CURRENT MFA STUDENTS
MIKI SKAK / MFA 2023
Hello! My name is Miki Skak. I love biking, cigarettes, coffee, art, music, my friends, my family, books, amateur philosophizing, and stuff like that. Before coming to the U of A, I was taught art at Bananskolen, Amager Ny Kunstskole, NEXT KBH and The Royal Academy of Fine Arts. I've exhibited my art and played music at really fancy places around the world. In recent times, I've really enjoyed painting bikes, bunnies, flowers, and sunsets. Some of my favorite artists these days are Henry Heerup, Tove Jansson, and Sofie Arildsen. Check them out!
Lily Hollinden / MFA 2024
Lily Hollinden hails from Bloomington, Indiana, where she received her BFA in Painting from Indiana University in 2019. Her paintings describe her relationship with the unpredictability of the future. The subject of water is used to represent the vastness and ambiguity of time. She aims to express vulnerability, curiosity and her personal philosophies in her work.
Chung park / MFA 2024
Chung Park, a Korean-born American artist, received his BFA from Boston University. Park has shown work internationally and in the US. He recently completed an Artist-In-Residence program at Artworks Loveland in Loveland, CO in August 2020. His drawings were also published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Pub Lab Workshop Journal Issue 3 in 2020. Before moving to Arkansas, he lived and worked in Los Angeles, CA where he became a member of GYOPO, a collective of diasporic Korean arts professionals and cultural producers.
Michael Shum / MFA 2025
https://michaelshuphooshum.wixsite.com/my-site
Michael Shum is a Chinese American artist who earned their BFA from Millersville University where he was the student representative for The Susan C. and Geral C. Eckert Art gallery’s advisory board as well as the painting studio technician. He attended thesummer intensive program at The Mt.Gretna School of Art and has worked for artists such as Robert Andruilli and Dorothy Frey as a studio assistant.
GRETA KRESSE / MFA 2026
Greta Kresse (b. 1999, Little Rock, AR) currently lives and works in Fayetteville, AR. Kresse received her BA from Hendrix College in 2021. She continues her studies at intensive programs like the New York Studio School and The Mount Gretna School of Art. She also frequently teaches workshops at the Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas.
Kresse creates large-scale paintings that explore the intimacy of the home, and what we do with ourselves when the party is over. She creates relationships between the figure and the environment that is primarily dictated by color. The color binds and separates the subject from the home which helps the viewer feel her bond with the space.
KARLENA FLETCHER / MFA 2026
karlenafletcher.myportfolio.com
Karlena Fletcher was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, but has called many places home throughout her childhood. She received her BFA in Painting from Boston University in 2021. Karlena paints to meditate on the exquisite visual moments that characterize her understanding of home, and simultaneously grapple with the temporal and fragmented nature of her memories.
MFA GRADUATES
brit borcher / MFA 2023
Brit Borcher is curious about the strange potential visual language; in her case, a concoction of abstract and figurative forms has to communicate the quality of experience. Painting provides her with opportunities to consider where vulnerability, sensitivity and generosity intersect creative actions. Borcher holds a BFA in Music Theatre Performance from Viterbo University (WI) and a BFA in Studio Art from Hunter College (NY) where she was a Kossak Painting Fellow. She has participated in workshops through New York Crit Club, Kent Blossom Painting Intensives, the Peninsula School of Arts and is a member of Wisconsin Visual Artists, SC chapter. Her work has been exhibited in Arkansas, Wisconsin, Ohio and New York.
Markeith Woods / MFA 2022
Markeith Woods, a native of Pine Bluff, AR, is a 2014 graduate from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff with a Bachelor of Science in Visual Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He is a national artist who has exhibited at various locations including, Agora Gallery in NYC, a solo show at Texarkana Regional Arts & Humanities Council, a solo show at Batesville Arts Councils winner of the Arkansas Arts Council SWOP, recipient of the Artist 360 grant and artist in residency at Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program to name a few. He furthered his educational career by becoming a full-time elementary Art Teacher, where he finished his fifth year of teaching in the Fort Smith School District. Woods is committed to motivating the world through the Arts by inspiring, educating, and teaching hope to embrace purpose.
