Lori Terjesen (BA art history ‘01) was promoted to chief programs officer at the National Women’s History Museum. Emily Janowick (BFA ‘13) was selected as one of the Sharpe Walentas Studio Recipients for 2026-27. Eliza Frensley (MFA ‘25) spent the past winter in South Korea as a resident printmaking artist at Print Art Research Center and Naughty Muse Studios. […]
During the 2025-2026 academic year, the School of Art welcomed three new assistant professors: Bucky Miller in photography, Zoe Weldon-Yochim in art history, and Katie Mahalic in time-based art and cinema studies. Recent faculty honors include the following:
The UT School of Art enriches the lives of students and the Rocky Top family through transformative experiential instruction, innovative artistic and cinematic practice, and groundbreaking art historical research. Your gifts help build our programs and fund visiting artists and scholars. In the past year alone, they have helped fund the visits of: Plus, in […]
Undergraduate and MFA students are earning recognition and gaining practical experience on campus and off. Cinema studies student Emma Brown was selected for a competitive paid internship with Omaha Productions, Peyton Manning’s company, in Los Angeles. Second year ceramics MFA student Lindsay Skvarek’s work Global Warming: Meltdown was featured in the 2026 National Council on […]
This annual newsletter celebrates the professional and life achievements of our students, alumni, faculty, and staff. We are proud of our record of creative activity, and grateful to have our graduate program recognized as 3rd among public universities by U.S. News and World Report
This annual newsletter celebrates the professional and life achievements of our students, alumni, faculty, and staff. We are proud of our record of creative activity, and grateful to have our graduate program recognized as 3rd among public universities by U.S. News and World Report
Polish printmaking exchange students Łucja Bańkowska and Julia Blaszczyk visited the School of Art this fall as part of a long-standing exchange program with the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw, Poland. During their time in Tennessee, they exhibited a show, “Who Turned the Light On?” at Gallery 1010 in downtown Knoxville. […]
Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Time-Based Art Heather Coker Hawkins’ short dance film Gravity Wins (2022) was screened at the 2024 Movies by Movers Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. It also enjoyed official selection at the University & Video Association Conference juried screening and at the Raleigh Film & Art Festival. Printmaking Professor […]
Marta Lee (’14) received a 2024 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. Printmaking MFA alumna Mary Climes (’21) was awarded the 2023-2024 Outstanding Teacher Award at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Printmaking alum Danqi Cai (MFA ’23) was awarded a $10,000 Practicing Artist Grant by the Mid-America Arts Alliance’s Artists 360 program. Manifest Gallery’s (Cincinnati, […]
The School of Art presented nine students with Kimberly D. Iles Scholarships this academic year: Sara Caoile, painting and drawing; Adele Ferguson, painting and drawing; Elle Hoytt, cinema studies; Abbie (Bea) Moore, photography; Rachel O’Donnell, sculpture; Grace Russell, printmaking; Benjamin Sechrest, time-based art; Laura Smith, art history; and Emma Mae Toledo, ceramics Rachel O’Donnell (’24) […]
Emily Roca Rice of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a 2023 MFA graduate who studied studio art with a concentration in painting and drawing. She is one of eleven UT students and graduates who were selected for the 2023-2024 Fulbright student awards. This award allowed her to study and conduct research abroad. Inspired by family heritage and […]
Zoe Brester-Pennings, 2023 MFA printmaking graduate, is the recipient of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside (UWP) Artist-in-Residence (AIR) position in printmaking. This position began in fall 2023 and runs through the spring 2024 semester. The residency will give Brester-Pennings full access to the academic/professional printmaking studio in UWP’s Rita Tallent Picken Regional Center for the Arts […]
Danqi Cai [dan-CHI Tsai] is a spring 2023 graduate of the UT School of Art MFA program. The program is proud to announce that she was appointed as Assistant Professor of Foundations at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She began in the fall of 2023. In addition to the news of her appointment, […]
Janelle VanderKelen is an Assistant Professor of Time-Based Foundation who co-directs the Time-Based Foundations Curriculum for the School of Art and teaches in Cinema Studies, Video Art, and Foundations programs. Maurice Moore is Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Tennessee School of Art. He recently completed a PhD in Performance Studies […]
Printmaking alumna Ericka Walker (MFA ’10) received the College of Arts and Sciences 2023 Alumni of Promise Award on September 29, 2023. Walker, who attended UT after completing her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she is an associate professor at NSCAD University. The Alumni Promise Award recognizes […]
Abigail Hedley of Knoxville, Tennessee, has been awarded the prestigious International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award for 2023. Hedley is an MFA student at UT School of Art. The International Sculpture Center (ISC) established the annual Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award program in 1994 to recognize young sculptors and […]
Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s most recent film has been named a Critics Pick by the New York Times. Sheldon is an assistant professor in the cinema studies program in the School of Art. The film, described as “a lyrical tapestry of a place and people,” meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, […]
Modesta Gorol and Jan Kozlowski were resident-artists at the UT School of Art during the month of September 2023. They are the latest artists in an exchange program between the School of Art and the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, Poland. The exchange, which has been running for more than 15 […]
Jered Sprecher, professor in the UT Knoxville School of Art, spent June and July 2023 in Italy, as a UT Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. While at the academy, Sprecher spent time visiting historical examples of Roman painting and sculpture that featured decorative motifs drawn from nature. The Ad Gallinas Albas Garden […]
Stacey Robinson was a featured artist at the UT School of Art during September and October 2023. He participated in multiple exhibitions in collaboration with the Ewing Gallery and the Downtown Gallery. He was a visiting artist for the school and community, sharing his skills as DJ with 90.3 The Rock, leading a gallery meditation […]
School of Art Newsletter
Prism Issue 8
Fall/Winter 2020
