Alex Turner (MFA Studio Art, ’20) and Ryan McIntosh (BFA Studio Art, ’07) showed their work at “The Intimacy of Distance” exhibition at the Douglas Marshall Gallery this fall in Santa Monica, California, along with Prof. Sama Alshaibi. Turner (photo above), McIntosh and Alshaibi chatted with the SoCal Cats alumni chapter and School of Art Director Colin Blakely during a special event on Oct. 23. The exhibition was co-curated by Prof. Lawrence Gipe.

Bella Maria Varela, (MFA Photo/Video/Imaging, ’21 ) has been named to the 2022 Provost’s Early Career Fellows Cohort at the University of Texas at Austin. Varela moved to El Paso, Texas, after receiving her master’s at the University of Arizona to attend the Border Art Residency (BAR), where she helped establish a new arts and philosophy program — Transformative Learning Communities — in elChamizal, a barrio on the US/Mexico Border. Read story

Dorsey Kaufmann (MFA ’20, Illustration + Design) Kaufmann exhibited her multimedia installation, “Ripple Effect,” in Venice, Italy as part of the ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition, “Cities of the Future: Living Together.” “Ripple Effect” is an interactive sound installation that visualizes contamination data of local water quality and then translates the data into sound waves. Read story

Kaufmann was listed as one of ArtConnect magazine’s “Artists to Watch 2021,” stating “Dorsey Kaufmann’s series Years of Lost Life exemplifies the power of when art and science merge. The project … visualizes the dangers to a whole community in the Sonoran Desert due to corporate mining … is clearly well researched … with a clear educational baseline.” Read Q&A

Cherise Smith (MA ‘97/BA ‘91, Art History) received the Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art by the Smithsonian American Art Museum for her book “Michael Ray Charles: A Retrospective.” The book is the first in-depth examination of the artist’s provocative paintings that sample images of racism from consumer culture. Dr. Smith is an inaugural Scholar in the African American Art History Research Initiative at the Getty Research Institute for 2021-2022, and she is the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in African American Studies and a professor in the African and African Diaspora Studies and art and art history departments at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research has been supported by the Getty Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African American Research at Harvard University. She has worked in the curatorial departments of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Saint Louis Art Museum among other institutions. Read story

Chris Gall (BFA ’85) has created a Wilbur and Wilma Homecoming illustration for the University of Arizona for the past 10 years. Gall has received over 50 major awards from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Art Magazine, The New York Art Directors Club, and Print Magazine. His artwork has been shown major national publications like Time, Newsweek, People, New York Times, and Washington Post.

Adriana Gallego (BFA ’97, Painting and Drawing) was appointed executive director of the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona. “I’m trained as a painter, but I am at the service of other artists,” Gallego said.

Jessica Gonzales (BFA ‘12, 2D Art) created this mural, “Seeds of Wonder,” in two days outside the Wonder House / Fogo de Chao at SXSW in Austin, Texas, in March. The mural depicts the excitement of finding and pursuing your passions, while also incorporating a taste of Tucson flare.

Clare Benson (MFA, ’13), a photographer and interdisciplinary artist, is being featured in a three-person exhibition, “On the Arctic Edge — Artists Explore the Far North” at Scandinavia House in New York City from Oct. 22 to Jan. 28, 2023. Benson’s work in Arctic Sweden in coordination with space scientists and indigenous Sámi reindeer herders has been exhibited internationally and published in the 2017 book “The Shepherd’s Daughter.” Website

Nassem Navab (MFA, ’19) and Anh-Thuy Nguyen (BFA, ’10) were featured in a compelling four-woman exhibition “Dialogues” at Tucson’s Yun Gee Park Gallery. Read story

Sadie Shaw (BFA, ’19, Art & Visual Culture Education) landed a new position with the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona. Read story

Sarah Hardesty (MFA Painting ’05) saw her solo show “Time Binding” reviewed by the Washington Post. Read story The show was held at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, Virginia, where Sarah is a resident artist and an assistant professor at Marymount University. See the show’s catalog and her website.

Adam Rex (’96 BFA Studio Art) mentored aspiring illustrators and writers as the fall writer-in-residence at the Himmel Park and Woods Memorial libraries in Tucson from August to October. Read Q&A

Aline Kominsky-Crumb (BFA, ’71) died Nov. 29 in France. She was 74. A close collaborator of her cartoonist husband, Robert Crumb, she was a founding member of the influential all-female collective that produced the anthology Wimmin’s Comix, a long-running feminist comic published from 1972 to 1985. A documentary about their life, “Crumb,” was released in 1994. Read obit