Visual Art Graduates

Graduates: or…whatever can one do with a degree in ART?

Since our first senior class in 1964 we have graduated over 600 majors in Visual Arts, many of whom have gone on to earn graduate degrees in a variety of fields. Since 2006 our graduates have earned advanced degrees from, or are enrolled in graduate programs at institutions such as Goddard College, Savannah College of Art & Design, Pratt Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, Maryland Institute College of Art, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rochester Institute of Technology, Ohio University, University of Florida, Florida State University, University of South Florida, University of New Mexico, Southern Illinois University, University of Kentucky, Seattle University, Pennsylvania State University, George Mason University, Kent State University, University of Missouri, University of Delaware, Virginia Commonwealth University, Claremont Graduate School, Pacific Northwest College of Art, University of Indiana at Bloomington, Lesley University, Ball State University, American University, Texas A&M at Corpus Christi, Hunter College, Watkins College of Art, Mills College of Art, Edinburgh College of Art (Scotland), and the Burren College of Art (Ireland).

Our graduates ultimately travel down a great many career paths, many of them art-related. One can find our Visual Arts alumni/ae engaged in art-related fields as varied as university or college teaching, public school teaching, sculpture, photography, design, illustration, advertising, graphic design, printmaking, visual effects, computer graphics, ceramics, functional pottery, jewelry, stained glass, painting, architecture, art direction, fashion design, community-based arts, film production, exhibition design, arts consulting, communications, performance art, woodworking, calligraphy, urban planning, theatre set design, lighting design, gallery owning, branding, landscape architecture, interior design, arts management and art therapy.

Not all of our majors elect to pursue art as a career, for we also have had alumni/ae who have chosen professions in fields as varied as civil engineering, psychotherapy, banking, retail sales, antiques, online networking, computer programming, music, military intelligence, social work, golf instruction, nursing, nutrition, youth ministry, law, radiology, real estate, and the list goes on!

Here’s what some of our alumni are up to…

Selected Visual Arts alumni updates

Jason Adkins ’96 (MFA, Claremont Graduate University) is a painter now based in Arizona.

Margaret Brommelsiek ’80 is Associate Research Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies at the University of Missouri / Kansas City, and has spent many years developing interdisciplinary programs between the fine arts and other academic subjects.

Grace-Anne Alfiero ‘04 (MFA, Goddard) is President and CEO at Arts in Action in Philadelphia, a consulting firm for non-profit organizations. She was founder of Creative Clay in St. Petersburg, and served as its Executive Director until 2011.

Kristin Baker ’85 is a teacher of gifted children, and in 2017 the New Jersey Association for Gifted Children recognized Kristin as Teacher of the Year.

Callie Ferraro Ayers ’11 is a painter, and currently works and exhibits at the Wedge Studios in the River Arts District of Asheville, NC.

Andrew Blaurock ’21 is a biologist and graphic artist at Kaligia Biosciences in Largo, Florida.

Joy Brown ’72 has exhibited her ceramic sculptures in one-person shows in Europe and Asia, and her work has been prominently featured in Ceramics Monthly. Joy is also co-founder and president of the Still Mountain Center, a nonprofit arts organization in Connecticut whose mission is to support, promote and celebrate artistic exchange between the United States and Asia. In 2017, nine of Brown’s large figurative sculptures were displayed on Broadway for a period of six months; 12 were also exhibited on the beach in Sanya, China (below).

Large-scale sculptures on beach in Cina

Pamela Callender ’07 received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, and she now is an art exhibitions curator for the Fogartyville Media and Arts Center in Sarasota, Florida.  She also recently taught a course for us in Environmental Art.

Jeffrey Carr ’74 is Exhibitions and Collections Manager of the Kennedy Museum of Art, at Ohio University.

Denise Choppin ’74 (MFA, FSU) is a graphic designer and mixed-media artist in Tallahassee.

Bede Clarke ’83 (MFA, University of Iowa) is Professor of Art at the University of Missouri at Columbia, teaching ceramics.

Kevin Collins ’99 is a professional golf instructor at the IMG Academy in Bradenton.

Neverne Covington ’77 is a painter, printmaker and book artist in St. Petersburg.

