University of Arizona School of Art

Congrats to Dr. Geneva Foster Gluck, a School of Art adjunct instructor and alumna who received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award along with six other University of Arizona faculty members for the 2026-27 academic year.

She will be based in Spain’s Catalonia region from September to May to develop a creative research project that combines energy humanities with applied art, theater and scenography as tools for promoting behavioral change related to climate change.

As part of the Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Award, she’ll work with environmental scientist Maria Heras at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona on a series of immersive art and educational encounters.

“This was my first (Fulbright) application … and I really look forward to working with Maria and with all the great energy and sustainability projects that are taking place in Spain,” Foster Gluck said.

She has explored similar environmental themes specific to Tucson and the borderlands in projects such as “Inheriting the Void” at Tumamoc Hill (image 2) and “Magnetic Chamber” (images 3 & 4).

Since 2024, Foster Gluck has taught “Career Development for Artists” at the School of Art, where she received her BFA in 1999. She will continue to teach the class online during her time in Spain.

🔗 To read the full story, go to https://tinyurl.com/SOAfulbright26

Arizona Arts The University of Arizona University of Arizona Office of Research & Partnerships Arizona Alumni Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

Looking for a way to beat the heat and get creative this summer?

The Center for Creative Photography’s Chill Zone is open through July 2 and features free self-guided art activities for visitors of all ages.

Open to the public and family-friendly, the Chill Zone offers a welcoming space to make, explore, and create while portions of the Center undergo renovations.

Through July 2
10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Free admission

Stop by, spend some time making art, and support the Center during this transition period.

Check out the page to keep up to date with the special activities that are being hosted.

Where are they now? Wednesday: Kevin Potter (BFA ’95, Studio Art) and his son, Vincent Potter (BFA ’23, Studio Art), are jewelry makers and historians who help run Potter USA in Tucson. Smithsonian Magazine recently profiled their company and repository, which has the largest collection of historic jewelry hubs in the world.

After graduating from the School of Art with a focus in painting, Kevin decided that making jewelry was his passion. He founded Potter USA in his garage in 1997 and now sells the dies on the internet to hobbyists, along with small hydraulic presses, so that his nearly 15,000 customers can use them to make their own jewelry.

Hubs and dies, known as “tools,” are small blocks of engraved steel. Back in the day, factories would use machines to press or strike the designs into sheets of gold, silver and other metals. Potter USA has amassed about 1.2 million hubs — including those from a shuttered company in Rhode Island.

“Every one of these tools took between 40 and 100 hours to make,” Kevin told the Smithsonian. “You’re looking at lifetimes of human labor and artistry, often multiple generations of the same families making these tools. Forty years ago, they would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but that value evaporated when the technology changed.”

Vincent helps his father with the collection and the tool business, and he runs his own company, Cranston Fancy Wire, which sells bracelets and engraved strips of copper, brass and silver. His mom and Kevin's wife, Danielle Crounse, co-owns Potter USA and handles the finances. She met Kevin when she worked in the College of Fine Arts dean's office. Danielle has a BA in Political Science and an MA in Journalism from the U of A.

🔗 Read the Smithsonian profile: https://tinyurl.com/SOApotter26 In 2025, Arizona Illustrated also ran a story on PBS 6: https://tinyurl.com/SOApotterazpm

🔗 Website: https://www.potterusa.com/

📸 Images of Kevin (left) and Vincent are by Wayne Martin Belger, for Smithsonian Magazine

Potter USA Arizona Arts The University of Arizona Arizona Alumni Smithsonian Magazine

Congrats to School of Art alumna Christine Crame Brindza on being named the Curator of American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art. She starts her new role on July 27.

Christine received her PhD in Art History and Education from the University of Arizona in 2025.

Brindza has worked the last 14 years at the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block as Senior Curator and Curator, where she's been a pioneer in community-based curation with a specialty in art of the West and Indigenous art.

Her work has earned major national recognition, including the Arthur H. Wolf Impact Award (2024) and the American Alliance of Museums Impact Award (2025).

“Christine’s leadership has transformed how museums engage with artists, communities and the histories of American art,” said Emily B. Neff, The Kelso Director at At the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA).

At SAMA, Christine will curate its American art collection, which spans the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century and includes portraits, landscape and still-life painting, prints and drawings, decorative arts, and marble and bronze sculpture. She also will oversee SAMA’s Texas collection and European collection, and work collaboratively with the Latin American art and contemporary art curators.

“I am honored to join the San Antonio Museum of Art and to contribute to an institution with such a dynamic commitment to cultural dialogue,” Brindza said.

