Division and Alumni News

Art and design take center stage at Circle of Light
11/30/22
Holiday festivals on the Texas Woman's University campus have gone through a few incarnations and themes over the years, but this year's Circle of Light is a celebration of art and design.
Mural in Union celebrates TWU
11/28/22
If you're walking through the Student Union's first level, head east from the food court, down the hall past the game room, computer stations and meeting rooms toward the gallery around the stairs. You will find color. An assault of color. Great, vibrant swaths and shapes of pink and orange and red, blue and turquoise, yellow and purple splashed on three sides of the gallery and wrapped around the beating heart of the university. It's called Corazón Radical.
Holiday festival returns to TWU
11/7/22
After a three-year pandemic-related hiatus, a holiday celebration returns to the Texas Woman's University's campus on Dec. 6, 2022. The five divisions of TWU's School of Arts & Design – dance, fashion, music, theatre, and visual arts – are joining forces to create the Circle of Light, an art-themed festival in and around Pioneer Circle between the Visual Arts Building and the Music Building. The Circle of Light will begin at 6 p.m. and is open to the public.
TWU Visual Arts to host Art Day Sept. 23
9/7/22
TWU's division of Visual Arts is hosting Art Day, a hands-on, interactive event with art workshops and visiting professional artists for high school students and art teachers. Activities will include a printmaking maker-space, four-person exhibition and panel presentation by visiting artists, and large-format printmaking – including with a steamroller, commonly used to level roads.
Art Day takes place on Sept. 23 at the TWU Fine Arts Building at the corner of Oakland and Texas Streets on the TWU campus, from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Now on display
East Gallery
Siete Más
Works of four printmaking artists.
Sept. 6-30. Artists’ panel on Friday, Sept. 23, 6-7 p.m.
West Gallery
Call and Response – The Inner Landscape
Maker-space: create and share a story onsite at the exhibition by making your own printmaking or collage art.
Sept 6-30
Alumnus' comic book series surpasses 10th anniversary Kickstarter goal; movie in works
6/7/21
"There hasn't been a superhero like El Peso Hero," TWU Visual Arts alumnus Hector Rodriguez III says. "A hero that transcends cultures and borders for Texas and Mexico."
The creator of the celebrated comic book series, who is a fifth-grade bilingual teacher for McKinney ISD, wears a lot of hats. He's also the co-founder of Texas Latino Comic Con, a publisher and CEO, and development director of a lucha libre multimedia company. Coming soon: the movie.
National Endowment for the Humanities awards grant to TWU faculty
4/14/21
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced that it awarded a Humanities Connections Grant of $99,426 to Texas Woman’s University. The grant will support the very first interdisciplinary and experiential learning initiative to integrate the history of Quakertown into courses at TWU. It will also enable the future development of a digital humanities archive of Quakertown-related research and reflection, which the project co-directors aim to connect to a public platform that will promote community engagement with Quakertown’s history for decades to come.
Visual Arts alumna Kalee Appleton (MFA '14) named 2021 Carter Community Artist
1/7/21
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art recently announced its 2021 Carter Community Artists: Kalee Appleton, Brenda Ciardiello, Michelle Cortez Gonzales and Kasey Short. Every year, the Carter selects four local artists to assist with planning and leading programs on-site, off-site and virtually. Throughout 2021, these Carter Community Artists will bring their distinct points of view to events and projects as they make connections to the museum’s expansive collection, exhibitions and rich history with the local community.
Appleton is a Fort Worth-based artist and assistant professor of photography at Texas Christian University. She earned her BFA in Photography from Texas Tech University (2005) and MFA in Art from Texas Woman’s University (2014). Kalee is an experimental artist whose work deals with digital technologies and their effects on society, as well the theoretical aspects of contemporary landscape photography.
Roses, votes and iron-jawed angels: TWU professor co-founds tribute to suffragists
11/6/20
As the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage approached, Texas Woman’s University professor Meg Griffiths wondered what her contemporaries thought about the right to vote.
She workshopped an idea with a friend and fellow photographer, Frances Jakubek, director of exhibitions and operations at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City. What if they invited their female peers — fine art photographers — to train their lenses on a subject connected to the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in August 1920.
TWU alumna Kim Brewer (MFA '15) explores loneliness in 'Isolation' exhibit
9/21/20
Derived from “mug shots,” Kim Brewer's body of work explores the relative frailty of the human condition in isolation and interrogates the mug shot as a platform for the perpetual captivity of the individual. Some individuals present themselves in defiance of their “captors,” while others are entirely consumed with their own intense set of circumstances; the varied expressions portrayed evoke images that are dynamic and often moving.
Plano Magazine publishes profile of TWU alumna and tattoo artist Nychelle Elise
9/16/20
After graduating from Texas Woman’s University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a focus on painting and drawing, Nychelle Elise searched the metroplex for a creative outlet. “I started doing a lot of art shows and painting a lot around Dallas,” she said. As her portfolio grew, so did her interest in tattooing. “I was always interested in tattooing just because it’s another form of art, another medium to explore,” she said.
TWU's Meg Griffiths co-founds 'A Yellow Rose Project' to commemorate 19th Amendment
8/20/20
Assistant professor of photography Meg Griffiths co-founded 'A Yellow Rose Project' to commemorate to the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment. More than 100 women across the U.S. were invited to join in the photographic collaboration, which showcases works in response, reflection or reaction to the ratification of the woman suffrage movement milestone.
Student News
MFA student Anna Galluzzi was interviewed about her mixed media series, "Security Blanket," in a September 2019 Voyage Dallas Q&A>>
MFA student Leslie Mauldin creates paintings on steel sheet metal, sculptures out of metal and foam, as well as installations. Read Leslie's story>>
Art student Hannah Werchan (BFA '19, current MFA student) won first prize and $10,000 in the Kennedy Center’s 2018 VSA Emerging Young Artists Competition, a program that recognizes and showcases the work of artists with disabilities between ages 16-25. Her winning painting, "Growth," is an impressionistic self-portrait that conveys her experience living with Stickler Syndrome, a rare connective tissue disorder. View the award-winning works and read Hannah's story>> She was profiled in a September 2019 Voyage Dallas feature>>
Fall 2018 publication design students April Allyn, Clarissa Baniecki, Courtney Ford, Cassandra Miller, Jennie Posadas, Allyson Titus, Alexis Warthen and Abigail Wroten gained valuable professional experience serving the Greater Denton Arts Council as a client by creating and presenting their catalog design proposals for the "Materials Hard + Soft" exhibition. Graphic Design major Abigail Wroten won the honor of having her catalog chosen for publication. Professor Sheli Petersen, who taught Publication Design last semester, is continuing the collaboration with GDAC by guiding her Spring 2019 Advertising Design class in developing their Membership Drive Campaign. View the winning design and read their story>>

