Faculty & Staff Highlights

FALL 2024

Part of David Taylor’s installation, “COMPLEX”

“Complex,” an exhibit by Professor David Taylor, opened Oc. 19 at the Pidgin Palace Arts, 1110 S. Sixth Ave. With photos, video and objects, the installation is a visual survey of the privately operated U.S. prisons that incarcerate migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The exhibit runs until Dec. 14 and is the latest chapter in Taylor’s two-decade effort to chronicle the changing borderlands.

Assistant Professor Nicole Antebi’s animated essay for The Texas Observer examines the word “friendship” in the subtitle of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The animations propose personal cartographies reclaiming the meaning of that word. See her essay.

Assistant Professor Ilayda Altuntas Nott presented her work on Sounding Art Practice as Research (SAPAR) at the 2024 Society for the Study of Affect (SSA) Conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Oct. 12-14. “The experience served as a reminder that ideas are, by nature, collaborative rather than proprietary,” she said, adding that SAPAR was first conceived in 2015 during a collaboration with a nonprofit working with juvenile detention centers.

Faculty members Jandey Shackelford and Danielle Jones and adjunct instructor Jesse Hinson collaborated on an exhibition, “Topophilia,” at the Untitled Gallery, 101 W. Sixth St., from Oct. 5 to Nov. 23.

Dr. Ilayda Altuntas, Pooja Venkatachalam Kumar and Jandey Shackelford grew up in Turkey, India and Wyoming, respectively. The new School of Art faculty members may come from different backgrounds, but they share one common goal: to encourage students to push their creative and scholarly boundaries. Get to know the trio in this Q&A.

Assistant Professor Alejandro Macias gave a Charlas Con Café talk, “Duality Along the U.S./Mexico Border,” on Oct. 4 at the Center for Latin American Studies. A member of the School of Art’s Painting and Drawing faculty, Macias was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border.

College of Fine Arts Dean Andy Schulz announced in late September that he’s stepping down when his current administrative contract ends on June 30, 2025. Schulz will also step down from his role as the university’s inaugural Vice President for the Arts. Schulz will take an administrative leave during the 2025-26 academic year, during which he hopes to complete a long-standing research project on the legacy of Islamic art and culture in Spain. He then plans to return to the classroom as an Art History faculty member in the School of Art. “I am incredibly proud to have played a role elevating and integrating the arts on campus and in the community as a means of advancing the U of A’s mission of student success, cutting-edge research, and impactful community engagement,” said Schulz. Read the full announcement

Art History Professor Irene Bald Romano jointly published an article on how a gypsum relief fragment from 7th century B.C.E. Nineveh (Iraq) ended up at the U of A’s Arizona State Museum after once being in the hands of circus impresario P.T. Barnum. The fragment, which depicts fat-tailed sheep led in procession by a royal eunuch, was discovered by British explorers in the 1850s and later became part of the Barnum Museum of Natural History at Tufts College. Romano, with Anthropology PhD student Gina Watkinson and former Classics student Kelly Moss, published the article in the Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research (BASOR). Article

SUMMER 2024

Professor Karen Zimmermann was interviewed by the Washington Post and a Tucson radio station (Aug. 5 episode) after being featured in a UA News story on Olympic icons for the 2024 Paris Summer Games.

“Nopal en la Frente (con Bud Light)”

Assistant Professor Alejandro Macias participated in a UnCool Artist Residency in Brooklyn, was accepted into the 2024 Texas Biennel and saw his “Nopal en la Frente (con Bud Light)” painting acquired by the El Paso Museum of Art.

Professor Larry Gipe reviewed L.A. painter Frank Ryan’s “Lived Perspective” exhibition.

LENSCRATCH published a Q&A with Galleries Director lydia see on June 25. She talks about her 2023 Arizona Biennial project to help honor COVID-19 victims, “Let no one say we were not here,” and about a second iteration to process her grief for those killed in Palestine. “lydia hones in on small details innate in humanity to conceptually focus on the role images play in our lives. With simple changes such as painting over the figures in an image with gouache, the image meanings shift,” the interviewer, Epiphany Knedler, writes in the introduction. Read the Q&A

Carissa DiCindio

Carissa DiCindio enjoyed her spring sabbatical as a visiting scholar at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The Art & Visual Education associate professor co-taught the honors course, “Making ‘sense’ of cultural ecosystems: Researching cultural fields using sensory research methods,” with Dr. Emilie Sitzia, a History associate professor at Maastricht. Students engaged with sensory and walking methodologies to better understand the cultural and community networks of the city. They mapped explorations of museums, cultural institutions and public spaces using arts-based methods and are currently building a digital map to share their work. Carissa also met with museum professionals to learn about how they support each other through shared resources, audiences and programming, and she presented her research to faculty, staff and students. “Being able to explore new avenues for my work and build collaborative relationships with faculty, students and museum staff were highlights of my time in the Netherlands,” DiCindio said. “I am especially excited to bring new ideas and experiences into my classes at the University of Arizona. Thank you to the Morgan Salomon Fund for supporting this project.”

