Mellon recipient Cordova hopes art project adds to border discourse

As part of his fellowship to study and interpret the U.S.-Mexico border, Nathan Cordova not only is interviewing his labor-activist uncle, but the School of Art graduate student also is conceptually interrogating the border wall itself.

The result will be “Ghosts and Shadows,” a 20-minute audio/visual project that Cordova will screen locally in Tucson. Cordova, an MFA candidate in the school’s nationally ranked Photography, Video and Imaging program, is one of eight University of Arizona students to receive the 2023 Mellon-Fronteridades Graduate Fellowship.

Nathan Cordova in the field

Cordova plans to travel to Tijuana, Mexico, and has already visited the border wall in Nogales and the pre-1848 U.S.-Mexico border in Colorado. He also plans to do a second Q&A in Los Angeles with his uncle Raymond Cordova, a labor and civil rights organizer with the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez in the 1960s and ’70s.

“While the original impetus of my interview was to learn more about my uncle’s time with the UFW, he instead expanded my frame of reference for my own project to a world without borders, where all labor is dignified,” Nathan Cordova said.

In the end, the grad student hopes his project “can add to the discourse of possibilities that we collectively imagine about this material/immaterial entity we call the U.S.-Mexico border wall.”

“The part that excites me the most … is the way I’ve proposed to engage with the agency of the material that comprises a lot of the border wall,” Cordova said. “I find iron, of which steel is made, to be an incredibly poetic material — a material that is always working to return itself to the earth, despite the nation-state’s best attempts to prevent it. In this way, the iron that comprises the border wall is actively working toward its own destruction of form and its own transformation.”

Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi, Cordova’s thesis adviser, also is excited about his project.

“By mining his family history from a critical perspective on how the border permeated the lives of his kinfolk and other communities with similar consequences, and by researching the conditions of the (wall’s) structure and site through a direct and embodied presence, Nathan is forming a vehicle for an encounter at various scales of knowledge,” Alshaibi said.

“Nathan’s project shares that borders are not just facts on the ground but also penetrable material in their making and, therefore, physically functioning toward their undoing,” she said. “In other words, when borders are made, the artist, as an activist, archivist and storyteller, can similarly act as the agent remaking a radical knowledge surrounding its presence and meaning over time. The political embodiment of borders requires re-imagining the physical conditions implicated in their trespassing over land and lives.”

Sharing with the community

Cordova hopes to screen his audio/video artwork to the public by this December, followed by a community engagement discussion with group reflections and possibly guest scholars from the university community. He’ll also make the work available for classes and symposiums.

Nathan Cordova works on earlier photo project.

“Nathan’s project creates social and institutional conditions for productive dialogue about what borders are, what they mean, and what can be imagined otherwise,” Alshaibi said.

Cordova, 38, received his undergraduate degree in Journalism from the University of Oregon. He spent more than a decade running a freelance commercial photography business, including weddings, which took him throughout the U.S. Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

A multidisciplinary artist who works primarily with photography, video, sound, sculpture and performance, Cordova joined the MFA program at the University of Arizona in fall 2021. He’s independently published four artists’ books, including “One Man’s Body Family Album” (2020), and his commissioned work has appeared in WIRED.

“I learned a lot about myself in those early years,” Cordova said about his wedding and commercial photography. “I built a ton of self-confidence through the practice of showing up in a new place and immersing myself in a group of people I’d never met before.”

He and fellow graduate classmate Jacqueline Arias are active in the Southwest Photo Collaborative, which includes MFA students from the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and the University of New Mexico. Their recent artwork is part of the “Land, Body & Archive” traveling exhibition, which ran until Sept. 22 in Albuquerque and is slated to be at the School of Art’s Lionel Rombach Gallery from Oct. 26 to Nov. 3 and in Tempe in early 2024.

Cordova said his artwork maps the poetic, philosophical and historical exploration of family testimony by making meaning out of sites of struggle and locations of identity.

That’s where his uncle comes in. A civil rights champion, Ray Cordova spent 18 months in the ‘60’s with the “Freedom Summer Movement.” He served in the U. S. Army Airborne and was a sergeant in Vietnam.

“My uncle and I talked for six hours straight. He’s done so much in his life that I felt like we only got to skim the surface,” Nathan Cordova said. “Perhaps, the most surprising part was learning more about the truly international scope of the labor organizing he’s been involved in … Palestine in the two years leading up to the first Intifada, Rio under the (Brazil) dictatorship, and the Mexican port city of Lázaro Cárdenas during attempts to halt the passage of NAFTA.”

‘Honored’ and ‘validated’

The Mellon-Fronteridades Graduate Fellowship is run through the university’s Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry and the Mellon Foundation. The program supports current UArizona graduate students to carry out interdisciplinary humanities-centered research projects, and creative scholarly activities focused on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I feel incredibly honored to have received this fellowship,” Cordova said. “I also feel incredibly validated. I proposed a project and methodology that I would personally describe as ‘out there.’ When thinking about art as research, the outcome is not yet known.”

“I think mentoring/teaching will always be a part of my life,” Nathan Cordova says.

In addition to visiting the border in Nogales, Cordova plans to collaborate with 2023 MFA graduate Mariel Miranda in Tijuana, Mexico, in November for a portion of his “Ghost and Shadows” project. A section of the border wall, made of steel slats, ends in the Pacific Ocean in Tijuana.

Miranda helped give Cordova feedback for his fellowship project draft.

“Mariel and I became close friends during our time together here. Her work addresses issues of labor, among other themes, as does my project,” Cordova said. “We feed off each other’s ideas, passion and support.”

Cordova, who teaches as a graduate assistant at the School of Art, grew up in Portland, Oregon, and started “making photographs with intention” after attending the Young Musicians & Artists (YMA) program the summer before his junior year, he said.

“I couldn’t articulate this at the time, but the way I see it now, and encourage my students to see it, is to use the camera and the photographic idea to be the authors of their own meaning,” he said. “Every picture we make, even if it’s just a quick snapshot on our cell phone will always tell us something about ourselves.”

Added Cordova: “I always make sure to say that I don’t care what they (the students) make work about, so long as they care about the topic or issue, that’s what matters. Sometimes this initial exploration via an art project will lead a student to pursue an interest in this topic in other classes or other departments outside of the School of Art.”

Why the University of Arizona?

Cordova said he chose the School of Art because of the Photo, Video and Imaging faculty and reputation, and conversations with then-current MFA students.

Marocs Serafim, David Taylor, Martina Shenal and Sama are all amazing,” he said. “They are incredibly dedicated to their students. And not just that, they are driven and dedicated to their own art practices.”

One pleasant surprise, Cordova said, was connecting with Art History Assistant Professor Jeehey Kim, whose groundbreaking “Photography and Korea” book was just published. “I’ve loved her classes, and the material she teaches is robust and complex, yet totally relatable. She’s on my thesis committee as well,” he said.

