Student creators embrace new online marketplace

When Reese McFarland suffered a health scare a few years ago, someone gave her a healing bracelet. Not only did it help her heal, but it also inspired her decision to study Design Arts & Practices at the University of Arizona.

Reese McFarland

“I like to be creative, and I wanted to go to college to do something creative,” McFarland said. “I had a hard time expressing what I went through, so I decided to make energy-filled beaded bracelets that are appealing to wear but also always close to your heart.”

She’s among 15 School of Art students who’ve joined Student-Made Arizona, a new online marketplace that allows them to promote and sell their products and services, such as jewelry, visual art, photography, apparel, digital art and fiber arts.

Reese McFarland’s “Lava Lotus” bracelet

McFarland’s online shop is called “Love, Pieces.” One of her favorite bracelets is the “Lava Lotus,” she said, because lava beads are spiritually grounding and calming, while the lotus flower symbolizes health and overcoming adversity. “Each one of my bracelets have a special meaning that you can share with others or keep to yourself,” she said.

The sophomore is highlighted on the Student-Made Arizona creators’ page along with these School of Art students:

Other School of Art students who plan to be part of Student-Made Arizona in the future are Kasey Leftwich (DAP), Natalie Benton (IDA), Xavier Urias (IDA), Vanessa Valdez (DAP) and Ava Sheppard (2D Studies).

From left, Reese McFarland, Hannah Contardi and Ava Jo Schuldt sell their products at a recent pop-up at the ENR2 building.

Student-Made Arizona launched this fall, joining over a dozen universities in a Student-Made network that was co-founded in 2017 by Lindsey Reeth. Then a student at North Carolina’s Elon University, Reeth wanted to help classmates run small businesses from their dorm rooms and apartments.

Startup Wildcats, a U of A entrepreneurial group affiliated with the university’s Tech Launch Arizona, oversees the student creators and a seven-member student management team led by Daniela Johnson, a Management Information Systems master’s student.

“Since Student-Made is brand new here, it’s been incredibly rewarding to build it from the ground up and create a supportive community for student creators,” Johnson said.  “As campus manager, I look forward to meeting the creators during our coffee chats and really getting to know and help them … and I hope to inspire other students to step into leadership roles.”

At Student-Made Arizona, customers can find student-created items such as phone cases, art prints, crocheted bags, keychains, customized shoes, hats and wood carvings. People also can arrange services such as photography, videography, tutoring and tech support.

Julie Barbier Bularzik, venture development education coordinator for Startup Wildcats, helped convince the university to partner with Student-Made after attending a session about the group at a conference for the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC). Like Startup Wildcats’ mission, Student-Made provides “immersive experiences that empower every Wildcat to unlock entrepreneurial possibilities and inspire the courage to venture,” she said. In other words, life skills.

Student-Made Arizona, part of Startup Wildcats, launched this fall on campus.

“My favorite part of Student-Made is that students get a chance to try something that can often be hard, scary or lonely in a supportive environment with a community all rooting for them to succeed,” said Barbier Bularzik, who also runs a small plant oils business, ace of cups essentials, in Tucson.

For McFarland, who grew up in Chandler, Arizona, having that support group is key — especially when it comes to gaining marketing and social media skills.

“It’s difficult to grab people’s attention and get them to like your product,” said McFarland, who is taking classes through the School of Art and the College of Architecture with a Spatial Design emphasis. She hopes to become an interior designer after graduation — but keep her bracelet business on the side.

At a recent pop-up event at the ENR2 Building on campus, McFarland shared a table area with Schuldt, a junior from the Seattle area who makes paw-print earrings that pay tribute to the Wildcats (U of A), Huskies (University of Washington) and Cougars (Washington State).

“I joined Student-Made to learn more about the business world,” Schuldt said. “I like talking to people, but I’m not so good at marketing.”

Like McFarland, Schuldt hopes to keep making art after graduation, but her career goal is to go into prop-making for film and television or live theater.

