Category: Student Story

Senior Grayson Agrella, a triple major in Art History, Anthropology and French whose research interests center around the gender non-conforming community, has been named a Centennial Achievement Undergraduate Award recipient — one of the highest honors a student can achieve at the University of Arizona.

Agrella, who will graduate summa cum laude with honors in spring 2024, is being recognized by the Dean of Students Office at a luncheon at Old Main on Dec. 5. He’s only one of two undergraduates to receive the award, given annually to students who have demonstrated significant contribution, accomplishment, moral character and integrity among the community.

“Grayson is one of those rare intellects … who has impressed the Art History faculty with the depth of his passion for the arts and his achievement in every class,” wrote School of Art History Professors Irene Bald Romano and Paul Ivey, who nominated Agrella for the award. “He has made a strong commitment to LGBTQ+ rights and issues — profoundly expressed in his research.”

In Romano’s “Topics in Museum Studies” class, for example, Agrella wrote about how museums have historically interpreted and displayed works by queer artists or LGBTQ+ topics, and how innovative exhibitions could change the cultural dynamic. And in Romano’s “Art as Plunder” class, Agrella explored how art dealing with homosexuality or the AIDS/HIV crisis was unfairly targeted in the 1980s while the LGBTQ+ community suffered unparalleled losses.

Agrella is committed to helping trans youths and has volunteered at camps for transgender children and their families. His Honors College thesis focuses on the types of activist engagement of trans youths — and how that impacts their perceived well-being and feelings of belonging in their communities, internalized negativity and negative health outcomes.

“I plan on going to graduate school after some work experience, and plan on pursuing something akin to queer anthropology,” Agrella said. “Lately I’ve been investigating visual anthropology programs, as they require a lot of skills such as visual analysis that I’ve learned as an Art History major.”

For the last two years, Agrella has worked at the Center for Creative Photography as an archival assistant, handling and rehousing archival materials, supervising researchers, and assisting with the digital archiving of images. In 2021, he worked for the U.S. Department of State as an agent in the Passports Division, which demanded “deep sensitivity to individual claims and individuals under stressful circumstances,” Romano and Ivey wrote in their nominating letter.

Agrella “regularly engages with mutual aid efforts, including those benefitting the unhoused community and other social justice causes in which he believes, the Dean of Students Office said.

“Grayson is the embodiment of the values associated with the Centennial Achievement Award,” Romano and Ivey wrote. “He has demonstrated outstanding persistence and integrity in his unwavering pursuit of excellence in his academic work. He has contributed significantly to the well-being of the community, especially trans youth, and he embodies the University’s strategic goal of valuing and supporting the diverse experiences of our students.”

Agrella, who carries a 3.971 GPA, was a National Merit Finalist and National AP Scholar at Tucson’s University High School, where he honed his literary gifts and became the Poetry and Prose editor for the Carnegiea Literary Magazine for the youth of Southern Arizona.

He talked more about his college experience in an interview with the School of Art:

Q. How rewarding, or challenging, has it been to juggle three majors?

A. I’ve found my experiences in all my majors to be eye-opening in different ways; I love studying art as a universal human experience, as well as how it becomes part of larger machinations, and anthropology has given me a more expansive understanding of many of those processes. Through the French program, I’ve been exposed to different cultures which has likewise made me analyze parts of my own culture that I took as givens — I love escaping the America bubble.

Q. How did you get interested in Art History, and what makes it special to you?

A. I initially chose Art History as a major after taking the AP in high school, and because I come from a family of artists but can’t see myself having a professional practice. Everyone has their own relationship to art — however high- or low-brow it may be — and I’m fascinated by how those relationships are influenced by a cacophony of outside factors. Art History, for me, is a material way of understanding snapshots of the human experience. The material focus still necessitates addressing abstract concepts at play, even if they involve global power dynamics or political motivations.

Q. What advice would you have for first-time undergraduate students at the university?

A. I would say branch out. Explore. I’ve found the School of Art to be what you make of it; there are so many ways to get involved — academically or otherwise — with whatever you’re passionate about, and if you feel something is missing you can make it happen yourself. And, you know, the usual things: Make connections with professors, figure out how to feed yourself, show up to class. And lean into whatever makes you a little funky and fun.