Adam Fulwiler / MFA 2022
Adam Fulwiler is a painter currently based in Fayetteville, AR. His paintings investigate communication, improvisation, play, and painting’s capacity for transformation. He received his BA in painting from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay ('17) and his MFA in painting from the University of Arkansas ('22). He is a recipient of the 2022 Windgate Foundation Accelerator Grant and was recently selected for a residency at Vermont Studio Center in 2023. He has shown in exhibitions in Arkansas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Tennessee, Ohio, and New York. In addition to showing and making work, Fulwiler works as a Studio Educator for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR.
JONATHAN VIRGINIA GREEN / MFA 2022
http://www.jonathanvirginiagreen.com/
Jonathan Virginia Green is a visual artist from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He graduated from the University of Tulsa with a BFA in painting in 2011. He uses his art practice to explore mechanisms of desire, pleasure, and transformation that are oriented within his experience as a queer transgender male. His practice includes painting, drawing, and video.
TAYLOR LOFTIN / MFA 2021
Taylor Loftin was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1993. He received his BFA in Painting from Memphis College of Art in 2015. He is interested in creating paintings and assemblages that exist in a constant transitional state between finished and unfinished, raw and refined, art and craft, painting and object.
THOMAS COFFEY / MFA 2020
Thomas Coffey holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from Harding University. Coffey's work explores the dissolution of the figure to create feelings of lost time and faded memory. He has been featured in exhibitions in Arkansas, Washington, Oregon, and California, and his work has been collected by Universal Pictures and included in private collections across the United States.
ZIBA RAJABI / MFA 2019
Ziba Rajabi was born in Tehran, Iran and holds a BFA from Sooreh University. Her works have been included in a number of exhibitions in both Iran and the United States. Working primarily with painting, she is focusing on the idea of public and private spaces, manipulating the access of the viewer to the layers of information.
JODY THOMPSON / MFA 2019
http://jodytravisthompson.com/
Jody Travis Thompson was born in Sulphur, Louisiana and began painting at the age of twelve when he was enrolled in private painting lessons after showing an aptitude for rendering and representation in oil paint. Thompson received his BFA in Studio Arts with concentrations in Painting and Drawing from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Thompson’s work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions, as well as being included nationally in the private collections.
HANNAH MCBROOM / MFA 2019
Hannah McBroom graduated from Mississippi State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with an emphasis in Painting. Her work explores themes of transgender embodiment and the body. She has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Chautauqua School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in international and national shows including Manifest’s Tapped, the International Painting Annual #6, and a recent solo show in Fayetteville and Kansas City.
CASSAUNDRA SANDERSON / MFA 2018
http://www.cassaundraksanderson.com/
Cassaundra Sanderson was raised in Branson, Missouri and graduated from College of the Ozarks with a BA in Fine Arts, emphasizing in Painting and Ceramics. She has been in group exhibitions including: Sketchbook West in Laguna Beach, CA; WomanMade: NWA in Bentonville, AR; Boger Gallery: An Undergraduate Thesis Exhibition in Point Lookout, MO; the White River Art Exhibition, MO; and the Taneycomo Bridge Art Exhibition, MO. She has received many commissions to paint and draw portraits, as well as scenery of the Ozarks.
As Director of sUgAR Art Gallery, she curated, In Which We Dwell, displaying the work of emerging artists: Hilary Baker, Tyler Beard, Andrew Blanchard, Adam Ekberg, Matthew F. Fisher, and Ron Lambert, as well as curated, Illogical Animus: A Survey of Artwork from Banned Countries, consisting of six International artists and spanning video, ceramics, glass powder installation, and painting.
MARYAMSADAT AMIRVAGHEFI / MFA 2017
Maryamsadat Amirvaghefi was born in Tehran, Iran and completed her BFA at the Sooreh University, Tehran, Iran in 2013. Her work spans various media including painting, drawing, video, and sculpture. Amirvaghefi's work has been included in exhibitions at venues such as the University of Missouri, Lindenwood University, St. Louis Artist Guild, and the CICA Museum in South Korea. In addition to her studio practice, she curated 2 exhibitions featuring both Iranian and American artists.
