Category: Faculty Spotlight

Congratulations to Assistant Professor and graduate director Amanda Curreri, who, along with multimedia artist Andy Ness, created the exhibition Liber Floridus presented by the Wege Gallery. Curreri contributed woven textile-based works, while Ness contributed...

MacDowell, the nation’s first artist residency program, has awarded 134 Fellowships to visionary artists working across seven disciplines for its Spring Summer 2026 season. The program is located in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Between March and August of 2026, each artist has an average stay of four weeks. These artists were selected from a competitive pool of 2,618 applicants with an acceptance rate of only 5 percent.

Subhankar Banerjee, a professor, photographer, writer, curator, and scholar of environmental humanities. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Environmental Arts & Humanities at UNM.

Jessamyn Lovell is a gender-fluid artist and licensed private investigator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They hold a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology, an MFA from California College of the Arts, and are currently a Principal Lecturer at the University of New Mexico.

Ray Hernández-Durán, professor of art history in UNM’s Department of Art & Art History in the College of Fine Arts, has been named a Regents’ Professor, a distinguished and lifelong honor recognizing senior faculty members who demonstrate excellence in teaching, research, and community impact. The title is awarded following a rigorous review process led by the College Dean in collaboration with the Provost’s Office and includes a three-year stipend to support the recipient’s work.

Stephanie J. Woods’ sculpture Never Quite, Sweet Enough I was acquired by the nationally recognized Perry Art Collection following her 2025 residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. The work explores memory, legacy, and historical survival through an abstract porcelain form rooted in Black cultural history.

Congratulations to Kaitlin Bryson for being selected to take part in the 2026 cohort for Monument Lab Re:Generation! She received a $100,000 grant for her ongoing project, Bellow Forth. Bellow Forth is a community project focused on restoring soil health and environmental resiliency through storytelling and collaboration, community and ecosystem science, and social art practice in wildfire-impacted lands and communities in northern New Mexico.

We’re excited to share that Myrriah Gómez, Associate Professor at the Honors College at UNM, has written an insightful article titled “Art and Activism at Highlands University” in Santa Fe Magazine, El Palacio.

Blending art, inquiry, and lived experience, Jessamyn Lovell creates work that challenges perceptions while forging new paths in contemporary photography.

His practice merges the historical methods of carving green wood with embossed patterning inspired by traditional leather and tinwork of the Southwest. Randall’s sculptures are shaped not only by his hand, but also by time. Each piece is left to respond naturally to...

Brandon Zech of Glasstire: Texas Visual Art recently reviewed Professor of Painting and Drawing Raychael Stine’s exhibition, “Falls and Springs and Stardust Things,” in his piece “Chimerical Colors.” Zech writes, “Raychel Stine’s paintings are full of pleasurable...

Clarence Cruz, who is Tewa from Ohkay Owingeh (formerly San Juan Pueblo), serves as the Professor of Ceramics in the Art Department. He has been a prominent and familiar figure on campus since his student days.

Raychael Stine, Professor of Painting and Drawing, recently created a show titled “Falls and Springs and Stardust Things” at the Cris Worley Fine Arts Gallery in Texas. Stine makes luscious, joyful paintings that integrate a variety of painterly languages and approaches to mark, texture, and levels of visual legibility, allowing for playful slippage between formal and material abstraction.

Art History Professor Ray Hernández-Durán was recently featured in two articles and interviewed by the Latin American and Iberian Institute. UNM News published “UNM Professors Create Exhibition, First-Ever Scholarship of Local Chicano Artists’ Work” by Anna Padilla, highlighting an exhibition curated by Hernández-Durán and Dr. Irene Vásquez. The show, now on view at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, features six talented New Mexican Chicano artists whose work has been historically underrepresented in academic scholarship.

Distinguished Professor Jim Stone is an exhibiting artist who uses photography. His photographs have been published in three monographs and exhibited internationally; they are represented in the permanent collections of over 30 major museums and public archives.

We are so proud of our faculty and the incredible achievements, creative projects, and research they’ve pursued over the summer. Their dedication and innovation continue to inspire our community. Here’s a glimpse into some of their recent work. Andrea Polli is currently a Professor and Director of STEAM NM with appointments in the College of Fine Arts and School of Engineering.

We’re thrilled to welcome three extraordinary artists and educators to the Department of Art!

Rambod Vala is a multidisciplinary artist, graphic designer, and educator whose work spans graphic and moving images. His practice integrates video, installation, typography, storytelling, and layered narrative structures interweaving realism and fantasy, politics and romance, skepticism and belief.

“Signal & Trace” highlights artworks at the intersection of human experience and technological mediation, engaging with systems of surveillance, autonomy, memory, and identity.