they navigate her living with Parkinson’s disease, tracing caregiving, loss of autonomy and the transformation of identity confronted by neurodegenerative illness.

Instagram and website: @sheldon_patten and sheldonpatten.com

Sama Alshaibi

“Tabula Rasa”
Mixed media collage, 2026

Sama Alshaibi

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Artist statement: “My practice emerges from aftermath, where fragmentation is the material condition of political conflict and forced migration. I explore Iraq’s built environments and the systems that imagined them. Baghdad is not only a place, but a living archive shaped by developmental ambition and political interruption. Using fieldwork, archival materials, and on-site imaging, I trace how modernization was spatialized and then stalled, and how its residue remains legible in form. Through LiDAR scanning, photography and video, I render Baghdad as a palimpsest. Return—grounded in my position as both exiled and returnee—exposes the misalignment between memory, form, and experience.”

Bio: Born in Iraq to a Palestinian mother and Iraqi father, and now a naturalized US citizen, Alshaibi is a Regents Professor of Art and Chair of the Photography, Video and Imaging program at the School of Art. Her work has been widely exhibited, including at the 55th Venice Biennale, the 13th Cairo International Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Crystal Bridges Museum of Art (State of the Art 2020), and the Barjeel Foundation (UAE). Aperture Foundation published her monograph, Sama Alshaibi: Sand Rushes In, in 2015. Alshaibi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography (2021), the Art Matters Betty Parsons Fellowship (2023), the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture Visual Arts Award (2017), and residencies at MacDowell (2025), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (2024), and Artpace (2019).

Instagram and website: @sama_alshaibi and samaalshaibi.com

Claire Fall Blanchette

“Tangled Currents”
Reishi mycelium, hemp hurd, hardwood shavings, clay, cardboard, paper, xanthan gum, and steel (2025)
“Reclamare”
Screen print and reishi spores on Rives BFK (2025)

Claire Fall Blanchette

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Artist statement: “Tangled Currents” uses eight historic landfills along the Santa Cruz River in Tucson as a framework to examine the sustained consequences of human activity on a local ecosystem. Each sculpture represents one of these sites and offers a speculative solution for their remediation. The work is created with reishi mycelium. Mycelial networks can clean toxins from soil and water through the process of myco-remediation and form reciprocal relationships with other organisms that increase their collective chance of survival. “Tangled Currents” presents an alternative to human-centered ways of thinking by examining natural processes for guidance in developing a mutually beneficial world.

Bio: Blanchette is an artist working across multiple disciplines including sculpture, printmaking and drawing. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Arizona in Tucson and a BFA in Printmaking and History of Art from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Recently, she was an artist-in-residence in the Expressive Arts Department at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, New Mexico, where she had a solo show, “Ground Truthing,” at the Francis McCray Gallery. Using organic and unconventional materials, she investigates the boundaries that humans have established between the built world and the environment. Blanchette is the recipient of the Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize (University of Arizona), Helen Gross Award (University of Arizona), Reba Stewart – Genevieve McMillan Travel Fellowship (Massachusetts College of Art and Design). She also was an artist-in-residence at Djerassi Resident Artist Program (CA), The Land With No Name (AZ), and Konstepidemin Arts Center (Gothenburg, Sweden). She has shown nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions.

Instagram and website: @clr_fall and cfblanchette.com

Eli Burke

“The Opening”
Photograph printed on coroplast, 2024

Eli Burke

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Artist statement: Artists and cousins Eli and Jesse Burke weave a visual narrative that intertwines identity, nature, and transformation through collaborative photography. Their work-in-progress explores themes of trans identity, masculinity, and embodiment, while examining the interplay between the human experience and the natural world. The Burkes’ photographs reflect a profound connection between the shifting landscapes and the fluidity of the trans body. The ever-changing desert, with its resilient flora and vast skies, mirrors the process of transformation within the body, particularly the trans body, reflecting both its vulnerabilities and strength as it undergoes constant redefinition.

Bio: Burke is an interdisciplinary artist working across drawing, painting, printmaking, photography and installation, exploring themes of loss, identity, queer embodiment, magic, empathy, and vulnerability. Burke earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in Art and Visual Culture Education from the University of Arizona School of Art.