Cordova is keeping his career options open after graduation in May 2024, but he said “mentoring or teaching will always be a part of my life.”

“Knowing what I know now because of my MFA experience thus far, I feel even more capable of sustaining a robust art practice while also maintaining a freelance career,” he said. “What I’m certain of is that I don’t want an office job. …

“I want to have and sustain a nourishing and impactful art practice that positions myself as an active agent in shaping the world, as much as that practice allows the world, in all its infinite complexities, to shape me in return.”

• Nathan Cordova’s website and Instagram
• Raymond Cordova bio, and online interview and radio interview about 1973 killing of Yemeni immigrant Nagi Daifallah

School welcomes 4 new faculty members

From accomplished artists to cutting-edge educators, the University of Arizona School of Art welcomes two full-time faculty members and two visiting professors as the 2023-24 school year begins.

Yana Payusova has rejoined the school as an assistant professor of practice in First Year Experience, while Jenn Liv has been hired as an assistant professor in Illustration, Design & Animation.

Meanwhile, Kate Collins (visiting associate professor) and Shivani Bhalla (visiting assistant professor) have joined the school’s Art and Visual Culture Education program.

Here’s a closer look at the four new faculty members:

Yana Payusova

Yana Payusova: Received her MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and worked full time in the Student Services area of the School of Art here before becoming an assistant professor of painting, area coordinator of painting and assistant chair of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Arlington three years ago. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Epperson Gallery in Crockett, California, and Conduit Gallery in Dallas. She is also in the permanent collection at the Crocker Art Museum and was recently commissioned to create work for the new Meow Wolf location in Grapevine, Texas. Website

Jenn Liv

Jenn Liv: Is an award-winning Chinese Canadian American illustrator who had been based in Toronto. Among her prestigious clients include The New York Times, Washington Post, Google, Microsoft, All Nippon Airways, AirBNB and NPR. Liv received her Bachelor of Design and Master of Design from OCAD University in Toronto and has taught at both OCAD and Sheridan College. Her personal research interests focus on investigating the intersections between gender studies, feminism, decolonization, and Asian diasporic identity. Jenn also has a keen interest in emerging technology, particularly in mixed reality, searching for new and innovative ways to expand upon her artistic practice through interdisciplinary methodologies. Website

Kate Collins

Kate Collins: Received her Ph.D. from Ohio State University and spent eight years as assistant and then tenured associate professor at Towson University before joining the Baltimore Museum of Art as director of Learning Communities in July 2022. As a community arts scholar/practitioner/leader, she has been published in the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance and Public: A Journal of Imagining America. Her most recent project, YAAS (Youth Artists and Allies taking Action in Society) provides arts programing to resettled refugee youth in partnership with the BCCC Refugee Youth Project and Patterson High School in Baltimore. Bio

Shivani Bhalla

Shivani Bhalla is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Dissertation title: “Visual Autoethnography: Exploring my Disability Experience Through Art Works, Written Narratives, and Conversations”). Prior to that, she received her MFA in Painting from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Vadodara in India. During her Ph.D. program, she has been teaching at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as well as SUNY New Paltz. Her research exploring art and disability in art education spaces has been published in Art Education and presented at a long list of conferences and professional gatherings, including the Art Education Research Institute (AERI) and National Alternative Education Association (NAEA).

The four professors recently reflected on joining the School of Art:

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO IN YOUR FIRST SEMESTER?

Payusova: I am looking forward to welcoming all the incoming BA and BFA art students in my First Year Experience classes. I love the energy of the new academic year and the usual excitement of seeing both familiar and new faces. I am also quite looking forward to studio time. In June I finished a big project (“The Real Unreal” exhibition in Grapevine, Texas) that monopolized all my time last year and then took a short break to develop new ideas. I am now fully rested and eager to get back to work. I am looking forward to experimenting and working on a few projects that have been sitting on the backburner.

“Kunstkamera,” by Yana Payusova, part of “The Real Unreal” exhibition

Liv: I’m looking forward to making new meaningful connections and sharing my knowledge about the illustration field with the students. My goals are to help demystify the inner workings of the industry and to help the students to develop their own visual stylistic identity.

Collins: I get to teach TWO community arts courses — one for grads and one for undergrads and both in my very first semester. What a dream! I’m just thrilled that the AVCE program has an emphasis on community and museums. Looking nationally at art education programs, it’s a unique focus and one of the things that made this opportunity so appealing. I’ve been cultivating a passion for community arts since I finished my MFA at Arizona State in 2002, so coming back to Arizona to teach and engage in community arts research is deeply gratifying. One of my initial goals is to become familiar and build relationships with the various community art organizations in Tucson so we can hopefully find some fruitful opportunities to collaborate.

Bhalla: To connect with students, learning from and growing with them. I see teaching as a form of collaboration, and classrooms as community spaces to support, nurture and help each other grow.

CAN YOU RELATE ONE OF YOUR MOST REWARDING EXPERIENCES?

Liv: What I find the most rewarding about being an educator is seeing all the wonderful work that comes out of my classes. It brings me great joy to see students demonstrate growth and development under my mentorship and guidance.  A recent experience as an artist that has been rewarding for me was finally being accepted into the American Illustration 42 Book this year. This is an achievement I’ve been working toward for nearly a decade now, therefore having this recognition means a lot to me.

Payusova: There are so many rewarding experiences in both teaching and doing my creative research that it’s difficult to think of one. The most rewarding experience for me always in teaching is seeing the students’ “light” go on, so to speak. I love helping the students discover their voice, the direction, their passion. It never gets old. In my creative research, I just finished a large sculptural installation for Meow Wolf (which was the big projects I was referring to earlier). The experience has been the most rewarding and challenging (in all the right ways).

Kate Collins has directed the YAAAS! (Youth Artists and Allies taking Action in Society) at Towson University.

Collins: Building and leading an interdisciplinary arts graduate program over the course of eight years at Towson University in Maryland was incredibly rewarding. During that time though, I was able to design and lead a program called YAAAS (Youth Artists and Allies taking Action in Society) and out of that has evolved a highly impactful pedagogical framework that simultaneously supports learning and wellbeing. Creating YAAAS and the research and publications that have followed have made it a truly a transformative experience that I hope to reinvent here in Tucson. The project embraced collaborative artmaking as a vehicle to build a dynamic partnership between working educators and newly resettled refugee youth in high school. It was beautiful in that it evolved into something that was mutually beneficial and valued by all. Partnering teachers expanded their global competency and gained confidence with employing arts-based strategies to support the growing population of English learners in their classrooms in a manner that is culturally sustaining, and trauma informed. Meanwhile our young partners gained a sense of agency and belonging, built critical relationships, expanded their facility with English, and through artmaking, enjoyed a critical outlet for self-expression that isn’t always possible when you don’t speak the language. It’s incredibly rewarding work that I can’t wait to dive into here in Tucson.

