GRADUATE ADVISERS
ANGELIKA RINHOFFER, MFA new media, USA
German artist ANGELIKA RINHOFFER, born in Nuremberg, Germany, grew up surrounded by the visual opulence of Catholic churches in Bavaria. She spent church services in fearful awe, absorbing the images of tortured saints and martyrs that lined the walls. It was an unforgettable experience that she now draws upon as an artist. Trained as a photographer in Germany, Rinnhofer started posing people in bygone costumes, in postures, lighting, and composition inspired by the Old Masters. Not tied to the visual language of just one painter or one period in time, the photographs nevertheless are heavily inspired especially by Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio, by Mannerism and the Renaissance.
Rinnhofer is currently a photography instructor, commercial photographer and artist. She is the recipient of a Kodak European Gold Award and received a fellowship in photography from the Dutchess County Arts Council. She participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in 2005. She currently resides in Beacon, NY.
Website: https://www.angelikarinnhofer.com/
BEATA FLEISCHMANN, MFA Industrial Design, USA
BEATA FLEISCHMANN has been an instructor in higher education since 2005 teaching within Interior Design in the United States as well as Architectural Technology in South Africa. Her focus is towards combining concept methodology with strong technological skills. Her varied educational background of Textile Design, Sculpture, Interior Design, Ecological Architecture, and Furniture Design has helped her to foster a sense of curiosity and exploration for herself and she aspires to have her students develop the same curiosity. She pushes her students to become acute observers and questioners.
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beata-fleischmann-design/
BUDJI TRESVALLES
BUDJI TRESVALLES is a product designer with a degree in BFA major in Industrial Design from the University of Sto. Tomas. She specializes in homestyle, fashion accessories, trend tracking and toy design. Her advocacy is designing for Fair Trade. She is also into illustration and photography. She teach part-time design history and other design subjects in college.
ETHEL VILLAFRANCA, PhD Education, AU
ETHEL VILLAFRANCA, PhD, is the Curator and Exhibitions Manager of the Museum of Chinese Australian History, in Melbourne, Australia. She has been involved in museum/cultural work in the Philippines, the USA, and Australia since 1998 and has held positions at the Ayala Museum and Lopez Museum and Library as well as graduate internship roles at various institutions such as the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Harn Museum of Art, and Florida Museum of Natural History. She has a PhD from the University of Melbourne, a master’s in Museology (major: education) from the University of Florida, and a bachelor’s in Philippine Arts (major: arts management) from the University of the Philippines-Manila. Her PhD research, Curated learning, focused on identifying teaching strategies of museums that school teachers can adopt to help students engage in deep learning. Ethel has been awarded prestigious academic and professional scholarships including the Fulbright Scholarship, Asian Cultural Council fellowship, and Melbourne International Research scholarship. She is the principal author of Making Museums Work: A Zero In Handbook, the first comprehensive and practical handbook on establishing and managing museums in the Philippines.
HUAN WEN, MFA Interaction Design, USA
HUMA MULJI, MFA NEW MEDIA ARTS, DE
HUMA MULJI works with sculptural installation, photography, collage and drawing. The city and its collective memory, the everyday and the overlooked serve as subjects in her deliberately awkward works. Looking at the dysfunctional, the sorrowful, the futile and the funny, the sculptures stand as inconvenient witnesses to time and place, critically exploring material, form and a fragmented historical narrative. Within a backdrop of economic globalisation, state and military power, Mulji has an abiding interest in examining the specificity of place, amplifying a perpetual discomfort and scepticism from the perspective of both observer and participant, in the face of colonialism and capitalism.
Mulji’s participation in recent exhibitions includes Can you Hear my Voice? Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, (2021) Skyfall, (solo) Karachi, Pakistan (2020), The Centre of Gravity, Bristol, UK, (2020), In the Open and in Stealth MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (2018), Witness, Karachi Biennale (2017), welcome to what we took from is the state, Queens Museum, New York, USA (2017), A country of Last Things, Koel Gallery, Karachi, (2016), The Great Game, Irani Pavilion, Venice Biennale, (2015) and Burning Down the House, 10th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, (2014) . She is the recipient of the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2013, and is represented by Project 88 Mumbai.