Galleries Director lydia see placed second in the Midwest Nice Art Annual National Juried Exhibition for her project “Let no one say we were not here (for Palestine),” 2023-2024, a durational performance represented as sculptural object. The exhibition, “nice;02. nice;02,” began July 1 and ran through Sept. 15 at the JFAC Gallery at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Details

Associate Professor Joseph Farbrook curated a student exhibition, “Dystopian Dreams,” at Sculpture Tucson this summer, with a public reception set for the fall (TBA). The Post House at Sculpture Tucson, 3240 E. River Road, is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Art & Visual Culture Education Associate Professor Carissa DiCindio and her team members received the second annual Resilience Theme Grant award for their project, “Building Hydro-Local Community Through Music, Art and Watershed Science,” from the university’s Arizona Institute for Resilience. Through musical compositions and performances, workshops and art, the team hopes to inspire greater interest in watershed stewardship and the conservation of water and land through practices such as rainwater harvesting, river cleanups, and restoration efforts. Story

SPRING 2024

Faculty member Lawrence Gipe was promoted to full professor, starting in fall 2024. Professor Gipe (2D Studies) engages the postmodern landscape and the visual rhetoric of progress in media that ranges between painting, drawing, video and collaborative installations. He has had 58 solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Munich, Berlin and Düsseldorf. He splits his time between his studio in Los Angeles and Tucson. Website and Instagram 

Faculty member Kelly Leslie was promoted to full professor, starting in fall 2024. Professor Leslie (Illustration, Design & Animation) has taught Publication Design, Design for Web and Devices, Clients and the Community and a collaborative class with UA Law called Visualizing Justice. Her work includes client-based commissions, drawings, and digital fabrication. She has exhibited in China, Japan and Australia as well as the U.S. Website and Instagram

“Border/River/Mover/Breather” (2024) is the title of two simultaneous exhibitions, implemented during Assistant Professor of Animation Nicole Antebi’s stay in Dublin, Ireland, from May 1-11. Her visit was a joint effort by the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and University College Dublin (UCD). Combining driftwood sourced from Dublin Bay and dimensional text and drawings, Antebi installed the works on the second floor of the Harry Clarke building — furthering her ongoing research on how power upheld in colonial treaties have shaped language, landscape and friendship in contested boundary waters. In collaboration with Éireann Lorsung, Antebi also created two text pieces come from passages extracted from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the Spanish translation thereof (by Pablo Ingberg). The text plays with the “lag” of translation, offsetting of “sides,” plus the time of animation. Photos

Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi participated in a prestigious residency with the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy in April. Not only did she join other top global artists, scholars and scientists tackling issues such as water and climate, she also worked on her art project that explores the impact of Iraq’s laws on women. Full story

Yana Payusova in China

Assistant Professor of Practice Yana Payusova traveled to the 2024 Jingdezhen – Taoxichuan Spring Art Fair in Jingdezhen, China, in late April and early May, as one of the international artists presenting and exhibiting at the world’s largest ceramic art event. The event drew over 3,000 international artists from 56 countries. “I met artists from all over the world and made important personal and professional connections,” Payusova said. “This place is practically sacred to any artist working in clay as Jingdezhen may have been  producing pottery as early as the sixth century CE and the history of this phenomenon is palpable in every corner of this fabulous modern city. The streets are literally paved with kiln brick! I am incredibly grateful to the donors to the College of Fine Arts Fund for Excellence for funding this amazing opportunity and experience.”

Arab News profiled Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi for Arab-American Heritage Month with the April 25 article, “Sama Alshaibi — I’m trying to change this idea of what an Arab woman is.” Story

College of Fine Arts Dean Andrew Schulz, a member of the School of Art Art History faculty, gave a talk, “What Did Goya See?” on April 11 at the University of Arizona Museum of Art’s Retablo Gallery.

Professor Ellen McMahon tries on the Imagination 1 space suit at the CFA lab, with the help of Ivey Wahome.

Professor Ellen McMahon, who is leading the efforts to integrate arts research into the overall research ecosystem at the University of Arizona, helped support a four-person, all-artist simulated moon mission, “Imagination 1,” at the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2 campus this spring. “This mission is a great example of arts research, demonstrating what we can learn about the human experience of space travel through the embodied and situated practices of dance, design, and writing,” said McMahon, associate dean of research for the College of Fine Arts. Story and Photos

Art History Assistant Professor Jeehey Kim participated in two free virtual photography talks: “Defining Identity through Photographs: Works of Japanese and Korean Photographers, 1945–1980s,” and “Photography and Black Presence in Korea and Japan” on March 27.

Professor Irene Bald Romano saw her new book, Beth Shean Studies: Aspects of Religion, History, Art, and Archaeology in Hellenistic and Roman Nysa-Scythopolis published. It was co-authored by Kyle Mahoney (Swarthmore College), with an Appendix by two scientists in Athens who conducted the analysis of the marble of the head of Alexander and identified the quarry. It was published by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, in a series that has been continuously published since 1771 (the oldest publication in America), now distributed by Penn Press. Story

School of Art Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi and Assistant Professor Marcos Serafim were named Mellon-Fronteridades Faculty Fellows by the university’s Confluence Center. Each year, the program allows graduate students and faculty to carry out interdisciplinary, humanities-centered research and creative scholarly activities focused on the U.S.-Mexico border. Alshaibi’s project, “Borderland Migrations & Metaphors (BMM)” is a creative inquiry that uses pláticas in combination with podcasting to produce trans-disciplinary stories of the U.S.-Mexico border. Serafim’s project. “Membrana Semipermeable,” proposes the creation of an immersive audiovisual installation and a performance piece that increase accessibility to available data about HIV/AIDS in the US/Mexico border employing cutting-edge tools for data visualization and documentary strategies. More details

“Border Watcher” (2023)

Assistant Professor Alejandro Macias attended a Feb. 23 reception for his first solo New York City exhibition, “Land of Wolves,” at LatchKey Gallery. He later learned that his “Border Watcher” painting was acquired by the Newark Museum of Art. Repost from the @latchkey_gallery: “Alejandro Macias roots his practice in the ambiguity of the in-between-of identity, nationhood, and place. His paintings and drawings address themes of migration and assimilation, rendering a unique impression of the US/Mexico borderlands and foregrounding the brutal and unjust policies that characterize this space. The artist positions himself as a documentarian, depicting the objects, people, and geographies that make up the dynamic yet complex region. In “Border Watcher” (2023), the subject wears a pressed and rigid border patrol uniform. While their identity is shielded by a multicolored serape-this pattern suggests that the sitter is of Mexican descent.”

