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2026 MFA Thesis Exhibitions

Experience seven weeks of MFA exhibitions packed with innovative ideas, fearless experimentation and advanced creative inquiry.

Thesis Exhibition Schedule

All work is displayed in the Temple Contemporary space at Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Exhibitions will be 11am-6pm, Wednesday-Saturday. Opening receptions will be held each Friday evening from 5-8pm.

March 11–14

Opening reception: March 13

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  • profile image of Rich Brown

    Rich Brown

    MFA Student

    Rich is the founder, owner, and creative force behind the Georgia-based pottery studio, Pottery32. An artist driven by curiosity, discipline, and heart, Rich approaches clay as both a craft and a language; one that communicates care,…Artist Statement My work originates in ceramics, where the vessel has functioned as both an object of use and a site of containment. Within my artistic practice, I have used pottery forms as a framework for examining how material, structure, and…

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  • profile image of ev Leto

    ev Leto

    MFA Student

    ev Leto (they/them; American, b. 1982, d. 2025) was a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Philadelphia, PA. Their practice centers the fat, queer, trans body as a site of exploitation and a tool of liberation. Their works probe the…Artist Statement Is queer (or fat, or trans, or disabled) a skill? My practice is an internal dialogue, evidence of my transformation, an accumulation of repetitive physical and emotional labor. Spoken in the language of protest,…

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  • profile image for Zahra Momeni

    Zahra Momeni

    MFA Student

    Zahra Momeni is an Iranian artist and an MFA candidate in Photography at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. Her work reflects her experiences with migration, distance, and diasporic memory. She explores how identity,…Artist Statement This project emerges from a condition of in-betweenness—between presence and absence, belonging and displacement, what can be spoken and what inevitably remains unsaid. It begins with a…

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  • profile image of Marcè Nixon-Washington

    Marcè Nixon-Washington

    MFA Student

    Marcè Nixon-Washington is a multidisciplinary artist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She received her BFA from West Virginia University with a focus in Africana Studies and is completing her MFA at Tyler School of Art and Architecture (May…Artist Statement I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, surrounded by plastic orange milk crates and skyscrapers layered with the sounds of PAT (Port Authority Transit) buses and Steelers fans. Most people don’t notice the woman operating…

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March 18–21

Opening reception: March 20

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  • profile image of Mary Champagne

    Mary Champagne

    MFA Student

    Mary Champagne is materially-minded and currently based in Philadelphia, PA. She holds a BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art with concentrations in Creative Writing and Printmaking.  Artist Statement I am concerned with collective fiction and the tenuous ways we rationalize our own identities and orientations. A weaver in many sensibilities, my practice prioritizes material transmutation both on and off…

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  • profile image of Will Grimm

    Will Grimm

    MFA Student

    Originally from Pittsburgh, Will Grimm began sewing at a young age under the guidance of his grandmother. He earned a BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2019 and is a current MFA Candidate in Fiber at Tyler School…Artist Statement The closest I’ve come to articulating what purpose my work serves is via the term “diary entry.” My practice centers thinking by making and is rooted in the traditions of stitching and dyeing. Sewn textile-collage-tapestry-quilt…

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  • profile image of Laura Sallade

    Laura Sallade

    MFA Student

    Laura Sallade is an artist living and working in Philadelphia. Sallade earned a Certificate in Sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2013 and completed a coordinated Bachelors of Fine Arts at The University of…Artist Statement Without light we can’t see matter—inversely, without matter we can’t see light. This interdependent relationship is the crux of my practice. I’m interested in colloquial references to light as a fleeting presence—a shadow appears…

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  • profile image of Lena Ruth Schwartz

    Lena Ruth Schwartz

    MFA Student

    Lena Ruth Schwartz is an artist and performer from New York City. Melding fibers with sculpture and sound, her work engages with biological vulnerability, melancholia, and myth. She has shown both nationally and internationally at…Artist Statement I want to compress time, to exist between the expanse of prehistory and the unruly hereafter, and awaken themes of a shared world through laborious handicraft and experiential, auditory, visual, and performative means…

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March 25–28

Opening reception: March 27

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  • profile image of Rachael Henson

    Rachael Henson

    MFA Student

    Rachael Henson is an artist based in Philadelphia and an MFA candidate in Sculpture at Temple University. Her work brings together silicone, steel, electronics, scent, sound, and living materials to create installations that operate …Artist Statement Where is the line drawn? I follow it across the pad of my thumb, see it curve through the grooves of a peach pit, carry electric signals across a circuit board, and repeat itself in the fragile wings of a mosquito feeding on…

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  • profile image of Marta Murray

    Marta Murray

    MFA Student

    Marta Murray (b. 1996) is a Chicago born painter currently based in Philadelphia. She earned her BFA from New York University in 2018, and is a current MFA candidate at the Tyler School of Art. Murray’s work has been exhibited …Artist Statement My recent large scale works on paper are sprawling and stylistically diverse compositions that combine drawing, painting and collage. I begin with a loaded visual reference, be it a page torn from a mid-century fashion magazine,…

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  • profile image of Nabeel Naveed

    Nabeel Naveed

    MFA Student

    Nabeel Naveed (b. 1997) is from Lahore, Pakistan. In 2025, Naveed exhibited in Memory and Material at Grizzly Grizzly, Philadelphia; TBD at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia; and Fugue/Body, a three-person show at…Artist Statement In my practice of image-making in paint and video, observations of escape, guilt, time, freedom, and existence construct relationships between complex systems of control. These relationships intersect with my…

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  • profile image of Brandon Aquino Straus