She currently lives in Bristol, UK and is Senior Lecturer, Fine Art, at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
Website: http://humamulji.com/
JADE HOYER, MFA Printmaking, USA
JADE HOYER’s work closely examines her Tuesday mornings. By this she reflects on her morning coffee but also her positionality in society and the greater impact of her daily actions. She works in an expanded print practice, combining printmaking with artist’s books, social practice, and community activism. She has exhibited nationally and internationally has been recognized by organizations such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is based in Denver, Colorado, where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Website: https://www.jadehoyer.com/
JANA BENITEZ, MFA Painting, USA
JANA BENITEZ was born in 1985 in New York to a Filipino family. She graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a BA in visual arts in 2008. A child art prodigy, the artist had her first exhibition at the age of 12 at the Ayala Museum in the Philippines in 1998. At age 14, she had a solo show at the Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York. Since then, she has continued to exhibit work in New York, the Philippines, Berlin, and Singapore.
JEANNE CRISCOLA, MFA Graphic Arts, USA
JEANNE CRISCOLA is an artist, designer, and educator. Her artworks, which are exhibited internationally, take the form of the book, drawing, photography, moving image, installation, generative art, and performance. She collaborates with international and community organizations on projects that feature both arts and culture issues and social justice initiatives. Jeanne’s most high-profile publications and exhibitions are the many award-winning projects she has created for the Soros Foundations.
Website: https://criscoladesign.com/
JEONGHO PARK, MFA Graphic Design, USA
JOSEPHINE L. TURALBA, MFA new media, at
JOSEPHINE L. TURALBA is an interdisciplinary artist who incorporates painting, photography, video, sound, and installation to explore her subject matter. She obtained her undergraduate degree and her Master of Fine Arts in New Media from Transart Institute at Universität Krems in Krems, Austria. Her works take a visceral approach to the politics of violence, focusing on the dynamics of infliction, trauma, depicting traces and spaces, a place where empathy translates into healing. Her videos and sculptural installation works have been shown at the Lopez Memorial Museum and Library in Pasig City, Philippines, the Malta Contemporary Art Center in Malta, the 12th Cairo Biennale in Cairo, Egypt, the KIT Kunst-im-Tunnel in Düsseldorf, Germany, the South Hill Park in Bracknell, United Kingdom, the Yuchengco Museum in Makati City, Philippines, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, the Werkstatt der Kulturen in Berlin, Germany, the La Cinémathčque Française in Paris, France, the Pier-2 Art Center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, the Santorini Biennale in Santorini, Greece and the Nova Gallery in Makati City, Philippines. She was a recipient of the 2012 Art Omi International Artists Residency and the current Dean of Philippine Women’s University’s School of Fine Arts and Design.
Website: https://josephineturalba.art/
KHALED HAFEZ, MFA Painting, Egypt
KHALED HAFEZ is born in Cairo, Egypt in 1963 where he currently lives and works. He studied medicine and followed the evening classes of the Cairo School of Fine Arts (Faculty of Fine Arts) in the eighties. After attaining a medical degree in 1987 and M.Sc. as a medical specialist in 1992, he gave up medical practices in the early nineties for a career in the arts. He later obtained an MFA in new media and digital arts from Transart Institute (New York, USA) and Danube University Krems (Austria). Hafez practice spans the mediums of painting, film / video, photography, installation and interdisciplinary approaches. Hafez is a Fulbright Fellow and Rockefeller Fellow.
Website: https://khaledhafez.com/
LIZZA MAY DAVID
LIZZA MAY DAVID’s multidisciplinary practices involves autobiographical narratives relating to identity, memory, knowledge and its loss in a personal and collective sense. Responding and resonating to these through mark making on canvas allows her furthermore to question how ideologies run through our bodies, influencing human/nonhuman relations, materialities, and indexical affinities. David studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and University of Arts Berlin, Germany.