Christina Tellez (left) tells students about her earrings at a pop-up.

Students across campus have joined Student-Made, including Retailing and Consumer Sciences major Hannah Contardi (“engrave”) and Physiology major Elias Sitzmann (“Ari Everyday Wear”). They joined School of Art students Auerbach, Deniz, Franco, Marshall, McFarland and Schuldt at a Sept. 27 all-day pop-up event at the Campus Store across from the Student Union.

Other student creators include Nutrition and Food Studies major Tommey Jodie (“Butterflies & Azee’”), who’s also a manager; Retailing and Consumer Sciences major Liney Meis (“LimeTime Art”); and Nutritional Science major Christina Tellez (“Chrissy T. Earrings“). Other student mangers include Camryn Capuzzo, Caroline Daub, Krishna Gala, Maahi Patel and Kat Toth.

“I want departments and programs all over campus to get involved and collaborate with us in creative, mutually beneficial ways,” Barbier Bulzarik said.

Daniela Johnson (left) and Julie Barbier Bulzarik

And in the coming months, she hopes Student-Made creators and managers can be part of pop-up events outside the university, such as the Made in Tucson and Desert Air markets near downtown. “I’d like to have community members get involved in the mentorship of our student creators,” Barbier Bulzarik said.

Students can join Student-Made by filling out an application.

“I’d love to see more students grow their businesses,” Johnson said, “and feel empowered by the support system we’re building.”

Four artists, scholars highlight 2024-25 VASE series

Celebrating its 18th season, the University of Arizona School of Art’s Visiting Artists and Scholars Endowment (VASE) lecture series will feature acclaimed artists and educators Ala EbtekarRonald Rael, Rujeko Hockley and José Villalobos in 2024-25.

The free, hour-long VASE presentations will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. at the Center for Creative Photography auditorium, 1030 N. Olive Road. Here’s the lineup:

Ala Ebtekar (Oct. 10, 2024): Director of Stanford University’s Art, Social Space and Public Discourse, the artist will discuss his most recent work, “The Sky of the Seven Valleys,” delving into the intricate interplay between terrestrial and celestial elements that inform his studio practice.

Ronald Rael (Nov. 14, 2024): The Cal Berkeley professor is an architect, activist, design technologist, rancher and traditional builder. In his talk, “Mud y Robots,” he’ll discuss his new paradigm in construction, coupling adobe with 3D-printing technology to create housing that can save the planet. (Co-sponsored with the College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture)

Rujeko Hockley (Feb. 13, 2025): She’s the Arnhold Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Hockley, who co-curated the 2019 Whitney Biennial, was born in Zimbabwe and relocated with her family to Washington, D.C., at age 2. (Co-sponsored with Racial Justice Studio)

José Villalobos (March 20, 2025): The San Antonio, Texas, artist explores traditionally “masculine” objects and softens the virility of them. He was raised in El Paso on the U.S.-Mexico border, growing up with religious ideals that conflict and condemn being gay.

“The VASE program continues to be a cornerstone of our students’ education, offering invaluable opportunities to engage with leading figures in contemporary art and design,” Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi said.

This year, Alshaibi said VASE is expanding its impact by partnering with the School of Architecture to host Rael and collaborating with Arizona Arts’ Racial Justice Studio to bring in Hockley.

Along with Ebtekar and Villalobos, “this exceptional lineup is not only broadening our horizons but also fostering new connections and innovation,” Alshaibi said.

“Our 2024-2025 guests will tackle critical issues such as the social, political, and environmental impacts of architecture, borders and migration, as well as the intersection of identity, place and memory,” she added. “By engaging with these diverse perspectives, we are advancing important dialogues on cultural boundaries and the resilience of marginalized communities.”

The 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.

Whitney Biennial showcases Prof Emerita Hammond’s work

Professor Emerita Harmony Hammond’s career continues to shine, 18 years after she retired from teaching at the University of Arizona School of Art.

