Draw itOUT!

Workshop Leaders

Sera Boeno (http://www.seraboeno.com/): Istanbul, Turkey native Sera Boeno is a sculptor, installation artist and curator currently residing in Baltimore, where she is an MFA candidate at the MICA Rinehart School of Sculpture with focuses in curatorial practice, critical studies and art education. Concrete, metal, wood and found objects make the foundations of her sculptures, which are heavily influenced by the sociopolitical context of her motherland. Her art and curatorial practice frequently overlap birthing projects such as Hayalî Residency, an imaginary institution with imaginary residents working on imaginary themes. Boeno graduated from Dartmouth College with degrees in Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Studio Art, where she taught sculpture and painting.

Andrea Sherrill Evans (http://andreasherrillevans.com/home.html: Arizona-born and Baltimore-based artist Andrea Sherrill Evans has a practice founded in drawing, painting, sculpture, and performance.  Her work aims to complicate the idea of nature and explores the division between the human and natural world. Evans received her BFA in painting from Arizona State University, and MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University.  She is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Drawing, St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award, and Blanche E. Colman Award.  Select exhibitions include Onloaded: Andrea Sherrill Evans, phICA (Phoenix, AZ), Passing, Left, The Dorado Project at the Buggy Factory (Brooklyn, NY), Clear-Cut, Emmanuel College (Boston, MA), 8-Hour Projects: Performativity at Allegheny College (Meadville, PA), and Mean Girls at SPACE Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA).  Evans currently teaches in the Drawing Department at MICA.

William Downs (http://williamedowns.com/home.html): William Downs was born in Greenville SC, he works in a range of mediums, but he focuses primarily on drawing. Currently he is a Lecturer in Drawing and Painting at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta, GA. He received a multidisciplinary MFA from Mount Royal School of Art at MICA in 2003. Downs taught Foundation Drawing at MICA from 2003-2010. He has also taught at Parsons/New School of Design, The Cooper Union and Tulane University. Downs is a part of three major exhibitions: Black Pulp! which is traveling to the Contemporary Museum in Tampa FL, Art Aids America which is showing at the Alphawood Foundation in Chicago IL, and Third Space: Shifting Conversations about Contemporary Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Chas Foster (angryelvis.com,flickr.com/photos/chasfoster/collections): Foster teaches visual art at Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. He earned an MFA in Studio Art from MICA in 2012. He is currently the Clandestine Artist-in-Residence at Maryland's Matthew Henson State Park.

Natalia Gonzalez (http://www.nataliagonzalezrequena.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26&Itemid=0): Natalia González is a Bolivian artist currently residing in Pittsburgh. Compounded from travels made between North and South America, she considers her practice a “nomadic, portable toolkit of anything.” Materials for drawing (notating, mark- making, and recording) are found/deployed on site, or reconfigured and installed in art spaces. These first-hand attempts test out the body in movement – under the watchful eye of the video camera – in order to contemplate impermanence, the poetics of being, and the nagging edges of the visual field. González has a Master of Fine Arts degree at MICA (2011) and a Licentiate in Fine Arts at the Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Chile, in Santiago (2002). Increasingly collaborating with artist Philip Hessler, recent exhibitions include Impermanencia, XVIII Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador (2016), Estereocomparadores, solo exhibition, Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz, Bolivia (2016); Ver con los oidos, IX Biennial SIART, La Paz, Bolivia (2016); VI International Video Art Festival of Camagüey, Cuba (2015).

Clarissa Gregory (http://cargocollective.com/clarissagregory): As a dancer, model-maker—Clarissa Gregory’s art is interdisciplinary. Her formative years in dance and theatre, plus a fascination for the natural world flavor her tactile environments. Past collaborative performances include Baltimore Independent Dance Artists and Effervescent Collective. Her recent animation investigates the life cycle of a cicada in graphite and charcoal drawing. Clarissa makes art, moms, teaches, and resides in Baltimore, MD.

