Faculty
In This Section
Full-Time Faculty
Faculty
Biography
BA Fine Arts, Vanderbilt University
MFA Visual Arts, Vermont College of Fine Arts
Kristi Hargrove focuses her studio practice primarily on drawing, but she also investigates other media such as photography, sculpture, and installations. Hargrove has exhibited her work in numerous juried shows and invitational exhibitions across the country. She recently displayed her detailed pencil drawings in the Frist Center’s Metamorphoses exhibition. Hargrove is a member of the Nashville artist collective COOP, a curatorial group committed to presenting challenging, new, or under-represented artists and artworks in the community.
Appointed in 2008
Associate Professor and Chair
Robin Paris
Biography
BA Studio Arts, The Evergreen State College
MFA Photography, Savannah College of Art and Design
Paris was born in Atlanta, GA, but at some point, has called Washington, Colorado, and California home. She has been photographing since she was 12-years-old when her father gave her a small Instamatic camera. She has continued the practice, but the cameras have changed. Several of her photographic projects have focused on community members in a small town (Sewanee, TN) and prisoners on Tennessee’s death row (with fellow Watkins professor Tom Williams.) Their work with prisoners has resulted in 11 exhibitions, including one at Apexart in New York. That work has also been featured in The Guardian, El Pais, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, and many other publications.
Appointed in 2003
Biography
MFA, Pratt Institute
Karla Stinger-Stein is an artist and founder of Photosynthesis Projects. Working across a range of media, Stinger-Stein makes site-sensitive work to address ecological vulnerability in the era of the Anthropocene. Her work includes transforming waste into building materials that support native plants for threatened wildlife habitats. Stinger-Stein has participated in group exhibitions at the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY Festival, the Dumbo Arts Festival, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Art in Philadelphia, PA, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York. She also has shown her work at Lafayette College, Pratt Institute, New York, the University of Massachusetts, and the Banana Factory in Pennsylvania. Stinger-Stein has participated in the GO! Brooklyn Museum Open Studio Project and received grants from the University of Massachusetts Arts Council and the University of Massachusetts Art and Art History Department. Her prior professional roles include serving as the director of development at the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, New Jersey and the gallery director for the Student Union Art Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Assistant Professor of Art History
Tom Williams
Biography
BA Art History, University of West Florida
MA Art History, State University of New York, Stony Brook
PhD Art History, State University of New York, Stony Brook
Tom Williams has taught at the School of Visual Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, New York University, and Vanderbilt University and is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. His writings have appeared in Art in America, Grey Room, and other publications. Williams has been co-facilitating the art workshop in Unit 2 (the Death Row unit) of the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution since 2013, and he has co-curated (with Robin Paris) a number of exhibitions of prisoners’ art, including Life After Death and Elsewhere at Apexart in New York City.
Adjunct Faculty
Matt Christy
Matt Christy
Biography
BFA Fine Art, Watkins College of Art
MFA, University of Oregon
Lesley Patterson-Marx
Lesley Patterson-Marx
Biography
BA Fine Art, Murray State University
MFA, UNC Chapel Hill
Lesley Patterson-Marx works in a variety of media, including book arts, marbling, printmaking, and works on fabric. She has exhibited her art books, prints, and mixed media works in galleries, art centers, colleges, and universities throughout the United States as well as in Great Britain and the Netherlands. Patterson-Marx’s work has been featured in such publications as Craft, ReadyMade, and 500 Handmade Books, Volume 2. She is a founding member of Platetone: Printmaking, Paper, and Book Arts in Nashville. Patterson-Marx has taught as both an adjunct and a full-time instructor at the University School of Nashville.
