Class Notes

2020s

Patrick Dean Hubbell (MFA 2021) had a solo exhibition, The Nature of You, at Gerald Peters Contemporary in New York.

Darshita Jain (MA 2020) was announced as the programming lead for Woman Made Gallery.

Percy Lam (MFA 2020) participated in Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program and the culminating exhibition curated by Asha Iman Veal (MA 2017).

Emma Saiz (MFA 2020) was selected as one of the 14 artists participating in the Oolite Arts Home + Away program at Anderson Ranch Art Center.

Corey Smith (MFA 2021) was selected as one of the 2022 resident artists at High Concept Labs.

Morgan Taylor (BFA 2020) won an honorable mention in the Artists Magazine Annual Art Competition and was included in the January/February 2022 edition of the magazine.

2010s

Diaka Ama (MFA 2019) was included in the Generation Equality Forum’s global gathering in Paris as an artist creating transformational work about gender equity.

Cecilia Beaven (MFA 2019) painted a mural, Mictlán, at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. The mural defines the entrance to the exhibition Día de Muertos: A Time to Grieve & Remember, a group show of Mexican and Mexican American artists that reflects on the Day of the Dead.

Cecilia Beaven (MFA 2019), Teresita Carson (BFA 2018), and Monika Plioplyte (MFA 2019) participated in Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program and the culminating exhibition curated by Asha Iman Veal (MA 2017). 

Ionit Behar (MA 2013) is co-curating and co-designing, with Andrew Schachman, the Terminal 5 Expansion public art project at O’Hare International Airport—the City of Chicago’s largest single acquisition of works by Chicago artists in the last 30 years. 

Marissa Lee Benedict (MFA 2011) and David Rueter (MFA 2013) exhibited the collaborative work deposition at the 2021 São Paulo Bienal.

Isidore Bethel’s (MFA 2017) film Acts of Love, a work conceived during his time at SAIC, premiered at Hot Docs and has since screened at 15 other festivals, including the Chicago International Film Festival. The film was hailed as an “exciting, genre-bending film” that “proves that it’s worth taking risks—in art and in romance” by The Hollywood Reporter.

Tyler Blackwell (BFA 2013), the Cynthia Woods Mitchell associate curator at Blaffer Art Museum, curated the first museum survey exhibition of Molly Zuckerman-Hartung (MFA 2007).

Ashley Colangelo’s (BFA 2010) solo exhibition Lots of Lines Make Stripes was curated by Katherine Bernhardt (BFA 1997) at her gallery Dragon, Crab, and Turtle in St. Louis, Missouri.

Noel King (MA 2015) published an article in the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) in June 2020 and gave a virtual presentation at the AATA conference in December 2021. It was AATA's first-ever presentation given by a Deaf art therapist. 

Parvin Peivandi (MFA 2019) was featured in the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts group exhibition The Presence of the Absent at Sierra College’s Ridley Gallery.

Cynthia Pelayo's (MFA 2010) recent novel, Children Of Chicago—a modern-day retelling of the Pied Piper fairy tale—won the International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery. 

Sam Rolfes (BFA 2012) directed and designed Lady Gaga’s Dawn of Chromatica album identity, animated her music video “Sour Candy”; performed a headlining virtual reality puppetry set with Danny L Harle at Unsound Festival in Kraków, Poland; designed the visual identity and merch for the festival; and directed and performed music videos for Danny Elfman, Danny L Harle, and umru, Tommy Cash, and 645AR.

Bow Ty (MFA 2014) was awarded a Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Award during Miami Art Week.

Juliann Wang (MFA 2012) was selected as one of the 2022 resident artists at High Concept Labs.

Tobias Zehntner (MFA 2015) exhibited the major work Halo at the Bright Brussels Festival of Light in Belgium. The project had its origins at SAIC and was derived from his work at the 2015 MFA show.

Rachael Zur (MFA 2019) had a solo exhibition, Haunt, at Stone House Art Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a two-person exhibition, Home/Body, at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida.