Bhalla: While I taught a disability studies course to preservice art education teachers, it was most rewarding when I realized students were already applying the theory that we were studying to the real-life classroom’s settings.  They had become self-critical and reflective of how they were perceiving disability and responding to students with disabilities.

WHAT ADVICE CAN YOU GIVE TO STUDENTS? 

Payusova: Get off social media! No, really. It’s a great tool for networking and showing your work but it can also feel very intimidating to see so much good work. It can feel as if everything has already been done by someone else. It’s important to take breaks from hearing other people’s voices out there so that you can hear your own. Be patient and kind with yourself. It takes time to develop both techniques and ideas. And finally enjoy this time at the university. It’s a fantastic experience to be a part of this great institution; to learn and grow with faculty and students from all over the country and the world.

Jenn Liv, “All Nippon Airways,” Advertising illustration series

Liv: My advice for students learning illustration is to identify what are the values that are most important to you as a person. This will be fundamental in helping you to develop your own visual identity as an artist. Illustration is a challenging career that rewards persistence over artistic talent alone. It is more important to strive for continuous growth and self-improvement rather than perfection.

Collins: Get to know Tucson. Go hiking and get out in nature. Got to the local farmer’s markets. See the local art shows and support the local artists. Find every cool mural in the city. Tucson as a city has SO much to offer. Go be a part of it! Bring a friend, bring a group, or go solo. Having been a college student for ELEVEN years of my life, I realize how insular we can be on campuses, often barely ever leaving the immediate vicinity. I know now I missed out by not spending more time getting to know the spaces and places and people around me. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I’d work much harder to get out there, especially here in the Southwest when there’s so much beauty and richness all around us.

Bhalla: Be yourself, and value your experiences. Grad school can be tough, but the fact the fact that you made it here is a proof that you are wonderful and your experiences matter. So never doubt that!

As honors flow, Macias hopes to expand border discourse

For years, Alejandro Macias shied away from using his experience growing up on the Texas-Mexico border as the subject of his figure paintings. “I felt everyone around me knew this experience,” he said, “so why speak on it?”

But during his first residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2016, Macias witnessed other young contemporary artists drawing inspiration from their life journeys. “This gave me the confidence and validation to speak on the bicultural experience, assimilation, acculturation, and use sociopolitical subject matter to exercise my voice,” he said.

Now, the University of Arizona School of Art assistant professor is being honored for embracing that voice.

Not only did Macias land a prestigious three-month CALA Alliance residency this summer for Latinx artists, but he also received the Lehmann Emerging Artist Award from the Phoenix Art Museum and saw his “Man on Fire” painting acquired by the University of Arizona Museum of Art for its permanent collection.

Alex Macias, School of Art Assistant Professor

Macias will focus his residency work on the U.S.-Mexico border, including systems of repression, oppression, erasure, disappearances and stories of migration.

“It’s content that I’ve been wanting to investigate using multimedia approaches, such as painting, drawing, printmaking and video,” said Macias, who plans to interview people across the borderlands, collaborate with local organizations and research statistical data.

“I’d like to explore this content with sincerity, and I’m hoping that my work can do these experiences justice and expand the U.S.-Mexico border discourse,” added Macias, who said the project will exhibit in yet-to-be-determined spaces in Phoenix and New York.

Macias is sharing the Lehmann Emerging Artist Award with Yaritza Flores Bustos, who migrated from Mexico to Phoenix at a young age. The two will be part of a joint exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum, starting July 19, along with Fronterizx Collective, the Scult Artist Award recipient.

“These artists each explore identity in distinct ways but through a shared lens of life on the borderlands, defined by varying migration patterns and transnational identity,” said Christian Ramírez, the museum’s assistant curator of contemporary and community art initiatives.

For Macias, “I couldn’t be more excited to exhibit within such an incredible museum and alongside such esteemed and accomplished artists,” he said.

Macias is also excited about the residency program at the CALA Alliance (Celebración Artística de las Américas), which provides artists with housing, studio space, a generous stipend and future exhibition opportunities. The group’s executive director and curator is Alana Hernandez.

“I truly respect Alana’s mission on making this opportunity a reality for so many emerging and established Latinx artists,” Macias said. “Her goal to uplift Arizona Latinx artists is beyond admirable because southern Arizona is a unique experience within the United States socio-political climate. … I feel it’s a place where many artists are tucked away and go unnoticed, due to the magnitude of the East Coast and West Coast art scenes. Alana is uncovering and contributing to the contemporary Latinx art canon in a regional, national and international way. I’m happy to even be a small fragment of CALA Alliance’s history.”

“Nepal en la Frente” (“Father as a Child)” / 2022 Alex Macias painting

Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Macias received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Brownsville in 2008 and a Master of Fine Arts in 2-D Studio Art from the University of Texas-Pan American in 2012.

“Brownsville is full of rich history and is a safe haven for many Mexican migrants and families struggling to survive,” Macias said. “It was an atmosphere and experience that I felt truly enveloped by, especially as a child, because I traversed between Brownsville and Matamoros in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Brownsville has an approximately 94% Hispanic population, and I’m second-generation Mexican American myself.”

One of Macias’ mentors was Carlos G. Gomez, his painting professor at UT Brownsville and a friend who migrated to the U.S. from Mexico City as a young child. Gomez died from brain cancer in early 2016, and Macias said, “the culmination of his teachings and guidance still affect my artistic practice today.”

Macias was a lecturer at UT Brownsville, which later became the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, before accepting a position at University of Arizona School of Art in 2019 as a painting and drawing assistant professor.

“We spent two years actively looking for a faculty member who could make positive contributions to our Painting program while also speaking to the unique experiences of the region in which we reside,” School of Art Director Colin Blakely said. “When we came in contact with Alex, we knew we had found exactly what we were looking for. He brings an important perspective and voice to our programs, and it’s exciting to watch the well-deserved success his work has garnered.”

In addition to Vermont, Macias also participated in residencies at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France, The Studios at MASS MoCA and the Wassaic Project in New York. He’s been a part of recent group exhibitions at the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Amarillo (Texas) Museum of Art, Carlsbad (N.M.) Museum of Art, Las Cruces (N.M.) Museum of Art and Arizona State University Art Museum.

Macias held solo exhibitions at Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts in Lubbock, Texas; Presa House Gallery in San Antonio and Tucson Museum of Art, and was featured in the West Issue #156 of New American Paintings, juried by Lauren R. O’Connell, curator of contemporary art at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

“Man on Fire” / 2022 Alex Macias painting

Just recently, the University of Arizona Museum of Art acquired Macias’ 2022 “Man on Fire” painting — a work inspired by his first visit to the UAMA gallery in 2019 and seeing renowned artist Luis Jimenez’s sculpture with the same title.

