New Chapters: SAIC Graduates Share What Comes After Art School
Graduation is its own creative turning point, when new alums begin exploring what their practices look like beyond campus. Recent School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) graduates Uy Pham (BFA 2025) and Carmella Murphy (BFA 2024) reflect on the early stages of their creative lives—their jobs, their work, and their advice for current students. Though their practices took shape in different corners of the School, both of their experiences offer a grounded look at the transition from student to working artist, one shaped by curiosity, adaptation, and a growing sense of what it means to build a sustainable practice after graduation.
Uy Pham
Since graduating, Pham has been working in brand design and is now part of the Design team at advertising agency BBDO, where he continues to expand his visual communication practice within the fast-paced advertising world.
What’s been the biggest unexpected challenge post-graduation?
The biggest unexpected challenge has been learning how to adopt AI into my daily workflow. [I haven’t received] much guidance on how to use AI in the creative process since it’s still a relatively new technology. But in advertising, it’s becoming incredibly useful, especially for visualizing photography and art direction and helping clients see concepts before production. I highly recommend that everyone explore AI tools to at least get familiar with them.
What are you excited about or working toward right now?
Professionally, I’m excited about my work with the Design team. We take on a wide range of creative projects that constantly push me to grow my skill set. I enjoy the fast pace of the advertising industry—it suits me well. Personally, I’m focused on maintaining a healthier work-life balance. After many sleepless nights in college, I’ve learned that my health is just as important as my work.
If you could recommend one course at SAIC, what would it be?
I would recommend the Interface and Interaction class by [Lecturer] Elliott Beazley in the Visual Communication Design pathway. Elliott makes the material incredibly relevant on how to think, design, and present in a systematic way. Even if you don’t plan to work as a UX/UI designer, understanding user experience translates well to other professions and to life in general. Plus, he’s genuinely fun to learn from.
What’s a small piece of advice you have for undergrads?
Learn storytelling. It can be quite an abstract concept. At its simplest, storytelling means walking people through your ideas. At its most advanced, it means making them believe in it. The same idea can feel dull or inspiring depending on how you deliver it. Being articulate about your thoughts is the first step toward setting yourself up for success.
Carmella Murphy
Murphy is developing a new stop-motion short, God is a Pelican, building on the momentum of her previous festival-screened film as she continues to shape her independent animation practice. Working on her animations full-time, she’s carving out a path that blends craft, storytelling, and self-driven production.
What was your area of focus during undergrad?
I experimented a lot as an undergraduate student, taking classes in ceramics, fibers, comics, and painting, until I fell in love with stop-motion animation in my Intro to Film class my Junior year. It was the most fabulous combination of everything I adored. I sculpted puppet’s faces, sewed little outfits, woodworked, and painted sets. I also learned about lighting a stage, animating, and most importantly, how to tell a story.
What’s been the biggest unexpected challenge post-graduation?
At first, it was very difficult to find my way. School gives you a sense of purpose you now have to find elsewhere, but this pushed me to start my own business, and I am now working on a new stop-motion film full-time in Denver, Colorado.
What are you excited about or working toward right now?
My new short is called God is a Pelican, which I’m co-directing with my collaborator and fellow SAIC alum AJ Dubler (BFA 2024). We recently released our previous film, A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian, after it screened at more than 60 festivals around the world, including Annecy, and reached over 500,000 views on YouTube. That project opened many doors for us, and a grant from the Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Award at Frameline is now helping us move this new film into production.
If you could recommend one course at SAIC, what would it be?
I absolutely loved [Assistant Professor, Adj.] Shelley Dodson’s Puppet Animation class! It was also the hardest class I’ve ever taken. I learned how to manage my time, push beyond my comfort zone, tell stories, and deliver projects on time, all skills I have taken into “real life.” I also made all of my best friends in that class! You have to be very passionate and weird to devote your life to puppets.
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