Assistant Prof. Nicole Antebi and fellow filmmaker Lisa Molomot shared their work and provided insight into non-fiction animation on March 15. The School of Art sponsored the conversation with the UA School of Theatre, Film & Television and Hanson Film TV Institute at the Marshall Building. Photos

Associate Professor Jeehey Kim, who was formally honored Feb. 28 by the university for her Early Scholar Award, hosted a Q&A at the CCP after the South Korean film, “Witnesses to Democracy.”

Associate Professor Larry Gipe is participating in a Creative Research Fellowship at the Wolfsonian/Florida International University until March 17.

Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi screenED her videos “Iihya” and “See Without Being Seen” on Feb. 15 and led a walk-and-talk tour the next day to discuss her pieces in the exhibit “Crafting Resistance.” Both events were at the Arizona State University Art Museum. Her visit was co-sponsored by ASU School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and ASU Art Museum.

Galleries Director lydia see wrote a profile of downtown’s Snakebite Creation Space, 174 E. Toole Ave., for Southwest Contemporary. Read the story

FALL 2023

Jenn Liv illustration, “Children’s Day”

New Assistant Professor Jenn Liv received the Silver Medal in the advertising category for this year’s Society Of Illustrators 66th Annual Competition. She was honored for a three-color risograph illustration series commissioned by the Japanese airline All Nippon Airways and art directed by VIRTUE NY. She’ll receive the award this spring at a ceremony in New York. Go to https://www.jennliv.com/ and Jenn Liv Illustration to see more of Jenn’s work.

Nearly five years in the making, Jeehey Kim’s new book “Photography and Korea” was published by the University of Chicago Press in summer 2023. It’s the first history of Korean photography in English. Kim, an assistant professor of Art History at the School of Art, said she did most of the writing during the pandemic to go along with the book’s striking images. The 272-page book features 41 color plates and 93 halftones. “As this is the first book on the history of Korean photography from the 19th century until now in the Western language, I hope it contributes to diversifying the field,” Kim said. “In addition, translation of the book into Korean, Japanese and Chinese is also underway to reach the broader public in Asia.” Story

Associate Professor Larry Gipe was selected for a Creative Research Fellowship at the Wolfsonian in Miami in spring 2024. The fellowship is a two-week opportunity for artists of all kinds to immerse themselves in the Wolfsonian collection and draw visual, conceptual, or storytelling inspiration from its wide range of historical materials.

Assistant Professor Jeehey Kim moderated a Q&A with the directors after the Nov. 30 screening of “Tour of Duty (2012) and the US Military Presence in South Korea.” It’s a documentary film being shown in conjunction with the Korean photography exhibition “Wonders and Witness” at the Center for Creative Photography.

For Art History Professor Irene Bald Romano, a five-year journey with 15 other international scholars culminated this fall when the authors saw their research published as a special online monograph, “The Fate of Antiquities in the Nazi Era.” Edited and co-authored by Romano, it presents for the first time a comprehensive view of the fate of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern antiquities that changed hands during the Nazi period from 1933 to 1945. Story

Assistant Professor of Practice Yana Payusova‘s work was part of an invitational exhibition through Nov. 17 at The Art Galleries at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas. Payusova, an instructor in our First Year Experience program, attended the reception for “Pleasure & Protest” on Oct. 13 at the Fort Worth Contemporary Arts. In the release for the exhibition, TCU wrote: “(Yana’s) work reflects both her cultural heritage and training in traditional Russian realist painting, and it blends the styles and symbols of folk art, icons, graphic posters, illustration & comics.” Photos

Professor David Taylor‘s Aug. 19 interview in Patagonia for a Border Chronicle podcast was released on Oct. 17. Longtime journalists Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller interviewed Taylor about his recent projects, including “The DETAINED: Voices from the Migrant Incarceration System.” Podcast

Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi and Assistant Professor Alejandro Macias were awarded Art Matters fellowships. Every year, Art Matters chooses 15 artists to both receive a grant and give a grant to another artist.

Professors Ellen McMahon and Martina Shenal hosted four MFA alums and two visiting artist/philosophers as part of a speaker series in October and early November.  The speakers: Clare Benson (MFA ’13), Doresey Kaufmann (MFA ’20), Hai Ren (East Asian Studies), Jonathon Keats (visiting artist), Mariel Miranda (MFA ’23) and Karlito Miller Espinosa (MFA ’19).

Associate Prof. Joseph Farbrook’s solo exhibition “A Mirror in the Void” ran until Oct. 7 in Dallas.

Prof. Ellen McMahon’s work was part of the “Ecotone” exhibit at the Desert Museum. Details

“Man on Fire” by Alejandro Macias

The Tucson Museum of Art featured Prof. Gary Setzer in a 2023 Arizona Biennial artist spotlight. Details

Associate Prof. Larry Gipe curated “how swift, how far,” a group exhibition that included his work and  Ryan McIntosh‘s (BFA ’07) in L.A.

Assistant Prof. Alejandro Macias finished his CALA residency, and his Lehmann Award artwork is on display at the Phoenix Museum. Read story

Two members of the School of Art faculty now have artwork in the UAMA permanent collection. “Man on Fire” by Alejandro Macias was inspired by a Luis Jimenez sculpture with the same title that is also in the collection. UAMA also purchased. Ellen McMahon‘s series “Lost Language of a Desert Sea,” inspired by McMahon’s research as a Fulbright Scholar in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, where she worked on conservation and environmental education projects.

