Our accomplished faculty at the George Mason University School of Art bring real-world experience to our dynamic learning environment. Engaging in impactful research and creative practices, our faculty actively contribute to the visual arts through museum exhibitions, public art installations, screenings, book arts, scholarly publications, and diverse forms of graphic design. Discover the latest updates in Director Zoë Charlton's welcome letter, highlighting the faculty's commitment to art for social change.
Zoë Charlton, Director of the School of Art, has participated in many national and international exhibitions, the latest of which is Multiplicity, at the Frist Art Museum in the Fall of 2023, during which she also gave a gallery talk with fellow artist Wardell Milan.
In the summer of 2023, she participated in A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, co-organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art and also shown at the Brooklyn Museum and the California African American Museum.
Elizabeth Hall
In late summer 2023, Professor Elizabeth Hall's work Veriditas IV (above) was featured in Enuma Okoro’s article Let the Dance Go On, in the Life and Art section of the Financial Times. The author came across Professor Halll's work while researching her article on the verdancy of summer and the human need to connect with and maintain such vital energy.
Associate Curator for Mason Exhibitions and the School of Art, Jeffrey Kenney's political cartoon was featured in the Royal Examiner in the article titled A Picture of Paradox: Library Doors Close as Vape Shops Flourish.
Sculpture professor Ben Ashworth’s Finding A Line was featured at The Open Source 2021 Festival. Ben curates and builds ongoing community sourced public art projects that combine skateboarding, education, construction, music, media, and visual art as a socially-engaged platform. His work has been featured at the Kennedy Center and Yale among other venues.
Andy Yoder
Through the end of 2023, professor Andy Yoder's exhibition, Overboard, will be on view at Tysons Corner shopping center. The 250 sculptures riffing off Nike Air Jordan 5s are connected to the 1990 story of when more than 80,000 pairs of those Nike shoes and work boots fell into the Pacific Ocean en route to the U.S. from South Korea during a storm.
Associate Professor of Art Education, Kimberly Sheridan’s book Studio Thinking 3: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education was published in June of 2022. This is a new edition of a now-classic text, a research-based account of teaching and learning in high school studio arts classes. Read more about the book.
J. Carrier
Assistant Professor and photographer J. Carrier's second major monograph (and 7th book) Mi’raj will be published by Brooklyn based imprint TIS Books. The book launched in November 2023 at Polycopies Festival held during the annual Paris-Photo week in Paris, France. Begun in 2011, the project is the culmination of several years’ work made in Palestine and Israel inspired by Al-Isra wal Mi’raj – the ascension of the Prophet Muhammad. Visiting Faculty Fellow Abdulrahman Naanseh created the calligraphy used on the cover and interior.
Associate Professor and interdisciplinary artist Mark Cooley codirected the documentary Fighting Indians, which covers a predominantly white community's fight to keep its "Indian" mascot in the face of opposition from the tribal nations. The film is now streaming on Kanopy and broadcasting on PBS.
Full Professor, Sue Wrbican's 50-ft steel sculpture, Buoyant Force is on display at Reston Town Square Park through November 1, 2024
Brian Davis
In the fall of 2023, Professor Brian Davis created an installation called Reconciliation (Disco), that combined field recordings, snippets of music recorded in the studio, and found audio. The work empowered the users to explore and create a soundscape that connects to other places, times, and experiences. Learn more about the installation.
Reconciliation (Disco), by Professor Brian Davis, Fall, 2023, at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
In 2023, Assistant Professor, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, was one of the 10 acclaimed, all-women cohort of winners at the Tribeca Festival and Chanel Artists Awards Program.
As an interdisciplinary and visual artist Professor Raimundi-Ortiz pulls her work from 17th and 18th-century European portraiture, comic books, sketch comedy, folkloric dance, and installation to address race, bias, trauma, and healing.
6 School of Art faculty are among 49 DMV artists who are showing work at the Kreeger Museum in Washington D.C., in an exhibition called The DMV Collects the DMV. The exhibition hosted by the Collaborative runs until February 1, 2025. The faculty exhibiting are:
Zoë Charlton, Steven Cushner, Edgar Endress, Helen Frederick, Cory Oberndorfer, and Sue Wrbican.
Chawky Frenn, a painter and an associate professor in the School of Art, has received a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award for research and teaching for the 2024-25 academic year. As a Fulbright U.S. Scholar, he will conduct international research while teaching at Banaras Hindu Universityin Varanasi, India, in the fall.
