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
Biography
BFA Studio Art, Middle Tennessee State University
MFA Art, Montana State University
Following graduate school, Haston spent the next eight years in Chicago teaching at Columbia College before returning to Nashville. His shows include Paintings and Sketchbooks and Abstract Painting in Tennessee (Cheekwood Museum of Art), the Los Angeles Printmaking Society National Exhibition, The Portrait: An Investigation of the Self (Camberwell College of Art in London), Bacchanal (Appalachian Center for Crafts), Art Chicago, Intersection (Contemporary Artist Workshop in Chicago), Superstruct (PLUG Projects in Kansas City), and Up Close with Prints (Frist Center). Haston is the recipient of the 2016 Tennessee Arts Commission for painting and a 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grantee. He is represented by Zeitgeist Gallery of Nashville.
Appointed in 2008
Associate Professor
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
Assistant Professor
Karla Stinger-Stein
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
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.
Biography
Moses Williams was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in Nashville. He received his BFA from Watkins and an MFA from Carnegie-Mellon University. Williams works at the intersection of performance, sculpture, video, and sound to question dominant cultural expectations, institutions, and ideology. He has exhibited and performed throughout the U.S. and Europe and has collaborated with The Nashville Ballet and Alias Chamber Ensemble. His work also includes collaborations with the residents of Unit 2 (the Death Row unit) at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Adjunct faculty
Matt Christy
Matt Christy
Biography
BFA Fine Art, Watkins College of Art
MFA, University of Oregon
Visiting Faculty and Artist Mentors
Patrick DeGuira
Patrick DeGuira
Biography
Patrick DeGuira has exhibited his work at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Brooks Museum of Art, Hunter Museum of Art, Cheekwood Museum of Art, as well as numerous commercial, non profit, and university galleries. He is represented by Zeitgeist Gallery. In addition to his exhibition career, he has worked as a museum exhibit designer, educator, and curator. He has co-curated video exhibitions through Fugitive Projects, which has held exhibitions worldwide, including at such venues as La Maison Laurentine (France), MVMA Fest 2010 (Marfa), Emmedia (Calgary), Version 10 Festival Screening (Chicago), Banff Center, and the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival (Ireland). His work has been reviewed and featured in numerous publications, including The Oxford American, New American Paintings, Art Papers, Number, and Art Daily, and he is a recipient of a Tennessee Independent Artist Fellowship Grant, as well as multiple Tennessee professional development support grants. DeGuira received a BFA from Memphis College of Art and his Master of Fine Arts at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Michael Dixon
Michael Dixon
Craig Drennen
Craig Drennen
Jodi Hays
Jodi Hays
Biography
Jodi Hays is a Nashville-based artist and curator. She has exhibited her work at galleries and museums across the United States, including at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Brooks Museum of Art, Wiregrass Museum of Art, Cooper Union, and Boston Center for the Arts. Her work can be found in such important public and private collections as the J. Crew Company, the Tennessee State Museum, and Music City Center. Her work is documented in seven exhibition catalogues, and has been positively reviewed in publications such as Number and Sharon Butler’s Two Coats of Paint. She is a recipient of several awards, from such institutions as the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. Hays holds a BFA from the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Art. She has earned residencies at the Cooper Union, National Parks of America, and Vermont Studio Center. Hays has been the assistant director at the Cambridge Art Association, maintains a studio and pop-up gallery Dadu in East Nashville, and was a founding member of COOP Gallery. Her work is represented by Red Arrow Gallery in Tenneseee and Art File in New Jersey.
Ron Lambert
Ron Lambert
Biography
Ron Lambert received his BFA from the University of Connecticut and his MFA from the School of Art and Design at Alfred University. After earning his masters, Ron taught at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle at Alfred University, where he received an excellence in teaching award. Lambert’s sculptures have shown in galleries nationally, including at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Michigan, the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum in San Antonio, the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, the New Britain Museum of Art in Connecticut, and the Sculpture Center in Cleveland. His video art pieces have been screened internationally (the Crosstalk Video Festival in Hungary, CICA in South Korea, and the Sanluan Yishu project in China). His work is in the Vascovitz collection, the Swedish Medical Center, and the collection of the Tacoma Art Museum. Lambert is a founding member of COOP in Nashville.
Armon Means
Armon Means
Biography
Armon A. Means is an assistant professor and area coordinator of photography at Kansas State University. He received his BFA in photography from The Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA in photography from Cranbrook Art Academy in Michigan. He has also studied at Lacoste School of the Arts, located in Lacoste, France, and at the School of the Arts in Budapest, Hungary. Means has been an exhibiting fine art photographer and educator since 2003. He has taught at The Cleveland Institute of Art, Watkins College of Art, Nashville State Community College, Volunteer State Community College, and Belmont University. His work has been in group exhibitions in France, Hungary, and numerous states in the U.S. His work centers on ideas of cultural concerns, minority identity, and environmental influences. He is represented in multiple collections across the United States and Germany.
Terry Thacker
Terry Thacker
Biography
BFA Studio Art, Austin Peay State University
MFA Studio Art, University of Tennessee- Knoxville
An artist and educator for nearly three decades, Terry Thacker has shown in numerous national and regional exhibitions at venues such as the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Brooks Museum, Hunter Museum, Dulin Gallery, and Cheekwood. He has exhibited solo installations at Vanderbilt University, Western Kentucky University, Murray State University, Alexandria Museum, and the Memphis Center for Contemporary Art. An active lecturer and reviewer, Thacker has written for Art Papers and has lectured at the Southeastern College Art Association and the Frist Center.
Appointed in 2005
Barbara Yontz
Barbara Yontz
Biography
A former professor visual art at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Barbara Yontz holds an MFA in visual art from Vermont College, teaching primarily studio classes in painting, drawing, and photography. She also holds masters degrees in art history from Vanderbilt University and in art education from the University of South Florida. Splitting her time between New York and Nashville, Yontz’s art practice in sculpture, installation, performance explores themes of social justice. Since 2013, she has worked on a project with a group of men living on Death Row at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville. This project has yielded a number of exhibitions including Unit 2 Voices: Artwork from Death Row at St. Thomas Aquinas College. Recent individual work includes a group of drawings, “The Love Letter Series,” which she conceived as individual letters to each of the men of Unit 2. Yontz has also exhibited at Vanderbilt University, the Frist Center for Visual Arts, the Phoenix Gallery, the Jose Marti National Library, the Boston Museum School, and the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences.
