Image: Roneld Lores, MFA ’22

STUDIO VISITS + CRITIQUES

GUEST CRITICS

During each intensive summer residency, we host innovative thinkers, gallerists, curators and artists to the MFA Low-Residency studios to interact with our students. These one-on-one critiques throughout the summer introduce a diverse range of voices, out of which our students can think about their work newly, in the context of contemporary practice and discourse. Studio visits are scheduled by the graduate programs office, please reach out to gradprogram@massart.edu with questions.

SUMMER 2024 STUDIO VISIT ASSIGNMENTS

STUDIO VISITS ARE APPROXIMATELY 25-30 MINUTES EACH. Students and critics should be conscious of travel time where applicable.

A member of the staff will escort each visiting critic to their first studio visit of the day. Participating students should plan to meet the visiting critics at the previous studio location, a few minutes before the start of their own visit.

SUMMER 2024 VISITING CRITICS AND PARTICIPATING FACULTY

MassArt Summer Lecture Series 2023 / Cicely Carew

Kelly Knight (she/her) is a multimedia artist based in Providence, RI. She earned her MFA in 3D Fibers from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, her BA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, and did her BFA studies in the Fibers program at Swain School of Design/UMass Dartmouth. She shows regularly in solo and group shows, and her work is in numerous private collections. She is the Interdisciplinary Low Residency MFA Program Director and Assistant Professor at MassArt.

STUDIO VISITS JULY 11

KNIGHT STUDIO VISIT SCHEDULE

Falaks Vasa (they/she, b. 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist, emerging writer and award-winning educator from Kolkata, India. Falaks graduated from Brown University with an MFA in literary arts in 2023 and from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA in 2018. She has also attended artist residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Artists’ Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions (ACRE). They have published a chapbook of poetry with the unnamed zine project, won the Archambault Award for Teaching Excellence from Brown University and have shown their artwork internationally at spaces like the Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver; the Queens Museum, NYC; and BARTALK, The Hague.

STUDIO VISITS JULY 18

VASA STUDIO VISIT SCHEDULE

LaiSun Keane (she/her) has been involved in the Boston art scene since 2015, at first volunteering and working from junior level for non-profits and art galleries. She then became a co-owner of a gallery for two years before starting her own in April 2020. Her eponymous gallery located in South End’s SoWa Art District focuses on showcasing non-mainstream voices and are thematic and narrative based. Besides in person and online exhibitions, her gallery has participated in Art Fairs in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. LaiSun received her Bachelor of Art Theory from University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia.

STUDIO VISITS JULY 20 (*Thesis Students only, MassArt x SoWa Gallery)

KEANE STUDIO VISIT SCHEDULE

Hannah Brancato (she/her) is an artist and educator based in Baltimore, whose art practice is grounded in collective storytelling, and the creation of public rituals to bring people’s stories together. She is faculty at Maryland Institute College of Art, Towson University and UMBC. Hannah is a recipient of the 2021 Rubys Artist Grant for Dreamseeds, an installation of textiles, sound, and interactive components that will invite current and budding activists in Baltimore to develop visions for the future, co-created with Sanahara Ama Chandra. Brancato is co-founder FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, an art/organizing collective that produces creative interventions to create a culture of consent, best known for the Monument Quilt.

STUDIO VISITS JULY 25

BRANCATO STUDIO VISIT SCHEDULE

Jasmine Chen (she/her) is a visual artist originally from Beijing, China, and is currently based in Boston. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Danforth Art Museum and has been exhibited there and at Matter and Light Fine Art, the Jackson Homestead Museum, and elsewhere. It was also featured in solo exhibits at the New Art Center and Storefront Art Projects. She has a B.A. from Harvard and PhD from Brandeis and studied art independently. In 2023, she attended artist residencies at S.E.A.R. in Searsport, Maine and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, and was the artist-in-residence at the Umbrella Art Center in Concord, Mass. last fall and artist-in-residence at the Storefront Art Projects January 2024.

STUDIO VISITS JULY 25

CHEN STUDIO VISIT SCHEDULE

Barbara Ishikura (she/her) received a BFA in 3D from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1985, an MA in Linguistics from Harvard University Extension in 1997, and an MFA in 2D from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2018. Based in Boston, she won the St. Botolph Emerging Artist award in 2018, and was commissioned to do a painting for The New York Times in 2023. Ishikura appeared in the Boston Globe in 2021 and 2023, and in Arts Fuse and ArtNet News in 2023. Her exhibitions include a solo show at FORMah Gallery in NYC in 2024, a group show at Trotter and Sholer in NYC in 2023, and a 2-person exhibition at the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum in Vermont in 2023. She is the recipient of a 2024 Mass Cultural Council grant, and received fellowships from MASSMoCA, Jentel, and Cill Railiag in Ireland. Ishikura teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

STUDIO VISITS JULY 29

ISHIKURA STUDIO VISIT SCHEDULE

Susie Nielsen (she/her) is an artist, designer and curator. She runs farm projects, a project space/gallery in Wellfleet, MA. Susie works with artists to create exhibitions, and printed works that extends outside the walls of a single space. She has a wide range of experience in art and design beginning with photography and film. In her own work Susie works with text and materiality removing language from its original context to create new opportunities for un-learning, changing neural patterns that may have become hardwired over time. She has a MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and undergraduate degree from Northeastern. Originally from New York, she lives in Wellfleet.

STUDIO VISITS JULY 29

NIELSEN STUDIO VISIT SCHEDULE