Faculty Emeritus

Retired School of Art Professor Philip Zimmermann saw his new artists’ book, “Melt,” short-listed in the Photobook Week Aarhus AI contest. More details. “Melt” also was named one of LensCulture.com‘s “Favorite Photobooks” of 2023. More info

SPRING 2023

Sama Alshaibi
Regents Professor, Photography, Video and Imaging

  • Her work “Eternal Love Song” will be featured alongside works by 25 women artists connected to the broader Islamic world in the “Being and Belonging” exhibition, which opens July 1 at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. More details
  • Formally inducted as a Regents Professor by the Arizona Board of Regents during the University of Arizona’s Outstanding Faculty Awards Ceremony on Feb. 15 at Crowder Hall. Read story
  • Tell it to the River,” a mid-career survey of Alshaibi’s work, started Feb. 27 at the Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah, UAE. The solo exhibition, which runs through June 30, 2023, brings together significant parts of her practice over the last two decades.

Nicole Antebi
Assistant Professor, Illustration and Design

  • Shared a bronze Anthem Award in Special Projects as an illustrator/animator for “Viruses, Vaccines, & COVID-19” — an explainer series produced by the American Museum of Natural History and the City of New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The second annual Anthem Awards, which also honored former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, celebrate purpose & mission-driven work from people, companies and organizations worldwide. Details

Sandra Barr
Lecturer, Art History

  • Gave a lecture April 19 on “Forgeries of Classical Sculpture” to the parents of Apollo Middle School students for the U of AZ CAP program. It is a early outreach program designed for first-generation college students in the Sunnyside School District.

Larry Gipe
Associate Professor, Painting and Drawing

  • Co-juried “By Degrees: Art and our Changing Ecology,” which opened April 15 at the Huntington Beach (California) Art Center. The exhibition, which runs through June 10, features adjunct faculty member Jonathan Marquis’ “In The Shadow of a Saguaro.” More details
  • Interviewed by KAMP Student Radio on Feb. 6 on 1570-AM. Listen

Paul Ivey
Professor, Art History

  • Gave a successful lecture, “Women Build Museums,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, on April 16. Details

Jeehey Kim
Assistant Professor, Art History

  • Named a 2023 Early Career Scholar Award recipient by The University of Arizona. Kim’s groundbreaking research in Asian photography has earned her international recognition. Story

Alejandro Macias
Assistant Professor, Painting and Drawing

  • Received the Lehmann Emerging Artist Award, which includes an exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum with co-recipient Yaritza Flores Bustos. “Thank you to the panelists and the museum for this incredible and special opportunity. I am so honored,” Alex said on Instagram. His exhibition will premiere on Wednesday, July 19, 2023, with an art talk presented by Fronterizx Collective at 6:30 pm. More details
  • Named the CALA Alliance regional resident this summer. CALA (Celebración Artística de las Américas) is a Latinx arts organization based in Phoenix. The alliance’s  residency program is one of the only programs that fosters Latinx artistic talent in the United States, providing artists with unparalleled resources that enable them to realize innovative, ambitious new work.
  • The University of Arizona Museum of Art  acquired his painting “Man on Fire.”
  • The “Soy de Tejas” exhibition in San Antonio featured work from Macias and Bella Maria Varela (MFA ’21). They are among 40 native Texan and Texas-based contemporary artists “who reflect the diverse and beautiful complexity of Latinx identities,” say the organizers of the exhibition, which is curated by Rigoberto Luna. The opening reception was Feb. 9 at the Centro de Artes.

Jonathan Marquis
Adjunct Instructor

  • His exhibition “Downwaste” is on display at the San Francisco Airport Museum until Oct. 26. For the series, Jonathan visited glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park and produced cyanotypes that visualize glacial melt. More details about the exhibition, curated by Kai Caemmerer.

Ellen McMahon
Professor, Illustration and Design
Associate Dean for Research, Arizona Arts

  • Featured along with Chris Rush in a mixed media and collage exhibition, “Again with the Real,” at the Etherton Gallery. The opening reception was Feb. 11.
  • Gave a presentation, “Perspectives on Resilience,” on behalf of the Arizona Institute for Resilience on Feb. 2, along with Tioni Collins of Arizona Arts.

Sarah J. Moore
Professor, Art History

  • Chaired a session at the Institute for the Study of International Expositions (ISIE) second-annual online symposium March 23-24. The event featured academic papers and top designers involved in exposition design. Moore is a board member of ISIE, which is the brainchild of UA Architectural History Prof. Lisa Schrenk.

Jennifer Saracino
Assistant Professor, Art History

  • Received a Barbara Thom postdoctoral fellowship from the prestigious Huntington Library near Los Angeles for the 2023-24 school year. The fellowship will allow Saracino to revise her dissertation on the Uppsala Map of Mexico-Tenochtitlan into her first book manuscript. Uppsala is the earliest known map of Mexico City, painted by indigenous Nahua artists after the Spanish Conquest (c. 1540). Story
  • Saw her chapter “Indigenous Artistic Practice and Collaboration at the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Mexico City (1534-1575)” published by the University of Florida Press as part of the edited volume “Collective Creativity and Artistic Agency in Colonial Latin America.” It’s the result of a symposium she participated in at the University of Florida in 2019.
  • Attended the College Art Association conference from Feb. 15-18 in New York City. She co-organized a panel entitled “Ecocritical Art Histories of Indigenous Latin America” on Feb. 18.

lydia see
Galleries Director

  • Presented a talk, “Love, Kinship and Connection: Relationships at Black Mountain College,” on Feb. 9 as part of the University of Arizona Museum of Art’s Spring 2023 Speaker Series. From 1933-1957 in the misty Blue Ridge Mountains, BMC was a hub of experiential education and fertile ground for artistic developments. There, incalculable relationships were forged or compounded between the famed and lesser-known alike – including one between Willem and Elaine de Kooning. A year before joining the School of Art, lydia curated an exhibition connecting ephemera from the Black Mountain Dreier Archive with objects from the Asheville (N.C.) Art Museum’s collection, with a focus on underrepresented artists within the prevailing Black Mountain College narratives.
Marcos Serafim
Assistant Professor, Photography | Video | Imaging
  • Received a production seed grant from the University of Arizona Office for Research, Innovation and Impact. Serafim is creating an immersive audiovisual installation, “Membrana Semipermeable,” related to the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S.-Mexico border. Details