• Learn more about Centennial Achievement & Senior Awards

Growing up in Maine, Claire Fall Blanchette often tagged along with a landscaper — her mom. “I spent a lot of time outside,” the School of Art graduate student said.

The experience had a big influence on Blanchette when she began to bring nature into her artwork, including plants, grass and now fungi.

That’s right, the MFA candidate’s November-December 2023 solo exhibition at the Lionel Rombach Gallery featured two interacting walls of bricks that she “grew” with mycelium, the invisible part of mushrooms whose roots consist of minuscule fungal threads called hyphae.

She titled the exhibition “To Pass Through Two Doors at Once” — a “physical metaphor for human interaction with the natural world,” she said. Working on the living sculpture was part of Blanchette’s reward for winning the 2023 Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize.

“Mycelium is the basis of all life on our planet and embody an array of contradictions,” Blanchette said. “It can appear as both multiple organisms and as one, create life and promote decay, give nutrients, and extract them. Entangled in almost every ecosystem, mycelium holds soils together, forms symbiotic relationships with 90 percent of plants and accelerates decay while making space for new life to emerge.”

The aspect of decay is what intrigues Blanchette. After her solo exhibition and other presentations across campus — including a fall 2024 installation at the ENR2 Building courtyard — she will move the sculpture to the Land with No Name, an outdoor art sanctuary about 35 miles southwest of Tucson.

“I’m interested in how the sculpture will decompose and change over time … given our dry climate and the monsoons,” she said. “I’m not sealing (the bricks) at all, so things could continue to grow on them.”

That’s already happening. “I’ve kept a few bricks growing, and they’ve sprouted mushrooms that are now beginning to release spores,” she said. “I’m really excited by the potential that the spores and fruiting material has in terms of future projects and using the material in other ways.”

And with the race on to help reduce the world’s ecological footprint, Blanchette hopes introducing her mycelium structure to the community “can help us understand how long alternative building materials can survive,” she said. 

The process

Exactly how did Blanchette grow her light but surprisingly solid bricks, which are 16” x 8” x 8” inches in size?

First, she had to order hundreds of bags of organic material that included mycelium spores and hemp fibers, which she then mixed with water and flour.

“The yeast in the flour gets the mycelium working,” she said. “Once activated, the material became white and then I transferred it into these wooden molds that I made outside the studio. Each mold had two dowels to provide space for the sculpture’s metal armature.” 

It took five to six days to grow and form each block in the mold, and then at least another week to dry, during which Blanchette covered each block with trash bags to keep the sides from being exposed to oxygen.

For Blanchette, the biggest challenge was simply learning to work with the mycelium material.

“Since it’s a living organism, it reacted in many unanticipated ways,” she said. “Each time I filled a mold and grew a batch of bricks, the results varied. I had no way to control what colors or patterns would appear on the blocks, or if they would start growing things after I started drying them. … The bricks themselves morphed and changed throughout the de-molding, growing and drying process, so while they look uniform each one is unique in color, pattern and form.”

In all, Blanchette created 35 blocks for each wall in her sculpture.

Growing up

Blanchette hails from Farmingdale, Maine, which is 45 minutes north of Portland. In addition to her landscaping trips with her mother, she drew inspiration from her high school art teacher.

She graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, receiving a BFA in Printmaking and History of Art in 2016. She was the 2017 recipient of the Reba Stewart – Genevieve McMillan Travel Fellowship to fund her residency at Konstepidemin Arts Center in Gothenburg, Sweden.

From there, she worked as an artist in Queens, New York, and was an assistant at the Julie Mehretu Studio, where she began to experiment with mycelium art.

As a University of Arizona School of Art grad student, Blanchette was part of two other exhibitions at the Rombach Gallery in 2023: “Donors and Scholars” and “Nice to Meet You.”

She worked with lydia see, the school’s galleries director, for those group exhibitions and her current Centennial Prize show.

“Claire’s approach is thoughtful and experimental with plenty of room for finding delight in the unpredictability of material,” see said. “I’m so happy to host this sculptural installation in Rombach Gallery for students, staff and faculty to engage with before it heads to its life cycle outside of a gallery space and into the world.”

