Graduate Students

My work is defined by personal reflection, contemplation, and intimacy. Through personified and stylized self-portraiture, I capture what it feels like to be in my body or mind. As I reflect on moments in my life, I question ideas of self, individual experience, femininity, and painting. I create figurative work on all scales, from small watercolor portraits to large acrylic figurative canvases. My work often depicts a singular figure, myself, in a cropped and condensed composition, reflecting my life experience or the human experience. My practice reflects how I navigate the world as a young painter, woman, and person. Drawing on my personal experience, I aim to address a broader human condition.

I am a queer woman using art as a way to explore and understand my relationships with myself, others, and society. I create in an intuitive manner, often reflecting on a given experience or interaction, and then translating various facets of it into a visual format. I engage with a variety of interdisciplinary methods and practices, including printmaking, painting, photography, collage, and installation, depending upon the work itself. Referencing personal archive, art history, popular culture, queer iconography, and “universal symbols,” I hope my works communicate messages of resilience, rebellion, and empathy. 

Mars (they/them) is a nonbinary printmaker, a part-time cartoonist, and a full-time menace. They love exploring how the limitations of print create unique forms of mark-making in the margins of error, and image as narrative. They recently escaped from containment in Ohio. 

My childhood was fragmented because of my father’s work. When I was 12, we left Atlanta, Georgia for Dhaka, Bangladesh. Three years later we moved to Manila, Philippines. I have had the sense of passing through others’ lives and worlds, though never quite having a place of my own. But as poet Edmond Jabés said, “You are never really anywhere, because everywhere you go you have brought all the places you have left with you.” 

My love for printmaking feels related to this sense of my personal past. In printmaking, you have the capacity to repeat an image, and thus the capacity to bring it into various mediums, like paper or muslin. As such, the same image can move fluidly from home to home. 

By intertwining philosophical perspectives, I strive to create works that invite diverse interpretations. My inspirations center on three key themes: reincarnation, mythology, and Korean identity. Reincarnation, representing the cyclical nature of life and death, informs my belief that existence continues beyond apparent endings. This concept of interconnectedness invites viewers to imagine what comes “next.”

Mythology and superstition enrich my narratives by connecting universal emotions across cultures. Through myth, viewers can relate personal stories to my work and navigate familiar archetypes. Living in the US has deepened my connection to my Korean heritage, allowing me to reflect on the contrasts between East and West, tradition and modernity. I incorporate Korean colors and patterns in two-dimensional works and explore space and form through immersive installations.

Ultimately, I aim to create meaningful, accessible art that bridges personal identity with broader cultural themes. I hope to grow as both an artist and educator, exploring the role of art in addressing social issues and fostering global connections.

Colombian visual artist based in Chicago, IL. MFA Printmedia student and leadership member of the Print Club at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Graduated with honors from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia. Founder of Sere Breve Student Group at PUJ. Poet, printmaker, and letterpress specialist. Creator of a movable type letterpress system. Independent movable type educator. Letterpress workshops and demonstrations organizer. Arts educator and mediator. Intern at Galeria Santa Fe; participated in educational activities for marginalized communities and populations. Contemporary artist and researcher interested in decoloniality, social justice, and collective liberation. Street artist interested in displaying the poetical language in the urban space. Fine artist interested in the encounter of a variety of materials with a multiplicity of artmaking tools and techniques. Admission tests assistant, research assistant, and assistant to the professors seminar at PUJ. Graduate assistant in the Department of Art Education and graduate student ambassador in Graduate Admissions at SAIC. Collective artmaking enthusiast. Making voices visible with movable types. Accomplishments: SAIC 2025–New Artist Society Award Scholarship and 2024–John H. Bryan Graduate Merit Fellowship. PUJ–Orden al Mérito Académico Javeriano. Febor 2018–Academic Excellence Scholarship. Ideaborn 2021–Ideaborn Arts Contest.

Through my work, I explore connections between memory’s impact on identity and the blurring of truth and perception. My own lack of episodic memory served as the catalyst for my interest, but studies show that memory is unreliable for everyone. Each time we recall a memory, that memory is changed. If we cannot check our memory against a “true” account of the past, how do we determine truth?

Much of my work is photo-based as photographs are typically treated like ultimate truth, but I often find myself looking at photographs from my past and those belonging to strangers with the same feelings of nostalgia and familiarity. Within my artistic practice, I spend much of my time pushing the boundaries between authorship and ownership of memories and then presenting the images as Schrödinger's memories: each memory is both mine and not mine, genuine and false.

While I often begin with photographs, my primary artistic interventions occur through printmaking processes to further explore the alteration of reality through memory and multiplicity. My intention in creating works that blur the lines of my former reality is to curate my present through the manipulation of my perception. We are who we remember being, so who can I become if I change my memory?

I am fascinated by opportunities where language fails and emotion lingers on the edge of articulation. My work spans publication design, printmaking, animation, photography, and craft, yet each medium is united by the same guiding impulse: to create clever objects with soul. How can form carry feeling? I’m drawn to the tension between expression and hesitation—the space where language begins and where it falls short. 

Growing up as an anxious child, I have struggled with feeling unwanted intense emotions. I felt the need to hide my emotions, channeling self-resentment instead. I have learned that vulnerability is what connects us and that being honest with ourselves and how we feel is healing. Depicting susceptibility and struggle in my work is my tool towards communication and connection.