2000s

Kate Bae (BFA 2003) won the Betsy Meyer Family Award for Contemporary Art, part of the larger Betsy Meyer Memorial Exhibition at Main Line Art Center.

Katherine Bennett (MFA 2007), also known as LadyK, had her multimedia electronic fiber installation Luciferins exhibited in the group show The Workings of Media at Harvestworks in Governors Island, New York.

Kate Berube (BFA 2000) illustrated the children's book John's Turn, written by New York Times bestselling author Mac Barnett and published by Candlewick Press in March 2022.

Jean Bundy (MFA 2007) presented the paper "Critics Interpret Climate Change Through Art" at the Gangwon Triennale 2021 International Conference sponsored by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA International) and the Korean Society of Media and Arts. Bundy was also recently elected as a vice president of AICA International.

Rachel Collier (BFA 2008) has a solo exhibition, Field Moves, at HAIR + NAILS Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this spring.

Deborah Doering (MFA 2000) is the co-director of DOEprojekts Art Collaborative, where they created a two-volume blog and book covering 10 years of DOEprojekts' blog posts.

Rowynn Dumont (BFA 2007) co-curated the DoinGud17SDGProject in conjunction with Women of CryptoArt. The exhibition is sponsored by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, with funds going toward gender equality. 

Jason Dunda (MFA 2001) and Susannah Papish (MFA 2002) participated in Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program and the culminating exhibition curated by Asha Iman Veal (MA 2017).

Rebecca Fasman (BFA 2003), the curator at the Kinsey Institute, co-organized the virtual conference Exhibitionism: Sexuality at the Museum.

Jennifer Fritz-Hunter (MS 2007) was hired as the City of Orlando’s historic preservation officer, managing six local historic districts.

Eric J. García (MFA 2009) has a solo exhibition Space Invaders at the Roswell Museum in Roswell, New Mexico, in conjunction with the museum’s artist-in-residence program.

Young Sun Han (BFA 2005) had a solo exhibition, Passages from a Memoir + Tourist in the Dark, at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.

Valerie Hegarty (MFA 2002) had a solo exhibition, Gone Viral, at Malin Gallery in New York.

Gina Herrera’s (BFA 2002) work was featured in PeacockTV’s Bel-Air episode 5. 

Wyatt Kahn (BFA 2006) was awarded a Public Art Fund commission. The work will be exhibited at New York City’s City Hall Park from June through November 2022.

Janavi Mahimtura Folmsbee (BFA 2008) had a solo exhibition, Calm Water Color Storm, at Heidi Vaughan Fine Art in Houston, Texas, and also had the winning design for a permanent 240-foot immersive art installation at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, which will be installed summer 2022.

At the Illinois Art Education Association (IAEA) conference, Jonathan Pruc (BFA 2009) was awarded Secondary Art Educator of the Year, Erin Garrity-Duffey (BFA 2004) was awarded Art Administrator of the Year, and Nick Hostert (MA 2009) was awarded Distinguished IAEA Member.

Edward Salem’s (MFA 2008) short story “Sacrilege” was selected as the winner of BOMB magazine’s 2021 Fiction Contest.

Carrie Schneider’s (MFA 2007) two-venue exhibition Deep Like at Candice Madey and CHART (both in New York) was included in ArtForum’s Best of 2021.

Ursula Sokolowska’s (BFA 2001) photography was exhibited in The Creative Portrait at the Los Angeles Center of Photography and published in The Good Earth: Vonnegut and the Environment, the journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, issue no. 10.

Karen Tam (MFA 2002) won the 9th Giverny Capital 2021 Prize, awarded by the Fondation Giverny pour l'art contemporain. She was also a participant in the 10th edition of Manif d'art, le Biennial de Québec at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, along with Valerie Hegarty (MFA 2002).

Daniel Tucker (BFA 2005) released the book Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of Pandemic (Soberscove, 2022), co-edited with Dan S. Wang and Anthony Romero (MFA 2011). The book is the basis for a group exhibit they co-curated at Drexel University's Pearlstein Gallery. 

