Eight student-led projects selected for this year’s Artistic Citizenship Collaborative Creative Project Grants in the College of Fine Arts
The Office for Community Engagement and Public Practice in the College of Fine Arts has selected eight student-led projects for the 2025-26 Artistic Citizenship Collaborative Creative Project Grants. These grants were created to foster artistic citizenship among Fine Arts students by supporting student-led multidisciplinary creative projects.
The framework of artistic citizenship enables Fine Arts students to consider their work as an essential part of the wider artistic ecology — locally, nationally and internationally — and helps mobilize students to work in teams to involve practice and praxis, while developing methods and implementing practices on creative projects that advance their own interpretation of artistic citizenship.
“Several themes ran through the selected submissions, including the challenge of identifying venues or outlets to exhibit their work and the role of art in fostering public conversations on societal issues in the contemporary context,” said Laura Gutiérrez, associate dean of Community Engagement and Public Practice. “Given that this is an off-year for the Cohen New Works Festival, the student teams are faced with a unique opportunity that I believe is generative for them and their work: they will collaborate with a venue to showcase their work in the spring semester.”
Musicology Professor Charles Carson will mentor the student teams as they work to bring their projects to fruition through collaboration, creativity and community-engaged research and practice.
“Following on the success of last year’s cohort, I am excited to see what the current group has in store for us,” Carson said. “These students are wildly creative, and the goal of this support is to allow them the opportunity to think beyond the curriculum and realize their work in ways they might not be able to otherwise. In doing so, they are also empowered to reimagine the relationships between their art and its contexts, putting the ideas of artistic citizenship into practice.”
Public | | Private
Gabriela Hernandez (Theater & Dance sophomore), Jose Salcido (Theater & Dance senior) and Gabriel Brown (M.M. candidate in Music Composition)
This project will create a tense yet safe environment that mirrors the experience of being watched through an interactive installation that explores the urgent issue of AI surveillance, not as a neutral presentation but as a catalyst for dialogue, and invites audiences to reflect on how constant monitoring shapes our daily lives. The work asks participants — especially peers, artists and activists — to consider the civic and creative implications of surveillance technologies and to engage in critical conversations about their presence in our communities.
Peel the Onion
Spencer Robbins (M.A. candidate in Design, focused on Health), Kaitlyn Gehrman (M.A. candidate in Design, focused on Health) and Mia Schwartz (Studio Art sophomore)
This exhibit is an immersive, large-scale onion sculpture that slowly “peels” throughout the visitor experience, revealing hidden layers over time using sensors to detect nearby presence, dynamically opening sections of the onion, encouraging visitors to gather and engage in orchestrated interaction. Each layer is designed to subtly guide social interaction, fostering connection without explicitly monitoring dialogue with an evolving, interactive nature.
The Pyrography Project
Clark White (Art History and Anthropology junior), Anshu Patel (Design and Arts and Entertainment Technologies junior) and Erin Jackson (Art Education senior)
The Pyrography Project will introduce the unique medium of wood-burning, or pyrography, as a tool for spreading awareness to the large-scale deforestation and desecration of the Texas Hill Country as a result of Austin's recent population boom. Participants in the program will explore environment-conscious pyrography through different events: classes guided by teaching artist instruction, open studio workshops and collaborative projects aimed toward community beautification and environmental education — revitalizing, one sapling at a time, the incomparable beauty of the Texas Hill Country.
Shoe Print
Violet Clemons (M.F.A. candidate in Costume Design), Gustavo Hernandez (M.F.A. candidate in Scenic Design), Desne Wharton (M.F.A. candidate in Integrated Media for Live Performance) and Patrick Scheon (M.F.A. candidate in Theatre, Live Design and Production)
Designed as a pop-up shoe store, the exhibit places white sneakers at its center. In collaboration with students in Integrated Media, Scenic Design and Costume Design, the installation features participatory elements that invite the audience to shape the space.
UNTITLED
Maria Parrini (D.M.A. candidate in Piano Performance) and Desne Wharton (M.F.A. candidate in Integrated Media for Live Performance)
This piece originated through curiosity about how the musician’s eye, seeking instructions or a map, and the videographer’s eye, seeking coherence and composition, might interpret the same neutral material: an aleatoric, graphic musical score that communicates in abstract shapes, rather than any traditional codified musical notation.
Lacuna: Portrait of Grief and Catharsis
Nadia Milad Issa (M.F.A. candidate in Dance), Edgar G. Bruno Avitia (M.M. candidate in Jazz Performance) and Aidan Christopher Berg (Jazz Performance senior)
This cross-disciplinary performance will bridge dance and modern jazz music through a work in six movements that explores themes of loss and grief with the hope of sparking public discussions.
In the selection process, a couple of projects were awarded partial funding to support their continued development and enable them to further refine their work as they explore the ideas.
UNMUTE JOURNAL
Brandon Foskett (Ph.D. candidate in Musicology), Anna Lopez (Ph.D. candidate in Musicology), Chloe Poustovoi (Arts and Entertainment Technologies senior), Isaac Taylor (Music Composition junior), Sara Sanchez (Design sophomore), Joshua Chung (Business sophomore) and Julian Woodman (Piano Performance junior)
This project is aimed at providing students at The University of Texas at Austin — both undergraduate and graduate and of any major, college or discipline — a new platform to demonstrate their passions and scholarship on various musical subjects. Submitted works can be of any format, ranging from formal academic papers to non-academic pieces including poems, narratives, anecdotes, brief philosophical musings and musical content.
Slash/her
Julia Kreutzer (M.F.A. candidate in Performance as Public Practice) and Anthony Anello (M.F.A. candidate in Playwriting)
A gritty horror-comedy, parodical portrayal of a summer camp terrorized by blood-thirsty teens, Slash/her prioritizes laughter and ephemeral experience over theoretical resonance. This play’s power is in its uproarious, unapologetic humor — a means of bringing us together by allowing us to laugh at ourselves.