Welcome to our Spring 2023 MFA Faculty! Learn more about each of them, below. **** Jen Caruso Criticism & Theory II Jen Caruso (she/her) PhD, Comparative Literature - University at Buffalo MA, Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism - University of Western Ontario BA, English and Philosophy - University of Toronto Jen Caruso has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University at Buffalo, and an MA from the Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario. She earned a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Dr. Caruso's recent research and teaching interests include aesthetics in the context of late capitalism, and cultural responses to climate change. She has made recent conference presentations on representations of climate change in science fiction film and has an essay on alienated labor in the novels of William Gibson in the anthology, Alien Imaginations: Science Fiction and Tales of Transnationalism (Bloomsbury). Her most recent writing project is Refusing the Future: Survival Narratives in 21st Century Dystopian Literature and Film. ------ Preston Drum Teaching in Higher Education Preston Drum (he/him) MFA - Minneapolis College of Art and Design BFA - Memphis College of Art Preston Drum was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He earned a BFA from Memphis College of Art in 2006 and an MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2016. His paintings, sculptures, videos and interactive installations explore notions of memory and performance through non-linear storytelling. Drum’s work is often site-specific and collaborative in nature, framing the audience as a participant in the art. His work has been exhibited throughout the Midwest and Southern United States at venues such as Goodyear Arts, The Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Walker Art Center. Drum is a member-emeritus of the Minnesota based artist group, CarryOn Homes, whose mission is to raise awareness of immigrant issues through the creation of artworks. Drum lives in the south suburbs of the Twin Cities where he wears many hats as a full-time caregiver for his children, husband, studio artist, gardener, arts educator, and occasional musician. ----- Michael Gaughan Professional Practices Michael Gaughan (he/him) MFA, Painting - San Francisco Art Institute M.Ed, Art Education - University of MN BFA, Painting - Minneapolis College of Art and Design Michael Gaughan is a Minneapolis based Visual Artist. Specializing in Watercolor Painting, but also working in Performance, Humor and Absurdity, Public Art, Sculpture, Mixed Media, and Commercial Illustration. MFA Painting 2014 San Francisco Art Institute / M.Ed Art Education 2004 University of MN / BFA Painting 2002 Minneapolis College of Art and Design / Over 19 years teaching experience / Over 22 years experience as an exhibiting visual artist, performing artist, and professional artist. ----- Sam Gould Publics & Publication Sam Gould (he/they) An artist, writer, and organizer, Sam Gould co-founded the cultural collaborative Red76 (2000 - 2015), an artistic and social configuration on the forefront of the burgeoning movement that became known as Social Practice. Focused on ideas around publication as an act of public making, his work often centers aspects of sociality, education, and encountering the political within daily life. In 2015 he established Beyond Repair, an “expanded publication,” functioning as a long-now site of questioning and social collaboration with the aim to move past the rhetoric of “people and places that need fixing” and towards a space of reflective self-determination and collaborative creation among his neighbors in Minneapolis’ 9th Ward. In the orbit of Beyond Repair he co-founded Confluence: An East Lake Studio for Community Design with longtime collaborator Duaba Unenra in March of 2020. An incubator for Social Craft, Confluence Studio believes “neighbors make neighborhoods, people make place.” Gould was a founding faculty member within the graduate department for Social Practice at the California College of the Arts, the first such department to be established in the United States, as well as a full-time visiting professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was a recipient of a 2014 McKnight Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship and a 2017 McKnight Foundation Mid-Career grant. He has lectured extensively within the United States and abroad at institutions such as Harvard University, the New Museum, and SF MoMA; held residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, The Luminary, Villa Montalvo, Printed Matter, and elsewhere; and has had projects commissioned by institutions such as Creative Time, the Walker Arts Center, Printed Matter, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and many others. ----- George Hoagland Criticism & Theory II George Hoagland (they/them) PhD, Comparative Literature - University of Minnesota George Hoagland's recent projects include mediamaplab.com, a digital platform constructed with partners in the research group Situated Critical Race and Media (SCRAM) and “Paul Beatty’s Slumberland and the Myth of Blackness,” a chapter in Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism: Critical Imaginaries for a Global Age (Routledge, 2015). With a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Minnesota, Hoagland works in media studies; queer, trans, and intersex black, indigenous, and people of color (QTIBIPOC) studies; critical theories of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability; transnational and anti-colonial studies; science, technology, and