VCUarts Craft/Material Studies

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VCUarts Craft/Material Studies

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We are a community of makers/artist who advance the conceptual, historical, technical and haptic aspects of Clay, Fiber, Glass, Metal and Wood.

It is exciting being at the forefront of the field. And, that’s exactly where we are. Graduate students come to the department with a fluency in the language of fiber, metal, clay, glass or wood. Undergraduates come with a sense of dedication and commitment to learning. Together, faculty and students hone, improvise, and redefine ancient technologies with new technologies. We bend and blend concepts and materials. We abstract from the familiar and tinker with expectations to take the field in new and exciting directions.

10/07/2026

Department Chair Sheryl Oring invites undergraduate and graduate students to apply for the new Department of Fine Arts Student Advisory Council!

The council will meet with the Chair to share student perspectives, ideas, and concerns and advise on matters affecting students across the department. Members will also serve as student ambassadors at departmental events, including Open Houses and other special programs.

We’re looking for students from across Fine Arts who want to help build a stronger, more connected department!

Interested? Here’s your chance to get involved, share your ideas, and help shape the student experience! Follow the link in our bio to learn more and apply by October 23. 🔗

VCUarts

05/08/2026

Congratulations to our Craft/Material Studies Class of 2026! 🎓

To celebrate this milestone, here is a look back at this year’s BFA Senior Capstone exhibition! “Total Liquidation: Everything Must Grow” featured works by our Craft seniors for their final show as a culmination of their knowledge and experience during their years studying with us.

We wish all of our new alumni the very best in all future endeavors, and we cannot wait to see what you do next! 🐏💛

04/28/2026

Round 2 of the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition opens THIS Friday, and as we approach this momentous occasion, let’s highlight one of our participating graduates and learn more about their thesis!

MFA Candidate Kika Castrellon 🏘️

Kika’s work centers on Mundo, a desert world of imaginary houses that serve as protective shells for human souls. This work is a response to the exhaustion of systemic hierarchies, industrial decay, and violence. To counteract these states, the artist created Mundo as an emancipatory reality, establishing a peaceful environment where community, peace, and Imagination are the foundation.

In Mundo, architecture is sentient. Each house has its own distinct personality and a window that acts as a portal for the soul. The houses are living characters that come together to form a landscape of connection. The creative process is rooted in traditional craft, utilizing clay, ceramics, basketry, and wire wrapping to bring these houses into the physical world.

Kika will be featured in Round Two of the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition, opening this Friday, May 1st, at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU (601 W. Broad St)! Additionally, Kika is participating in the MFA Thesis Film Screenings happening today, April 28th, at the Grace Street Theater, and May 2nd and May 6th at the ICA!

To learn more about this upcoming exhibition, follow the link in our bio! 🔗

Congratulations, Kika!

04/27/2026

Summer courses with the Fine Arts Group are currently available for enrollment! 🐏☀

The following classes still have seats open! These courses are offered to all VCU students without the need for overrides.

📚 Art History 📚
History of Motion Picture with Michael Jones, 3 credits
History of Motion Picture II with Harrison Nicholas, 3 credits

✏ Art Education ✏
Justice & Equity in Art and Education with Fatemah Khawaji, 3 credits

💍 Craft/Material Studies 💍
Beginning Jewelry with Sarah Parker, 4 credits

🖼 Painting + Printmaking 🖼
Narrative Printmaking with Mehreen Fatima, 4 credits

Open enrollment for summer courses closes on the first day of the class! To learn more about these classes and see other courses open for enrollment, follow the link in our bio! 🔗

04/17/2026

Meet the MFA Candidate Anna Johnson 🔮

Anna Johnson (she/her) is a ceramic artist whose work focuses on personal experiences and her identity as a woman, centering on narratives of sexual violence told through themes of mythology. While much of her practice centers around personal identity, violence, gender equality, memory, and mythology, she is also inspired by nostalgia and women’s shift from childhood to adulthood. Through hand-built trompe-l’oeil objects and illustrative surfaces, she creates pieces that encourage conversation, community, introspective thinking, and, she hopes, action. Her work has been shown in Georgia, Montana, and Virginia, and she was recently featured in 19 Under 39, an exhibition at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture.

Born and raised in Georgia, she received her BA in Fine Art and Art History from Berry College in 2021, and earned her MA in Art History from the University of Georgia in 2023, where she studied 6th-century Byzantine icons and was awarded distinction on her published thesis, Christ Pantocrator: God, Emperor, and Philosopher (The Byzantine Iconography of Christ). She completed her post-baccalaureate certificate in ceramics at the University of Montana in 2025 and was a visiting artist at Berry College that same year. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Craft and Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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Anna will be participating in the upcoming 2026 MFA Candidacy Exhibition, “Late Breaking”, opening at The Anderson gallery tonight at 5 PM! On view until April 25th, “Late Breaking” will feature the work of 21 first-year graduates across VCUarts!

