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By Liz Smith, Associate Chair | Associate Professor of Art, Ceramics »
UCA Department of Art and Design alumni, Anna Wagner, 2019 BFA with an emphasis in Ceramics is currently on campus in her role as the 2021-2022 Alumni Artist in Residence program. This exciting new program offers a significant stipend to a departmental alumnus who has proven to remain active in the field and would benefit from access to time and studio space and equipment with a particular goal for creating a body of work made while in residence. In exchange the resident presents two artists talks at the beginning and end of the residency, makes themselves accessible to studio students, gives a workshop based on their art practice, exhibits the body of work they created in a local exhibition space and does some community outreach.
Anna’s vibrant and complex sculptural ceramic work focuses on her personal experiences as a neurodiverse individual and others’ related experiences. Her excellent workshop showed the many steps she takes to create both her complex forms and surfaces. Her amazing x-period talk detailed the methods she uses to research, organize, sketch and refine her preparatory work using her phone as her primary tool. She continues to inspire the students in the ceramics studio as she constricts multiple large scale ceramic works.
I encourage all art students to stop by the ceramics studio during the week to view some of Anna’s work in progress and talk to her about how she has remained active after graduation.