Prof. Andy Yoder's work is being featured in the exhibition Strata of Synthesis at Mono Practice from April 6-May 18, 2024. Prof. Yoder's work examines the natural world as a fantastical state, proposing connections in historical and contemporary crises relating to intricate layers of domestic and societal narratives.
Image: Door Number Four, 2008, mixed media (styrofoam, plexiglas, artificial flowers)
Justin Plakas
Artist, designer and Term Assistant Professor, Justin Plakas (above) has an extensive exhibition record. His latest exhibition, It'll Do Till It Gets Here (2023), at Levee Contemporary, Wisconsin, featured new paintings and sculpture works by the artist. This collection of vibrant and playful works serves as a reflection on the interconnected themes of loss, love, the transformative journey of new parenthood, and the power of memory.
Assistant Professor, Juana Medina, is a published author and illustrator of several children's books, the latest of which is titled Elena Rides. Read a review in The Buffalo News. Medina is also the creator of the acclaimed Juana & Lucas series and well as several other titles.
Sue Wrbican
Full Professor, Sue Wrbican, was one of 10 artists who participated in Bodies We Inhabit and Doctrine of Signatures, at NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, named one of 20 shows to see in New York in the Spring of 2023. Professor Wrbican has an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh.
Visual Editor of Asymptote Journal
INTERVIEWS
Brazilian Artist André Griffo (2024)
Manga translator Alexa Frank (2023)
Arabic designer and artist Bahia Shehab (2023)
Syrian artist and calligrapher, Abdulrahman Naanseh (2023)
AWARDS
Inaugural Villa Albertine Translation Prize in Fiction for translation of Isabelle Sorente’s The Woman and the Falcon (2023).
PUBLICATIONS & REVIEWS
Short essay in Poetry Daily about Renee Gladman’s hybrid work of drawing and poetry, Plans for Sentences (2022)
Reviewed 31 poetry collections for the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books (2022).
Alan Caballero LaZare
Alan Caballero LaZare is a Colombian American designer, artist, and educator and an Assistant Professor at School of Art where he teaches Graphic Design History and Visual Communication Theory. His work is centered on community engagement and reimagining design history pedagogy to be more inclusive, plural, and empowering for students in the classroom. Alan's essay, The Road to Flores de María, will be published by AIGA in the next issue of Shifted. It tells the story of his collaboration with community leaders to establish a foundation that helped school children in a secluded Colombian pueblo, located close to where his family has resided for generations. With the money they raised from the fundraiser, they bought clothes, toys, books, and over-the-counter medicine for the children.
His essay, Changing the Paradigm for How Graphic Design Histories are Taught, was published on the People’s Graphic Design Archive and shares his experience of teaching design history to the diverse student body at George Mason.
Doris "Reece" Quiñones
Professor Doris "Reece" Quiñones Named One of Graphic Design USA's 2021 People to Watch. According to Graphic Design USA, the accolade goes to someone who embodies the spirit of the creative community and is an individuals known and respected for a combination of talent, success, leadership, newsworthiness, influence, and community service.
Read Doris "Reece" Quiñones' Bio
Dr. Justin Sutters, Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Research and Assessment, received the 2021 Southeastern Region Higher Education Art Educator Award, a prestigious award, recognizing the exemplary contributions, service, and achievements of an outstanding NAEA member.
In 2020, Dr. Sutters was named George Mason University's Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges Faculty Fellow, serving on the Reaffirmation Leadership Team. Read about Dr. Sutter's award.
Above: Patient Zero, editorial portrait of George W. Bush official Tom Scully, The American Prospect (2023).
Editorial designer and Associate Professor Jandos Rothstein's has had his work published in magazines such as The Forge, The Antiochian, Moment Magazine, and The American Prospect, among others.
In 2022, he received two Jury Selection awards for Welcome to Hell (art direction of entry), The American Prospect (2022), Society of Illustrators (New York) and American Illustration.
Ana Farnham
AWARDS
2022 Society for Experiential Graphic Design Global Design
2023 Silver indigo design award
PRESENTATIONS
2022 Society for Experiential Graphic Design Conference
2022 Society for Experiential Graphic Design Education Summit
2023 Society for Experiential Graphic Design Riga Chapter Virtual Design & Research Conference
PUBLICATIONS
Contributed to Media Architecture Biennale Provocations Publication (2023)
JURIES
2023 AIGA World studio Scholarship Jury
2023 Society for Experiential Graphic Design Global Design award Jury