Faculty Bios

DAVID BAKER is a visual artist who specializes in poetic landscape painting, much of it done en plein air. His studio pieces are often reinterpretations of paintings done outdoors. His principal media are watercolor, oil, and charcoal. Over the years, he has mounted more than four dozen solo exhibits. A lifelong artist and teacher, Baker recently retired as Art Professor Emeritus from Southwestern Michigan College; he has taught at Ox-Bow since 2000. He earned his MFA from Indiana State University. He is represented by Aveline Gallery, Benton Harbor, Michigan, and the Rising Phoenix Gallery, Michigan City, Indiana.

DEVIN BALARA’s recent work uses steel as a drawing material to depict cartoonish scenes inspired by bad omens, supernatural moments, desert island logic, and the outdoors as both unruly and picturesque. Her work has recently been exhibited at Comfort Station, Chicago; Ortega y Gasset Projects, New York; Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey; SPRING/BREAK Art Show NYC; and DEMO Project, Springfield, Illinois. In 2014, Balara received the Sculpture magazine Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Monson Arts, Elsewhere museum and artists’ resi-dency, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Wassaic Project. Balara spends summers managing the sculpture studio at Ox-Bow. Originally hailing from Tampa, Florida, she holds an MFA in Sculpture from Indiana University Bloomington and a BFA from the University of North Florida.

BRITNI BICKNAVER is an artist and educator from Cincinnati. With a background in sculpture and drawing, Bicknaver works primarily in the medium of sound, creating pieces that range from audio tours to pop songs. Her work is fueled by concepts such as history, memory, arcane information, and the revelation of inner worlds. She received an MFA from the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning and a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

GABRIEL CHALFIN-PINEY is a multidisciplinary artist and organizer, with a background in performance and exhibition-making. They are interested in making by way of olfactory, gustatory, and tactile experiments, prompting audience members to participate as co-creators. They hope to be part of building a play forward-abolition centric-family style eating-oral historical-tattooed-meditative-puppetry bound-molded-meditative-ecology. Gabriel holds an MA in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They have shown work at the Dorsky Museum, Panoply Lab, High Concept Labs, and Grace Exhibition Space.

ERIN CHAPLA currently serves as Ox-Bow’s Head Chef; she’s been spicing your food in the Ox-Bow kitchen for 15 years. Her enduring love of Asian cuisine has been nurtured by extensive travel, as she honed her skills cooking and eating across south & east Asia for several years. She now lives with her family on their 5-acre permaculture homestead in the Allegan woods, where she tends an ambitious garden, an unruly flock of chickens, and two wild little girls.

Originally from Queens, New York, and now based in Baltimore, KYRAE DAWAUN was raised by a matriarch in the 1990s. Dawaun today maintains a practice embellishing quotidian cognizance with expressions of regional, cultural imagery through figuration and abstraction. His approach to his working modalities in painting, sculpture, and installation is influenced by his avid studies, speculation, and experience around architecture, hospitality, and the fluid and fickle nature of language. He has shown widely in the Washington metropolitan area and has been invited to work, reside, and exhibit in Los Angeles, Toronto, and Berlin, as well as Italy. He received the Denbo Fellowship at Pyramid Atlantic in 2016 and the DCCAH Arts and Humanities Fellowship in 2017. He received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and his BFA from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design.

E. SAFFRONIA DOWNING works with clay to map material residue across time and place. She forages local materials and creates site-specific installation and sculpture. Downing is the co-creator of the digital publication Viral Ecologies. Her work was featured in the 2019 autumn session of the Setouchi Triennale, Japan. She has also exhibited nationally at numerous Chicago and Baltimore galleries. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA in Studio Art from Hampshire College.

For over 35 years, CHRIS FERRIS has worked in restaurants in California, Chicago, and Michigan, in every position from dishwasher to head chef. She has collaborated with Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, and Randall Graham. Since 2013, she has owned and operated the Farmhouse Deli in Douglas, Michigan, focusing on healthy, local, made-from-scratch food.