Carolanne Currier ’69 has taken on a second career as a ceramic artist after spending many years as an investigator for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Lisa Daily ’03 earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at George Mason University, and is now on the faculty at NYU.

Susan DeMay ’77 (MS, Peabody/Vanderbilt, and MA, Tennessee Tech) is Senior Lecturer in ceramics at Vanderbilt University. For more of her current work see her personal website.

Ben Dimmitt ’76 is a photographer who taught for years at the International Center of Photography in New York. He recently moved to Asheville, NC.

Hope Donnelly ’02 is owner and Creative Director of 8-Count Productions in Tampa.

Dawn Regan Ellenburg ’86 has been the Creative Director at Eckerd College since 2004.

frje Echeverria ’66 (MFA, University of Arkansas) is Professor Emeritus of Painting at the University of Northern Iowa.

Brad Ennis ’10 has been a photo assistant and production assistant at Annie Leibovitz studio in New York, and he now works full time as first assistant to photographer Billy Kidd.

The late Paul Eppling ’71 was very well-known in the Tampa Bay area for his welded metal sculptures.  May 8, 2014 was celebrated as Paul Eppling Day in St. Petersburg, a tribute to the remarkable works he made for the community.

Justin Erickson ‘03 is Assistant Director at Manatee Technical College.

Matt Fisher ‘98 (MFA, Claremont Graduate U) is an artist, writer, editor and web developer in Oakland, California, and member of the artist collective Finishing School.

Lawrence Frey ’93 owns and operates a custom stained glass business in Pennsylvania.

Zoe Friedman ’07 earned her MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art.  She works in photography, video, installations and finely cut paper. She recently (2022) had an installation on view at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland.

Esther Rodriguez Fuldauer ’92 is a painter, and also a UX/UI designer in Blanes, Catalonia, Spain.

Lori Loveberry George ’08 is an artist and teacher in Sarasota.

Samantha Goresh ’03 earned her Master’s in Photojournalism at the University of Ohio, and is a freelance photographer in Boston.

Ben Hamburger ’10 earned his MFA in Community Arts from the Maryland College Institute of Art.  His thesis work at MICA explored the consequences of urban development in Baltimore; it was reviewed in the Baltimore press, and also featured in an interview on NPR. More recently Ben’s paintings depicting the removal of Confederate monuments in North Carolina received press coverage as well.

James Heaton ’88 is President and Creative Director of Tronvig Group, a branding firm based in Brooklyn. Tronvig Group was listed by Clutch as a top advertising and marketing agency (2017).

Stanton Hunter ‘80 (MFA, University of Southern California) is Professor of Ceramics and Sculpture at Chaffey College in California.

Harriett Huss ’73 is a painter, and founding member of the Melrose Bay Art Gallery near Gainesville, Florida.

Stuart Hyatt ’97 is an interdisciplinary artist and musician, and founder of Team Records. His cd package design for his own collaborative recording Clouds was one of five finalists for a Grammy Award in 2006. Stu earned a Masters of Architecture from Ball State University (in addition to his MFA from Indiana University), and he also is a member of the M12 Studio, an innovative art and design collective that explores the aesthetics of rural cultures and landscapes. In 2018, with the Field Works Collective, he composed and premiered a new album with a sold-out live performance from deep inside the Cave Without a Name, near Bourne, Texas. In 2019, Stuart was honored by being named a National Geographic Explorer.  And in 2020 Stu’s recording “Ultrasonic” was reviewed in the New York Times.

D.J. Jackson ’12 is now an independent scientific illustrator.

Martha Ensign Johnson ’75 is now retired from teaching printmaking at Westmont College, and currently lives and works in Asheville, NC.

Blaze Birge Jones ’98 was a founding member of the Flynn Creek Circus in Mendocino County, California, committed to “pushing tradition to the edge.” Blaze is Creative Director of the circus, and specializes as a trapeze artist. The “Daring Jones Duo” won the Silver Medal at the International Circus Festival in Izhevsk, Russia, in March, 2014.

Owen Josiah ’08 is Art Director for DGT2GO in Clearwater, Florida.

Jonathan Keeton ’80 is retired after a long and distinguished career as a pioneer in the visual effects industry, and he has been winning state and national awards with his paintings.

