ABOUT THE MFA

For a select group of graduate students, we offer an advanced program which builds upon the mission of our undergraduate program. Each year we typicallly receive more than 40 applications for 3-5 openings in the program. Graduate application materials are screened beginning on February 15th for admission for the following fall semester.

Graduate students are required to place a greater emphasis on applying theory to the development of a mature body of work. Our program is also intended to provide preparatory experiences for college level teaching for students on a Graduate Teaching Assistantship.

For more information visit the on-line graduate catalogue:
http://web.utk.edu/~gsinfo/toc.htm

We strongly encourage applicants to come to Knoxville to meet us and the current students and to see our facilities. If you are planning a visit, CLICK HERE for maps of Knoxville and the UT campus. CLICK HERE and then click on "zone 7" to see the map showing the location of the Art and Architecture Building. The UT Printshop is located in room 241 on the second floor, north-west corner. Visitors should also plan to visit Yee Haw Industries, our local letter press shop located at 413 S. Gay Street.

Current MFA Students are listed below. Prospective students are welcome to contact these individuals to inquire about the program.

Katherine Nanfro - III Year
Email: knanfro@utk.edu
Website: www.galaxyofglass.com
Education: Florida State University - BFA

"My work predominately conveys ideas concerning the constructed narrative of identity. Through my prints and drawings I strive to imbue the work with a childlike, innocent hand tempered with anxiety. I have been working with kite like installation pieces to denote a certain disconnect from any known environment or context. I am interested in imagery derived from fairy tales, the pastoral, and memory. The result is a supernatural form of identity that is fragmented and reminiscent of the past. The viewer is presented with a trace of a memory enhanced with mystery and at the same is denied a narrative."

Katherine Nanfro is currently a third year graduate student. See was the co-chair of a panel session featuring the work of currrent MFA students at the Southeastern College Art Conference held at Vanderbilt University in October 2006. In May of 2006 Katherine spent as month in Poznañ, Poland with UT's Student Artist-in-Residence Program

Sarah Shebaro - III Year
Email: sshebaro@utk.edu
Education: University of Iowa - BFA

“My recent installations are an interaction of printmaking, painting, photography, and sound creating an environment resonating with tones of isolation, chaos, and nostalgia. These spaces reflect my rural, midwest upbringing while simultaneously coexisting with abstracted elements extracted from my fascination of music and the everyday peculiarities that accompany life in the South.”

Sarah Shebaro grew up on a farm in the northwest corner of Iowa. In 2002 she received her BFA in painting and from the University of Iowa. From 2003-2005 she attended Bucknell University in a unique Post-Baccalaureate Teaching Assistant Position in the Painting and Printmaking Program. In May and June of 2006 Sarah spent as month in Poznañ, Poland with UT's Student Artist-in-Residence Program. Sarah is currently a third year MFA candidate in the printmaking program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and is known in the local music scene as "DJ Mini-Tiger."



Crystal Wagner- III Year
Email: thelifeofcrystal@hotmail.com
Education: Atlanta College of Art - BFA

“When I regard human existence and its relationship with the rest of the world, I sit slumped and ignorant against the masses. I appreciate that as animals human beings are just one part of the elaborate system of life and I recognize my incapability at ever truly being able to comprehend it. Whether it is due to my own biological utilities inability to provide me with accurate information or the fact that my own mind acts to filter my senses, I feel the disconnection and am aware that I can develop a rationalization, but never a truth so to speak. A quote by Michael Oakshott explains that, ‘Human beings are what they understand themselves to be; they are comprised entirely of beliefs about themselves and the world they inhabit.’ I am interested in the way human beings fabricate their own suspensions of belief about the world around them in order to help them cope and survive with it. Science seemingly concrete appears fickle and insignificant in the greater scheme of things to me and though offered as a truth becomes just another option for the interpretation of it. My current body of work takes the elements of the mechanical and the organic that surround me as concrete
objects and explores ideas of interpreted space, imagined realities, and fabrication while referencing already established ones i.e. science and philosophy.”

Currently a third year graduate student and Teaching Associate in the MFA program at The University of Tennessee, Crystal Wagner received first her AFA from Keystone College in La Plume, Pennsylvania in 2002 and then her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, Georgia in 2004. While attending Keystone College she was awarded Best Prose/Fiction writer for her work in creative writing. During her time in Atlanta she majored in sculpture and eventually in printmaking. In 2004 she was awarded the Southern Graphics Council Fellowship for her work in intaglio etching. In May of 2005, she spent a month in Poznañ, Poland working at the Academy of Fine Art and presenting an exhibition of her work. She was awarded the 2007 Terry Burnett Scholarship for graduate students. Her aspirations include; teaching, becoming a published novelist, and professional artist.

Jesse Van der Laan - II Year
Email: jessievdl@bellsouth.net
Education: Washington University, St. Louis - BFA

“My recent work is invested in weight and gravity, in both their physical and metaphorical implications. I strive to create a space of specific ambiguity, a place located in between what has happened and what is about to happen, making the viewer question the fragment of story they are given. My work operates like a piece of a memory, which feels familiar but undefined. By using printmaking methods, I am able to create building blocks for my drawings, installations and sculptures. Each multiple has the potential to be cut apart, collaged together or repurposed to become more than a singular impression.”