Phil Hessler (http://philhessler.com/home.html): is a Pittsburgh-based artist with an interest in the ontology of industrial debris. His art often involves changes in the status of old objects and the doublespeak of corporate memoranda or accident reports; raked over with documents, photographs, and drawings. These are taken directly from dead factories in Pittsburgh or recreated in a reckoning of misspent labor. Hessler has a Master of Fine Arts degree at MICA (2010) and a Major in Fine Arts at Penn State University (2002). Increasingly collaborating with artist Natalia Gonzalez, recent exhibitions include Impermanencia, XVIII Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador (2016), Estereocomparadores, Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz, Bolivia (2016); Ver con los oidos, IX Biennial SIART, La Paz, Bolivia (2016); VI International Video Art Festival of Camagüey, Cuba (2015).

Maren Henson (http://www.marenhenson.com/work.html): Baltimore-based artist Maren Henson encodes the aural, visual, and personal aspects of language with paper, charcoal, and sound elements. Her interest in these materials appear throughout her work starting at University of North Texas, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting and Drawing in 2014. She received her Master of Fine Art degree in the Mount Royal School of Multidisciplinary Art at MICA. Henson has exhibited work in Texas, Maryland, and California.

Cynthia O’Neill (https://awalkoflifestudios.carbonmade.com/about): Cynthia O’Neill is a current graduate at MICA in the Rinehart School of Sculpture. O’Neill uses art as a method of healing, communicating and narrating personal journey. Through sculptures, body adornments, and installations her work explores ideas related to the perception and the biology of the human condition with a variety of human-made - yet also naturally occurring - materials such as steel, wood, concrete, paper and porcelain. Recurring themes of medicine, anatomy, conflict, culture, and sexuality in relationship to the body are consistent throughout her practice.

Bart O’Reilly (https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/bart-oreilly): Bart O’Reilly was born in Dublin, Ireland and has lived in Maryland since 2003.His studio practice includes painting, drawing, poetry and video. He has teaches at The Maryland Institute College of Art and Harford Community College. O’Reilly has shown extensively in Baltimore, Washington DC. Philadelphia and New York as well as Ireland and Northern Ireland. He received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2000 and his MFA from MICA in 2012. Recent award include grants from The Baltimore Social Innovation Journal and an Individual Artist Award from The Baltimore Office of Promotions and the Arts.

Jassie Rios (http://jassierios.com/): Jassie Rios’ practice intersects visual art, music, science and technology and takes the form of site-specific,  interactive sound/light installations, collage, video, photography, text, performances, and works for internet and paper. Lines of research include absurdity, noise, silence, soundscapes and code. Rios studied Interdisciplinary Drawing at MICA, earning a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art (2011); she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Painting from Texas State University (2002); and she is working towards earning a Master of Arts in Audio Technology at American University, concentrating in Computer Music.  Her work and installations have been exhibited in Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Philadelphia, Texas and New York. Selected performances include ’A Line Becomes A Cone’  Stevens Institute for Technology, Hoboken, NJ and  ‘American Wild Birds’ at Wave Farm Acra, NY.  Collaborations with artists include Free [Space] Collective and Renee van der Stelt.  Textual works have ben featured in Ditch, an archive for Canadian and International Contemporary Poetry.

Rebecca Rivas-Rogers (https://rebsrogers.com/): Rebecca Rivas-Rogers grew up in Northern Ireland earning her BA in design from Glasgow School of Art, and is currently an MFA candidate in Studio Art at MICA. Having been uprooted and transplanted many times between Europe, the United States, and South America, Rivas-Rogers’ follows an aesthetic of “making do and getting by” and her practice is concerned with how a shift in perspective can make the mundane seem extraordinary. She addresses these questions though drawing, sculpture, collage, installation, and photography.

Andrea Sisson (http://www.andreasisson.com/): Andrea Sisson is a Los-Angeles based artist working in conceptual art through video, imagery, installation, performance, writing, and sculpture. Her current interests lay in post-digital influence, specifically the combination of the analogue with post-digital influences and paradigms. Her work is anthropological and philosophical - playing with humor, poetics, elements of narrative, and assemblage. Andrea is a 2010 U.S. Fulbright Scholar and is currently an MFA candidate in Studio Art at MICA. Her collaborative works have been shown at the São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound and Palais de Tokyo in Paris.