Contina Kemp ’02 earned her M.Ed in Student Development at Seattle University, and is now the School of Film Academic Advisor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she is also active in improvisational theatre, and is the Orientation Coordinator at PhillyCAM

Betsy Lagana ’69 is a designer, printmaker, fabric artist and writer living in Bradenton, Florida.

Mary Law ’69 (MFA, Alfred University) is Senior Lecturer in Ceramics at Contra Costa College, and recently also at Diablo Valley College, in California.

Betsy Orbe Lester ’93 (MFA, USF) has been teaching Visual Problem Solving for us for a number of years.  She maintains a studio at Art Lofts in St. Petersburg.

Jessica Loving-Campos ’05 has been exhibiting her paintings frequently in her home state of Colorado. Jessica and her husband also own a web/graphic design business there.

Nadya Lyapunova ’18 is a Multi-content Coordinator at LENA, in Denver, and works in graphic design and illustration.

Ainslee McAndrew ’07 is a designer at Block Shop Textiles in California.

Devin McDonald ’10 recently earned her MFA at the University of Missouri-Columbia (where Bede Clarke ’83 was on the faculty.)

Casey McDonough ’03 (MFA, RISD) has been a resident artist at the Morean Center for Clay, Red Lodge Clay Center and the Hjorring Kunstmuseum in Denmark, as well as apprentice to Don Reitz. He has also taught at Cedar Crest College and the University of Central Arkansas.

Barbara McFadyen ’74 is a metalsmith and enamelist who has been designing jewelry in gold, silver, and enamel for over four decades. Barbara received her MFA in Metal Design at East Carolina University, and has exhibited with the American Crafts Council, the Smithsonian Institution, SNAG, and the Enamelist Society.

Ian Meares ’00 earned his MFA in Studio Practice at Pennsylvania State University, and more recently an MFA in Critical & Curatorial Practice, at the University of California Irvine, Irvine California.  He has taught at several institutions, among them Ohio State University, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Illinois.

Joe Melamed ’06 earned his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and serves as Exhibitions Preparator at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley California.

Ingram Ober ’98 (MFA, Claremont Graduate U) teaches sculpture and foundry at Palomar College in California.  He and his partner Marisol Rendon recently installed a sculpture at the Underwater Museum of Art in the Florida Panhandle that now serves as an artificial reef.

Erin O’Malley ’13 earned her MFA in Studio Art at Mills College, concentrating in photography, and has also recently earned a Master’s in Technical Writing from Portland State University.

Lia Nydes ’15 spent many months as a photography and video intern with the National Park Service in Alaska, and earned her MFA in Environmental Filmmaking at American University. She is now a freelance camera operator and assistant, and has done work for Disney Plus, Smithsonian Channel, Netlix and Maryland Public Television.

Brandi Palmer ’97 earned her Master’s in Arts Administration at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and is now owner and principal of her own niche brand positioning and public relations firm, WordStoryBoard.

Beth Mueller ’77 has her own production company, featuring ceramics, clothing and paper products of her design.

Kirk Palmer ’10 earned his MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and now works out of the Art Lofts Studio in St. Petersburg.

Mark Pauline ’77 is founder of the San Francisco-based performance art group Survival Research Laboratories, which boasts of staging “the most dangerous shows on Earth.”  Here is a 2018 interview with Mark published at Artspace.

Conor Pickett ’13 is now a ceramics teacher at the Umbrella Arts Center in Concord, Massachusetts.

Elaine Raybourn ’85 (Ph.D. University of New Mexico) is engaged in research with Sandia Labs, investigating the learning experience design of immersive transmedia ecosystems to support informal learning, ubiquitous computing, and the anthropology of next generation learners’ interactions with future learning technology. Watch her present in this 2015 TEDx talk.

Tai Rogers ’01 earned his MFA in Ceramics at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, and is now working independently in Colorado.

Lourdes Rosas-Rasdall ’84 is now the Director of the Suntan Art Center in Pass-a-Grille.

Scott Ross ’97 earned his MFA in sculpture from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and recently taught at Linfield College in Oregon.

Maddy Rowe ’19 is enrolled in the MFA program in photography at Hunter College in New York.

