Illustration + Design

Visit our Graduate Gallery and support Michaela Moravcikova’s current exhibition, “Body lotion.” Michaela is an exchange student from Slovakia currently enrolled in our 2D studies program and is achieving her Masters in Painting. The exhibition containing acrylic paintings, monotypes, and silkscreens will end December 12, so be sure to check it out soon! You can contact michaela.moravcikova2@gmail.com to request a viewing.
“I try to connect the body with the icons. Abstraction created through layers, shapes, patterns, icons, lines, background, foreground, and transparency is shaken and then led by the haiku of my memory, experiences, emotions and associations. I’m interested in taming rationality, intuition, imagination, association, suggestions, trust and savageness. I try to juggle with elements of daily life with ease, to perform the best gig. Why wouldn’t I, if everything is permitted. We all want to have fun.” @michaelamoravcikova ...

In case you missed it: Tucson Weekly “Best of Tucson” UA Alumni Winners!🎉 Congratulations to the Pro Wildcats! Thank you to the artists for adding even more beauty to our beloved city 🌵 Take a look at their work and see for yourself how remarkable the talent in this room is right now. 👏 ...

Meet one of our many amazing alumni, Jenny Day!✨
Jenny earned her MFA in painting at the UArizona School of Art and is currently a painter and sculptor based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She has exhibited her work in Arte Laguna in Venice, Italy, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Korea, Museum of Art Fort Collins, Mesa Arts Museum, and the Phoenix Art Museum, to name a few! She also has a solo show currently on display at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center and a collaborative exhibition with Beth Davila Waldman at Chung | Namont in San Francisco, California.
We are so proud of Jenny for all of her incredible accomplishments and wish her success in her future endeavors!
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“Retreating from the stress and chaos of the last year, I created another landscape; populated by an army of friendly creatures. Here the burdens of coronavirus, climate change, and political division are dismissed by hot pink kittens that arc gracefully through meteor showers and owls that bury into beds of daffodils. In this place worry is edged out by the fantastic and mystical snails trail neon candy canes through the scorched earth. The apocalyptic is supplanted by the surreal and the allegorical.
Anxiety followed me. The escapist reflects and distorts its shadow world, the real, a funhouse mirror that names the traumas as it blows past them, slyly referential. The work suggests that magic is possible; while anchoring itself in the grotesque, inedible foods, a conglomeration of garbage. A blissful, almost psychedelic, reverence for nature exists, but the fantasy’s origins leach through in the details and distortions. The animals are often translucent, reflective. Nature persists, proliferates, and transforms. Relentless flowers push up against the edges of paintings, attempting to smother and subsume, animals and people oblivious to any threat; the threat always present.” - @jenny.marie.day ...

Check out these impressive and meaningful collages from School of Art Alumnus, Spencer Nichols! Spencer has received his BFA in Studio Art and is currently an MFA candidate at Pratt Institute. These images are from a series titled, “Work in Progress 1.”
“I created this work as a response to emotions caused by a breakup. It reflects my thoughts, feelings, desires, and pains I experienced and almost appear to be begging for some sort of release. Originally thinking about this work, I wanted it to be a comparison between the feelings of being lost as a child and an adult; as a child I often felt lost, as I did during the time I began the work. When I thought about the material I wanted to collage with, 1970/80’s gay pornographic magazines, it reminded me of the connection between media consumption and sexual habits in gay culture, as well as the connection present in personal and private exploitations. I felt trapped, hostage to heartbreak and old habits. I also became reminded of the link between materials created during a viral epidemic and work being made in a new global pandemic. The ransom note style text is my attempt at asking myself what the price is for letting go and being free. How can I be the prisoner and the security guard, and what is the ransom to release myself from the cage? This work explores those questions through vulnerability within myself in an attempt to find the answer.” - @srnichols7 ...

This past Thursday, The Committee on Multiethnic Concerns (a special interest group of the National Art Education Association) celebrated its 50th anniversary! The virtual event, “The Future is Now: Imagining The ‘As Yet’,” was moderated by fourth year PhD student, Amber Coleman who is currently studying Art and Visual Culture Education at the School of Art. The talk also featured School of Art Alumna and recipient of the SoA and CFA Outstanding Senior Award in May 2018, Elizabeth Denneau. Elizabeth is currently an art teacher at Marana High School while also completing her MFA at SAIC. Congratulations to both Amber and Elizabeth for being featured in the event and representing the next generation of leaders in the field of art education!
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First photo: Elizabeth Denneau
Second: “mettre le feu” by Elizabeth Denneau
Third: Amber Coleman
Fourth: Flyer for COMC event ...

Tomorrow is Future Teachers of America Day! We are so glad to highlight Carissa DiCindio, one of our amazing Assistant Professors of Art and Visual Culture Education who is currently teaching and mentoring our future art and museum educators. Carissa is professor for Theory & Practice in Art Museum Education where she focuses on museum education, teaching and learning theory, communication techniques, and studying audience characteristics. Last spring, Carissa received a grant from the College of Fine Arts where she was able to fund student projects for her ARE425 class. Students were able to purchase supplies for “Our Stories I Acts of Love and Community: Sharing Experiences with Food and Art” exhibition in collaboration with @artworksua currently on display at the @uazmuseumofart. Her ARE525 class also contributed to the exhibition by designing zines, soundscapes, and a digital curation of Ed Ruscha art. Carissa DiCindio’s research, teaching, and service have been specifically focused on museum-community partnerships, underrepresented museum audiences, university art museums, and accessible programming.
Be sure to check out the exhibition before it ends on December 19! ...