Jimenez, who died in a studio accident in 2006, was a central figure in the Chicano art movement, known for his small drawings and prints to monumental sculptural works. Jimenez’s “Man on Fire” work, Macias said, speaks on the Spanish colonization of the Aztec empire and the torture of its ruler, Cuauhtémoc, the Buddhist monk who set himself ablaze to protest the Vietnam War, Thich Quang Duc, as well as Chicano identities along the Southwest.

“I felt inspired to … pay homage to such an iconic Chicano figure,” Macias said. “In this case, I am critiquing my own American assimilation through an image of myself burning. The serape Mexican textile, which reinforces my ethnic and cultural background, burns away in the shape of a flame over my head. … As a side note, I am also honoring Presa House Gallery within my T-shirt, a San Antonio art space that centralizes the voices of Latinx artists within central and south Texas.”

School of Art alumna Olivia Miller (BFA ’05), new director of UAMA, said she was “struck by Alex’s approach. … He was inspired by (Jimenez’s) sculpture, but he created a painting unique to his aesthetic and his personal experience.”

“While it’s exciting to see how Alex’s painting connects to existing works in the collection in provocative ways, it’s also important for the museum to support the perspectives of contemporary Latinx artists in our region,” Miller said.

Those words mean a lot, Macias said.

“I’m happy to hear that UAMA is investing in Latinx voices and continuing the legacy of Luis Jimenez through his influence,” he said. “I’m humbled and honored to be included in a such an important collection.”

Wellesley Fellow Smith latest alum to earn national recognition

When Kaitlyn Jo Smith received a prestigious early-career artist fellowship from Wellesley College, she thanked her professors at the University of Arizona School of Art for “believing in me and my work.”

“Graduate school taught me to think bigger, dream bigger and trust in my instincts,” said Smith, a 2020 Master of Fine Arts graduate in Photography, Video and Imaging whose interdisciplinary art focuses on America’s working class and the implications of automation on labor and religion.

Smith joins a long list of other recent alums and current students in the MFA and Art History/Art & Visual Culture Education programs to earn national recognition and realize their dreams. Some examples include:

Kaitlyn Jo Smith, in front of her “American Standard” installation at Tucson Museum of Art (Photo by Julius Schlosburg)
  • Ricardo Chavez (current Ph.D. student): Tyson Scholar in American Art
  • Kendall Crabbe (Ph.D. ’22, AVCE): Elliot Eisner Doctoral Research Runner Up-Award in Art Education
  • Karlito Miller Espinosa (MFA ’19): Whitney Independent Study Program
  • Tehan Ketema (MFA ’22): First Wave Arts and Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Martin Krafft (’20 MFA): Residency at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York
  • Naseem Navab (MFA ’19): Artists in Residence, Art Produce Gallery, San Diego
  • Marina Shaltout (’20 MFA): Residencies at the Creative Centre in Stodvarfjordur, Iceland and at New Mexico State University
  • Alex Turner (MFA ’20): Grand Prize, FOCUS Photo L.A. Summer 2021 Competition
  • Bella Maria Varela (’21 MFA): Early Career Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin
  • Kenzie Wells (’20 MFA): Residencies at the Wassaic Project Artist Residency in New York, Oxbow School of Art and Artists’ Residency in Michigan, and Penland School of Craft in North Carolina

“Our graduate programs are incredibly strong right now, and there is no better evidence of that than the success of our students after graduation,” School of Art Director Colin Blakely said. “Kaitlyn Jo is a perfect example. She pushed her work in new and truly innovative directions during her time here, and the recognition associated with this fellowship is a great and well-deserved validation of that.”

Kaitlyn Jo Smith’s workspace (ArtConnect photo)

In late April, Smith received the 2023-2024 Alice C. Cole ’42 Fellowship in Studio Art at Wellesley College near Boston. The $35,000 award is intended to support outstanding artists at an early point in their career, by providing the necessary time to develop their art relatively independent of financial pressures.

“The work that I make is a direct reflection of my experiences growing up in a working-class family in rural middle America,” she said. “The fact that these stories resonate with others is validating for me not only as an artist, but as a young adult trying to understand my place in the world.”

Smith is from Sycamore in northwest Ohio, a town of about 800 people, where she joined 4H in fourth grade and took one of the youth organization’s photography classes. “I’ve been obsessed with images ever since,” she said. “I’m extremely fortunate that my parents have always been incredibly supportive in all of my creative pursuits.”

She was just a teen when the housing market crashed in 2007-08, leaving most of the adults she knew out of work. She earned her BFA in Photography from Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio before joining the University of Arizona School of Art’s Photography, Video and Imaging MFA program in its first year of expanding into technology.

“Kaitlyn entered as a traditional photographer-based artist but quickly pushed the limits of the medium and her own work to compel viewers to feel the despair of the U.S. manufacturing labor market’s waning,” Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi said. “Many of her art pieces involve the use of material that has been altered, replicated, exploited and out of place.”

Added Alshaibi: “I’m thrilled that Kaitlyn’s practice has been recognized by the Wellesley College Art Department as spanning Sculpture through an expansive lens, including new media and deep-learning production, social practice and virtual domains.”

Computer-generated factory workers from “Lights Out,” 2020. See a video excerpt.

Smith calls the graduate program at the School of Art “a pressure cooker of brilliant minds and high expectations.”

“Throughout my entire experience, I felt supported by a group of (faculty) mentors who I genuinely believe wanted me to succeed: Sama, Martina Shenal, David Taylor, Cerese Vaden and so many others,” Smith said. “I miss the intensity of critiques and the space for criticism in a nurturing environment.”

Smith’s “American Standard” MFA Thesis Exhibition project, put on hold until 2021 because of COVID, reflected her roots in the Midwest. She was longlisted for the 2021 Lumen Prize in Art and Technology (London) and received the College Art Association’s Services to Artists Committee Award for her video “Lights Out.”

Her “Fixtures” and “Lights Out” installations, which make the workers and the products they produce visible, are on display at the Arizona Biennial exhibition until Oct. 1 at the Tucson Museum of Art. 

“American Standard pushed me both conceptually and technically,” Smith said. “I’m even prouder of my most recent exhibition ‘Mass Production.’ It was the first solo show I have had since grad school and consisted of four entirely new projects. Since its installation, I have noticed a big shift in the way I see myself — I no longer felt like a student, but a professional.”

“Mass Production” ran from March 19 to April 30 at Bells Projects in Denver. The exhibition connected the repetition of Catholic mass to the rituals of factory production, Smith said.