Instagram and website: @iheartfeelings and eliburke.com

Mary Meyer

“The Leaf Connection”
Hand-carved ceramic leaves and pins, 2024-25

Mary Meyer

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Artist statement: My sculptural practice examines the relationship between humans and the botanical world, grounded in Arizona’s ecology and shaped by biophilia—the innate human affinity for living systems. Working with clay, wood, and found objects, I focus on tactile experiences to explore cycles of growth, adaptation, and resilience shared by bodies and plants. “The Leaf Connection” extends this inquiry through hand-carved ceramic leaves inspired by community-sourced observations of local flora, highlighting citizen science and our shared responsibility for urban biodiversity. Through these works, I create contemplative spaces where material presence, embodied encounter, and desert environment intersect to deepen connection to place.

Bio: Meyer is a sculptor whose work investigates the relationship between the human form and the natural environment. 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 30 years. She holds a BFA in sculpture from Arizona State University, where she studied foundry casting methods and metalworking. She completed her graduate studies at the University of Arizona, where she received the MFA Fellowship for her work with large mixed media installations. The artist, who has exhibited throughout Arizona and Royal Caribbean International, has served as an adjunct professor teaching sculpture at Arizona State University, Scottsdale Community College and Chandler-Gilbert Community College.

Instagram and website: @marymeyerstudio and marymeyerstudio.com

Anh-Thuy Nguyen

“Rice is Me”
2-separate-channel video with sound, 2025

Anh-Thuy Nguyen

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Artist statement: The works I submitted here are drawn from the multi-disciplinary project “Rice is Mẹ” (Mẹ is Mother in Vietnamese). Through the powerful symbol of rice, I embark on a journey to reconnect with my roots, family, and traditions, while navigating the complexities of cultural assimilation. I blend my primary approaches (photography, video) with ceramics, sculpture and poetry in this new work to express my complex emotions of loss, hope and resilience. At the heart of the “Rice is Mẹ” project, I intended to reclaim rice as my artistic medium by combining Vietnamese and American clay to sculpt each grain of rice.  

Bio: Nguyen live and works in Tucson, where she is head of the Visual Arts Department at Pima Community College. She received her MFA in Photography/Video from Southern Methodist University, a BFA in Photography from the University of Arizona; and a BA in Economic Geography from the University of Social Sciences & Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. As a Vietnamese-American artist, she investigates her cultural and identity as well as her migration story through photography, video, installation and performance art. She has received grants and fellowships from the Arizona Commissions for the Arts, Art Foundations for Tucson and Southern Arizona, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, and the Oklahoma Center for Humanities. Recently. She was awarded the 2023 Second Sight award from Medium Photo, and her work work is in the permanent collections of Amarillo Museum of Art, Tucson Museum of Art, the Center for Photography at Woodstock among others.

Instagram and website: @anh_thuynguyen and anh-thuynguyen.com

Other Biennial artists

• Michael Afsa
• Maria Ruth Aragon De la Fuente
• Scott Baxter
• Brass Tuna
• Cherie Buck-Hutchison
• Manny Burruel
• Ashley Czajkowski
• Hoge Day
• Rafael Angel Diaz
• Mikey Estes
• Nathan Garcia
• Lex Gjurasic
• Maura Grogan
• Kate Hoover
• Adia Jamille
• Monica Aissa Martinez
• Daniella Napolitano
• Tom Patton
• George Peñaloza
• Wendy Raisanen
• Inna Rohr
• Dee Ruff
• Julius Schlosburg
• Karima Walker
• Danielle Wood

Related stories

• This is Tucson story
• Southwest Contemporary preview
• Tucson Weekly profile
• Tucson Museum of Art preview

School of Art animation students helped Arizona Illustrated and Arizona Public Media win the Regional Edward R. Murrow Excellence in Innovation Award for the May 2025 broadcast video profile, “Eveli: A Jeweler, A Dreamer.”

“I cannot stop smiling,” said Nicole Antebi, an associate professor in the Illustration, Design & Animation program. “This goes in the students’ resumes.”

The student artists in Antebi’s fall 2024 animation class (ART 306b) were:

• Camila Soria Palacios
• Natalie Duong
• Danitza Miranda
• Amanda Desjarlais
• Hanna Lawson
• Evan McMillan
• Zoe Reisinger
• Sasha McDonald
• Earnest “E.j.” Walker IV
• Garrett Icenhower
• Morgan Erdman
• Scooter Curran
• Julia Victoria Johnson
• Elisa Elena
• Andrea Michelle Davila
• Nina Rose Dominguez
• Ashley Bambauer
• Sophia Matte
• Amrutha Susarla
• Brianna Golden
• Sela Margalit

The students created animated sequences based on Eveli Sabatie’s book, “Eveli: A Jeweler’s Memoir.”

