Featured Alumni

Tom White (he/him) is an artist from Omaha, NE. He moved to Chicago in 2020 after graduating from he University of Nebraska at Omaha with his BFA in Drawing and a minor in Art History. Tom is a substitute teacher within Chicago Public Schools. Although drawing in pen and ink is his current area of study, he is excited for the opportunities the Printmedia department will open him up to. 

CHema (he/his/him) is a graphic artist. An enthusiast of popular graphics and traditional printing techniques, his work reflects parallel universes, includes polysemy, and is often inspired by popular culture, cartoons, and music as well as social issues.

Personal Statement: The work I create uses various types of mediums including drawings, printmaking, and sculpture. Ethnic identity is a recurring theme within my work. I dig deeper into subcategories such as trauma, and resilience. I take the time to reflect on my own past experiences, as well as collective experiences from African American communities. Depending on the viewer's own placement within today’s racial structure, each person will see the images differently. However, it is my hope that the viewer is able to emphasize and leave with a better understanding of racial issues.

Haley Kim works with monoprint and artist books that explore the dream, memory, landscape, and virtual space. Creating prints and making a constructed artist book in three dimensions, her works allow the audience to interact with a visual reconstruction of the artist's dream space. These images are constructed through continuous, abstract mark-making and the afterimages which recall the aesthetics of photographic film. She uses the physical space of the exhibition to construct a three-dimensional, interactive narrative embodying the space between dreaming and waking. 

Personal Statement: Much of my current work is fed by curiosity in the persistence of psychiatric disorders and the ways in which humans fall into cognitive traps. I use my art not only as a means of externalizing internal processes and giving form to underlying negative thoughts, but also as a narrative tool to echo the minds of those with similar struggles. I want to give form to thoughts that many may share, yet are unable to say out loud, in order to make them feel less alone. My hope is that new avenues and approaches to expression will arise as a result of being immersed in SAIC’s diverse artistic community.

Mehdi Darvishi (he/him) was born in the summer of 1988, coinciding with the Iran—Iraq peace resolution. In his war-stricken hometown, Mehdi grew up unexposed to art galleries and museums. In 2007 he left home to earn a BFA in Painting at the University of Tehran where he learned basic printmaking techniques such as relief and intaglio. After receiving his degree in 2011, his interest in printmaking grew into a life's pursuit. He has since exhibited in over 30 countries and has participated in more than 200 global exhibitions, competitions, residencies, and as a visiting artist. His works have been widely collected by museums such as the China Printmaking Museum, the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Art, Jyvaskyla Museum of Fine Arts, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the US Library of Congress. He is the recipient of the Southern Graphics Conference fellowship as well as the Pritzker fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Personal Statement: Processing the metaphorical and literal battles of my life, my artwork focuses on expressing myself and learning who I am as an individual. Growing up as a queer person in a conservative Catholic household in South Louisiana along with battles I currently face with familial bonds and expressing my queerness proudly in life are all things that influence the direction and themes of my studio practice. Through my artwork I hope to gain more of an understanding of who and what I am, the culture in which I actively chose to reject when growing up, and aggressively dismantling the belief systems of my childhood such as religion, homophobia, and self-hatred. 

My artwork focuses on my personal self and lived experiences, thus it is the main way I understand myself and why I have a never-ending need to create. My understanding and perception of both my past and current art is constantly changing as I continue to learn and accept more about myself. My studio practice is experimental in nature, and I focus on selecting what processes can best convey the specific idea and themes of a piece. Common themes of my work are queerness, familial bonds, religion, and the idea of costume. My artwork often appears dark, macabre, and melancholic because of the subtlety and somberness of my subject matter. My work crosses the disciplines of printmaking, painting with acrylic and watercolor, sculpture, and even academic typography research. Most recently my artwork has been focused on the processes of printmaking due to the vastness and tactility of the medium, specifically experimenting with manipulating screen printing.

Yehimi Cambrón Álvarez (she/her/ella) is an artist and activist raised in Atlanta and born in San Antonio Villalongín, Michoacán, México. 

Cambrón has served as a monument-maker asserting the humanity of immigrants in Atlanta through public art. She has claimed barren walls to paint landmarks that belong to undocumented people who, through her community-responsive process, share their desire to be defined by more than their immigration status. 

The monuments Cambrón has painted in Atlanta institute a space for immigrants within the South's dominant racial binary. From her first mural on Buford Hwy—the immigrant heart of Atlanta and where she grew up—to her mural at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, she confronts the idea of who is worthy of public celebration in the home of the largest Confederate monument in the nation. 

Although she initially became known for her murals, Cambrón's art and activism found a place in museums through mixed-media pieces, paintings, and installations. She exhibited at Atlanta's High Museum of Art in 2019 with "Family Portrait," a series of individual portraits depicting her immigrant family. Since then, she has exhibited at the MOCA GA, the Atlanta Contemporary, and the University of South Carolina’s Upstate Art Gallery, among others. Her most recent mural in Atlanta, "Monuments: Atlanta's Immigrants," is part of The Art Collection at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. 

