Graduate Alumni Profiles
Hannah Duggan
2022
MFA
Cima Khademi
2022
MFA
Video
Taylor Benoit
2021
MFA
Richenda Cope
2021
MFA
Avery Forbes
2021
MFA
Avery Forbes creates work that explores what we lose when we mediate social interactions through our devices, and aims to make visible and unignorable the pressing social issues that we often prefer to distract ourselves from. Consumer culture has a way of inspiring ennui rather than unrest. Avery's work aims to make the small indignities and injustices more visible, and inspire action
Nima Nikakhlagh
2021
MFA
Jessica Scott
2021
MFA
I am a multidisciplinary artist working in performance, sculpture, installation, collage, theater and photography. My work addresses concerns of bodily autonomy, human rights, transnational feminisms, and transformations of the flesh through imaginary, literary and practical means. For the past 15 years I have designed and performed for Broadway shows, in a 1000-gallon aquarium and the Pacific Ocean, internationally, in living rooms and everything in between. I am currently a 2nd year MFA Candidate in Studio Art at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Originally from San Francisco, I received my BA from NYU with a focus on Political Science and Community Organizing. The values communicated to me through a mixed-race, women-led, working class family are present in all my work: written, visual and performed. I am now based in Amherst, MA and New York City.
Chaehee Yoon
2021
MFA
Amanda Boggs
2020
MFA
Amanda works in the mediums of performance, video and installation. She is trained in embodied practices (modern dance, yoga, physical theater, gymnastics, and varsity athletics), in visual arts (photography, film, and video), Eastern Philosophy, and ten years as an Off-Broadway performer in the harness-based aerial show De La Guarda. Her background in aerial practices have given her a unique, kinesthetic understanding of the world on both horizontal and vertical planes. In her work, she explores concepts of identity and human connection through experimentation with drone technology and embodied practices.
Kathryn Fanelli
2020
MFA
Bibiana Medkova
Bibiana is a cross-disciplinary artist who uses installation and new media to interrogate ideas of democracy and globalization. Their work has been shown at Benaki Museum, Athens Greece (2015) and the Satellite Art Show, Miami FL (2016 & 2017); their work has been included in projects that have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (2017), MoMA PS1, Queens NY (2015) and Petzel Gallery, New York NY (2017) and has been reviewed in the Hyperallergic, ArtFCity and Feature Shoot. Bibiana is an MFA candidate at University of Massachusetts - Amherst, founder of Pickled Press and co-editor of Fotofobia.
Kenneth Murphy
2020
MFA
Painting
Kenneth Murphy is a descendant of pioneering Americans, the Mormons, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, grew up in multi-cultural Northern California and is a painter. His research is focusing on the intersection between Men's and Postcolonial Studies resulting in paintings and performance-based videos that directly address the artist's demography as a blue-eyed white man, critique ideas around transparency and privacy, and incite a simultaneous effect of inclusion and exclusion.
Kenneth Murphy earned his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2011.
Xuan Pham
2020
MFA
Leah Burke
2019
MFA
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Kristy Childress
2019
MFA
From personal inquiries into memories of place, Kristy Childress investigates the ephemeral nature of “home” and how our human experience parallels with natural and man-made phenomena of the landscape.
Althea Keaton
2019
MFA
Althea Keaton primarily creates drawings, etchings, and comics. Her work explores a variety of topics including gender, time, space, identity, and emotion. Much of her work is autobiographical to some extent.
Emily Tareila
2019
MFA
Emily is compelled by the ideal conditions individuals and communities need to make, learn, be curious and engage meaningfully in/with the world. Her work often takes the forms of workshops, gatherings, meals, events and writing, enacting practices in sustainability, well-being and lifelong learning.
Margaret Wilson
2019
MFA
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David Hannon
2017
MFA
collage, drawing, sculpture
Ethan Kiermaier
2017
MFA
ekiermaier@umass.edu
Ethan Kiermaier makes videos and performances and installations and situations. He is a DJ, a carpenter, a shade tree mechanic, a producer and a karaoke host. His work is magical realism in the round with relational tendencies.
Peter Mack
2017
MFA
Painting, collage, animation, video, music
Andrew Napoli
2017
MFA
Collage, etc.
Lauren Bennett
2016
MFA
Dave Musgrave
2016
MFA
Chelsea Sams
2016
MFA
Chelsea Sams explores the intersections of institutions, environments, and the beings that inhabit them. Tactics used in this investigation include drawing, installation, and performance.
Kyle Thorne
2016
MFA
Molly Hoisington
2015
MFA
Molly Hoisington likes to think too much. She is interested in abstraction and representation, in exploring sensation and the somatic. She thinks a lot about the process of learning, the process of processing. She mostly paints.
Joe Saphire
2015
MFA
My work explores media culture through tactics of intervention and misuse. The ways in which a baseball game can feel like a distantly familiar dream; how we might find ourselves empathizing with an actor in an ad; reclaiming noise as cultural artifact—I am interested in the psychological underpinnings of the mediated experience. Projects resolve as installations, site-specific displays, and collaborative events, and are designed malleably to fit different kinds of environments.
Negar Ahmadi
MA, Art Education
Rebecca Aiken
MA, Art Education
Sally Curcio
MFA
Bryan Larkin
MA, Art Education
Abbey Paccia
MFA
Paul Teeling
MFA
Classically trained as a commercial photographer and instructor for 27 years, Paul Teeling is using his time here to focus on multimedia art, exploring light, space, and the human condition.