Born in North Africa to French parents, Sabatie began her jewelry career on the mesas of Hopi, where a chance encounter in a laundromat led her to be mentored by Charles Loloma, an acclaimed Native American jeweler. She went on to forge her own career, working in Santa Fe and then Tucson, where she lives now.

In all, Arizona Illustrated won six Regional Murrow awards for excellence in journalism.

For Nuala Gwilliam, art began before sunrise.

As a toddler newly moved from Massachusetts to Tucson, Gwilliam often woke up hours before the rest of her family. To keep her occupied, her parents left out crayons, paper and snacks beneath the kitchen table.

“I’d probably attribute the beginning of my ‘artistic career’ to when I was 3 or 4, dealing with jet lag,” Gwilliam said. “So, from a toddler scribbling at 5 a.m., to an awkward middle schooler making comics in the margins of my homework, to a high schooler flourishing in art club, to being here at the University of Arizona, art has always been in the forefront of my mind.”

Now, years later, she’s inspiring young artists to find their voice and is being honored as the College of Fine Arts Outstanding Senior during the May 17 CFA Spring Graduation Convocation in Centennial Hall at 2 p.m. After graduating with a BFA in Art & Visual Culture Education, Gwilliam will start a job teaching art at Catalina High Magnet School in August.

A record of academic excellence

In their nomination letter, School of Art Associate Professor Carissa DiCindio and Professor Ryan Shin described Gwilliam as “one of our strongest recent undergraduates in AVCE,” praising her exceptional academic record, leadership and commitment to youth arts education.

Academically, Gwilliam maintained a 4.0 GPA at the University of Arizona and earned Highest Academic Distinction in 2024 while repeatedly appearing on the Dean’s List with Distinction. Faculty noted her professionalism, thoughtful participation and ability to combine educational theory with practical classroom experience.

“She developed a solid understanding of the principles and procedures of art education and strengthened her instructional and classroom management skills through practical teaching experiences,” DiCindio and Shin wrote.

That experience has taken many forms. Gwilliam worked as a “Chugim” art instructor at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, where she taught weekly art classes for groups of 20 to 30 elementary school students. Her lessons centered around themes such as kindness, gratitude, creativity and persistence.

She also interned with Groundworks, a community arts nonprofit dedicated to creating safe and accessible creative spaces for youth. There, she facilitated public open studio hours, developed lesson plans, volunteered at exhibitions and events, and assisted with promotional design work.

Learning from a fellow School of Art graduate

One of the most influential experiences of Gwilliam’s undergraduate career has been her student teaching placement at Tucson Magnet High School under mentor teacher Elizabeth Denneau, herself a 2018 School of Art BFA graduate in AVCE.

For Gwilliam, the experience has offered a firsthand look at the kind of educator she hopes to become.

“Student teaching at Tucson High has been an amazing experience,” she said. “While studying how to teach is great, actually doing it is an entirely different rodeo.”

She described her students as creative, funny and inspiring, but emphasized the impact Denneau has had on her development as a teacher and artist.

“I truly couldn’t be having the experience I am without Elizabeth Denneau, my mentor teacher,” Gwilliam said. “Her experience as both an artist, and an educator of high school and college students has given me incredibly valuable perspective and insight. She’s truly helped me solidify the teacher I want to be, and I can’t thank her enough.”

The mentorship has also reinforced the strong connections between the School of Art and Tucson’s broader arts education community, with one generation of graduates helping guide the next.

Faculty members say Gwilliam’s teaching philosophy centers on making creativity accessible while encouraging self-expression and confidence.

“I really enjoy watching the cogs turn in someone’s head as they realize something new, or hone a new skill, or express something in a way they haven’t before,” she said. “Teaching art really feels like the pieces falling into place for me.”

Building community through art

Alongside her educational work, Gwilliam has also built a strong artistic practice of her own. Faculty selected several of her projects for exhibition, and this spring she participated in the 2026 BFA exhibition for 2D Studies with her mixed-media installation, “Intersection.”

Gwilliam, who did commission-based illustrative work all throughout high school and into college, is interested in design but also enjoys traditional art. “I’ve worked a lot in mixed media. I love finding new ways to communicate through materials as well as imagery,” she said.