Faculty and Staff News
Cornaro professor emerita Susan kae Grant had her prize-winning Night Journey series on display October 2018 at The Baldwin Photographic Gallery in Murfreesboro, TN. She received the Cornaro Award on April 14, 2016. This is the highest honor and award to be bestowed upon a TWU faculty member, and Grant is the first visual arts faculty member to receive the award.
Meg Griffiths, assistant professor of photography, interviewed her mentor for the LensScratch article, "Photographers on Photographers: Meg Griffiths and Cig Harvey in Conversation." Her work will be on display at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center Aug.16-Sept. 28, 2019 as part of the collaborative exhibition, "Come Together."
Julie Libersat, assistant professor of studio art, participated in a panel discussion on new media art in North Texas at the Cedars Union in Dallas in partnership with Ro2 Art on Nov. 27. Her solo exhibition, Paved Paradise, will be on display March 10-April 19 at the Women & Their Work gallery in Austin, TX. Learn more >>
Colby Parson's Structured Light series will be on display June 8-August 25 at the Patterson-Appleton Arts Center's Gough Gallery in Denton, TX.
Sheli Petersen's illustrations were featured at Grey Fox Mercantile's exhibition Aug. 2-Sept. 2, 2019 in New Hartford, New York. She organized TWU's first annual Art Day in October 2019 on the university's Denton campus. High school students, transfer students and art educators participated in the free, daylong event.
In September 2019, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art named TWU gallery coordinator Blake Weld one of four 2019–20 Carter Community Artists. “As a Carter Community Artist, I hope to engage with a larger community and to showcase a different side of making art that can be humorous or serendipitous,” said Weld.
In Memoriam: Jana C. Perez (1966-2021)

Former Department of Visual Arts professor Jana C. Perez passed away earlier this year. Jana taught graphic design at TWU for ten years, from 2007-2017, and was a professional artist, designer and photographer. At the time of her death, she was Director of Operations at High Bandwidth, a digital branding and advertising agency in Plano.
Celebration of Life Service for Jana C. Perez
The Jana Perez Celebration of Life Ceremony took place Saturday, Feb. 20 at 3 p.m. The socially distanced, face-to-face event was held at Allen Family Funeral Options.
Page last updated 9:34 AM, November 30, 2022