Check out this awesome project created by Madison Ritscher for Karlito Miller Espinosa’s Art 368 Figure Illustration class!
For this piece, Karlito wanted students to study different figures and find a way that they could interact with each other, “I decided to create a collage of different references from National Geographic. I’ve decided to call it ‘Untitled 1’ because I plan to do more work like this in the future, taking a look at things like National Geographic articles, and other forms of informative media and changing it to create confusion out of things that were normally meant to be educational.” - @art_with_maddi_ritscher
The first image is a digital sketch, the second a progress picture, and the last is the finished oil painting. ...

Mark your calendars for the opening reception for “In the Field: Graduates of the University of Arizona School of Art”, organized by Associate Professor Lawrence Gipe. Starting Friday Nov. 19 from 5-7pm at the Tubac Center for Arts, Tubac, AZ. See a variety of work from Wildcat Alumni with diverse backgrounds all full of life. The show will go on until Jan. 2, so make sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity to support your local artists!
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Artists:
L. Aili Schmeltz
Jonathan Marquis
Tim Si-qin
Lara Haddad
Nassem Navab
Roberta Gentry
Alex Turner
Karlito Miller Espinosa
Tiffany "Bunnie" Pelmont
Anthony Luis Barron
Erin DiGiovanni
Ryan Macintosh
Jason Manley
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Images:
1. Karlito Miller Espinosa, "We will have to, Marx declares, and we will be able to, we will have to be able to...", 2021, oil on canvas, 48" x 60".
2. Jason Manley, 2021, "Painting", mixed media​, 20" x 18"x 3".
3. Lara Haddad, 2018, "Cleansing", Print on blanket, machine embroidery, 80x60".
4. Ryan McIntosh, 2021, "Figure and Plane, Solheimasandur, Iceland", silver chloride print, 8x10".
5. Erin DiGiovanni, 2020, "Wash With Care", mixed media sculpture.
6. Roberta Gentry, 2021, "Wiz", acrylic on canvas, 48"x32" ...

Take a look at this eye-catching series of work by art student Hailey Jo Smith, “Undercurrent.” Hailey is pursuing a studio art major with an emphasis in illustration, learning more about art than previously thought possible. Hailey speaks about her series and why she created the beautiful “Undercurrent;”
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“Undercurrent is a body of work that seeks to illustrate the ways in which I personally have experienced disconnection and connection throughout my life. In discussing the pain that disconnection often creates, and the abundant joy connection brings, I wanted to create works that communicate balance, harmony, and necessity between these two opposite forces. One cannot exist without the other, and throughout the experiences in our lives, each of us will find it imperative to encounter all ranges of disconnection and connection - it is what makes the human experience whole. Life can be cold and isolating at times, but that is why we all have each other - to lean and be leant on, and to show one another ever more beautiful ways of loving each other. “ - Hailey Smith
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1 “Spiral”
2 “Dualism”
3 “Feminine”
4 “Actualization and Efficacy” ...

Hey! My name is Sabrina Enriquez and I am a University of Arizona School of Art Alumni. I graduated in May 2021 with a bachelor's in Studio Art with an emphasis in Graphic Design and a double minor in Marketing and Spanish. My focus as a graphic designer is digital/social media marketing. I love being able to impact the lives of those who encounter my work. When it comes to coming up with designs, I like to think of myself as a very adaptable designer. I've always felt that I didn't have or work in a specific "style" which I believe allows me to adapt to many brand guidelines for various clients and businesses, making my work boundless and open to more audiences.
Zusammen is a project that I created in my Clients & the Community Design class (ART 465). This project was about coming up with an airline and all of its branding and identity, this includes a color palette, logo, name, slogan, packaging, etc. For my project, I created a secondary airline under the existing Austrian Airlines company and was specifically designed for families who were traveling with young children. - @sabrinas.designs ...

Something to 💥spark💥 your interest…
School of Art Alumnus and current Shop Technician Assistant, Trevor O’Toole created this incredible sculpture for the City of Surprise, AZ fire department station 304 to commemorate Randy Perry, a fallen firefighter. The sculpture stands 6’ft tall 3ft x 3ft and is made completely from bronze.
In regards to his artistic process, Trevor says, “I’ve always been enthralled by the act of communication and the resulting confusion that occurs because of the differences in people, their backgrounds, and their expectations. I’m especially interested in expressions used to add clarification through analogy and localized humor…I am motivated by a love of traditional media and fabrication techniques, including woodcarving and the lost wax bronze casting technique. The satisfaction of communication between the work and the audience is paired with the joy and rest I find through the lengthy process of making.” - @trevorotool ...

Congrats to Jennifer R. Saracino, Assistant Professor of Art History, School of Art, for her most recent publication! Dr. Saracino was invited to write the chapter “Staking Claims on Native Lands: The Symbolic Power of Indigenous Cartographic Conventions in the Ayer Map of Teotihuacan Mexico (1560) and Its Copies” for a volume published by the University of Chicago Press.
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The chapter discusses an Indigenous made map of Teotihuacan that the Newberry has in its collection. The volume as a whole explores the relationship between maps and the environmental knowledge in the Americas, or between humans and nature. ...

¡Feliz día de los Muertos! Happy Day of the Dead! Celebrate your loved ones today and celebrate the culture by visiting the Dia de los Muertos 2021 Expo before it’s over! See the art that Mexican and Mexican-American graphic designers can create to showcase the Day of the Dead and all it means.

“The intention with this exhibition was to make graphic design known as a true form of artistic expression. We are very grateful to Consul Barceló Durazo for collaborating with us to make this exhibition possible. Not only does it allow us to showcase cultural diversity and the love we have for our Mexican roots, but also present graphic design as an art form that is not always recognized as such.” -Maria Rosa Zaragoza Medina (Graphic artist and organizer of the event.)

This expo will be available for viewing Monday-Friday from 8am-5pm until November 22 in the Leonora Carrington Gallery Consulado de México in Tucson. ...