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Alumni Profiles
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At first glance,
Brian Burkhardt's sculptures of plants and animals look as if
they belong in a botanical garden instead of a contemporary art gallery. The
hyacinth, the starfish, and the tiny snails appear to be perfectly preserved
specimens. But then you notice a Macintosh computer plug emerging from the roots
of a foxglove, and that the pattern on the wings of a butterfly is an exact
replica of Louis Vuitton luggage. "I want people to stand an inch away and say, '
Wait a minute, is that real or not?'," Burkhardt says. "I like that blurred
line." More >
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| Emily G. Kahn
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In 1980 Emily
G. Kahn (Diploma '98, Fifth Year Certificate '99) made a startling discovery,
but she didn't know it at the time. She had gone to Baltimore to clean out
her childhood home after the death of her father, and there in the cellar,
buried in an old trunk, was a small stack of photograph negatives. Kahn packed
up the negatives without looking at them and took them home to
Boston. More >
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| Laura Milkins
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Last year, in the name
of cultural criticism, Laura Milkins (Post-Baccalaureate Certificate '96,
Diploma '00) physically transformed herself into Paris Hilton. She dyed her
hair, lost 20 pounds, and acquired a fake tan. She then attempted to rescue
Paris's dumb-blond reputation by demonstrating her own traditional domestic
skills in a series of performances at the Dinnerware Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. Paris cleans! Paris
sews! Paris cooks! More >
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| Sand T
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When
the multimedia artist Sand T (MFA '97) was evicted from her
Boston
studio and gallery to make way for for a parking garage, she protested, she
grieved, and then she transformed her loss into action. She
found her way to Malden,
Massachusetts,
at Boston's
northern edge, where she opened a second gallery in the two-car garage next to
her house. In doing so, she unwittingly launched a grassroots cultural movement
that has helped reshape Malden
into an up-and-coming haven for artists. More >
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| Monika Navarro
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In
early 1999, Monika
Navarro
was halfway through her second year at the
Museum
School,
when she learned that her Uncle Gino
had overdosed on heroin in a Tijuana
motel room. He'd
recently been deported to Mexico
from his longtime home in southern California,
along with one of his brothers. "There was a shift in my family, a shift in me,"
Navarro says. Her uncles had been addicts and dealers for years, so her
mother—their sister—had kept them at a distance. "I became fascinated by these
men who loomed large in my past, but I didn’t know them," Navarro says. More >
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| Catherine Davis Hayes
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In the mid-1990s,
Catherine Davis
Hayes (Master of
Fine Arts in Teaching in Art Education '92) started her public-school career
teaching art at Oakland Beach—the largest, poorest elementary school in
Warwick, Rhode Island. "There I was in a room with 26 kids labeled as '
difficult'," Hayes recalls. "I'll be honest. The sixth-graders
scared me." More >
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| Jerry Beck
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In the mid-1980s,
Jerry Beck (MFA '91) and some friends staged an art show
in twelve derelict railroad cars on the South Boston waterfront. The
Revolving Museum was born. "It was magical," Beck says. "Some of
us slept in the cars. One night we had storytelling, and every kind of person
you can imagine was shoulder to shoulder: artists, children, people in their
eighties, homeless people. It cemented my idea of what I wanted the
Revolving Museum to feel like." More >
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| Rebecca Goldberg Oliver
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Rebecca Goldberg
Oliver lives in
Richmond, Virginia, and is a painter, a mother of two, and a
cheerleader. The paintings she does in oils. The cheers she does—of course!—in a
short skirt. But on Oliver’s "team" jocks are scarce. She cheers for the art
world, and her squad's foot-stomping chants ring with satirical wit and sharp
political views on the role of artists in contemporary society. Call it
performance art with pompoms. More >
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| Lisa Bufano
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Lisa Bufano (Bachelor
of Fine Arts '03) has no fingers, no legs below the knee, and no interest in
discussing how she got that way. Instead, she'd rather talk about her art, which
ranges from sculpture and stop-motion animation to, more recently, modern dance. "
My eye has always been drawn to abnormal forms," Bufano says, referring to
dolls she has made and animated that have no face, extra ears, or hair curlers
for legs. "It's just that now my tool is my body. I'm still animating a form,
but it's my own form." More >
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| David Carroll
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At this moment David Carroll (BFA/Diploma '65) is probably thigh-deep in a cold
New Hampshire swamp with one thing on his mind: freshwater turtles. For decades
he has followed the same spring ritual, heading out into the thawing wilderness
to observe the turtles that have inspired him to paint and draw, to write books,
and to become an unflagging advocate for ecological preservation. More >
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| Kasia Ozga
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Last year, on
the lawn outside the Ujazdowski
Castle
Center
for Contemporary Art in Warsaw,
Poland,
Kasia
Ozga (BFA '04)
installed one of her sculptures, a bust of a controversial Polish media figure.
