Tommy Kha, Critic in Photography and MFA '13, in residence at KinoSaito, July-August 2024. Credit: Chika Kobari courtesy of KinoSaito.
Since 2024, we’ve been excited to support members of the School of Art community in residency and teaching endeavors. This summer, A.L. Steiner will be the third full-time SoA faculty member traveling up to Verplanck, New York for a residency at KinoSaito, an art center rooted in abstraction and experimentation. Past KinoSaito artists-in-residence supported by the School include Matthew Keegan, Senior Critic in Painting/Printmaking, in 2025, and Tommy Kha, Critic in Photography and MFA '13, in 2024.
The artists selected to participate in these residencies at KinoSaito are based on nominations submitted by each Director of Graduate Study. Directors also nominate faculty for residencies at Ucross, a foundation dedicated to fostering the creative spirit of working artists on an historic 20,000-acre ranch at the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains in northeast Wyoming. Last summer, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Critic in Sculpture, was the first faculty member to participate in an SoA-sponsored UCross residency.
Turning to alums, in 2024 we worked with the University of New Haven Department of Art and Design to launch a two-year community engaged art fellowship, open to MFA alums who graduated within the past three years. Katharen Wiese, Painting/Printmaking MFA ‘24, was selected as the inaugural fellow, and in the 2024–2026 cycle, she was invited to teach at UNH each semester, which included the development of an original community-engaged art course. In addition to engaging multiple local nonprofits through course-based projects, Wiese’s students also staged an exhibition at our collaborative community art space, 63 Audubon, leading the graphic design, promotion, art handling, and curation to create Vari(us), a group exhibition of fifteen works.
Her fellowship culminated in the solo exhibition, HARD LEISURE, at UNH’s Seton Gallery this past April. A reflection of the works made during the two years of the fellowship, HARD LEISURE was described by the New Haven Arts Council’s Arts Paper as containing “moments of technical brilliance and exciting beginnings through [her] material play with paper.” We were excited to learn that just last week, Wiese was awarded an endowed tenure track Assistant Professorship in Painting and Drawing at the University of Denver in Colorado, starting Fall 2026.