BOBBY GONZALES is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, whose work explores the intersection of painting, performance, and photography. His most recent exhibitions and performances include Spontaneous Remarks at the Chicago Artists Coalition and participation in Merce Cunningham’s Field Dances at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; group exhibitions at the Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and the Galleries at Columbia Uni-versity and Zürcher Studio, New York; and solo exhibitions at the Vox Populi, Philadelphia, artist collective, of which he was an artist member from 2012 to 2014. Gonzales is currently the Print and New Media Studio Manager at Ox-Bow. He received his MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

MICHAEL GABRIEL CUADRADO

GONZALEZ is a visual artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He now lives and works between Chicago and Saugatuck. In 2017, he participated in Ox-Bow’s Fellowship program, and in winter 2020, he was an Artist-in-Residence at the Wassaic Project. He received a BFA in Drawing from Pratt Institute.

JASPER GOODRICH is an artist and educator living in Chicago. He explores iteration in image-making in media including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and sculpture. He has exhibited nationally in venues in Illinois, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Goodrich is also interested in collaborative prac-tices inspired by music. Currently, he teaches at Marwen, the Hyde Park Art Center, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in both the Printmedia Depart-ment and the Early College Program. He studied painting and sculpture, primarily casting processes, at Skidmore College, and printmaking at SAIC, where he received his MFA.

EMORY HALL is an artist working with food at Ox-Bow. Her experience draws from commercial food styling, creating digital content for food brands, and working in Michelin-recognized kitchens in Chicago. Having taken classes through the Dutch Institute of Food and Design, she is currently working with food as a living sculptural medium and constantly seeking to expand the experience of visually and physically consuming food.

GURTIE HANSELL, aka Kangmankey, is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist and designer of genderqueer streetwear. Their signature style uses a range of self-taught and adapted techniques that anyone can learn and do from home. They subvert the expectation that so-called “gender neutral” clothing is all masculine in some way. Instead, they put all gender expressions front and center for everyone to explore. A self-described Craft Store Goth, Hansell creates “Gender Non-Specific Wearables for Your Gorgeous Spectrumful Ass!!!” They received a BA in Graphic Design from Columbia College Chicago.

BRENT HARRIS is a multimedia sculpture artist who currently heads the Sculpture Department at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Harris has a long history in metals and foundry work. His public work, and the monumental pieces cast over years at his bronze foundry, can be found throughout the United States. He re-ceived his BFA from Western Michigan University.

An interdisciplinary artist based between Saugatuck and Chicago,

DOVE DRURY HORNBUCKLE

believes the fundamental role of art is to activate profound transformations of self, communities,

and quality of life. Their artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group shows in Chicago, Melbourne, and New York. They currently work as the Ceramics Studio Manager at Ox-Bow. Hornbuckle received their MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design.

CHRISTALENA HUGHMANICK is an artist and educator based in New York and Chicago. Recent exhibition sites include Faur Zsófi Gallery, Budapest; Carriage Trade, New York; and Andrew Rafacz and Document, Chicago. Her recent public engagement work Freedom Quilt Hungary was reviewed by Lori Waxman for the Quarantine Times and Hall W. Rockefeller for Less Than Half. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the American Academy in Rome, the SÍM Association of Icelandic Artists, the Moholy-Nagy Művészeti Egyetem, and Wedge Projects. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Hungary Student Grant, US Department of State Individual Assistance Grant, Grainger Marburg Travel Grant, and Lenore G. Tawney Foundation Scholarship. Hughmanick received an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

JOANNE LAUDOLFF is a Saugatuck-based artist working in papermaking, fibers, and printmaking. She has studied these disciplines at Northern Illinois Universi-ty, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sandra Jensen Studio, and Ox-Bow. She has led workshops over the past 20 years at the Nature Printing Society, the Morton Arboretum, and the DuPage Art League, among many other venues.

HONORE LEE is a visual artist and educator from Grand Haven, Michigan, where she now resides. For 40 years, she lived in Kalamazoo, where she maintained an active studio practice while working as a Teaching Artist with the Education for the Arts Aesthetic Education Program and as adjunct faculty in the humanities de-partment of Kalamazoo Valley Community College. Lee received her MA from Western Michigan University. Her work has been represented by numerous galler-ies in Michigan, including Water Street Gallery, Douglas; LaFontsee Galleries, Grand Rapids; and River Gallery, Chelsea.