“Each of my Catholic grandmother’s seven sons has worked in a factory,” she said. “When I think of their collective prayer at her funeral mass, I think of my father and his brothers on the assembly line. ‘Mass Production’ questions whether the learned rituals of Catholicism have conditioned them, and other blue-collar workers, for habitual lives of monotonous labor. …”

“Confessional Kiosk,” 2023, from “Mass Production” exhibition in Denver

During her fellowship, Smith said she’ll continue “to explore the ways that automation and artificial intelligence are rapidly changing our understanding of work and how we structure our lives.”

Smith will take several trips to Wellesley, Massachusetts, but will remain based in Tucson and continue as an adjunct instructor at the School of Art. She’s taught various classes, including Introduction to Photographic Concepts.

“Kaitlyn has been a great asset to our extensive image/photography program because she has the ability to uniquely link established artistic techniques with cutting-edge technologies for relevant purposes,” Alshaibi said.

Smith’s work uses 3D printing and scanning “as a way to visually present the monotony of both automation and skilled manual labor,” she said.

“I love teaching. I love learning from my students,” Smith said. “There is something so inspiring about being surrounded by and helping realize so many wildly different ideas. I’m incredibly passionate in what I do and hope that I encourage that love of exploration and discovery in my students. Art is not easy, but I can think of nothing more rewarding than creating something out of nothing. I love watching my students experience that accomplishment.”

As part of her fellowship, Smith will give an artist’s talk at Wellesley this fall and work with students there. “While many of the subjects in my work have roots in the Midwest and Rust Belt, I believe that a lot of the themes are universal,” she said.

Smith’s work and teaching are important now more than ever because they combine science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, with the arts, Alshaibi said.

“While Kaitlyn produces exquisite and poetic work in photography and found archives, it’s her capacity to fully embrace innovation and creative risk-taking that sets her apart from others,” Alshaibi said. “She has personal experience with what it takes to uphold tradition while developing and inventing for the future.”

As for her own work, Smith said both her “American Standard” and “Mass Production” projects have left her with “more questions than answers, but I think that is why they’re successful.”

“I make art to try and understand the world around me,” Smith said. “I don’t understand it yet; there is more art to be made.”

• Kaitlyn Jo Smith’s website 
• ArtConnect interview

Top senior Olander takes her Art History talents to Columbia

Calista Olander traded one canvas — the ballet floor — for another in Art History when she enrolled in the University of Arizona School of Art.

But her love for learning and performing arts didn’t stop there, as she minored in Japanese and mathematics, learned two other languages, helped curate multiple student exhibitions, interned at MOCA Tucson … and studied the history of Korean and Italian cinema.

That explains why Professor Irene Bald Romano calls Olander a “modern-day Renaissance woman” — and why Olander has been named the spring 2023 Outstanding Senior in the School of Art for the College of Fine Arts.

Calista Olander

Olander, who carries a 4.0 grade-point average, has been accepted into Columbia University’s Art History and Archaeology master’s program in New York.

“I’m very excited for grad school,” she said. “I’ll be studying European art between 1700-1900 and working with Professor Anne Higonnet, whose extensive study of Berthe Morisot will aid in my research of Morisot’s contemporary, Mary Cassatt.”

Olander’s first love was dance. She joined the Arizona Ballet Theatre when she was 8 and began teaching ballet, tap and jazz to children and teens when she was 16.

“I absolutely loved teaching and choreographing,” Olander said. “I unfortunately had to stop because of the pandemic, but the experience helped me in my college career … and in my research at the U of A.”

Olander became interested in Art History at Tucson’s University High, where she was a National Merit Scholar. Her Art History teacher’s “passion for the subject made me absolutely love it,” Olander said. “I learned how collections came to be and how museums can improve their exhibition practices to better represent the communities they serve.”

As a University of Arizona student, she continued her research on museums, which culminated in her Honors College thesis about “Decolonize This Place,” a newly formed collective dedicated to challenging issues found within art institutions that affect marginalized communities.

Her adviser, Dr. Sandra Barr, said Olander has “proven herself to have integrity, intelligence, humor and resilience” – in class and in her research on the “Decolonize” group.

“Decolonize This Place is trying to garner attention and protection for Native American art and grave goods,” Barr said. “Calista wrote a very thoughtful account of what the group is and what their aims are.”

Barr, Romano and Gallery Director lydia see nominated Olander for the outstanding senior award.

“Calista is a rare talent of a serious young scholar of art history and mathematics, with outstanding foreign language skills, and a love of the performing arts,” Romano said. “She is a modern day ‘Renaissance woman’ and justly deserving” of the award.

Olander can speak Japanese, Korean and French, and impressed the Art History faculty with “her thoughtfulness, thoroughness and excellence in every aspect of her work: writing, speaking and mentoring other students,” the nominating letter said.

Under see, Olander co-curated the “Donors & Scholars” exhibition in February and served as student gallery manager for the school’s Joseph Gross Gallery, assisting with four exhibitions.

“Calista has been a pleasure to work with and I have enjoyed co-creating exhibitions with her as she expands her curatorial practice,” see said. “She throws herself headfirst into experiential learning opportunities and … has already developed a skilled eye for exhibition design and a keen understanding of how the often-unseen tasks of preparatory and registration work contribute to this overall process.

“She has a bright career ahead, and I’m grateful I was able to work alongside her for a year.”

Olander volunteered at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) last year and interned there this spring.

In spring 2022, she also studied abroad in Seoul, South Korea, taking an intensive language course and a History of Korean Cinema class, which Olander said “connected well” with two courses she took on campus: Art History of the Cinema, with Anthropology Regents Professor David Soren, and an elective class in Italian cinema.

“It was really interesting to compare film made in Korea, Italy and the U.S., and helped me to appreciate this different art form,” Olander said.

During her final two semesters, she flourished under the guidance of Barr, Romano and see.

“Each of these three people helped me grow, both academically and personally,” Olander said. “They helped me find my path forward and I would not be where I am without them.”

Creating art in Danielle Hunt’s DNA

As the youngest in a family of musicians, dancers, artists and storytellers, Danielle Hunt was a perfect fit for the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts.

The senior is graduating Magna Cum Laude this month with a BFA in Studio Art and Extended Media. She started out in Theatre, Film & Television but changed majors and became one of the School of Art’s most engaging students. Hunt spoke at the Donors and Scholars Exhibition this spring and was a member of the Arizona Arts Equity in the Arts committee.

“I view my role as that of a messenger,” she said about the equity panel, “listening to my fellow classmates, taking note of their concerns regarding equity, diversity, and inclusion, and voicing them in a space where they will be heard.”

Hunt, who’s focus is sculpture, recently answered questions for the School of Art.

Q. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

A. I come from a family of five, with my parents and three older siblings (yes, I’m the baby). Both of my parents graduated from the U of A — my father (Craig Hunt) with a degree in chemical engineering and my mother (Cassandra Hunt) with a degree in general fine arts. They actually met here at the university. All my family members are creative in some way: my father is a professional French horn player and pun master; my mother, a dancer and traditional artist of many talents; my sister, a photographer and writer; my eldest brother, a martial artist and storyteller; and my second eldest brother, a musician and special effects guru. Growing up surrounded by creative people, I always felt particularly drawn to the arts and I’m very blessed to have been supported in my artistic endeavors.