🔗 Read the announcement story in ArtDaily at https://tinyurl.com/SOAbrindza

Photo courtesy of SAMA

Arizona Arts The University of Arizona Center for Creative Photography San Antonio Museum of Art Arizona Alumni Art_Daily_News University of Arizona Museum of Art Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block

Meet these six artists with School of Art ties and their work in the 2026 Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art:

1. Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi, “Tabula Rasa”
2. MFA student Sheldon Patten, “SRP Randolph, AZ”
3. Claire Fall Blanchette (MFA ’25), “Tangled Currents”
4. Eli Burke (PhD ’25), “The Opening”
5. Mary Meyer (MFA ’05), “The Leaf Connection”
6. Anh-Thuy Nguyen (BFA ’10), “Rice is Me”

🔗 Story link: https://tinyurl.com/SOAbien26

With 31 artists total, the 39th Biennial — the longest-running statewide juried exhibition in Arizona — is on view at the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block, 140 N. Main Ave., until Sept. 27.

Don't miss “TMA’s “First Thursday,” (June 4) from 5-8 p.m., with pay-as-you-wish admission.

Images courtesy of the artists.

Arizona Arts The University of Arizona University of Arizona Museum of Art Center for Creative Photography

We're excited that Nicole Antebi's Fall 2024 animation students helped Arizona Illustrated (PBS 6) win the Regional Edward R. Murrow Excellence in Innovation Award for the May 2025 broadcast video profile, “Eveli: A Jeweler, A Dreamer.”

“I cannot stop smiling,” Antebi said on Instagram as she congratulated Arizona Illustrated and her ART 306b class. “This goes in (their) resumes.”

The student artists were Camila Soria Palacios, Natalie Duong, Danitza Miranda, Amanda Desjarlais, Hanna Lawson, Evan McMillan, Zoe Reisinger, Sasha McDonald, Earnest “E.j.” Walker IV, Garrett Icenhower, Morgan Erdman, Scooter Curran, Julia Victoria Johnson, Elisa Elena, Andrea Michelle Davila, Nina Rose Dominguez, Ashley Bambauer, Sophia Matte, Amrutha Susarla, Brianna Golden and Sela Margalit.

They created animated sequences based on Eveli Sabatie’s book, “Eveli: A Jeweler’s Memoir.” Born in North Africa to French parents, Sabatie began her jewelry career on the mesas of Hopi, where a chance encounter in a laundromat led her to be mentored by Charles Loloma, an acclaimed Native American jeweler. She went on to forge her own career, working in Santa Fe and then Tucson, where she lives now.

Kudos to Arizona Illustrated, the students and Antebi, who learned recently she has been promoted to associate professor with tenure in the School of Art's Illustration, Design & Animation program. In all, AZ Illustrated won 6 Regional Murrow awards for excellence in journalism this time!

🔗 Watch the video profile at tinyurl.com/SOAeveli25

Arizona Arts The University of Arizona Arizona Public Media Andrew Brown Ozlem Ayse Ozgur

Kudos to School of Art Associate Professor Alejandro Macias, whose work is being featured for a second time at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside, California.

Alex joins 60 other artists for the exhibition, “We the People: Chicano Art in the U.S.A.,” which opens this Saturday (May 30) and will be on view until May 23, 2027. The show marks the fourth anniversary of “The Cheech,” named after the actor, comedian and art collector Marin.

Organized by artist and curator Benito Huerta, the exhibition focuses on themes of identity, migration, community and cultural memory. It includes 126 works, including by Vincent Valdez, who gave a VASE lecture for the School of Art in October 2023.

Alex met Marin at “The Cheech“ in October 2025 during the opening for “Soy de Tejas: A Statewide Survey of Latinx Art,“ an exhibition that featured three of Macias' self-portrait paintings.

Image 1: “Distress Signal,“ Alejandro Macias, Graphite on paper, 20” x 20” 2020

Image 2: Alex and Cheech (right)

🔗 Read more about “We the People“ at https://tinyurl.com/soapeople26 and about Alex's first time at “The Cheech“ — https://tinyurl.com/SOAalex25

Alex Macias Art Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum Arizona Arts The University of Arizona University of Arizona Museum of Art

Congrats to School of Art MFA candidate Beihua Guo (Photography, Video & Imaging), who received a 2026 Alexia Innovation Mentor Grant with Stephen Wilkes from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.

Beihua was among 17 student and professional photographers and filmmakers around the world to be honored for his project submission, “−·· −−− −· · (DONE).”

About his project, Beihua said: “Despite comprising 90% of the workforce, Chinese laborers were erased from the 1869 Transcontinental Railroad completion photos. I respond by inserting my blurred body into these landscapes — ruins, lines and borderlands. Adopting the visual language of the ghost, I insist these sites remain haunted by the invisible presence of their builders.”

Wilkes is an award-winning photographer and National Geographic Explorer. For 35 years, the Alexia program at Syracuse's journalism and communications school has handed out over $1.7 million in grants to 170 photographers or filmmakers “whose work informs, fosters cultural understanding and inspires meaningful change.” This year’s submissions represented more than 110 nations.

🔗 Link at https://tinyurl.com/SOAalexia

📸 Image (by Beihua Guo): The Bullfrog-Goldfield Railroad Yard in Goldfield, Nevada, where Chinese passengers on the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad were prohibited from stepping off the train there.

Arizona Arts The University of Arizona Center for Creative Photography Newhouse School at Syracuse University