As we start a new semester, we are pleased to introduce our fall 2022 MFA faculty.
Nancy Ariza
Community & Context
MA, Education and Graduate Certificate in Culturally Responsive Teaching – Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota
BA, Art History and BFA, Printmaking– Minnesota State University, Mankato
I am a printmaker, educator, and arts and cultural engagement organizer. My work draws on themes of multigenerational relationships, storytelling, and memory. Through prints and installation I explore the ways material culture and ephemera can aid in further understanding and preserving identity. My studio practice is intertwined with my roles as educator and organizer. Since 2012, I’ve been developing and implementing arts programming in museums, schools, and community spaces. Currently, I’m the Associate Curator of Learning and Engagement at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and have taught at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minnesota Center for Books Arts, Walker Art Center, East Side Arts Council, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and more. My aim is to foster creativity and self-expression through collaborative, inclusive, and culturally responsive programming.
William Franklin
Criticism & Theory I
MLS, minor in Art History – University of Minnesota
BA, Mass Communication and Rhetoric – University of Minnesota
William G. Franklin “Billy” is a college professor, bilingual educator, and an independent art curator. Franklin has curated more than a dozen exhibits locally and served as panelist reviewing applications for grants and artist-in-residence programs. This year he served as juror for the Anderson Center at Tower View Artist Residency Program in Red Wing, Minnesota, and led inquiry-based bilingual tours for the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Franklin is authoring and curating an upcoming Afton Press publication on Latino, Latina, and Latinx MN-based artists with support from the Minnesota Historical Society Legacy Grant.
Kathryn Savage
Criticism & Theory I
Studied creative writing at The New School
MFA in fiction from Bennington College
MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota
Kathryn Savage is a hybrid writer whose debut lyric essay collection, GROUNDGLASS, is forthcoming from Coffee House Press (August 2, 2022). Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, BOMB Magazine, Ecotone Magazine, the Guardian, Poets & Writers, the Academy of American Poets poets.org, the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment, Virginia Quarterly Review, World Literature Today, and The Best Small Fictions of 2015, among others.
Recipient of the 2018 Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize, she’s been awarded grants, fellowships, and residencies from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Minnesota State Arts Board, Millay Colony, Ucross Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center. In 2018, she was awarded the O’Rourke Travel Fellowship and the Graduate Research Partnership Program Fellowship from the University of Minnesota to research and write about volcanoes in Iceland. In 2019, 2020, and 2021 she was awarded the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
Savage teaches creative writing at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), and in both the Augsburg University and Hamline University MFA programs, with a focus on poetry and creative nonfiction. Formerly, she served as a program manager at The Loft Literary Center, overseeing the Loft Mentor Series fellowship in poetry and creative prose, which offers twelve emerging Minnesota writers the opportunity to work intensively with six nationally acclaimed writers for one fellowship year. During her six-year tenure at the Loft, she managed a range of literary arts programs funded by the Poetry Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation.
From 2014 to 2019 she volunteered with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, overseeing the organization’s annual broadside collaboration in partnership with the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. In the editorial space, Savage has read scripts for Focus Features and Cine Mosaic Films, as well as manuscripts for Sarabande Books.
Ziba Rajabi
Graduate Critique Seminar 1 and Graduation Preparation 1
MFA – University of Arkansas
BA, Painting – Soore University of Art, Tehran, Iran
AA, Graphic Desing– Institute of Higher Education, Karaj, Iran
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.
Aida Shahghasemi
Graduation Preparation 1
MA, Arts Politics, New York University
BA, Anthropology and Psychology, University of Minnesota
Aida Shahghasemi is a Minneapolis-based musician with roots in Iran. Her research has centered on restrictions on creative expression, auditory perception and sonic pollution, utilization of art towards social consciousness and social change, along with the application of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed method in k-12 and university settings. She developed and taught a course called Iran’s Arts Activism at New York University for three years and currently serves as a full time mental health therapist at Care Free Counseling.
Wen-Li Chen
Graduate Critique Seminar 1
M.Des., Photography – The Glasgow School of Art, UK
BA, Russian – Tamkang University
Wen-Li Chen is a Taiwanese-born, Saint Paul-based interdisciplinary artist, arts administrator and graphic designer. Wen-Li is moved to both encounter and present intergeneration, dwelling and inheritance by way of oblique poetics, vulnerable histories, enduring relationships and personal experiences. Her artwork often takes the form of books, photo-essays, photography, video, found objects and installation. Art administration remains an ongoing outlet for Wen-LI, with a particular focus on providing rigorous and often challenging contemporary art to underserved rural communities in Taiwan.
Wen-Li has shown her works internationally and nationally. In addition she has done projects, received grants and collaborated with several international organizations, such as the Warhol Foundation (USA), Ministry of Culture (Taiwan), Taiwan Academy (NYC) and the National Culture and Arts Foundation (Taiwan).
Aki Shibata
Graduate Critique Seminar 3
MA Saint Mary University (Art Instruction)
BFA College of Visual Arts (Photography)
Aki Shibata is a behavioral artist, educator, facilitator, and community organizer from Tokyo, Japan, now based in Minnesota.
In Shibata’s artistic work she develops intersections for people in public spaces to discover their authentic selves and to nurture compassion for all. Her work is about finding a sense of belonging and finding ways to let people meet their inner peace. Her artistic practice involves the examination of body and mind in public and gallery spaces through exploring the behavior of human interaction and notions of performance.
She currently teaches visual art and participatory art in schools throughout the Twin Cities and facilitates Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access in Leadership (IDEAL) training with the Science Museum of Minnesota. In 2017 she founded the Primary School of Behavioral Art, where people come together to learn from each other and to work together to bring liberation for all through art.
Peng Wu
Graduate Critique Seminar 3
MFA, Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Peng Wu is a design activist and an interdisciplinary artist dedicated to creating socially engaged art in public space. His work combines the power of design thinking with contemporary art strategies to address various urgent social issues including immigration, modern medicine and health, environmental sustainability.
Dan McAvey
Teaching Art and Design Online Certificate
MFA – Minneapolis College of Art and Design
MA – University of Minnesota
BA – Carleton College
Dan McAvey’s work explores human connection through the genre of landscape painting. He teaches studio art in collegiate and community settings, empowering students to adopt a spirit of experimentation in their work and to embrace failure as a joyful part of developing their practice.
Dan holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, an MA in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota, and a BA in Psychology from Carleton College.