Environment on her mind

While in Tucson, Blanchette also has worked on art projects with buffelgrass – an invasive grass introduced to the Sonoran Desert in the 1930s for erosion control. “You have to use a pickax to extract them,” she said. “The root system is really tough.” She coats the buffelgrass in resin and has some of her work on display in her graduate studio.

Tucson volunteers have rallied to remove buffelgrass, and Blanchette hopes her mycelium sculpture “can spark conversations about our impact and interaction with the natural world.”

“The push and pull between me and the mycelium mimic the fallible attempts of human authority over the environment,” Blanchette said in her artist statement for “To Pass Through Two Doors at Once.” “Through this work, I examine the frailty of structures imposed onto uncontrollable spaces and the errant attempt at systemized power over the landscape.”

For more than 30 years, the Centennial Sculpture Prize has been given to an MFA candidate, specifically to support the completion of sculptural/3D artwork. The recipient is determined by a committee of staff and faculty through a proposal process. Recent honorees included Emiland Kray, Mariel Miranda, Benjamin Dearstyne Hoste, Marina Shaltout and Karlito Miller Espinosa.

The prize is sponsored by Marcia Grand, a generous donor to the School of Art who also was instrumental in supporting the school’s First Year Experience program.

“I wanted to make something big to honor the award,” Blanchette said.

• “To Pass Through Two Doors at Once” website
• Claire Fall Blanchette website
• On Instagram: @clr_fall

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.

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’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.”

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

Carrying on a tradition that began in 1970, six School of Art graduate students presented their work in the 2023 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition in collaboration with the University of Arizona Museum of Art.

The exhibition, with three installations in UAMA and three in the school’s Joseph Gross Gallery, ran from April 15 to May 13 at 1031 N. Olive Road. An opening reception was held April 20 at the school’s atrium.

This annual exhibition, the culmination of the MFA Studio Degree, is presented during a graduate student’s final semester in the three-year degree program. During the last year of their coursework, graduates work closely with faculty to develop a body of original art to present to the public in lieu of a written thesis. The result offers visitors the opportunity to see new, cutting-edge art in a variety of mediums and styles.

“This is the next generation of artists who will be going out and impacting the discipline and thinking about what their next chapter looks like,” School of Art Director Colin Blakely said. “We encourage our students to be bold and experiment and take ownership of their process. This exhibition is a fantastic manifestation of all of those qualities.”

The MFA Exhibition featured installations by Alain Co, Mariel Miranda and Gabrielle Walter in the Joseph Gross Gallery and Emily Kray, Jesus Sanchez-Alvarez and Jandey Shackelford in the UAMA Gallery.

“Each artist in this exhibition took a unique path in their work, demonstrating their research, critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity and ambition,” said Chelsea Farrar, UAMA’s curator of community engagement. “Collectively these works represent the rigor, the quality and the breadth of study of the U of A School of Art.”

VIEW ALL THEIR WORK

ALAIN CO

• Bio: Alain is a Master of Fine Arts candidate in Sculpture. Originally from New Orleans, they received their Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art with a concentration in Sculpture from Southeastern Louisiana University. They have works installed on sites ranging from the Tucson high desert to the Ozark foothills.

• Thesis title: Ever, Always Are

• Artist’s statement: My installation is a response to strong dissociative tendencies. When dysregulated, my grasp of reality becomes fragile and I don’t trust my thoughts or perceptions. Memories become slippery, mutable, and easily influenced. When in that state, working with materials brings clarity to an oppressive fog — if I can touch it, I know it is real. Adaptation has driven me towards object-making in all its forms, and I relate this survival strategy to natural phenomena.

Many studies of Earth systems (ecology, climatology, geology, etc.) use extracted core samples from different substrates, like pencil-thin specimens from living trees or massive cylinders removed from the Antarctic. They are used as analogs for recreating past climate and ecological data. Using condensed layers of debris, scientists can paint pictures of the past, solve ecological mysteries, and posit conditions for the future. The sculpture objects I create are formed through accumulation and reformation.