She’s one of 71 artists participating in the prestigious 2024 Whitney Biennial, the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States, until Aug. 11 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

For the Biennial’s 81st edition, titled “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” Hammond is presenting four paintings — including “Patched” (2022), a repurposed and mended quilt cover that foregrounds women’s time and labor. Her work reflects the exhibition’s theme that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is complicating our understanding of what is real.

Harmony Hammond (photo courtesy of her website)

“The surfaces are very organic, pieced and patched, mended and repaired, like our bodies — like my body,” said Hammond, who taught at the School of Art as a professor from 1989-2006.

School of Art Professor Paul Ivey nominated Hammond as a professor emerita in 2021.

“Harmony continues to inspire and lead the next generation of artists and feminist scholars,” Ivey said. “Though she may have retired from full-time teaching at the University of Arizona, she continues to be an active force in the feminist world, and has been for over six decades.”

Hammond created a queer feminist language of abstract art embedded in histories of sewing, weaving, quilting, making and the struggles of women. The artist, writer and independent curator’s groundbreaking book, “Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History (2000),” received a Lambda Literary Award and remains the primary text on the subject.

For the Whitney Biennial, her “Patched” painting features cotton squares stained with blood. They lie in the center of cross-like spaces formed by the quilt pattern. The reference the “repeated and ongoing violence against women, (including) the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, and sexual brutality against women used as a weapon of war,” according to the Whitney website. A grid of grommeted holes below the quilt functions as a footnote, suggesting order but also bearing witness to the ongoing repetition of violence and healing.”

Also featured is Hammond’s “Chenille #11” (2020-2021), with “underlying colors of red and gold that split the seams and stain the thickly painted white burlap surface — evoking chenille bedspreads with its tufts and ridges. Grommeted straps bind the painting like bandages,” the Whitney website said. “Black Cross II” (2020-2021) and “Double Bandaged Quilt #3 (Vertical, 2020)” round out her exhibit.

“We see the seams in the painting. I do not like digital seamlessness,” Hammond said in a Whitney audio clip. “I like the seams to show. The seams show how things are connected. … That attachment thing, that idea of tying things together, of wrapping straps around a painting, could be thought of as restrictive binding, bandaging or bondage.”

Two years after earning her B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1967, Hammond moved to New York, where she was a co-founder of A.I.R., the city’s first women’s cooperative art gallery and Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art & Politics. In 1984, Hammond moved to New Mexico like her forbears, Georgia O’Keefe and Agnes Martin.

Hammond settled in Galisteo, New Mexico, and began commuting to Tucson and the University of Arizona in 1988 as a visiting instructor for the School of Art. She became a professor in 1989 and a tenured full professor in 1990, teaching painting, combined media and interdisciplinary graduate critique seminars until retiring in 2006.

“She was a warm, inspiring teacher,” Ivey said. “By example, she modeled positivity regarding the ambition one must have to be a successful artist and/or to bring art into their own teaching. To her students, she passed on her insights about creativity, perseverance and diligence.”

Harmony Hammond's paintings at the 2024 Whitney Biennial (photos by Ron Amstutz)
Harmony Hammond’s paintings at the 2024 Whitney Biennial (photos by Ron Amstutz)
“Patched” (2022)
“Patched” (2022)
“Black Cross II” (2020-2021)
“Black Cross II” (2020-2021)
“Chenille #11” (2020-2021)
“Chenille #11” (2020-2021)
“Double Bandaged Quilt #3 Vertical” (2020)
“Double Bandaged Quilt #3 Vertical” (2020)
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Living in two locations, Hammond unfolded a broader view of art to her students, Ivey said.

At the end of each semester, if she was assigned a graduate class — sometimes adding a few outstanding undergrads — she organized a trip to introduce them to several contemporary artists she knew in the Santa Fe area. Hammond also arranged introductions for the group to see museums and galleries in the area. Her plan included important art writers such as Lucy Lippard as well as exposure to specific gallerists and museum directors.