MOLLY MARKOW is an interdisciplinary artist based in Saugatuck and Chicago. Her work employs a playful approach to collage and assemblage to poke fun at idealized constructions of “nature” and landscape. She has had solo and two-person exhibitions at University Galleries, Normal, Illinois; Terrain Biennial, Chicago; and That Gallery, Laramie, Wyoming. She has been included in group shows at Scarlow’s Gallery, Casper, Wyoming; Transpace Gallery, Normal, Illinois; McLean County Arts Center, Bloomington, Illinois; and Ox-Bow. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts and Lazuli Residency. Markow is currently Executive Assistant at Ox-Bow.

NICOLE MAUSER’s paintings and installations investigate tensions at play between color fields, materiality, and gesture within a language of abstraction. Her paint-ings have been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including rk Gallery, Lichtenberg; the Arts Club of Chicago, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago; and Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin. A former Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Resident and Latitude Artist-in-Residence, Mauser received a City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Individual Artists Program Grant in 2017 and 2018. She was a co-founder of the Kansas City Plein Air Coterie, a group of artists engaged in making paintings outdoors every week for more than a year, culmi-nating in public workshops and exhibitions.

Chicago-based artist collaborators MILLER & SHELLABARGER have had solo shows and performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center, and DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis; INOVA, Milwaukee; the Time-Based Art Festival, Portland, Oregon; Sindikit, Baltimore; and Gallery Diet, Miami. They have performed and/or exhibited in group shows across North America. Their work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas; Newark Public Library, New Jersey; Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, Bloomington; and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Miller & Shellabarger are the recipient of a 2008 Artadia Chicago Award and a 2007 Louis Com-fort Tiffany Foundation award. Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger also maintain separate artistic practices. They are represented by Western Exhibitions, Chicago.

BARBARITA POLSTER is a writer and artist/filmmaker who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Solo exhibitions include shows at Critical Practices, New York; Glass Box, Seattle; and William Busta Gallery, Cleveland. Group exhibitions include shows at Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago; Field Projects Gallery and A.I.R. Gallery, New York; and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Residencies include the Studios at Mass MOCA, supported by an Illinois Arts Council Agency IAS Professional Development Grant and a City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Individual Artists Program Grant. She was awarded the MOCA Cleveland Nesnadny and Schwartz Visiting Curator Selection by João Ribas.

CHRIS REEVES is a Chicago-based research creator and artist. He is co-editor and author of The World’s Worst: A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia (Soberscove), as well as the Hole Black Hole Catalog and Old Future’s Almanac (Flatland). His work has been featured in publications, galleries, and unconventional spaces throughout the United States and Europe. He is currently working on Playing Music Badly in Public, his second book on music and art, which looks at the value and joy of playing music without knowing how. Reeves holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

MADDIE REYNA is a Chicago-based artist who started MG Flower Studio in 2019. She began arranging flowers as a way to create subjects for her work, but this practice has come to stand alone as she applies considerations of color, form, and composition to three-dimensional organic matter. In addition to flowering events for brides and other party throwers in Chicago, she is Assistant Director of Academic Programs at Ox-Bow. She received a Master’s in Painting and Draw-ing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied at FlowerSchool New York.

RUBY T’s work is an experiment in translating fantasy to reality, and she is fueled by anger, desire, and magic. Named a 2018 Breakout Artist by Newcity, she has had solo and two-person exhibitions at Western Exhibitions, Roots and Culture, and the Back Room at Kim’s Corner Food, Chicago, and Randy Alexander, New York. She holds an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

JANET TRIERWEILER enjoys creating large, expressive abstract paintings. Her work focuses on the sensual nature of art and the healing aspects of beauty. An interest in the full spectrum of human experience, from primal instincts to highest consciousness, has led her to study Eastern art and healing. A Reiki Master through the Usui System of Natural Healing and certified Feng Shui designer through the New York Institute of Art and Design, Trierweiler has taught drawing and painting at the Evanston Art Center, the North Shore Art League, the Chicago Mosaic School, the Chicago Botanic Garden, and online through her own website. Col-lectors of her work include Northwestern University, the Illinois Institute of Art, Frank Thomas, and Fifield Companies. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

ANDERS ZANICHKOWSKY is an artist living in Chicago, where he works for Spudnik Press Cooperative. While his formal training is in works on paper, his studio practice is truly interdisciplinary and includes neon sculpture, digital video, performance art, weaving, social practice, and poetry. His work about grief and desire, which has been described as queer abstraction and queer futurism, invites people to celebrate and mourn the lives of individuals who cannot or will not leave the margins of society. He received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his BA from Hampshire College.