Each is an experiment that incorporates an array of materials, using a range of techniques. Strata of texture and color are displayed together in an arc with individual arrangements acting as samples of the core materials. Fragments, residue, and debris that is gathered, donated, or remnant from previous projects are assembled, deconstructed, rearranged, combined, dismantled, and assembled again. This body of work and the experience of my being are grounded in the constant bending, breaking, and reforming of matter through living systems on our planet.

• Instagram: @a.co_thealien

EMILY KRAY

• Bio: Emily Kray, is a visual artist working primarily with watercolor and book arts to investigate the complexities and fallacies of memory by manipulating our attachment to nostalgic and familiar forms. He began his artistic career by living and working in Las Vegas and received his BFA from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2020. That same year, he began his MFA at the University of Arizona. He has participated in group shows nationally since 2016 and has had solo shows across Nevada and in Arizona. Since then, Kray continues to make art with a focus on community involvement and volunteer work with a goal to graduate with his MFA in the Spring of 2023.

• Thesis title: You Can Only Turn Left

• Artist’s statement: My installation investigates the blurry state between sleeping and waking where memories fade into dreams, and reality feathers into the fantastic. The expansive nature of our unconscious rivals that of the mysteries of deep space and the depths of our oceans, and reveals to us the limitless potential of our own humanity. Dreams throughout history have been the vehicles for new discoveries, spiritual awakenings, divine interventions, and a place to revisit the absurd theater of life. By untangling and studying my own dreams, I have compiled a personal lexicon of the symbols that appear and reappear to me, referencing my personal truths, absurdity, and the beautiful mundanity of my waking life.

In these artworks, as in dreams, the observer is riddled with the question of agency. The interactive narrative included in the exhibition explores this notion as it simulates the liminal hypnagogic state before one’s body falls asleep. The hallucinations experienced within this simulation force the player to bounce between different states of consciousness while tossing and turning in bed. Both the player and the character lack control in this scenario, thus offering a challenge to be a mentally flexible dreamer and an attempt to achieve lucidity.

The subjects represented in this body of work appear from the black abyss. Dense, inky mist distorts and emphasizes their form. They are hidden and uncovered simultaneously, offering both questions and answers. Each work is a morphing riddle, or a liquid puzzle. By resisting the urge to impose our credulous desires upon these dreamy experiences, these symbols can exist in a realm detached from logic. The subjects within these works offer opportunities for new perspectives, new possibilities, and instances to practice nonattachment to our logical tendencies.

• Website: emilykray.com/emily

• Instagram: @troctopus

MARIEL MIRANDA

• Bio: Mariel lives and works in Tijuana and Tucson, where she is an MFA in Studio Art candidate at the School of Art and the 2021 Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize recipient. A sociologist and visual artist, she is co-founder and director of the International Festival of Photography Tijuana (FIFT), a feminist platform created for the undisciplined reflection on the image and its current modes of production.

• Thesis title: The dust, or the wind, perhaps

• Artist’s statement : My work presents a speculative fiction installation invoking radical utopias founded in a Science Fiction workshop that I co-hosted with my brother, neighbors and friends in Las Cumbres, my barrio in Tijuana, Mexico. Together we planned how to defend our loved ones against a narco pest and the alien thieves that are causing the running water to dry out in our homes. We challenge the use of our land as a junkyard and undermine the presence of a factory that works for the neocolonialist corporations Tesla and SpaceX — thriving on profit from the old Mars colonization fantasy while relying on extractivist practices and of our manual labor.

In my neighborhood, I have been weaving the tactics of resistance embedded in our collective work and ability to imagine, transform and create with what is available. The years involved in the process of creating a communal library in the front yard of my house as the making of photographs, collages, oral histories, interviews, videos, essays and workshops have allowed me to use art and education as excuses for the mobilization of desire and affective places for the night. In a moment of history, where triumphant narratives depend on our sadness and pessimistic belief in the future’s end, in Las Cumbres — as in many other territories — our fight is for solidarity, joy and life: The South are us.