I aim to illuminate the profound beauty that can emerge from the unfiltered human experience. Through the use of animal and human figures in expressive compositions, I draw on emotions such as isolation, fear, and anxiety while simultaneously inspiring comfort and resilience. I have always found absurdity in hiding our true selves in order to conform to society standards. Animals, dogs in particular, inspire me by their true reactions and honest nature. Animals do not lie. They act instinctually, without worry as to how they will “look.” However, similarly to our unwelcome emotions, their reactivity is often looked at negatively and is often misunderstood. There is no black and white; there is always duality. By structuring my works around these ideas, I aim to instill resilience in the viewer as they have in myself.

I come from the state of Indiana. Indiana is a significant part of my life because I was born and raised there. Through my experiences of going through academia in my home state, I have been interested in the history of certain places like Gary, Bloomington, Martinsville, and more places. Previous places like those include historical figures like Richard Hatcher, Herman C. Hudson, and other lesser known figures in the history of the Hoosier state.

I had no idea that there was a lot of Black history in Bloomington where my alma mater resides, and that telling of the past inspired me to want to tell the stories of lesser known figures, and places through my art. There was the Secret Game of 1944, the story of Terrel Peterson, and just as many histories that are not as well known by the public—me included.

The main goal of my artwork is to tell the stories of these complicated pasts, because I believe that the past informs our current, contemporary world. With printmaking you can take a lot of liberties when making works of art, and you can use a variety of techniques to convey storytelling. Screenprinting is the technique that I am the most fond of when using that particular medium. I intend to show certain people, and iconographies associated with those people and places.

Artist Mya Drost-Parra (she/they) discovers the abstraction of memory, the unwinding of trauma, and joy through queerness. As a printmaker, their work centers on the movement of water and energy as they morph into color fragments through the process of screen printing. Mya was raised in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up as a swimmer. Through her experience with a traumatic brain injury, found art as a language to describe the organisms dwelling inside her. Mya is also a practicing ceramicist, oil painter, and illustrator. Things Mya loves: walking outside with her dogs, mac and cheese, biking, and meeting new friends through her wearable art business, Mdp.art. 

Dark matter and energies are invisible, but like concepts of joy, love, and connection, their invisibility doesn’t relegate them into nonexistence. They are just as important as the unseen subterranean processes that shape our planet. This is what I aim to do with my work: visually represent these mysteries in explorations of print, large scale painting, mural, glass, film, stage, and one line portraiture. To celebrate differences and to honor connections. To be a champion of ecology, equality, and curiosity. To contextualize abstract ideas for the betterment of humanity and existence as a whole. And to have fun while doing so. My curiosity of connection has led me to studies in geoscience (Bachelor's, USM), improvisation (Second City Chicago Conservatory), and now SAIC.

In my practice, I combine printmaking, sculpture, and digital art to explore the liminal spaces between life and death. I often use the monotype printmaking process on rice paper, ripping apart images and sewing them back together. I then use projection mapping to layer the original, and ghost prints to create ethereal beings that live between worlds.

Conceptually, my current practice focuses on the convergence of anticipatory grief and adolescence. I am using the framework of environmental decline and the natural world to explore my identity formation in the shadow of a parent who had a terminal illness. Ultimately, my work investigates how grief, memory, and loss create liminal moments of transformation that shape our understanding of place and self. 

Ember Nevins (she/they) is a mixed media artist, printmaker, and papermaker from the seacoast of New Hampshire. Her work spans a multitude of mediums, and she often draws inspiration from the nature of her surroundings. She is fascinated with texture, line, color, and shape, and material. Experimentation and play are crucial to her process.

Ember views her work as an extension of her subconscious—fluctuating with the natural patterns of life. Lately, she has been intrigued by organic shapes and representing something that feels alive. She is drawn to cellular components, small fractal elements, and wandering, intersecting lines. Her work feels like a connected network of images and ideas that communicate through their own invisible language, much like fungal ecosystems or the arteries of our human bodies.

After receiving her BFA in Studio Arts and BA in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire, Ember has worked as a custom picture framer in Portsmouth, NH. She has exhibited her work at various galleries across New England, and recently completed a printmaking studio residency at the Art Center in Dover, NH. As Ember continues her graduate studies at SAIC, she is interested in exploring topics like overconsumption, media, and tech, and how they intersect with her identity and community. 

What does it mean to live in a country that carries echoes of colonialism? In Peru, my home country, those echoes manifest as unresolved tensions. My work seeks to surface the stories that are missing or have been silenced. I translate oral testimonies, archival images, and overlooked or erased narratives into visual or moving image pieces. My work manifests in drawings, prints, installations, papercuts, moving image works, community-based projects, collages, or artist books. As a printmaker, I carry with me concepts from the field, such as synthesis and contrast. I work with alternative techniques to the traditional printmaking ones as an attempt to differ from hegemonic histories.

Ashton Williams (he/him) is an incoming graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus in printmedia. His practice tackles outmoded means of production in relation to the visual culture of the Other—unpacking wider notions of aesthetic culture, the systems that influence and generate product, and the voices made illegible by said production. Through this reexamination he seeks to define new formats in aesthetic appreciation and critique that reveal the previously discarded, the things left unseen; encouraging a level of discernment with regards to Black visual culture that reframes the cult of the past as a means toward new creative futures. Through his practice, specifically his still-developing book series Sidelong, Ashton pulls from Black cultural movements across multiple subject positions and national contexts—a syncretic kitchen-sink of West-African cosmology, hauntology, and hip hop—that provides a critical language for artistic evaluation outside of the normative boundaries of the institution.