Website: www.lizzamaydavid.com
MERVY C. PUEBLO, MFA Sculpture & Public Art, USA
MERVY C. PUEBLO is the current Philippine Women’s University School of Fine Arts and Design Graduate School Coordinator. She specializes in sculpture, installation, and public art. She received her B.F.A. in Visual Communication from St. Scholastica’s College de Manila and her M.F.A. in Visual Studies (Sculpture) from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design as a Fulbright Scholar from the Philippines. After completing her graduate studies in the U.S., she returned to teach at Philippine Women’s University. She has completed residencies in Vietnam, Russia, and South Korea. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums, including solo and group shows at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Kulay Diwa Art Galleries, Blanc Art Space, Le Pavilion, Boston Art Gallery, Kaida Art Gallery, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Artinformal Gallery, Gallery Anna, Liongoren Gallery, Gallery Nine-SM Art center, National Commission for Culture and Arts, Ayala Museum, and Gallery 1951 at home and abroad. She has also worked for various institutions as an Art Teacher for the Link Center for the Deaf, the Mute and Therapy Plus (School for People with Down Syndrome), as well as a Teaching Assistant and Assistant to the Gallery Director of the Minneapolis College of Arts and Design, respectively. She was recently included in the Thirteen Artists Award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, a bi-annual tribute given to outstanding young artists. She is the recipient of other grants and awards from the Metrobank Foundation, the Arts Network Asia, the National Commission of Culture and the Arts, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the Ateneo Gallery.
Website: mervypueblo.weebly.com
NANCY WHITCHER
NANCY WHITCHER is a Connecticut -based multidisciplinary artist who uses printmaking, clay sculpture and photography to reimagine the realms of nature. Since 2001, her work has been influenced by her grant awards to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Kansas City Institute of Art and Design and the art residencies at the Vermont Studio Center where she worked on themes in contemporary art and design in painting. At her art residency at the Zea Mays Printmaking she researched and worked on historic and contemporary pochoir monotype. Her clay work in hand building vessels demonstrate her understanding of three dimensional form. She works to bring the mark making from her 2-D work to come alive in her sculpture where they offer design and visual excitement.
Website: ncwhitcher.net
PATRICIA ARANETA, PhD Traditional Arts, UK
PATRICK SUNICO, mde INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, AU
PAUL OTT, MFA Photography, USA
Paul Ott-Artist, photographer, writer, has taught in schools and in colleges and universities. He has worked in commercial arts and as a professional photographer.
He feels it is important to establish how you approach image making and to build a relationship with the viewer. A subtle shared emotion or experience perhaps, that builds that bridge between the artist and the viewer. And a way to establish that you have achieved that goal. Perhaps, once achieved you can change the world one person at a time.
Working in both black and white and color though his love is for black and white. By removing the natural colors from images, we are left with a different reality…an abstraction of sorts. One that forces us to think about those images differently and to view them with more scrutiny than perhaps we would normally. And that is a beautiful thing!
He is currently working on three portfolio series. One of “dark flowers”, one of Woods Hole and one of ancient “dead” stones. He is represented by galleries in the USA in CT, NY and in private art collections in USA and Europe.
Website: paulott.me
PENG WU, MFA Illustration, USA
PENG WU is an interdisciplinary artist and designer 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, health disparity, queer rights etc. Through collaborating across disciplines and cultures, he has created participatory art installations exhibited in art institutions such as Weisman Art Museum, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, as well as numerous public spaces and community centers both in the U.S. and China. He is also an independent curator working with international cultural organizations on various exhibitions. Recent projects include the tour exhibition Home of Memories by Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project; Shanghai International Paper Art Biennale at Fengxian Museum etc. He is also an educator currently working as a full-time professor at St Cloud State University in the U.S.
Website: www.pengwu.works
SONIA E. BARETT, MFA Sculpture, UK/AT
SONIA E. BARETT performs Composites of plants, animals, elements and people to create interventions that presence their objectification and commodification, she also thinks about how to change perceptions of phenomena in “nature” that are a given. The work seeks to create new questions where there was a kind of certainty that has to do with the hegemony of normative wester European values.
Born in the UK of Jamaican and German parentage Sonia E Barrett grew up in Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Cyprus and the UK. She studied literature at the University of St Andrews Scotland and her MFA at Transart Institute Berlin/New York.
Her work unpacks the boundaries between the Determined and the determining with a focus on race and gender, She makes sculptural works so she can run her hands alone the fissures and manifest strategies for multiple compatible existences and mourn.
THOMAS O. HAAKENSON, PHD Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society, USA
THOMAS O. HAAKENSON is Associate Professor in the graduate Critical and Visual Studies Program, as well as in the undergraduate Critical Studies Program and the Visual Studies Program, at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Oakland, USA. He holds a doctorate in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, as well as graduate-level minors in German and the History of Science and Technology. In 2013 he completed a Certificate in Program Evaluation from the Department of Organization Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota.