As we start a new semester, we are pleased to introduce our spring 2022 MFA faculty.
Criticism & Theory II
PhD, University of Minnesota
George Hoagland is Associate 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.
Criticism & Theory II
PhD, State University of New York at Buffalo
MA, University of Western Ontario
BA, University of Toronto
Dr. Jen Caruso earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with an emphasis on European modernism and critical theory and holds an MA from the Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario. Her recent research and teaching interests include socially-engaged art practice, aesthetics in the context of late capitalism, and cultural responses to climate change. She has an essay on alienated labor in the novels of William Gibson in the anthology, Alien Imaginations: Science Fiction and Tales of Transnationalism (Bloomsbury).
Graduate Critique Seminar 2
MFA, University of Minnesota
Katayoun Amjadi is an Iranian-born, Minneapolis-based artist, educator and independent curator. In her work, she often considers the socio/political systems that shape our perceptions of Self and Other, such as language, religion, gender, politics and nationalist ideologies. Katayoun blurs these boundaries and creates an off-balance, hybrid style, slightly acerbic and a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Her art probes the relationship between past and present, tradition and modernity, and individual versus collective identity, and simultaneously seeks to spur discussion about our place in the temporal arc and the interwoven roots of our histories.
Graduate Critique Seminar 2
BA, University of Southern California
Craig Laurence Rice is an award-winning producer and director who is nationally recognized for his distinguished career in music video, commercial, television and film industry.
Rice credits include producer for the 90-minute PBS variety show special A Prairie Home Companion 30th, executive producer on the nationally syndicated series Million Dollar Idea, and executive producer as well as director for the feature length documentary Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks for HBO, which was nominated for three Emmy Awards and an NAACP Image Award. He has recently completed a television documentary on DJ Spooky at MCAD and two hour concert film entitled Loops and Time with the musical group Story City and hip-hop artist Toki Wright. He has directed music videos for the latest releases by Mazarati and Lia Renee Dior.
Rice holds a production degree from the University of Southern California Cinema Department and a liberal arts degree from Minneapolis Community and Technical College. He also attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota with a film, photography, and theatre major.
Rice currently is developing a television series entitled the Black Panthers for Netflix.
Professional Practices
Anne Labovitz
MFA Creative Practice, Plymouth University, United Kingdom, (Transart Institute)
BA, Hamline University, St. Paul, MN
Labovitz lives and works in St. Paul, MN. Responding to today’s world, I make artwork that challenges isolation, loneliness and disconnection by activating color and light in large-scale work. Local context and creating connections with others is embodied in my creative process and public interventions.
Recent projects include: an artist-in-residency and new work commission at Theatre Unbound in Bethlehem, PA, solo exhibitions at Concordia St Paul (2021) and Art in Motion, Holdingford (2021), two large-scale permanent public mosaic artworks at the MSP Airport (2021), 122 Conversations currently installed in MSP airport Terminal 2 (2019- 2023), the Belgrade Art Residency, Serbia (2021), Turn Up the Turn Out, a cohort of 22 artists dedicated to the promotion of voting and voting registration in Minnesota (2020), Response (2020), a body of new works responding to COVID 2020 isolation, an Outdoor fence installation in Berlin, Germany (2022), a site-specific participatory public art commission at the Redleaf Center For Family Healing (2021), I Love You Institute, a community-based art project, supported by a Springboard for the Arts community grant. Upcoming projects include: a solo exhibition installation for Truth/False 2022 Film Festival, Columbia, MO. and solo exhibitions at theMinnesota Marine Art Museum (2022) and the Rochester Art Center (2023).
Teaching Seminar
Preston Drum
BFA, Memphis College of Art
MFA, Minneapolis College of Art and Design
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 The Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Walker Art Center.