Taryn Sabia-Fritz ’01 (M. Arch. RISD, and Ed. M. at Harvard) is Associate Professor of Research in the School of Architecture and Community Design at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and co-founder and President of the Tampa Urban Charrette.

Maggie Sanger ’15 is a designer and installation artist in Nashville.

Emily Schadow ’16 is a graphic designer at Minnetonka, in Minneapolis.

Nick Schwartz ’98 owns and operates the Flynn Creek Pottery in Comptche, California.

Garvin Sealy ’02 earned his MFA at the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and he is now a member of Applied Arts in Scotland.

Elise Shapiro ’22 is a junior content producer for Oh Snap! Social.

Ward Shelley ’72 is a sculptor and performance artist whose work has been exhibited in ten countries, has often been featured in Art in America and Artforum, and is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and other major museums. In 2014 he was featured on CBS News as a result of his performance collaboration with artist Alex Schweder during which they lived in a very large hamster wheel for ten days. More recent collaborations with Alex Schweder, ReActor (2016) and “Slow Teleport” (2019) have gained international attention.

Lisa Sibley ’12 earned her MFA at Lesley University in Boston.  She is a professional photographer, and recently has taught courses for us here at Eckerd.

Zack Sierke ’02 is a functional potter working out of his own studio with local clays in Fairhope, Alabama.  Here’s a recent (2021) interview with Zach, featured in Studio Potter.

Jayden Simelda-Longe ’21 is a multi-media designer at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg.  She also has her own personal brand, Radiate/Creative.

Leslie Simons ’97 is owner and president of Simons Designs, working as art director, wardrobe stylist, and set and props designer, while also working in retail display and residential design.

Steve Smith ’74 (MFA, University of Florida) has examples of his Artistamps included in the Moscow Artistamp Collection, and the Gina Lotta Post Online Artistamp Museum.

Michael Specht ’11 works for Apple in San Francisco, as a Camera Image Quality Engineer, in helping develop iPhone technology.  He also continues to make his own photography.

Melanie Taylor ’74 (M. Arch., Yale) in an architect in New Haven, Connecticut. She was one of the first architects to participate in building the planned community of Seaside, Florida, designing Rosewalk.

Carrie Hall Tomberlin ’00 (MFA, Clemson) teaches photography at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Lindsey Nahmias Turowski ’06 is a digital brand manager at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island.

Mila Kollock Turtle ’90 is the owner of her own graphic design firm in St. Petersburg, Turtle Moon Graphics.

Merry Vasterling ’06 is an art teacher at the Perkins Elementary Center for the Arts and International Studies Magnet Program in St. Petersburg.

Hallie Rae Ward ’12 is Business Manager & Art Director at the Art for the People Gallery in Austin, Texas, and regularly exhibits there.

Jan Wiley ’78 is an artist in Tallahassee, and also serves as the Design & Communications Director of the Mission San Luis Living History Museum there.

Tiffany Willey ’06 received her Master’s in Science in Exhibit/Interior Design from Pratt Institute, and is now an exhibit designer for Gallagher and Associates, in the Washington D.C. area.

Mary Yates ’91 earned her MA in Photography and Digital Media at the University of Louisville, and she has taught photography for Spalding University.  She is now a Manager of Enhanced Content for SANS Institute

Zara Yost ‘12  earned her Master’s of Arts in New Arts Journalism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently serving as the People and Culture Administrator at the Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh.

Edgar Zabaleta ’00 is a Creative Director and Digital Marketing Consultant based in Tampa.

Photo (above) by Vic Richardson ’15

Gallery hours:
Mon.–Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Michael Knigin: Lone Lily, lithograph, 199

Flora & Fauna III
Works from the Permanent Collection
January 3 – February 9, 2024

Grisha Bruskin, Lexica (intaglio, 1992)

Four Printmakers
Works from the Permanent Collection
January 22 – February 15, 2024

William Henry Jackson: Florida, Tomoka River, The King's Ferry, 1898

Four Photographers
Works from the Permanent Collection
January 22 – February 15, 2024

Senior Thesis Exhibitions
Visual and Interdisciplinary Arts
February 18-May 3, 2024

The Sophomore Show
Visual Arts Major Portfolio Exhibition
Part I: March 31 – April 26, 2024

Eckerd Review
The Exhibition
May 5 – 17, 2024