“With my time in both the Illustration, Design & Animation track as well as Art Education, I’ve been able to meet artists with many different disciplines and talents,” she said. “I can’t credit the CFA enough for the impact it’s made on my artistic development, my perspectives on art education, and my personal life and community.”

Though her résumé is filled with accomplishments, some of Gwilliam’s favorite memories are rooted in quieter moments of connection.

She recalls a late night during her freshman year in sculpture class, when she and several classmates stayed in the studio working toward a deadline. Covered in paint and insulation foam dust, the exhausted group was suddenly offered leftover catered food from another campus event.

“I don’t think better words have ever been spoken to a group of hungry 18-year-olds covered in paint,” she said. It was the best food I’d had in weeks — little steak kebabs, brussel sprouts and dessert tarts. All woefully underdressed for the event, we filled our paper plates and laughed at how lucky we were.”

Moments like those helped define her undergraduate experience — one shaped by collaboration, mentorship and community. “I was making friends and art and eating good food and listening to great music, all at once,” she said.

Gwilliam credited Dr. DiCindio and Dr. Shin for playing “a big part in my development of my educational skills and passions.” But she also expressed gratitude to graduate instructors, including Hanan Khatoun, Trent Pachon, Drew Grella and Dylan Hawkinson, as well as faculty members Angie Zielinski and Cerese Vaden for encouraging her artistic growth and supporting her through challenges.

A new chapter at Catalina Magnet High School

After graduation, Gwilliam will begin a full-time position teaching art at Catalina Magnet High School, marking the beginning of her professional career as an educator in Tucson.

The opportunity represents a major milestone for Gwilliam, who hopes to continue building inclusive, community-centered art spaces for students while also developing her own creative practice.

“I see my graduation as the beginning of so many new potential opportunities,” she said.

Alongside teaching, Gwilliam plans to continue freelance illustration work, pursue graphic design studies and stay active in Tucson’s arts community through museum and nonprofit volunteer work.

“I have one life, and I intend to fill it with as much art as I can.”

Growing up in Mexico City, Andrés Caballero made sure to cherish dinnertime with his parents and two older brothers — no matter how busy or tired they all might be.

“It was the one moment we shared each day,” he said. “For me, and for many families, the dining room is a cornerstone of identity. It’s the space where conversations unfold, stories are told, and memories take root.”

Those memories not only helped shape Caballero as an artist, photographer and researcher, they also became the inspiration for his current MFA Thesis Exhibition installation, “IN PLACE,” at the University of Arizona School of Art. Since 2023, the Fulbright student has participated in 23 exhibitions and screening placements, and secured 21 grants, fellowships and awards.

And his latest honor might be the most impressive: the overall Outstanding Graduate student for the College of Fine Arts. Caballero will be honored May 17 at the 2026 CFA Spring Graduation Convocation in Centennial Hall at 2 p.m.

“Andrés exemplifies the CFA criteria through an uncommon combination of rigorous, research-driven creative work, sustained academic excellence, demonstrated leadership and consistent public-facing community engagement,” Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi said in her nominating letter on behalf of the school’s Photography, Video & Imaging (PVI) faculty.

“Grounded in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, his work examines how computational systems reshape borders, domestic space, and memory, with disproportionate consequences for marginalized communities,” she said.

Border families contribute to MFA project

Caballero’s MFA installation, “IN PLACE,” on view at the University of Arizona Museum of Art until May 16, reconstructs a Mexican family’s dining room from the borderlands. As a video of a participating family re-enacting oral histories and everyday domestic gestures plays, a real-time computer vision system quietly tracks the audience’s movement, shifting the room from refuge to a monitored space.

“These everyday scenes, such as sharing a meal, offer a powerful entry point for empathy,” Caballero said. “They reflect the human need for community, stability and care. In doing so, the work reclaims visibility for those often rendered invisible, reminding us that migration is not only about crossing borders, but also about preserving dignity, connection and a sense of place.”

He worked with five families, four from Douglas and one from Tucson, with much of his design work based on continuous visits and conversations, in addition to personal objects they contributed for his final installation.

“This process included the collection of oral histories, which culminated in recorded reenactments of personal memories. These recordings are what the audience sees on one of the screens,” Caballero said. “The relationships I built and the experiences I had during this process remain some of the most meaningful moments of my time here.”