Q. You started at U of A with a different major. What attracted you to the School of Art?

A. Having taken film courses throughout high school and enjoying them more than any other subject, I thought it was a no-brainer to enter the U of A as a film major. While all the film classes here were interesting and engaging, I found that they weren’t hands-on enough for me; I needed to be creating things ASAP! I decided to explore Studio Art as a minor and loved the way the classes were structured. I generally felt more productive in my Studio Art classes as well, as physical evidence of my effort would appear in the form of tactile objects, rather than words on paper.

Danielle Hunt

Q. What were your favorite class(es) and project(s) as an undergrad student and why?

A. I would say my favorite class was Beginning Sculpture (ART 287) since it was the class that introduced me to the world of sculpture and allowed me to meet all the amazing faculty and other sculpture-oriented students that I know today. My favorite projects have been those that challenge me as much as they excite me, with my piece “Sensory Maze” being a prime example. “Sensory Maze” was my first ever large-scale installation, and I took tremendous value from being able to create an impermanent environment for others to experience.

Q. You talked about wanting to focus on sculpture now. What is it about this medium that is so intriguing and motivating?

A. Honestly, I would say sculpture just fits my brain the best! Tetris was my favorite video game growing up (still is to this day) because there’s something immensely satisfying about fitting shapes together neatly. Getting to that point of fitting those shapes together neatly, though, involves a lot of problem solving. That’s really all that sculpture is, too: creative problem solving! I love the tactile and sensorial nature of it, being able to really see, smell, hear, taste and feel what it is that I’m creating. Sculpture feels like the truest form of creation to me.

Q. How important is culture and self-identity in your work?

A. I’m finding that culture and self-identity are becoming more and more important in my own work. I tend to gravitate towards exploring abstract thoughts and feelings, many of which have surfaced from my own experiences and personal history, so I hope to incorporate more aspects of my culture and self-identity in my work as a form of self-discovery.

Q. Can you explain the two sculptures you exhibited in the Donors and Scholars Exhibition: “Diverging Timelines Converge” and “Headrest”?

A. “Diverging Timelines Converge” was heavily inspired by Tamara Kvesitadze‘s “Man and Woman” kinetic sculpture. I wanted to explore the idea of sharing a certain amount of time with someone only to be separated before and after that time has passed using perspective. Looking at the sculpture from the “front,” you see two separate figures; looking at them from the “side,” it appears as though they are embracing. The oval base on which they stand leaves some ambiguity as to which direction the figures are facing and questions whether there is a front or side to the sculpture; their timelines are continually converging and diverging depending on how the sculpture is viewed.

“Headrest” became a sculpture where the meaning lay in the process rather than the final product. I had at least five separate wax molds of my face and no clear idea of what to do with them. Eventually, I discovered that the crook of the nose fit rather nicely behind the ear and was able to assemble my own triumphal arch of sorts by fitting three of the molds together. To me, this piece symbolizes tranquility, based on the facial expression and how each face seems to flow into the next. It was certainly an enjoyable piece to work on!

Q. You were an intern for Arizona Athletics. How cool was it to work over there?

A. It’s been great working as an intern in Athletics! When I first started in 2019, there were only three or four interns, me included. Now, it’s closer to 25, so it’s been very special to have seen the internship’s growth from the start. The internship is focused on creative services and media, so most of our work as interns is specific to producing content, creating graphics, and helping with live production during games. I typically help in the control room, controlling the remote camera, queuing up prompts for the video board, or assisting the replay operator. Recently, I’ve been hoping to lean more into producing animated content, so hopefully that’ll be a path I can continue to pursue!

Q. What was your biggest challenge as a student, and how did you overcome it? What was your favorite accomplishment that made you feel happy?

A. One of my biggest challenges as a student, specifically an art student, has been time management when dealing with burnout. I’ve somehow managed to add on more outside projects with each semester, which certainly hasn’t helped. Struggling to keep up with a strict schedule is even more difficult when you’re burnt out and unable to think creatively, and deadlines for finished art projects don’t wait for your burn out to dissipate. The only way I’ve been able to overcome burnout and get back on track with managing my time has been focusing on self-care: taking time to go out in nature, talk with friends, sleep, and take inspiration from the ordinary. It’s been especially helpful and relieving to have understanding professors that can relate to this cycle and will incorporate flexibility into their courses to account for it.

I’d say that one of my favorite accomplishments that has made me feel happy is simply talking to people. Socializing with others has always been a challenge for me, so being able to talk to my peers and other like-minded individuals about things we’re passionate about has been hugely inspiring and encouraging.

Q. What are your goals after graduation? Are you considering grad school? How can you use your art degree?

I plan on staying in Tucson for another year or so after graduating, just to nurture some relationships and give myself time to create more art and expand my portfolio before looking into grad schools. One of my main reasons for wanting to attend grad school, besides continuing to grow my craft, is to have the opportunity to teach and evaluate if I want to consider teaching as a career path. If I decide not to pursue teaching, I imagine I’ll consider attending a trade school for welding or carpentry in order to elevate my current skill set. I’ve had some very exciting opportunities here in Tucson, so it’s possible my plans will be completely derailed and led in an unexpected direction, to which I say: my plan is to go with the flow and see what happens!

• Danielle’s portfolio

Alum Hardy’s postcard projects connect artists

Postcards make Camden Hardy happy.

Designing and mailing them — and, of course, receiving them — helps him connect with other artists and stretch the limits of creativity, a process he says that “simply cannot exist in cyberspace.”

It’s why he started the Postcard Collective 13 years ago as a Master of Fine Arts student at the University of Arizona School of Art, and why he’s now leading a storytelling project in which his fellow Ph.D. students are making postcards for a class co-taught by Professor Ellen McMahon.

Camden Hardy

“Postcards promote an ethics of care that is often at odds with our culture of fast-paced, transactional consumption,” Hardy said.

“To create and send a postcard to another human being is to deliberately forge a personal connection without any guarantee of reciprocation,” he added. “To receive a postcard is to be reminded that someone cared enough to reach out. The relational dynamic between sender and recipient is a poignant reminder that our wellbeing is directly tied to that of others.”

McMahon is co-teaching the course, “Art Research in the Unruly World: Questions, Forms & Methods” (SCCT 510),  through the SCCT Graduate Interdisciplinary Program — a class that brings together faculty and Ph.D. students like Hardy from different units across campus.