Then a
flock of birds started eating it. More >
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| Jennifer Parrish
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If Minimalism has an opposite, Jennifer Parrish's jewelry is it. Her ornately beaded
necklaces, jeweled crowns, and engraved amulets filled with frankincense all
look like they belong on a 16th-century Tudor queen. More >
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| Rosamond Casey
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For two months Rosamond Casey (BFA '76) stood in her Charlottesville, Virginia,
studio with the curtains closed, her hands held behind her back, and a
vacuum-cleaner brush tied to her toes. More >
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| Christopher Newell
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Christopher Newell (Bachelor of Fine Arts '83) is an explorer, a book editor, a
philanthropist, a fundraiser, a de facto travel agent—and, most notably, a
photographer who helped create what Guinness World Records calls the largest
published book in the world. More >
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| Art Show Down: Roland Smart and Jeff Warmouth
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What do you get when
you cross an eclectic group of young artists with old-school television game
shows like "The Price is Right" and "Let’s Make a Deal?" The answer: "Art Show
Down," a Western-themed, art-focused game show that’s part cultural criticism,
part art installation, and, according to director Jeff Warmouth (Master of Fine Arts ’97), part "cheesy,
ridiculous fun." More >
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| Christopher Schmitt and Emily Simons
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When Ben Affleck wanted to outfit the cast and crew of his latest movie in
Boston Red Sox T-shirts, he didn’t go to Fenway Park. He called Cambridge
graphic designers—and fellow Sox fans—Christopher Schmitt and Emily Simons
(Bachelor of Fine Arts '91 and '93, respectively).
More >
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| Liz Hickok
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If you were to peek into the studio of
photographer Liz Hickok
(Bachelor of Fine Arts '97), you'd find Jell-O. Lots of Jell-O. Hickok mixes up
batch after batch of the stuff and painstakingly molds it into panoramas of
downtown San Francisco. With its fragile, temporary nature, Jell-O, Hickok says,
is a fitting symbol for a city that sits on vulnerable ground. "Earthquakes are
on everyone’s minds here," she says. "I like to play this fun, friendly, happy
medium against more serious themes." More >
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| Brian Gershey
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Brian Gershey (Master of Fine Arts '06) loves to watch cartoons. He raves about
South
Park, Popeye, and
Ricochet Rabbit the way other people gush over a sunset or a perfect
rose. "The flat colors, the stylized images—other people may not see these
things as beautiful," he says, "but I get really excited about animated forms." More >
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| Evelyn Rydz
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Evelyn Rydz (Master of
Fine Arts '05) didn’t know how to respond when she showed her pen-and-ink
drawings to an acquaintance a year ago: he took one look at the strange,
otherworldly images and marveled, "I never knew you were such a lunatic." More >
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| Fannie Hillsmith
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Every day, 95-year-old
Fannie
Hillsmith sits down in her
studio in , New
Hampshire,
to
paint. Like petting her
cats, it's not
something she thinks about—she just
does it. But even with
three-quarters of a century of experience,
Hillsmith says
the
work never comes easily. "Art is so baffling, so
difficult," she says. "
Every painting is a new challenge."
More >
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| Shinique Smith
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Twenty years ago, Shinique Smith (Master of Arts in Teaching in Art Education '
00) was a rowdy teenage graffiti "tagger" roaming the streets of Baltimore, "
using the city," Smith says, "as a playground." The painter and sculptor, now
based in Brooklyn, still finds inspiration in the urban landscape: in
architecture, in the clothes people wear, even in the trash she sees on the
street. More >
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| Steve Snider
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When you walk into a bookstore, Steve Snider (Diploma '65) has just a fraction
of a second to catch your attention. As Vice President and Creative Director at
St. Martin's Press, Snider
oversees the design and production of 700 book jackets a year. Each one, he
says, is like a pick-up line in a bar. "If we get it right, we get to have that
little conversation. It doesn't necessarily mean we’re going home together, but
we're sending the right signal to the right audience." More >
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