| 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! | | | | Kristin To (BFA Graphic Design, BA Computer Science) received a University of Iowa Student Employee of the Year award for her work as a graphic storyteller and computer programmer at the Iowa Reading Research Center (IRRC).
From animating letter formation for LIFTER, the center’s handwriting curriculum, to designing its beloved mascot, Lifty, her work is making handwriting instruction engaging for more than 250,000 educators worldwide.
Learn more and watch To's animation process in an IRRC feature article. | | | Ali Hval (Assistant Professor of Instruction, Painting and Drawing) was chosen as one of two Iowa-based muralists for the Iowans Create Community Mural Program, a yearly public art endeavor funded by the Iowa Arts Council.
Hval designed a 58' long mural for the city of Waverly, Iowa that plays with the idea of a charm bracelet, each charm telling a story and reflecting the character of the town. Hval will paint eight smaller murals for a public building in Cedar Rapids this summer.
alihval.com | @alihval | | | | Max Boersma (Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History) was awarded a Publication Grant by the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, for his book Technical Implications: The Making of Interwar Abstraction in Russia and Germany.
Boersma's book presents a newly fraught and transnational story of European abstract art by following the technical entanglements of artistic making. Reapproaching familiar artists in unfamiliar ways, the study charts how interwar practitioners in Russia and Germany reimagined abstraction via intricate negotiations with other forms of making.
maxboersma.com | @m_______m_______m | | | | The Iceland Interdisciplinary Student Expedition gave students the opportunity to design, build, and launch high-altitude research balloons in preparation for the 2026 total solar eclipse in Iceland, bringing together expertise from education, engineering, science, sustainability, and the arts.
The experience was a collaboration of many CLAS departments and faculty, including Thalassa Raasch (Area Head, Photography) and expedition leader Steve McGuire (Area Head, Jewelry and Metal Arts). | | | Rachel Cox (Associate Professor, Photography) has been awarded an Artist Professional Development Grant from the Iowa Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. She will use the award to further her photogravure work with Prints on Paper Studio in Cabot, VT.
Cox is an image-based media artist whose work has been exhibited, published, and collected widely in the U.S. and abroad.
rachelcoxphotography.com | @rayraycox | | | | Annie Klein (MFA Printmaking 2024) is joining the Printmaking Department at the University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor of Practice.
Klein's prints combine the aesthetics of accumulation and biting humor to explore consumer culture and class politics in the post-truth era. She recently completed a year as the National Endowment for the Humanities Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Colgate University.
raggedanne.com | @_ragged_anne | | | Rachel Epstein (Art History PhD 2026) has accepted a Professor of Art position at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California, starting in August.
Epstein specializes in Modern and Contemporary European Art. This position will allow her to focus on teaching and getting students excited about art and history, while also pursuing research and publishing opportunities. "I am thrilled to be able to dedicate a majority of my time to my students and their success," she says. | | | | Grace Edwards (BFA Ceramics with Honors 2022) is the recipient of Northern Clay Center’s 2026 Warren MacKenzie Advancement Award.
Edwards explores the inherent sweetness of life through her bodily lived experience and imaginative use of ceramic materials. In 2025 she received the Sturgis International Fellowship, which allowed her to conduct material and pastry research in France, Sweden, Denmark, and China. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
@gsquared_ceramics | | | Aaron Lurth (MFA Photography 2012) was recently granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor of Art and Visual Communication at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.
Lurth also spent the past year researching and writing his first book, which is coming out in August. Small Luxuries: Film Cameras explores the history of photography alongside the historically important film cameras and brands that shaped the industry.
aaron-lurth.com | @lurthinator | | | |
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