Jessie Van der Laan was born and raised in Denver, CO. She graduated with her B.F.A. in Printmaking from Washington University of St. Louis in 2002. Jesse is currently a second year M.F.A. candidate in Printmaking at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she is also the Assistant Director of Gallery 1010, a student run art space and the Immediate-past-President of the UT Print Club.

Daniel Maw - I Year
Email: mawdaniel@gmail.com
Education: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, BFA

“I take advantage of the pictorial vernacular of our culture to create work that by its nature communicates clearly. The ideas or events communicated, however, are unexpected, quirky, and ultimately amusing. I consider an assortment of artists and images in this pursuit, including comic artists ranging from George Herriman to Chris Ware, modern cartoons such as those produced mid-20th Century, graphic imagery seen in advertisements, and games and toys. My pieces require an authentic interaction by the viewer, either to untangle the visual cues in order to complete the story or to follow the directions in order to construct the object and solve the game.”

Daniel Maw was born the middle of five children in a small Iowa town located along the Mississippi River. He entertained himself by imitating the drawings of cartoonists and comic artists he witnessed each day in print and on the television. Electing to pursue a lifestyle that allowed this sort of behavior, he earned his BFA in Printmaking at the University of Iowa in the fall of 2006. Presently he is a first year MFA candidate in Printmaking at the University of Tennessee where he is also working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. He is the current President of the UT Print Club.

Erin Mullenex - I Year
Email: erin.mullenex@gmail.com
Education: University of Virginia, BA

“My work uses images appropriated from anatomy textbooks to explore ideas of standardization. Through their generality, these diagrams depict everyone, yet in their standardization they show us nothing of our individual selves. This leads into questions concerning the unique within the multiple. How fixed are these categories? We often bestow supernatural qualities onto the everyday object. But where does this power originate, and how is it transmitted through a common “universal” object? Does this alter the object? Or the power itself?”

Born and raised in Newport News, Virginia, Erin Mullenex received her B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Virginia. After graduation in 2005, she remained in Charlottesville for a few years, working in a custom frame shop. Currently, she is a first year graduate student in printmaking at the University of Tennessee.

Katie Ries - I Year
Email: kt.ries@gmail.com
Education: The Colorado College - BA

“We may know that our food is grown or raised, but we lack a working knowledge of the labor and biology involved in bringing it to the table. Instead, our ideas of agriculture are informed by nostalgic imagery featured in food packaging. For example, the Sun-Maid Raisin logo: a pale young woman in an old-fashioned bonnet holds a woven basket full of grapes. The sun shines behind her and she is smiling. I incorporate imagery such as this as a point of reference and use the disposable packaging as a material to make printed and sewn objects that are to be handled, used up, read, worn out, and consumed by the viewer.”

Upon graduating from high school in Nashville, TN. Katie Ries worked briefly as a retail underling and then farm laborer before hiking the Appalachian Trail. Following her long walk she attended and was graduated from The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO. Through the college she worked with small edition printer Ediciones Vigia in Matanzas, Cuba and with traditional weavers and dyers in Oaxaca, Mexico. She returned to Tennessee to intern with the folk-art-letterpress heroes at Yee-Haw Industries in Knoxville, TN. and is now a first year student in the graduate printmaking program at the University of Tennessee.

Veronica Siehl - I Year
Email: siehlv@gmail.com
Education: Beloit College, BA

“Like a three-legged puppy, my artwork is pathetic. My prints contain a delicate balance of humor and discomfort. I am interested by acts of observation and participation that occur in social settings. I examine the cringe-worthy moments of life, the ones we often don’t like to remember, let alone be in. The rigid and densely packed marks I employ heighten the anxiety present in my work. Through depicting these awkward occurrences, I call to question the role of social norms and rituals.”

Veronica Siehl hails from Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 2006 she received her B.A. from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Veronica is currently a first year graduate student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Ericka Walker - I Year
Email: ericka0061@yahoo.com
Education: University of Wisconsin-Madison, BS

“I am an impatient individual. The majority of my mental energy is spent anticipating the next step, event, or encounter. While the process of printmaking does require the artist to consider sequence, it also demands patience and an open mind. Working as a printmaker naturally runs counter to the way I proceed through life. My first experience with printmaking prompted me to disregard it for more immediate means of expression. Due to academic obligations I stuck with it for a semester. I came to find that while working on a matrix or printing an edition I wasn’t thinking about the day to come. For hours at a time I was able to mentally remain with my work and nothing else. Working on a plate, stone, or woodblock can at once calm and humble me. Both the process and my subject matter embody patience, flexibility, and acceptance. I work single mindedly in the studio, reinterpreting the posture of trees, the forms of which offer so singularly beautiful a glimpse of nobility that the image likens itself to a portrait of the honored dead – a work of art in its own right.
I am looking forward to the next three years of graduate study as an opportunity to disrupt some of the quietness while still embracing the therapeutic work oriented process of making fine art prints.”

Ericka Walker was born and raised in rural South-Central Wisconsin. In 2005 she received a Bachelor of Science in Art from the University of Wisconsin Madison. She is currently a first year MFA candidate at UT Knoxville and working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Foundations Department. Pictured above is a detail from one of Ericka's recednt etchings.