It’s time to introduce and welcome our wonderful Spring 2024 MFA Faculty! Learn more about each of them, below.
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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, native plant nurseryman, arts educator, and an occasional musician.

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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 20 years teaching experience / Over 23 years experience as an exhibiting visual artist, performing artist, and professional artist.

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Publics & Publication

Sam Gould (he/they)

An artist, writer, and editor, 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 the winter of 2020. An incubator for Social Craft, Confluence Studio believes “neighbors make neighborhoods, people make place.”

Gould was a founding faculty member within the MFA Dept. 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, and elsewhere; and has had projects commissioned by institutions such as Creative Time, the Walker Arts Center, Printed Matter, and many others. His collection of essays on a shifting cultural landscape, America Composes Itself, was published in the fall of 2023 by Publication Studio – Hudson.

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Graduate Critique Seminar II

Russell Hamilton (he/him)

Master of Fine Arts: Sculpture – University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Bachelor of Arts: Political Science (Southern African Politics) – University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

Russell Hamilton is a practicing visual artist and educator. He has worked as a professor of Art and Design in the mediums of sculpture, painting, and mixed media. He has taught at Wayne State University, Zayed University (UAE), and he currently teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). Russell has exhibited widely throughout the US; Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Detroit, NYC, Skowhegan, Washington D.C., as well as, the UAE, Venice, and Japan. His works are in both public and private collections. ​

Russell received an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington, Seattle. He has also attended the renowned Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1990) and the 2021 alumni class. He was an artist-in-residence at the Pratt Institute in Seattle for glass blowing and a one-year Artist in Residence at the prestigious Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC. ​Russell has worked on a number of community projects and worked as an artist in residence at a number of community-based organizations and school districts. He continues with his individual studio work and is further interested in art collaborations that extend beyond the walls of the traditional gallery.

In addition to his MFA, Russell received a BA in Political Science (Southern African Politics) from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Campus.

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Criticism & Theory II

George Hoagland (they/them)

PhD, Comparative Literature – University of Minnesota

George Hoagland is Professor in Liberal Arts at MCAD. Their projects include mediamaplab.com, a digital platform constructed with research partners in the collaborative Situated Critical Race and Media (SCRAM), and digital scholarship on the work of painter Julie Mehretu. With a Ph.D. in comparative literature, Hoagland works in emergent and participatory media studies with a focus on queer, trans, intersex Black, Indigenous, and people of color (QTIBIPOC) issues.

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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, occuying sites in and around Edinburgh.

She has taught college art courses on a ship for Semester at Sea, leading field practicuums 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.

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Graduate Preparation II, and MFA Visiting Artist

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, Iran. Her primary practice is focused on painting, drawing, and fabric-based installation. She is the recipient of the Jerome Foundation Fellowships for Early Career Artists sponsored by the Jerome Foundation and 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, 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, Terrain Residency, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center.

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Graduate Critique Seminar II

Edson Rosas (he/they)

MFA – Pacific Northwest College of Art
BFA – Minnesota State University, Mankato

Edson Rosas (he/they) is a queer Mexican-American artist, educator, and Arts Administrator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a printmaker, an installation artist, a soft sculpture maker, and a haiku writer. His work is autobiographical and is currently focused on exploring his Mexican roots and how that plays a role in his everyday life and queer-hood. The work is often honest and open, making the personal become universal.

Edson received his Master of Fine Arts from Pacific Northwest College of art in 2021 and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Minnesota State University, Mankato in 2019. He has experience curating, has exhibited both in group and solo shows, and has worked/volunteered in gallery settings.

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Criticism & Theory II

Kathryn Savage (she/her)

MFA in fiction from Bennington College
MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota
Studied creative writing at The New School

Kathryn Savage’s Groundglass: An Essay (Coffee House Press), explores topics of environmental justice and links between pollution and public health. Her recent research and teaching interests include intersectional feminist responses to climate crisis, socially-engaged interdisciplinary collaborations, and the porous boundary between self and environment.

She is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize, and her work across forms has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Ucross Foundation, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Recent writing appears in American Short Fiction, Ecotone Magazine, VQR, BOMB Magazine, World Literature Today, and the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment.

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