Hardy, a doctoral candidate in Applied Intercultural Arts Research (AIAR), gave each student in the class three stamped and addressed postcards with the prompts “space / place,” “time” and “identity” printed on the back. Students responded to the prompts on the front of the postcards in whatever form they desired — words, images, collages — and then dropped them in the mail.

Hardy collected the postcards to compose a visual narrative, which was on display in early May in the School of Art’s Visual Arts Graduate Research Lab, 1231 N. Fremont Ave. An opening reception was held May 2 in the lab’s Palo Verde graduate gallery.

McMahon is ecstatic about the collaboration with Hardy and other students from units such as the School of Art, Agriculture, Anthropology, Educational Psychology, East Asian Studies and AIAR. Most are minoring in Social Critical and Cultural Theory through the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program (GIDP).

Robert Warner, The Postcard Collective, Spring 2014

She also worked with Hardy on her 2013 co-edited book “Ground/Water: The Art, Design and Science of a Dry River.” Beyond his personal project for the book, he provided beautiful images for the inside covers and the section dividers, McMahon said.

“Camden is soft-spoken and humble about his work,” she said. “He’s generous, persistent and dedicated to cultivating a creative community around him wherever he is.”

Hardy received his BA in Media & Theater Arts Photography from Montana State University before getting his MFA in 2012 at UArizona, where he started the Postcard Collective as an effort to maintain relationships with artists in different cities and regions.

“We hold seasonal postcard exchanges — about four per year — in which approximately 30 artists create and send postcards to each other; each participant receives a postcard from all other participants,” said Hardy about the exchanges, which are themed with prompts such as “The Sound that I Saw.”

For Hardy, the May exhibit at the School of Art brings back memories of the Postcard Collective’s first exchange in the graduate gallery toward the end of the Spring 2010 semester. It was busy time.

Camden Hardy addresses guests at a May 2 opening reception in the Palo Verde graduate gallery.

“Graduate school is a pressure cooker,” Hardy said. “A group of young artists suddenly find themselves surrounded by like-minded individuals, all with the shared goal of learning about themselves and how to make their work in the most authentic way possible, faculty and peers challenging them at every turn.

“Looking back, it is truly remarkable to consider what graduate school inspired us to make of ourselves.”

After getting his MFA, Hardy worked and taught at Southwest University of Visual Arts for the next eight years while the Postcard Collective gathered momentum. Hardy said postcards from the collection have been exhibited inside and outside the United States in a variety of contexts.

Hardy decided to return to UArizona as a doctoral student to “explore the ways in which communities of practice can facilitate and support unifying discourse among artists,” he said — and he’s using the “evolution of the Postcard Collective as a space for artists to conduct their own research and connect with each other.”

“Let’s be honest: we’re going through some dark times,” Hardy said. “Our culture has been flooded with divisive, toxic rhetoric that has pitted us all against each other.

“Art, on the other hand, can be the cure. It has the power to remind us of what it means to be human, and that we are all in this together.”

Senior’s documentary ‘brings Tucson’s water story to life’

When Tia Stephens needed a local issue to explore for her honors capstone documentary film project, the School of Art graduating senior picked a topic we sometimes take for granted in the desert.

Water.

“Every day I interact with water in the most intimate of ways and yet I had no idea where this water came from and how it was managed,” Stephens said. “This disconnect from our most precious resource is something that I’ve noticed all around me, and so I want this film to serve as a way to reconnect people with water.”

“Every Last Drop,” Stephens’ feature-length documentary, explores Southern Arizona’s water practices and policy. A free screening of the film will be held Tuesday, May 2, at 7 p.m. at The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway.

Stephens blended her skills as a Studio Art student in Photography, Video and Imaging along with her multimedia journalistic skills gained as an editor at the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

For the past 18 months, Stephens collaborated with film students, obtained grants, consulted water and hydrology experts, and executed a data research project to bring “Tucson’s water story to life,” she said. In the film, experts include a faculty and student, and officials from Tucson Water, the Senora Project and the Apache Nation.

“Water must be priority number one for us in Arizona,” Stephens said, “and currently it’s clearly not. I think most people are aware of how important water conservation is, but … we need to bridge the separation that exists between us and the planet and stop seeing it as merely a resource to use.”

Stephens grew up in Flagstaff, speaking out on climate issues at the Arizona Capitol as a senior in high school.

It also helps that Stephens has a keen sense of how government works as a Political Science double-major in International Relations in the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences.

“With her high quality of work, a 4.0 GPA and her leadership across activities, Tia is doing exceptional community-engaged research on environmental issues,” said Marcos Serafim, her capstone project adviser and a School of Art assistant professor.

“Tia’s exceptional creative practice is informed by her journalistic agency and her knowledge of world politics,” he said, “frequently employing investigative strategies to generate poetics and artwork about relevant social issues.”

Serafim “guided me every step of the way,” said Stephens, who will graduate Summa Cum Laude with honors with her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

“He gave me the space to dream big and be ambitious and connected me with the resources I needed to get the project running,” she said. “I have learned so much under his mentorship and am forever changed as an artist because of it.”

After graduation, Stephens has a summer internship with AmeriCorps as a videographer.

“My immediate plans are to stay in town, take a much-needed rest, and do some self-discovery in order to figure out my next steps as an artist,” she said. “Eventually, I plan to pursue an MFA, but first want to gain some work and life experience.”

UArizona honors Jeehey Kim with Early Career Scholar Award

Art History Assistant Professor Jeehey Kim, whose groundbreaking research in Asian photography has earned her international recognition, has been named a 2023 Early Career Scholar Award recipient by the University of Arizona.

Kim joins five other assistant professors being honored with the award, which recognizes outstanding early career faculty who are at the forefront of their disciplines and make valued contributions to the teaching, creative activity and service priorities.

Assistant Prof. Jeehey Kim

“Dr. Kim’s research, teaching and service intersect in important ways, and she has contributed to defining the University of Arizona as a center for the research and teaching of photography,” the School of Art’s nominating letter said, “complementing the international reputation of the Center for Creative Photography and the School of Art’s top-ranked studio art program in Photography, Video and Imaging.”

Kim earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2015. She taught at several universities in New York, New Jersey and Korea, then held a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago before coming to the University of Arizona in 2019.

Dr. Kim’s research and publications encompass the history of photography, visual culture and film studies in East Asia and Southeast Asia. They touch on issues of colonialism, images of “the other,” identity politics and international relations in the 19th to 21st centuries.

As a scholar of East Asian visual culture, Dr. Kim’s interest in the politics of memory has led to an exploration through the medium of photography of the ethics of representation and the ways in which colonial legacies have structured trans-Asian modernity. Her recent research on vernacular photographic practices, documentary films, and visual culture in relation to the Cold War and gender politics in East Asia, has been published in international journals.

“In summing up this incredible list of accomplishments (for someone in their third year at the university!), the word that comes to my mind — besides sheer industriousness — is generosity,” wrote Professor Larry Busbea, who chairs the school’s Art History program.