• Website: marielmira.com

• Instagram: @mariiel.mira

JESUS SANCHEZ-ALVAREZ

• Bio: Jesus is a graduate student in painting & drawing at the School of Art, where he has been a teaching assistant for the “Elements of Drawing” course. His current drawings and paintings attempt to revive historical decorative designs foreign to our fast-paced society through a world he invented consisting of characters who grow ornamented lifeforms through music.

• Thesis title: Embellishment Intimacy

The presence of ornamentation in this work represents the extension of the natural world beyond where it ordinarily grows. As a result, many decorative components take on organic shapes. Ornament in these renditions can be found on the vestments, architecture, wings, trees, plants, and seeds. The large, decorated, egg-like shapes are the seeds which bloom into elaborately designed plants. The nature in these settings grows upon the playing of musical instruments found in the series’ universe.

By combining nature and ornament, two different visual dialogues emerge. The realistic representations of life forms communicate spontaneity, as nature grows unpredictably. On the other hand, the decorative components embody repetition and idealization. Thus, I seek for my work to be a union between realism and idealism, as well as spontaneity and recurrence.

• Artist’s statement: Creating a sense of intimacy with natural forms and ornamentation is the driving force behind my pen and ink drawings and watercolor paintings. My definition of natural forms encompasses plants, human beings, and animals. Studying the diversity of organisms on our planet evokes within me an attraction to fantastical and other worldly imagery, such as hybrid beings. In my view, a hybrid being is a living composite of multiple life forms such as fairies, centaurs, and angels. I view nature as an enchanting place, and I seek to magnify this perception through creating new types of plants and creatures.

• Website: wixsite.com/jernestoart

• Instagram: @j.ernesto.art

JANDEY SHACKELFORD

• Bio: A multimedia artist from Gillette, Wyoming, Jandey received her BFA from the University of Wyoming and studied abroad in Australia, where she focused on making work about the objectification of women.

• Thesis title: Imprint

• Artist’s statement: My work raises questions and sheds light on persistent stereotypes, gender roles and forms of oppression that persist. Specifically, it is a reflective examination of the impact that a space, particularly a home or house, can have on its inhabitants. I utilize a combination of my own footprints and those of others to explore these concepts. The footprints serve as tangible evidence, presence, and memory of the impact that this space has had on those who occupy it.

These large drawings were created through a process that employs bodies, space, interaction and physical manipulation of roofing paper. The material was subjected to a system of imprinting, tearing, arranging, and careful mending with fibers to represent the foundation of a home and the chaos that can exist within it. Through the combination of construction and craft materials, I seek to express the experience of living in a space characterized by a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. The act of creating these drawings represents an effort to transcend the space of sadness from which they were born.

• Instagram: @jandeyshackelford

GABRIELLE WALTER

• Bio: An MFA candidate in Illustration and Design, Gabrielle is a visual artist that makes anything and everything sequential — and work about her relationship with her body, anxiety and womanhood. All mediums are of interest to her, but she mainly uses drawings, cyanotypes, and digital illustration to create her projects. In the past, she has worked in both public and fine art spaces, producing the design for Bill Walton’s chair at University of Arizona basketball games as well as work for Lubbock and Tucson galleries.

• Thesis title: Fireweed

• Artist’s statement: My installation is inspired by a 2022 trip to Juneau, Alaska, where I reconnected with my body through place. An artist book, illustration series and animation incorporate cyanotypes gathered during this journey to tell the story of a fictional protagonist in conflict with herself and nature. As this young woman goes for a walk, she fixates on the beauty of the landscape, spurring a thought spiral about her aesthetic and physical worth in the vastness of her location.

Alaska’s native fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) becomes a catalyst for change as the defeated protagonist finds similarities in her own journey and this weed’s ability to survive. With this work, I was able to ask how the body affects our navigation of mental and physical spaces.

Set to the backdrop of a cyanotype mountain range, I sought to capture the role nature can play in this relationship as it forces us to acknowledge our bodies through physical exertion and witness the beauty found in harsh conditions. Fireweed is an ode to the endurance of the human form and the relationship between femininity, resilience, and the body.

• Website: gabriellewalterart.weebly.com

• Instagram: @gabriellewalterart

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.”

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.

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