David Taylor
Professor, Photography | Video | Imaging

  • Featured in a University of Arizona Communications story, “UArizona helps launch archive sharing stories of detained immigrants,” on Feb. 20. Taylor collaborated on the project, which contains the stories and images of artwork and memorabilia of asylum-seekers and undocumented migrants incarcerated in Arizona. “My goal in all of this is to ensure that people’s experiences do not disappear. These are people who don’t get to write history. They don’t usually have their say,” Taylor said.
  • Gave a live-streamed artist talk on April 4 at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts for the “Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea” exhibition, which includes collaborative work by Marcos Ramírez ERRE and Taylor. Details

Karen Zimmermann
School of Art Associate Director
Professor, Illustration and Design

  • Helped organize a successful 2023 Wayzgoose gathering for the Amalgamated Printers Association June 1-4. The annual national APA get-together included a banquet dinner at the Lodge in the Desert, where David Shields gave an inspiring keynote talk about his research on the Rob Roy Kelly Historic Wood Type Collection. Other events included workshops at the School of Art’s Book Art & Letterpress Lab; a swap meet; and a field trip to the printshop of Jim Irwin, the last person to run an engraving machine in Arizona.

Group collaborations

  • Faculty members Amelia (Amy) Kraehe and gloria j. wilson and Ph.D. student K. Lynn Robinson helped lead a Feb. 16 webinar, “Creative Pathway to Servingness through the Arts,” part of the University of Arizona Hispanic Serving Institution – HSI Initiatives “Centering Servingness” series, presented with Faculty Affairs. They shared three new student programs from Arizona Arts: JustArts Fellowship for Student Leaders in the Arts; SALON, Student Artist Live Opportunity Night; and Rehearsals in Anti-Racism.

Affiliated Faculty

  • Kathy Short, a College of Education Professor of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies, was appointed a Regents Professor by the Arizona Board of Regents. Short is also director ow Worlds of Words. Details

Former Faculty

  • Mark McKnight, a former visiting assistant professor, was named a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. List of Fellows

Faculty Emeriti

  • The Rodeo de Tucson Group Show featured four paintings by Moira Geoffrion, chair of the School of Art Advisory Board and professor emerita. The opening reception was Feb. 3 at the Medicine Man Gallery. The show showcased more than 30 artists, including Howard Post (BFA ’72, MFA ’78). Details

FALL 2022

Sama Alshaibi
Regents Professor, Photography, Video and Imaging

  • Presented the Hixson-Lied Visiting Scholar Lecture Nov. 9 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Art, Art History & Design.
  • Gave an artist talk on Sept. 28 in support of her solo exhibition “Sama Alshaibi: Generation After Generation” at the Phoenix Art Museum. It was part of Arizona Arts’ 2023 Signature Series. The museum also awarded Alshaibi the 2021 Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award. Watch her Scult Lecture (6:25 mark)

Nicole Antebi
Assistant Professor, Illustration and Design

  • Antebi’s Illustration II students collaborated with the Florence Immigration Project in the spring. The group’s recent newsletter and annual report featured Robin Silverman’s and Gabriel Spencer’s artwork that accompanied a story about an Albanian teen named Luan, who was detained at the U.S.-Mexico border and coped with his sorrow by playing chess with himself on a makeshift board. Students contributed other projects being rolled out on social media. “I’m very proud of this group and how sensitively they approached the subject matter,” Prof. Antebi said. Read story
  • Her spring motion arts students were so enthralled by the ants during their class visit to Biosphere 2 that they created a short film, “Who Put These Ants in my Biosphere?” The animated film is shown from the perspective of an ant colony exploring Biosphere 2 and was screened at The Loft Cinema for the School of Theatre, Film & Television’s Magic Hour. Eight motion arts students were then selected to dive deeper into focused animation work that reflects Biosphere 2 and Arizona Institutes for Resilient Ecosystems and Societies (AIRES) research through a Science in Motion 2022 Summer Residency in Animation, co-directed by Antebi and Aaron Bugaj. Watch video
  • Antebi was selected for the Center for University Education Scholarship 2022 Spanning Boundaries Challenge. Antebi joins faculty and staff from Biosphere 2, CAPLA and the W.A. Franke Honors College who will engage students, faculty and Borderland communities in community-driven research around sustainable food and water solutions. The project aims to lay foundations for strong bi-national relationships, while providing new opportunities for students and faculty to have a measurable societal impact.
  • Her Animation 1 students created a video for a November character turnaround assignment that encouraged them to use unique characters to offer more inclusive and diverse story possibilities. Watch video
  • In October, Antebi’s animation students wrapped up a puppet animation/rig exercise. Watch video

Aurore Chabot
Professor of Art & Ceramics

  • Chabot’s commentary and images of sculptural work were included in the hand-building section of “Experience Clay,” 3rd edition, by Maureen Mackey, Davis Publications, Inc., Worcester, MA, 2022.
  • “Surface Treatments for Ceramics,” an upcoming book on a group of international artists’ ceramic surface treatments by Claire Ireland, will include text description, commentary and imagery of Chabot’s “reverse inlay” technique of “memory fossils and fragments.” The technique transforms the surfaces into what appear to be fossils and archaeological remains that Chabot uses in sculptures and tile murals. The book is set to be published in early 2023, London.
  • Chabot gave a lecture about her work on Sept. 15 at the Recital Hall at Pima Community College’s Center for the Arts complex. Her work was part of “A Tribute to Clay,” an invitational group exhibition at the Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery that ran from Aug. 29 to Oct. 8.
  • Other recent exhibitions: “My Body My Choice” Group Invitational Exhibition, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; “Three Artist Invitational, Stage(s)(ing),” Yun Gee Park Gallery, Tucson (new eccentric porcelain), 2021-22. Her work is represented by Yun Gee Park Gallery, Tucson, 2020-23

