Alumni in the News

Adraint Bereal (B.F.A., Design, 2020) and his photos were recently featured in an AirBnB Hosts television ad. The ad featured images that Bereral captured on a weekend trip with friends before graduation last spring.

Ariel Lee (B.A., Studio Art, 2020) has been named in the Forbes Next 1000 List in the first cohort of 250 founders. This list showcases the ambitious sole proprietors, self-funded shops and pre-revenue startups in every region of the country. Her company Remane offers a platform to identify hair needs for each individual’s hair type to recommend a customizable hair regimen. Photo courtesy of Ariel Lee

Tamara Johnson (B.F.A., Studio Art, 2007) has organized Sweet Pass Sculpture Park’s new education-based exhibition program, Sweet Pass Sculpture School. The program consists of a two-week intensive in Dallas, a year-long remote mentorship for research and project development and a concluding exhibition centered at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park. Artists invited to participate will engage in site visits, lectures, screenings, readings and dinners and will meet with local cultural producers, thinkers and experts to collectively explore the city of Dallas and the surrounding region.

A new choral work by Joshua Shank’s (D.M.A., Composition, 2016, Musicology, 2019) was performed by 34 choirs in a nation-wide effort to raise money for professional musicians decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The consortium of choirs from 21 states raised more than $10,000 for relief.

Laura August (Ph.D., Art History, 2012) is a 2021 inaugural Mellon Arts + Practitioner Fellow at Yale's Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration. She will be developing new writing that expands upon one of the exhibitions she curated in 2020. The work, To Weave Blue: poema al tejido, on view from January to April in the Fogelman Galleries of The University of Memphis, was the first exhibition in the United States to center contemporary Maya art and philosophy.

Carlos Rosales-Silva (B.F.A., Studio Art, 2017) will be featured in his first New York City solo exhibition at Ruiz Healy Art in Manhattan. The exhibition, Sunland Park, uses landscape and architecture to express changes in artistic and cultural histories throughout time along the border of Texas, Mexico and El Paso.

Kimberly Archer (D.M.A., Composition, 2003) has been selected by the president’s own Marine Band to compose a new work to be premiered during the presidential Inauguration ceremony. The work, “Fanfare Politeia,” celebrates the traditions of a free and fair election and a peaceful transfer of power. Photo courtesy of Murphy Music Press

Emily Edwards (B.F.A., Art History, 2015) has been promoted to assistant curator at the Dallas Contemporary. Her latest curatorial project opens in late January alongside a video, titled Doubt & Imagination, created by alumna Ariel Rene Jackson (M.F.A., Studo Art, 2019). Photo by Ariel Rene Jackson

Mary Paynter (B.A., Art History, 2007) launched the site ILostMyGig.com in the wake of SXSW's cancellation due to the pandemic. The site is a peer to peer mutual aid space that documented the individual losses of gig workers, creatives, freelancers, and contractors from Austin dependent on SXSW for income. The site was profiled and I was featured in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and CNN, among others and has provided $750M in funds. Photo by Ben Sklar