Cambrón pursued her MFA at SAIC as a 2023 Fellow of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. She earned a BA in Studio Art in 2014 from Agnes Scott College as a recipient of the full-ride Goizueta Foundation Scholarship. In 2015, Cambrón was accepted into Teach for America (TFA) as a Corps Member. After completing her TFA commitment as an elementary school teacher, Cambrón returned to her alma mater, Cross Keys High School, to teach art from 2017-2019. She has been a full-time artist, activist, and national public speaker since 2019.

Robert Shannon Sawyer attended Wheaton College, focusing his studies in Printmaking and Graphic Design. Prior to commencing studies at SAIC, Robert worked in a variety of creative industries including athletic apparel design, architecture, and graphic design.

Robert has exhibited in a variety of states in the US as well as internationally in Wellington, New Zealand. 

Logan Kruidenier is originally from Santa Barbara, California. Kruidenier went to CSU Chico for their BFA and studied abroad in Mainz, Germany for their last year of undergrad.

Kruidenier moved to Chicago in 2016 to pursue their passion in the realms of alternative comics as well as multi-media installation and the production of community art events such as "Doodle Jam!," an ongoing series of free creative workshops. Kruidenier applied to SAIC a little more than a year after moving to Chicago, and was fortunate enough to be accepted.

The frontier has always served as a repository for American optimism. In Alessandra Norman's work, two different manifestations of the frontier are at odds with one another: The West—the frontier of the past—the embodiment of historic mythologies and creation myths of America, is at odds with Space—the newest frontier—a boundless and infinite container that holds our hopes and aspirations for the future. Norman's work is a stage on which this battle over past and future, of expectations and experimentation, is waged.

Neil Patrick O'Malley was born and raised in Metro-Detroit, Michigan, and graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Printmaking. 

Elise Parisian is a printmaker and mixed media artist whose approach to making embraces experimentation and informed intuition. Her work is currently focused on exploring themes of presence/absence, simultaneity, and ghosts. Parisian grew up in Chicago and completed her undergraduate degree in Studio Art at Smith college.

Juan Neira received a BFA in Studio Art and ARH Degree from the Florida International University.

Rosemary Holliday Hall was born in Los Angeles, California and graduated from the University of California Davis where she studied Fine Art, Horticulture, and Education.

Garrett Fees was born in Alexandria, Virginia and raised in Fairfax, Virginia until the age of 18. He grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Garrett attended Virginia Commonwealth University and received a BFA in painting and printmaking in 2011.

Jasper Goodrich attended Skidmore College, focusing on his studies in sculpture, in particular metal casting. He has exhibited in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Press includes Art New England and the Newport Mercury.

Rodolfo Maximilano Gabriel Cupich III was born and raised in the East Mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He received his BFA from the University of New Mexico with a concentration on printmaking.

Chris Williford (b. 1993, Dallas, TX) received his BFA in Printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2015. Recent exhibitions include the Clemson National Print and Drawing Exhibition (Clemson, SC), Reckless A. Bandon at The Lunchbox (Milwaukee, WI), and Academy 2015: MFA/BFA Invitational at Connersmith Gallery (Washington, D.C.). 

As an observer Ashley Pastore is collecting things that are leftover—residue. To Pastore, they are markers of time used to create a conversation about the vastness of the ideas and experiences that make up the human condition. The objects that exist around human routine have been Pastore's focus recently. Pastore has been examining how these collections can be both specific and also universal. The human routine can create a string of objects that help to express the ways in which beings spend and experience their time.

Pastore is interested in portraying aspects of common life which may be relatable for many people. Through the use of dust collected from the happenings of daily life within a person’s home, the minuscule particles that accumulate become markers for the kind of life that one lives. Dust being something that collects within all of our lives, it is in a way something that we all have in common. Pastore wants to emphasize the fact that we all have things in common while at the same time are totally unique. This also reminds us that none of us can escape death and the flowing back into the energy that makes up the entire universe. 

Pastore believes dust to be a representation of the interconnectedness of the entire universe. There are miniscule pieces of our physical selves existing everywhere at all times and through this idea Pastore is trying to conceptualize whether this could mean living forever or not. Through the magnification of objects Pastore hopes to create space where she is able to both zoom in and also step back, feeling the greatness that is the universe while also accepting that this is something she will never fully understand.

Born in Haiti and cultivated in Miami, Florida of immigrant parents, Fabienne Elie received her BA in Visual and Critical Studies at New College of Florida, where she developed a critical background for a print-based practice. 

Elizabeth Cupich grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and received her Bachelors at the University of New Mexico, with a concentration in Printmaking. Most recently, she was living in New Orleans, Louisiana, bartending on Bourbon Street. Elizabeth and her husband Rodolfo work collaboratively as COCHINANASTY.