To learn more about this upcoming exhibition, follow the link in our bio! 🔗

.clay

04/15/2026

Meet the MFA Candidate: Elizabeth Schweizer 🪾

Elizabeth Schweizer is an artist working with weaving as a framework for her practice. She sees the weaver as one who brings materials together, records time, and embeds meaning through touch. She is struck by intimate encounters that typically go unnoticed. Objects that record gestures draw her in: a piece of foil that borrows the texture of asphalt after it’s been crushed by a car, or a branch that has split in two and reveals its core.

Elizabeth’s work explores precarity, tenderness, and the possibility contained in material. It is a curious trickster and a gentle coaxer, persuading us to pay attention to things we might otherwise overlook.

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Elizabeth will be participating in the upcoming 2026 MFA Candidacy Exhibition, “Late Breaking”, opening at The Anderson gallery on April 17th at 5 PM! On view until April 25th, “Late Breaking” will feature the work of 21 first-year graduates across VCUarts!

To learn more about this upcoming exhibition, follow the link in our bio! 🔗

.schweiz

04/13/2026

Meet the MFA Candidate: Margaret Pinto 🛡️

Margaret Pinto is a visual artist working primarily in ceramics. Through the vocabulary of ceramic surfaces and forms, which warp, melt, and transform under external forces, her work explores the fallibility of structures and living bodies. Drawing reference from historical artifacts, rituals used to preserve the body, and interweaving imagery from everyday life, her work explores how the objects and structures we surround ourselves with reflect our fears and beliefs.

Pinto has been an artist-in-residence at Zentrum für Keramik in Berlin, and in 2023, she participated in the MAPSpace Studio Residency in Port Chester, NY, which culminated in a solo exhibition. Pinto has exhibited across New York State and Brooklyn, where she lived and worked prior to relocating to Richmond, VA. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Ceramics in the Craft/Material Studies Program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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Margaret will be participating in the upcoming 2026 MFA Candidacy Exhibition, “Late Breaking”, opening at The Anderson gallery on April 17th at 5 PM! On view until April 25th, “Late Breaking” will feature the work of 21 first-year graduates across VCUarts!

To learn more about this upcoming exhibition, follow the link in our bio! 🔗

04/08/2026

Craft/Material Studies sat down with artist and alumna Eileen Morley (BFA ‘23) for an interview about her career and journey during her time with us in VCUarts! 🐏⭐️

Currently a practicing artist located in the U.K., Eileen describes that her time at VCU shaped, “[...] the way in which I work, emphasizing care, craft, and community above the prestige or perceived prestige of making contemporary art,” and finds inspiration through her time cycling.

To learn more about Eileen, her practice, and to read the full interview, follow the link in our bio! 🔗

03/20/2026

Craft/Material Studies is excited to invite alumna Katie Hudnall (MFA ‘05) back to VCUarts for a visiting artist lecture on March 30th! This lecture will begin at 10:30 AM at the Grace Street Theater (934 W. Grace St.).

Katie Hudnall is an artist, woodworker, and educator living in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and runs the Woodworking & Furniture Program. She has a BFA in Sculpture from the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, DC, and an MFA in Woodworking/Furniture Design from Virginia Commonwealth University. She makes other-worldly, interactive, furnitural objects intended to solve problems both real and imagined, and sometimes, they do.

To learn more about our upcoming visiting artist, follow the link in our bio! 🔗

03/19/2026

Tomorrow is the big day! 🎉🐏

Friday, March 20th, we invite you to celebrate our graduate students as they unveil their theses in Round One of the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition, hosted at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU (607 W Broad St.)!

Opening at 5 PM, the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition is the culmination of two years of intensive research and practice, representing twenty-eight graduate students from across VCUarts. Participating MFA Candidates include:

🏺Craft/Material Studies 🏺
Cole Kamerick Alfelt-Eller,
Megan Koeppel,
Nathaniel Newcomb,
Colin Goodpasture,

🖼️Painting + Printmaking 🖼️
Eva Foldy,
Tori Mitchell,
Kevin Hopkins,
Daša Kulikova,

⚒️Sculpture + Extended Media⚒️
Hammet Reavis,
Erin B Ehren,
Frances Adair Mckenzie,

Round One of the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition will be on display at the ICA until April 5th!

Designed by Graphic Design MFA Candidate Charles O’Leary.

Address

1000 W Broad Street
Richmond, VA
23220

Website

http://arts.vcu.edu/craft/

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