“While there, students were invited into her impressive studio, whereby she shared her own processes and multiple directions, and she arranged places for her students to stay, so they could take time to explore the area,” Ivey said. “During the weeks of teaching, she also set up studio in Tucson, in order to keep her ideas and work flowing, when she was fully present at her job in Tucson.”

Hammond also was responsible for bringing to campus now-famous artists and critics such as Nick Cave, Carrie Moyer, Judy Baca, Amy Silman and May Stevens.

While at the university, Hammond participated in 17 solo exhibitions, 86 groups exhibitions, including the important “High Times/Hard Times, New York Painting 1967-1975,” that traveled to Mexico and Europe.

Now 80, Hammond continues to focus on her art and occasionally attends environmental protests, women’s marches and pride parades. Since leaving the university, Hammond’s work has been exhibited in nearly 20 solo exhibitions and 70 group exhibitions. She considers exhibiting her art as one of her primary forms of activism.

“Exhibitions allow us to physically occupy space, so we are visible to queer and non-queer folks alike,” Hammond said in a 2019 ARTNews interview. “I’ve always been engaged with voices and forces that have been buried, or covered up, and assert themselves from underneath the surface of things.”

Installation view of “Harmony Hammond: Material Witness: Five Decades of Art,” 2019, at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.

In 2019, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, organized a traveling solo exhibition along with a scholarly monograph, “Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art,” which featured Hammond’s “installational” and mixed-media paintings composed with vernacular materials she recovered from the Arizona and New Mexico landscape. 

“The ruggedness of the land — its distinct cultural history and rural aesthetic — is evident in (Hammond’s) later work,” Hyperallergic wrote in a 2019 review of the solo exhibition, “accentuating it with a sense of place, and oddly enough, a new sense of belonging.”

While at the University of Arizona, Hammond received many important awards, grants and residencies, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study Center Residency in Italy, an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, an Emily Harvey Foundation Residency in Venice, Italy, a College of Fine Arts Summer Research and Professional Development Incentive Grant, and also received a Veteran Feminist of America Award.

Since leaving the university, Hammond has received multiple prestigious awards, including induction in the National Academy of Design in New York, the Anonymous Was a Woman Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art, The College Art Association Distinguished Feminist Award, a Through the Flower Award for significant contributions to the Feminist Art Movement, and was named a National Women’s History Month Honoree.

Hammond’s work is represented by Alexander Gray Associates in New York City, where she has had six solo exhibitions. Hammond’s artwork has been collected by 50 important public museums, university museums, and corporations, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York).

According to Hammond’s website, “her earliest feminist work combined gender politics with post-minimal concerns of materials and process, frequently occupying a space between painting and sculpture – a focus that continues to this day.”

“Her near-monochrome paintings of the last two decades participate in the narrative of modernist abstraction at the same time they insist upon oppositional discourses of political content,” her website bio said. “Often referred to as social abstraction, the paintings which include rough burlap, straps, grommets, and rope, along with Hammonds signature layers of thick paint, engage formal strategies and material metaphors suggesting connection, restraint, agency and voice — a disruption of utopian egalitarian order, but also the possibility of holding together, of healing.”

Born in Chicago in 1944, Hammond studied art in Decatur, Illinois, before moving to Minneapolis with her husband, artist Stephen Clover, who came out as gay within a year of their marriage, Hyperallergic said. They moved to New York in August 1969, shortly following the Stonewall Riots.

“The city was a hotbed of political activity,” the 2019 Hyperallergic review said. “The Civil Rights movement, coupled with the women’s movement, antiwar protests, and the start of the Gay Liberation movement put New York on the cusp of a social and cultural revolution. Second-wave feminism was just around the corner. The couple separated, but Hammond was pregnant. She later gave birth to a daughter, Tanya.”

Hammond, who came out as a lesbian in 1973, was on the forefront of the feminist and lesbian art movement in New York in the early 1970s.

“It’s not only about making our work,” Hammond wrote in an Artsy post commemorating the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. “We also have to document and preserve it and insist on a place in history or it will be erased.”

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