society (STS) studies; performance studies; and pedagogy. ----- Avigail Manneberg Graduate Critique Seminar II Avigail Manneberg (she/her) MFA, Art - University of Minnesota Avigail received her MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2012. Since then she has been teaching studio arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and at the University of Minnesota. She lived in Berlin in 2009, 2015, and 2017 supported by DAAD, (German Academic Exchange Service) art fellowships, where she was affiliated with the University of the Arts (UdK). She has exhibited her work at galleries, universities, and museums in the USA and internationally, including in Finland, Berlin, Cyprus, Beijing, and Israel. Avigail is the recipient of the 2018, 2021, and 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Visual Arts grant and the University of Minnesota's 2018 Human Rights Initiative Grant. ----- Patricia McMeans Graduate Preparation II Patricia McMeans (she/they) PhD, practice-led, Contemporary Art Practice - Edinburgh College of Art MFA, Sculpture and Combined Media - University of Minnesota Patricia is an artist, researcher and co-producer of projects taking the form of artists’ residencies, social sculptures, sound and participatory printed matter. Her work investigates how radical hospitality and slow immersion within the artist-led social studio leads to residential learning and new practice. Since 2012, she’s run iterative experimental artists’ residency events in her two homebases, Minneapolis and Edinburgh (UK), for international sets of emerging artists called Ten Chances Art Res. She has conducted these itinerant experiments trans-nationally, most recently in Edinburgh and other regions of Scotland, Galway, Helsinki, New York City, Boston, as well as Minneapolis and North Branch, MN. Her co-producing endeavours include five culminating events from 10XArtRes iterations (2012-2016), and is affiliated with the Number Shop, the Fruitmarket Gallery, Bargain Spot, Embassy Annuale, Cove Park Residency, Hospitalfield Arts, formerly Soap Factory (Mpls), Art Shanty Projects and Night Owl Farm. Recently, she’s joined a cohort of artist-builders in a self-designed dwelling project called Moveable Feast Bothy, occupying sites in and around Edinburgh. She has taught college art courses on a ship for Semester at Sea, leading field practicums in Cadiz and Istanbul, and also on land at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design from 2007 to present. She holds an MFA in Sculpture and Combined Media from the University of Minnesota, and has recently earned her practice-led PhD in Contemporary Art Practice at Edinburgh College of Art, studying Lived Residencies, Experiential Learning and Thick Geographies: How Artists Produce Knowledge(s) in the Social Studio. Primarily identifying as an artist, her strategies continue to place the artist first and give them room to move. ----- Ziba Rajabi @lentsphotography Graduate Preparation II Ziba Rajabi (she/her) MFA - University of Arkansas, Fayetteville BFA - Sooreh University, Tehran Ziba Rajabi (b.1988, Tehran, Iran) received her MFA from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and her BFA from the Sooreh University, Tehran. Her primary practice is focused on painting, drawing, and fabric-based installation. She is the recipient of the Artist 360 Grant, a program sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Her work has been included in a number of exhibitions, nationally and internationally, such as Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; AR, CICA Museum; South Korea; Masur Museum; LA; 21C Museum, AR; Araan Gallery, Iran; The II Platform, UK, among many others. She has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center as well as Anderson Ranch Arts Center. ----- Piotr Szyhalski; photo by Rik Sferra Graduate Critique Seminar II Piotr Szyhalski (he/him) MFA - Academy of Visual Arts Piotr Szyhalski is a Polish-born and trained multimedia artist working in the United States since 1990. The Minneapolis-based artist’s wide-ranging practice encompasses an array of media and genres, including drawings, posters, prints, photographs, painted murals, interactive digital media, sound art, installation, and performance. His multilayered works explore extreme historical phenomena, communication/exchange, and the relationships between the individual, society, history, and time. In 1998 he established Labor Camp, an ongoing art project guided by the motto “We Are Working All The Time!” In addition to a major survey exhibition at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis in 2022, his work has been exhibited at museums around the world, including the International Center of Photography, New York; MOCA Cleveland; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; San Jose Museum of Art; ACC Galerie, Weimar; ICA Gallery, Winnipeg; LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón; steirischer herbst, Graz; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; and in his home city at the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Szyhalski’s work is in the collections of KADIST (Paris/San Francisco), Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Walker Art Center, Weisman Art Museum, and others. Recent artist monographs include COVID-19: Labor Camp Report (Frank, 2021) and Piotr Szyhalski: We Are Working All the Time! (Weisman, 2020). He is the 2021–2022 contributing artist to the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, New York, and a professor of media arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Categories All