“There is something in Dr. Kim’s work and general demeanor,” he continued, “that gives a clear indication that she is as concerned about the success of our program, of our students, affiliated institutions like the Center (for Creative Photography), as well as an international network of photo professionals, as she about that of her own research program.”

Since coming to the University of Arizona, Kim has developed nine courses in Art History at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, challenging students with content that incorporates her deep knowledge of the history of photography and her specialized subject of Asian photography.

In response to the “Black Lives Matter” movement, in Fall 2020 Dr. Kim designed an innovative and timely 400/500 class, “History of Photography: Black Lives Matter,” examining images by Black photographers and about Black lives since the mid-19th century.

She has also created two other advanced courses that reflect on postcolonialism through contemporary art in East Asia and on global indigenous photography, “demonstrating her versatility and ability to engage with cutting-edge intellectual topics in the classroom,” according to her faculty colleagues — Martina M. Shenal, James Cook, Irene Bald Romano and Carissa DiCindio — who nominated Kim for the early career award along with Busbea.

“Singapore Sikh Police Officer, 1941,” part of Carl Mydans collection at the CCP, which was part of the Nov. 18, 2022, virtual symposium organized by Dr. Kim.

Kim’s first book, “Imagining Korea through Photography,” London: Reaktion Books/Chicago: University of Chicago Press,” is forthcoming in June 2023. Her second, “Photography and Death: Funerary Photo-Portraiture in East Asia,” Leiden: Brill, is currently under review. Her article on “Contagious disease and visual media in Colonial Korea” will appear in a forthcoming 2023 book to be published by the Hong Kong University Press.

In addition, Kim has organized eight scholarly panels or symposia and presented more than 10 papers between 2019 and 2022. On Nov. 18, 2022, she organized a day-long, virtual symposium on “Photography and Southeast Asia: History and Practice,” co-sponsored by the School of Art, Arizona Arts and the Center for Creative Photography. The event included presentations by colleagues in CCP, from other institutions in the U.S., as well as in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Singapore, and the Philippines.

Earlier in November 2022 she was the moderator of a panel jointly organized by Dartmouth College and Harvard University on “Korean Art since the 1980s: Dynamism and Expansion.” She was a discussant on a College Art Association panel in Chicago in February 2020 on “The Cold War in the North-South Axis: Asian Art Beyond the U.S.-Soviet Dichotomy.” And, in March 2019 she gave an invited lecture at the University of Chicago on “Commemorating the Dead through Photography in East Asia.”

“The many ways Dr. Kim shares her research with scholarly and public audiences are impressive,” her nominating letter said. “She has built bridges and networks across disciplines, within local communities, and across international boundaries, significantly increasing the impact of her work and bringing major attention to the University of Arizona’s School of Art.”

Kim also has been an active contributor to improving equity, diversity and inclusion at all levels through her affiliation with the Faculty of Color in the School of Art and with Faculty of Color in the College of Fine Arts.

She received an M.A. of Philosophy in Art History from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2010, and a B.A. in English Literature from Duksung Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea.

“I really appreciate all the support from my program, the School of Art and the College of Fine Arts,” Kim said in a note to faculty. “This is the award for all of us.”

2023 UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA EARLY CAREER SCHOLAR AWARD RECIPIENTS

  • Alex Craig, Assistant Professor, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
  • Andrew Curley, Assistant Professor, School of Geography, Development and Environment, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences
  • Yuanyuan (Kay) He, Assistant Professor, Fred Fox School of Music, College of Fine Arts
  • Anna Josephson, Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
  • Jeehey Kim, Assistant Professor, School of Art, College of Fine Arts
  • Andrew Paek, Assistant Professor, Molecular & Cellular Biology, College of Science

Panama inspires grad student Arias in her art, filmmaking

Born in Costa Rica, Jacqueline Arias was adopted by American parents and moved to the Panama Canal Zone at age 4. While she only spent three years there before moving to rural Ohio, the experience made a profound impression on the artist, independent filmmaker and educator.

Now a University of Arizona School of Art graduate student, Arias is working with artisan women from Panama — the Guna people — to make traditional mola quilts that incorporate her personal designs and reference borders, military presence and the canal infrastructure.

Jacqueline Arias

Arias held her first solo exhibition, “Mola: Truth Maps,” at Nogales’ Hilltop Gallery in March 2023. Through videos, prints and VR, she activated the molas as visual and aural maps — lived maps — that collect and narrate the lived experiences of the people of Panama.

In September 2022, her video “Panama Narratives,” which incorporates the mola mythology, was shown at the Arizona Underground Film Festival in downtown Tucson. The short documentary coincided with National Hispanic Heritage Month, which also celebrates Latin America heritage.

Arias’ video explores her childhood experience, the U.S. intervention in the Canal Zone area and the relationship between its residents and the Panamanian and indigenous Guna people.

“I’m drawn to the Guna matriarchal society, where the molas are worn by women as protection, a tradition drawn from the story of a young woman who finds enlightenment through overcoming obstacles,” Arias said. “Through enlightenment, she shares the gift of protection and knowledge with other women of her tribe.

“In exploring how this mythology speaks to my personal experience — I am returning to my indigenous roots to find healing and knowledge and re-examining my Latinx experience of dislocation.”

The Guna people are autonomous from Panama and have fought to maintain their land, heritage and governance. Arias’ designs deviate from traditional mola subject matter, which is usually apolitical, she said.

“I’m interested in the mola because the materiality represents a material embodiment of indigenous cosmology,” Arias said. “They use reverse applique technique with fine needlework that stitches together multiple layers and colors of fabric. These layers represent a spiritual labyrinth, which can trap evil spirits within their patterns.”

Arias said she’s begun to incorporate her mola panels into printmaking to “talk about invisible labor, constructed borders and U.S. occupation.”

A second-year MFA candidate in the interdisciplinary program, Arias was selected for the Border Lab Graduate Fellowship program by the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry, a $10,000 award possible with funding from the Office of the Provost and University of Arizona HSI Initiatives.

She studied photography at Parsons School of Design, experimenting with video art and performance work. Her work addresses the invisible social barriers in society and the feelings of cultural detachment they cause, she said.

Arias is enjoying her classes and hopes to graduate in 2024.

“I’ve learned so much in the short time I’ve been here,” Arias said. “I The instructors are just as nurturing as they are challenging. My goal is to soak up as much knowledge as I can while I’m here.”

• Jacqueline Arias’ website

Floral Arrangement

Floral Arrangement

Janessa Southerland
Tailgate Party

Tailgate Party

Roger Masterson
I fell down some stairs

I fell down some stairs

Lyle Emmerson Jr.
Half Off Special

Half Off Special

Wilbur Dallas Fremont
What Do You See?

What Do You See?

Utvista Galiante