| School of Art, Art History, and Design Newsletter | SAAHD students, faculty, and alumni create extraordinary art and scholarship. Please submit your news and images for consideration for a future newsletter. We'd love to share your accomplishments! | | | | T.J. Dedeaux-Norris (Area Head, Painting and Drawing) has been named a 2025-2026 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
Their project, Martyrs, Vessels, and Perpetual Becoming: An Emergence in Rome, is a semi-autobiographical multimedia memoir culminating in a three-part mixed-media installation exploring identity, transformation, and the Black queer femme experience.
Dedeaux-Norris will also create site-specific installations inspired by Rome’s sacred spaces. "This work is about martyrdom, spiritual resistance, and the pursuit of the American Dream from the margins. It’s about death, rebirth, and becoming."
mekajean.com | @tj_dedeaux_norris | | | The SAAHD is excited to welcome YoonJee Kwak, who will begin as Assistant Professor of Ceramics in Fall 2025.
Kwak holds an MFA in Ceramics from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a BFA in Ceramic & Glass from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, South Korea.
Her work pays homage to a Korean metaphor that describes a person’s character as a “vessel” of tolerance and depth, while exploring contemporary themes of openness and human connection.
Kwak’s work has been featured in over ninety group and four solo exhibitions.
yoonjeekwak.com | @yoonjee_kwak | | | | The SAAHD is excited to welcome artist and scholar Elizabeth McTernan as an Assistant Professor of Art.
McTernan earned her MFA from Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany and her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She has received numerous awards, grants, and residencies across Europe and the US.
McTernan often collaborates with scientists and scholars in her research-oriented and mixed-media work, playing with empirical methods and media ecologies.
elizabethmcternan.com | @liz_mcternan | | | Zhen (Tina) Zhang (Art History PhD student) has been awarded a 2025-2026 Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship. She will spend six months working at the National Museum of Asian Art.
Zhang is specializing in Chinese art history. Her dissertation is titled Telling a Story in the Landscape: Narrative Landscape Painting in 14th-16th Century China. | | | | Ceramics students and faculty traveled to Salt Lake City for the annual NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) conference in March.
Area Head Andrew Casto and MFA student Javier Espinosa Momox both presented. MFA student Shaun Mallonga had work in a juried exhibition at the conference, which had over 6000 attendees.
@uiowaceramics | | | Printmaking students and alumni gathered in Puerto Rico for the SGCI (Southern Graphics Council International) PuertoGrabando conference in April.
The attendees exhibited their work and presented their portfolios to conference goers. The SGCI is the largest organization in North America dedicated to printmaking and graphic arts.
@uiowaprint | | | | Annie Klein (MFA Printmaking 2024) has been appointed the National Endowment for the Humanities Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Colgate University in upstate NY.
Klein is a printmaker from Chicago. Her prints combine the aesthetics of accumulation and biting humor to explore consumer culture and class politics in the Post-Truth Era.
raggedanne.com | @_ragged_anne | | | | Timothy Frerichs (MFA Printmaking 1991) is showcased in the Art & Ecology exhibition at Olson-Larsen Galleries in Des Moines through May 31.
The exhibition features seven artists whose work engages with the environment. Frerichs is showing new work, the Riparian Dream Series, which consists of a series of six and an installation of 21 drawings.
Frerichs is a SUNY Distinguished Professor of the Department of Visual Arts and New Media.
timothyfrerichs.com | | | Lauren Coghlan (MFA Graphic Design 2024) is the Creative Coordinator for the University of Iowa Libraries, managing visual design across all seven libraries.
Go behind the scenes of the current exhibition at the Main Library Gallery, A Roll of the Dice: Symbolism in the Sackner Archive, in a feature interview with Coghlan.
laurencoghlan | @laurencoghlancreative | | | |