Amanda Valdez’s (BFA 2007) exhibition The Deep Way at The Landing Gallery in Los Angeles, California, was reviewed in ArtForum.

1990s

Sandra Binion’s (MFA 1992) double exhibition Fleeting and Aftermath was presented at the Durand Art Institute at Lake Forest College.

Michele Brody (MFA 1994) mounted two solo exhibitions with New York City artist-run spaces JVS Project Space and AAA3A. Brody also installed the public artwork Garden Sentinels on Governors Island.

Eileen Favorite (MFA 1999) presented “Can You Love the Art While Hating the Artist” at TEDxWrigleyville.

Jennifer Fink (MFA 1990) published the book All Our Families: Disability Lineage And The Future Of Kinship with Beacon Press. 

Tanya Gill (BFA 1992) and Mayumi Lake (BFA 1997, MFA 2000) participated in Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program and the culminating exhibition curated by Asha Iman Veal (MA 2017).

Jennifer McCandless (MFA 1994) had a solo exhibition, Living Among the Humans, at Soapbox Arts in Burlington, Vermont.

Shin Yu Pai (MFA 1999) was awarded a fellowship from Artist Trust. These unrestricted merit-based awards are given annually to Washington state artists of any discipline in recognition of artistic excellence and dedication to their practice.

Kari Percival’s (BFA 1996) debut book How To Say Hello To A Worm: A First Guide To Outside, a picture book on gardening for toddlers, was released this spring from Rise x Penguin Workshop and has received glowing reviews.

Damon Lamar Reed’s (BFA 1999) ongoing Still Searching project, in which the artist paints portraits of missing Black women from the Chicago area, has been featured in Block Club Chicago, on NewsNation, and in a documentary of the same name.

Andrea Stanislav (BFA 1990) had a solo exhibition Andrea Stanislav: Cosmist Reconstruction: Memories of Earth at the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her exhibition Surmatants—Mars Rising at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recently closed after one year.

1980s

Jerry Allison (MFA 1984) showed work at LoosenArt in Millepiani Gallery in Rome, Italy.

Kapra Fleming (MFA 1985) produced a feature-length film on Lee Godie, the Chicago French Impressionist, which premiered at Chicago Filmmakers.

Deyana Mielke (BFA 1984) exhibited work in shows at the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin, the Kauai Society of Artists in Lihue, Hawaii, and the Diversia exhibition in Toronto, Ontario. The Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will acquire her piece Return to the Creative Force: Chicago Art Purge (1989) as a promised gift of Merwood Olsen and Gregory Hodapp.

Mark Nelson (BFA 1986) is one of 20 artists commissioned to participate and produce work for the permanent art collection of the University of Illinois in Springfield, Illinois, based on Abraham Lincoln. These finished artworks will be exhibited from August to September 2022 in the UIS Visual Arts Gallery, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, and the Springfield Art Association. 

Joy Panos-Stauber’s (BFA 1990) Stauber-Brand Studio developed a casebound monograph to help Chicago-based global architecture, engineering, and construction firm Epstein mark their 100th anniversary. 

Carole Silverstein (BFA 1988) had a solo exhibition, she wears her potency as ornaments (the garden), at Minnesota Street Projects in San Francisco, California.

1970s

Terry Berkowitz’s (MFA 1973) video "Notebook of the Plague" was shown as part of Saying Goodbye to Covid, an online program by NewFilmmakers NY. It is also being shown with looseleaf pages in Art on Paper 2021 at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Jerry Stefl (BFA 1970, MFA 1980) was awarded the Senior Illinoisan Hall of Fame Award from the Illinois Department of Aging for his commitment to education at the Illinois Art Education Association Conference.

Tanya Young (BFA 1976) was artist-at-sea on the Oceanographic Research Vessel R/V FALKOR in the summer of 2021.

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In Memoriam

Milton Bridges (BFA 1958)

Marjorie David (MFA 1994)

Jill Jeannides (BFA 2000)

Mary Min (MFA 1985)

Gail Orenstein (MAAT 1994)

Danielle C. Tyler (HON 2022) ■