Bringing visibility to school

As far as “meaningful moments,” Caballero has had many during his three years at the School of Art:

Academic: In addition to his Fulbright scholarship and a 3.94 GPA, his other major distinctions include the Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Award, the Border Arts Corridor (BAC) Fellowship; the Mellon Fronteridades Graduate Fellowship from the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry; and a Tinker Field Research Grant. He also became the first School of Art MFA student to receive a Roots for Resilience Fellowship from the University of Arizona’s Data Science Institute, an honor typically held by PhD candidates.

Creative activity: His “Borderlands Masks” solo exhibition at the school’s Lionel Rombach Gallery explored the stories of the lucha libre community along the US-Mexico border. But his student work reached well beyond the usual graduate exhibition circuit, including major cultural and civic venues such as the Tucson Museum of Art (“Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands”), the Consulate of Mexico in Tucson, the 17 Days Video Series at Western Michigan University, and presentations in Guadalajara and Mexico City, demonstrating professional traction and cross-border visibility.

Leadership: Caballero served on the Latin American Art Patrons board and the Sienna Collective, supporting students of all backgrounds and lived experiences, and was active in the school’s Riso club. He also created a professional opportunity for five PVI graduate students by securing a grant from the Graduate and Professional Student Council to support attendance at the Society for Photographic Education 2025 National Conference. He shared advanced technical knowledge through workshops and invited presentations such as “Computer Vision & Vibe Coding,” hosted at the School of Art. He excelled as a graduate teaching assistant, including lab sessions for Intro to Photographic Practices, and as a graduate research assistant to Alshaibi and Associate Dean David Taylor, and as a digital production assistant in the U of A Libraries’ Digitization Services for Special Collections.

Community Outreach: Caballero has hosted public-facing workshops and invited presentations, including the “Documenting the Desert” workshop (Douglas, Arizona), the Computer Vision & Vibe Coding workshop (VARS, Tucson), and an invited presentation for the Tinker Field Symposium (Kiva Theater, Tucson). He also has supported public screenings and events that brought university-linked creative research into civic, binational and community spaces, including projects and presentations at venues such as the Consulate of Mexico in Tucson and community arts sites in the borderlands.

“He brings visibility to the program through media coverage and public storytelling, extending the reach of student research and strengthening the public profile of the School of Art,” Alshaibi said.

MFA project continues his focus on community

In his research, Caballero said he seeks a bilateral and collaborative approach, “where everyone is an active participant in the construction of a border counter-narrative.”

“My goal is to continue strengthening these community ties to generate art that serves as a tool for agency in the face of increasing systems of control,” he said.

As part of his Centennial Prize award, Caballero plans to make his MFA “IN PLACE” installation a traveling exhibition shown in different cities throughout the borderlands, prioritizing public, non-institutional spaces. He’s in the final stages of discussion to show it at a historic public venue in Douglas. “This would be a special location for me because most of the participants from this project live in the area, so I am imagining it as a community pop-up event,” he said.

In addition, Caballero hopes to gather enough documentation to build a comprehensive website for “IN PLACE.” He said: “Beyond serving as a living digital archive, the site will allow the project to reach a wider audience,” he said. “It also becomes a public, open-access resource that exists beyond the institutional walls.”

Looking back and ahead

Caballero credits Professors Alshaibi, Martina Shenal, Taylor and Marcos Serafim — and his Photo, Video & Imaging MFA cohort — for helping him achieve his goals. His first class, Experimental Photographic Techniques with Shenal, set the tone.

“I was delayed a week due to some visa issues, so my first introduction to them was by having my face projected into a huge wall while I could barely see anybody,” Caballero said. “After I finally arrived, I felt welcomed right away and quickly bonded with everyone. At that point, I was experimenting freely, just learning and following my curiosity. That lack of pressure made the experience feel completely liberating.”

He added: “I still remember the time spent in the darkroom with my peers; working through ideas, talking about their processes, and trying to figure out what I wanted to say with my own work. Those moments became meaningful throughout the program.”

As for his career aspirations, Caballero plans to return to Mexico City at some point and apply to PhD programs in Studio Art, both in the United States and internationally. “My research is currently focused on new media and experimental visual arts, and I plan to continue developing projects in this field while eventually teaching courses related to these areas in my country,” he said.

“My goal is to continue working as a full-time artist while remaining engaged in an academic environment,” Caballero said.

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