Carissa DiCindio, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Art & Visual Culture Education

  • DiCindio taught a graduate special topics course that is the first class-in-residence at the Center for Creative Photography.  She worked with Meg Jackson Fox at the CCP to design and implement an exhibition on color photography using visitor-centered practices. More information
  • From fascinating telescopes to a Coke can camera, the School of Art’s Graduate Certificate Program in Museum Studies and co-directors Carissa DiCindio (AVCE) and Irene Bald Romano (Art History) hosted an event on Nov. 4 in the John E. Greivenkamp Museum of Optics in the Meinel Optical Sciences Building. Museum interns Grace Gousman (undergraduate major in History with minors in Art History, Spanish, Linguistics, and Psychology) and Jennifer Weiss (graduate student in the M.A. program in Art History and in the M.S. program in Geosciences) gave a tour of the collection of cameras, telescopes, lenses, opera glasses, and many other objects and works of art related to optical science. Photos

Lawrence Gipe
Associate Professor, Painting and Drawing

  • Co-curated “The Intimacy of Distance: Explorations of the Figure/Ground,” an exhibition of 17 photographers Sept. 10-Oct. 29 in Santa Monica, Calif. The show, at the new Marshall Gallery in Bergamot Station, will include works by Prof. Sama Raena Alshaibi), one former faculty member (Mark McKnight) and two UA SOA alumni (Ryan McIntosh, BFA ’06, and Alex Turner, MFA ’20). Go to tinyurl.com/3r2z4fpc for details.

Russian Drone Painting 6_Ferris Wheel at Pripyat, 2016-_2021-2022_ oil on canvas ©Lawrence Gipe
  • The William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., presented a solo exhibition of paintings by Gipe from Aug. 6-Sept. 17. “Recent Pictures” draws from his themes of progress, industrialization and environment, including his Russian Drone paintings below. williamturnergallery.com/lawrence-gipe and lawrencegipe.com
  • FASO, an exhibition created for Grad Critique, led by Gipe, held its reception on Nov. 18 at the Graduate Gallery.
  • Gipe participated in Art Days on Nov. 12 at the School of Art, critiquing high school students’ portfolios.

Simon Hinchliffe
Assistant Professor of Practice

  • Participated in National Portfolio Day (NPD) on Oct. 22 at Mesa Community College. He and Prof. Karen Zimmermann reviewed high school students’ portfolios and gave them advise on attending the University of Arizona School of Art.

Paul Ivey
Professor

Jeehey Kim
Assistant Professor

  • Organized by Kim, the School of Art hosted a new, ambitious virtual three-part symposium examining Asian photography from Korea and Taiwan, co-presented by the Center for Creative Photography and Arizona Arts. The virtual events featured artists, curators, scholars, and museum directors weighing in on photography practices and movements and their relation to colonialism, postcolonialism, gender issues and national identity. The third all-day session, “Photography and Southeast Asia: History and Practice,” was held Nov. 18. The free symposiums were held entirely online to accommodate a broader audience in Asia, the U.S. and other countries. The series was supported by grants from the Academy of Korean Studies and the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan. The events featured professional interpreters for English, Chinese and Korean.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe
Associate Professor
Associate Vice President, Equity in the Arts

  • Kraehe received a 2022 Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Faculty Seed Grant for the interdisciplinary, collaborative project, “Creative Resistance among Undergraduates at Two Hispanic Serving Institutions: Arts Integrated Youth Participatory Action Research”. The fund aims to support scholarly research and creative work that enriches the university’s HIS designation and advances scholarship that directly impacts QT BIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) populations.
  • Along with Prof. gloria j. wilson, Kraehe co-edited the book, “A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back,” an ode to the 1981 touchstone work for generations of feminist women of color—the seminal “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color” by Chicana feminist intellectuals Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa.
  • Kraehe, along with Ohio State’s Joni Boyd Acuff, addressed issues of race in an accessible style and with a focus on classroom practice in their book, “Race and Art Education.” This book provides a well-informed introduction to essential concepts, vocabularies, strategies, and methods for engaging race and racialized human differences in a constructive, equity-oriented manner.

Alejandro Macias
Assistant Professor

  • Participated in the Wassaic Project, a non-profit organization in Wassaic, N.Y., that invites emerging contemporary artists, filmmakers, writers and more to their residency programs — a community of artists — which includes visiting artist lectures, monthly artist presentations, studio visits, and 24-hour access to private studio spaces. “I know that I’ll be heading back to Tucson with a fresh crop of ideas to explore in my own studio. It’s also just been a dream spending time in New York,” he said… “I don’t exaggerate when I say that this career path has given me more than I could’ve ever expected and imagined.”

    “Rise and Fall”
  • Two of Macias’ works, “Rise” and “Fall,” was part of the art exhibition “Lucha Libre: Beyond the Arenas” at the Arizona State University Art Museum, which opened Oct. 29. The first exhibition of its kind, “Lucha Libre” went beyond the sport’s popularity in contemporary culture to reveal its ancient roots, explore its influence on socio-political movements and link its relationships to the visual culture of Mexico and beyond.
  • Exhibited in Son de Allá y Son de Acá, hosted by four Albuquerque, N.M., galleries, which brings together 60 Southwest artists. Curator: Rigoberto Luna. In conjunction with the show, Macias was mentioned in a Hyperallergic story about the importance of creating pathways and fellowship for Mexican-American, Chicanx, and Latinx artists throughout the Southwest.
  • Everything and Nothing at Once,” a 2021 Macias project funded by the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry, has been digitally archived in the University of Arizona Libraries’ Special Collection. Macias, who was raised in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, created two-dimensional works that navigate the artist’s own Mexican-American identity, physical and sociological divisions along the U.S. / Mexico border, and the ever-shifting contemporary American political landscape within a pandemic.
  • Had work featured last winter in West Issue 156 of New American Paintings, the 2021 Review of 40 Artists in the Western United States You Need to Discover. Curator: Lauren R. O’Connell
  • Other exhibitions: “Everyday MEMEing,” Modified Arts, Phoenix, AZ. Curators: Melissa Koury, Dr. Grant Vetter, and Lauren O’Connell. “Icons and Symbols of the Borderland,” Las Cruces Museum of Art, Las Cruces, NM Curator: Diana Molina.

Ellen McMahon
Professor
Associate Dean for Research, Arizona Arts

  • McMahon was featured during Women’s History Month in a series spotlighting women researchers working on climaterelated issues. “Motivating people to work together… will require a cultural shift only possible through a well-considered combination of artistic and scientific means,” said McMahon. “I have seen how art/science collaborations can raise awareness about and catalyze a public response to environmental risks and help us to imagine and work together toward more sustainable futures.”

Sarah J. Moore
Professor of Art History

  • Moore was the Terra Foundation for American Art visiting professor at the Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan for the 2021-22 academic year. The foundation is considered the most prestigious in support of American art scholarship. Moore taught virtually in the fall and in-person this spring classes in American art in the global studies program. Moore also served as a keynote speaker at the Inaugural Biennial International Conference, Institute for the Study of International Expositions, a global network of researchers interested in world’s fairs and expositions.
  • She presented research, “Slow Trees in Manhattan,” related to her current book project at the Counter Image International Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in July. The manuscript, “Slow Landscape: Trees and the History of Art in the United States,” is framed on the argument that trees are among the primary drivers of history in the United States and have informed shifting discourses of national identity from the moment of earliest contact with European settler colonists to the present day.  Each chapter of the book comprises a close visual and contextual analysis of a particular moment, image, or place when trees played a defining role in the construction of contested notions of nation-ness.  The entanglements of history, time, materiality, and nature serve as the conceptual framing device of the text while eco-criticism provides the methodological model.
  • Moore criss-crossed the U.S. this fall, including presenting a paper on landscape at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, on Sept. 30. Her paper, “Neither Land nor Landscape: Time Landscape as In-Between Formation,” examines artist Alan Sonfist’s environmental land art sculpture for New York City that visualized how the city looked before urbanization. The paper is part of a larger book project for which Moore was granted a sabbatical leave in Spring 2023.

Irene Romano
Professor

  • Romano edited and co-authored a major publication with 15 scholars from the U.S., Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain, France, Greece), entitled “The Fate of Antiquities in the Nazi Era.” It’s scheduled to be published soon as a special issue of the Journal of the International Association of Research Institutes.

Adri Boudrieau (left) and Prof. Irene Romano inspect an item from a small collection of artifacts acquired in the African country of Mauritania in the 1980s by a Peace Corps volunteer.
  • Romano was featured in a story by UANews’ Kyle Mittan: “A Woman’s Dying Wish Leads to Returning a Piece of History,” after receiving an intriguing voicemail from a woman speaking English with a French accent. The woman said she had a collection of artifacts acquired from the African country of Mauritania and wanted the artifacts returned because, “I’m dying of cancer.” The voicemail led to the repatriation of artifacts to Mauritania.
  • Romano’s research was featured in a story by the New York Times’ Milton Esterow, “New Research Tracks Ancient Artifacts Stolen by the Nazis,” and republished nationally and internationally in other outlets.
  • She was featured in story, “MFA Boston to return marble head looted during world War II to Italy,” and also featured in a news release and the Boston Globe.
  • Romano gave two public lectures in the fall on different topics: Sept. 22 — “ASMOSIA at 34 years: The Trajectory of Research on Ancient Stone and its Relevance to Art Historical Questions,” public keynote address at the 13th International Conference of the Association of Marble and Other Stones in Antiquity (ASMOSIA), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Oct. 14 – “Exhibiting Classical Antiquity during the Nazi Era,” invited lecture, Department of Art History, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

Jennifer Saracino
Assistant Professor

  • Over the summer, Saracino participated in “Plantation Knowledge,” an international workshop organized as part of the Migrating Knowledge Project. It was hosted by the Global South Studies Center at the University of Cologne, Germany. All the participants are presently working on essays for an edited volume to be published by an academic press.

    Jennifer Saracino at the Newberry Library in Chicago

    Saracino presented a paper, “The Ayer Map of Teotihuacan as Embodied Action & Performance,” after being invited to the 21st Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr. Lectures in the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library in Chicago. This year’s event, held Nov. 3-4, was titled, “Mapping as Performance.”

  • How might a Charles Dickens tale find a homeland in the Sonoran Borderlands? Saracino participated in an interdisciplinary collaboration with other UA faculty on Oct. 25, . From digital installation to performance, sonic experiments to film, cartography to micro-publication, the exhibition explores questions about the relationship between arts and public-engagement, literature and everyday places, and authors and readers.. Professors across departments are participating in a field studio together and producing creative projects based on our reading of the Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield. The products of this studio form a key resource for a new undergraduate 15-week GE course, conceived as the pedagogical outcome of the studio, where UArizona students might forge their unique authority as readers with the power to make such books matter in our time. This course will be offered through the Department of Public and Applied Humanities, as part of UArizona’s College of Humanities Fearless Inquiries Project, whose aims include supporting curricular (re) design work as part of the Dorrance Dean’s Award for Opening the Canon. We will debut our creations at the Public Humanities Festival at the end of October.

lydia see
Gallery Director / Joseph F Gross Endowed Curator

  • She participated in a Nov. 3 panel, “The Critical Eye: Curators in Conversation” — at the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block. Joining her was Taína Caragol, curator of painting, sculpture, and Latinx art and history at the National Portrait Gallery; Julio César Morales, an artist, educator, writer and senior curator at the Arizona State University Art Museum; and TMA’s chief curator, Dr. Julie Sasse.
  • School of Art Galleries opened its first show of the 2022-2023 year, “Delivery Systems,” in the Joseph Gross Gallery in September. “Delivery Systems” asked artists to exhibit artworks alongside the materials, mechanisms and collateral that they’ve utilized to get that artwork to the gallery, communicate its specific installation, and present it in a thoughtfully resolved manner. The show was juried, installed, programmed and interpreted by students in the Gallery Management class, with guidance from gallery director/curator lydia see and a dynamic group of preparators, exhibition designers and registrars from local museums, including the UA Museum of Art, Arizona Historical Society, Center for Creative Photography and Tucson Museum of Art. The exhibition served as the experiential learning framework for the class, providing students with experience in all aspects of exhibition design, curation, and planning. Follow along @gallerypraxis for behind the scenes Gallery Mgmt. class content and details about this and other upcoming shows.

Gary Setzer
Professor / First Year Experience Program Chair

  • Over the summer, Setzer finished an overview video his project exhibited at the 2021 Venie Biennale. “The Corridor: Climate Change, Border Permeability, and Ecosystem Resilience” — an installation with Dan Majka of The Nature Conservatory, asked where will animals move to survive as climate change alters habitats and disrupts ecosystems. It utilized a three-channel video and sound immersion to address the relationship between border permeability and ecosystem resilience in a time of climate change.

Ryan Shin
Professor, Art & Visual Culture Education

  • Co-edited the 2022 book, “Counternarratives from Asian American Art Educators: Identities, Pedagogies, and Practice Beyond the Western Paradigm,” along with Maria Lim, Oksun Lee and Sandrine Han. An e-book is available now, and the hard copy will be out later. It’s his second book released this year – and he was the leading editor on both.
  • Received the COMC J. Eugene Grigsby, Jr. Award from the National Art Education Association in spring 2022. The Committee on Multiethnic Concerns award honors individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of art education in advancing and promoting education, investigation, and celebration of cultural and ethnic heritage within our global community.
  • Co-edited the 2022 book, “Borderless: Global Narratives in Art Education,” with Karen Hutzel. In collaboration with: Margaret Baguley, Jesús Caballero, Paulo Esteireiro, Jana Jiroutová, Mira Kallio-Tavin, Martin Kerby, María Isabel Moreno Montoro, Elle Pierman, Petra Sobánová, Fu-ju Yang.

David Taylor
Professor

  • Taylor collaborated on a project called, “DETAINED: Voices from the Migrant Incarceration System” with Principal Investigator Anita Huizar-Hernández, associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Taylor captured images taken via drones of 28 privately operated ICE detention center on the border throughout Arizona and the Southwest. The project documented the experiences of former asylum seekers and undocumented migrants who were incarcerated by immigration authorities in Arizona.

gloria j. wilson (left) and K. Lynn Robinson

gloria j. wilson
Associate Professor, Art & Visual Culture Education

  • Co-edited the 2022 book, “A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back,” with Prof. Amelia (Amy) Kraehe and Joni Boyd Acuff. It honors the 1981 seminal book by Chicana feminist intellectuals Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. wilson talked about the book with her other contributors on Oct. 21 at the School of Dance’s Stevie Eller theater. Photos

Karen Zimmermann
Professor, School of Art Assistant Director

  • Zimmermann and her Visual Narratives and the Artist Book students were featured in the Fall 2022 issue of “Parenthesis,” the Journal of the Fine Press Book Association.

Group collaborations

  • A triple collaboration between Nicole Antebi‘s Illustration II, Lisa Watanabe‘s Typography I, and Karen Zimmermann‘s Letterpress and the Multiple resulted in a Riso-printed book featuring text, recipes, and illustrations designed by students in these courses and inspired by UAMA’s The Art of Food exhibition.
  • Students enjoyed their first project — “Chancescapes” — in the special topic Process + Play class (Art 404), as they try to create an illustration or design for a poster of a fictitious play, environment or world. The class, led by Associate Prof. Kelly Leslie and Asst. Prof. of Practice Lisa Watanabe, is being developed to better integrate illustrators, designers and animators. “This way, (students) can share their unique approaches to visual problem solving,” Leslie said. “The new class, when on the books, will be required and explores play, chance and failure as components to growth and discovery.” Photos

FACULTY EMERITUS

  • Philip Zimmermann (Illustration + Design) was a winner in the AIGA ‘50 Books | 50 Covers’ competition for the best designed books of 2020 with his book, “Delirium.” Zimmermann retired in 2019 after 10 years of teaching at School of Art. The competition is considered the most competitive and coveted honor for book design. AIGA, the professional association for design, had 696 design entries from 36 countries this year.
  • Robert H. Colescott, a Regents’ Professor Emeritus at the School of Art, is being remembered with a retrospective traveling exhibition, “Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott.” Considered one of the most important and critical painters of his generation, the Colescott exhibition has been venerated by no less than Roberta Smith, the co-chief art critic for The New York Times.
  • Margaret (Bailey) Doogan, a School of Art professor emerita, died on July 4 at age 80. Doogan taught art at the University of Arizona for 30 years. An acclaimed artist, Doogan’s paintings and drawings addressed issues of women and aging in society. She inspired students in her classroom and was an outspoken advocate for women artists and designers across the nation. “With powerful imagery, combining bite and humor, (Peggy) called out sexism and misogyny in academia as well as in the Tucson art community and the art world,” said Ellen McMahon, a School of Art professor. Doogan mentored McMahon, a graduate student who took all three design courses that Doogan taught. Obit
Floral Arrangement

Floral Arrangement

Janessa Southerland
What Do You See?

What Do You See?

Utvista Galiante
Half Off Special

Half Off Special

Wilbur Dallas Fremont
I fell down some stairs

I fell down some stairs

Lyle Emmerson Jr.
Tailgate Party

Tailgate Party

Roger Masterson