    Brandon Aquino Straus

    MFA Student

    Situated between the digital, the physical, and the imaginary, Brandon Aquino Straus’ work consists of video, installations, sculpture, and paintings in which he researches and examines the cultural amnesia and entangled histories of the United…Artist Statement Situated between the digital, the physical, and the imaginary, my work consists of video, installations, sculpture, and paintings in which I research and examine the cultural amnesia and entangled histories of the United States…

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April 1–4

Opening reception: April 3

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  • decorative profile image for Jamie Cabreza

    Jamie Cabreza

    MFA Student

    Jamie Cabreza is an artist residing in Easton PA. Her primary focus is creating landscapes where our built and natural environment converge and the effects that both time and humans have on their surroundings. She currently teaches photography at…Artist Statement My photographs have always been about the art of noticing – intensely observing my surroundings while envisioning both the past and future of the current state of things. Our environment reveals the mess of relations,…

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  • profile image of Jessalyn Mailoa

    Jessalyn Mailoa

    MFA Student

    Jessalyn Mailoa is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia. She moved to the United States in 2017 and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Glass and Graphic Design while also studying psychology at the University of…Artist Statement Value systems determine what is significant, who belongs, and how social structures are organized. My work investigates how hierarchies of value arise at the intersections of technology, craft, and ecology. I…

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  • profile image of Madison Tubbs

    Madison Tubbs

    MFA Student

    Madison Tubbs is a painter living and working in Philadelphia and a second-year MFA candidate at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. Her abstract practice explores the perceptual and spatial possibilities of light and color…Artist Statement My recent large scale works on paper are sprawling and stylistically diverse compositions that combine drawing, painting and collage. I begin with a loaded visual reference, be it a page torn from a mid-century fashion magazine,…

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  • profile image of Ananda Voecks

    Ananda Voecks

    MFA Student

    Ananda Voecks (she/her) is a jeweler, artist, and aerialist from Denver, Colorado. Her work explores the relationship between the body and movement using materials such as glass, lenses, acrylic, and light to create pieces that shift…Artist Statement My jewelry emerges from play and material experimentation, transforming movement, light, and perception into dynamic forms. Each piece blurs the line between art and wearer, challenging the idea of jewelry as…

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April 8–11

Opening reception: April 10

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  • profile image of Judith Addison

    Judith Addison

    MFA Student

    Judith Addison is a ceramicist working with clay as a living material that connects mind to body and body to earth. Guided by somatic practices—breathwork, yoga, and intuitive movement—they use sensation as the primary method of making. …Artist Statement To touch clay is to remember that matter breathes — that every act of making is the world remaking itself through us. In the slow exchange of breath and motion, sensation gathers attention into the present.  …

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  • profile image of Rylie Kelley

    Rylie Kelley

    MFA Student

    Rylie Kelley is an emerging artist and printmaker living and working in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Born in eastern Iowa, Kelley makes geographically grounded work about conservation, ecology, queerness, archives, and activism. They earned their…Artist Statement  My studio practice is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing from environmental humanities, queer ecology, posthumanism, and the archive. Propelled by my research and volunteer work in environmental conservation, I translate the…

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  • profile image of Joseph E. Malson

    Joseph E. Malson

    MFA Student

    Joseph E. Malson (b. Wilmington, NC) spent his early childhood in the deep South, raised primarily by his mother who was a self-taught artist and avid crafter. His adolescence in the conservative Midwest where he experimented with makeup, vintage…Artist Statement I am a multi-disciplinary assemblage artist working with found materials sourced from second-hand stores and personal collections. I create objects utilizingtextiles that I manipulate through handwork and piecework,…

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  • profile image of Meredith Tenney-Free

    Meredith Tenney-Free

    MFA Student

    Meredith Tenney-Free (b.1996) is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist investigating grief through personal, communal, and ecological perspectives. Her work has been exhibited in Columbus, Boston, Washington D.C., New York, and…Artist Statement I engage grief as a framework for expanded relationalities. Grief, emboldened by quantum mechanics and entanglement, traces the pilgrimage of cells through the physical universe. My work evokes…

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April 15–18

Opening reception: April 17

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  • profile image of Maximilian Art Boyce

    Maximilian Art Boyce

    MFA Student

    Maxmilian Art Boyce is a multidisciplinary sculptor from Chicago, Illinois currently working in glass and salvaged architectural debris. Exploration of the urban landscape is central to his practice and part of a broader inquiry about the tension…Artist Statement My practice revolves around the extraction of sub-structures, removing objects from their original context to abstract their meaning and redefine their function. As a means of responding to these objects, I integrate…

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  • profile image of Brianna Howard

    Brianna Howard

    MFA Student

    Brianna Howard is a painter whose work investigates accumulation, repetition, and perceptual systems. Using thousands of repeated marks, she builds surfaces that shift between order and interference, creating optical vibration and subtle instability…Artist Statement My paintings build themselves through repetition. A single dot holds little on its own, but placed among thousands it becomes a field, a vibration, a surface, or a structure. The mark is both microscopic and architectural,…

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  • profile image of Weiwei Li

    Weiwei Li

    MFA Student

    Weiwei is a metalsmith and jewelry artist working within the field of contemporary craft and wearable art. Her research-based practice examines transformation, duality, and the emotional dimensions of growth. Through her work, she investigates…Artist Statement Exploring how patterns transform forms drives my studio practice. I extend this idea by producing both wearable pieces and playful objects, inviting viewers to interact with the work in ways that allow transformation to…

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  • decorative profile image for Olivia Smith

    Olivia Smith

    MFA Student

    Olivia Smith is a printmaker and textile artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work challenges cultural associations between exertion and value, critiquing societal pressures surrounding gender roles, emotional labor, and self-worth. …Artist Statement My work utilizes printmaking and fibers techniques to explore the emotional landscape of a daily routine. Through a collaging practice, I manipulate photographs of my mundane tasks, repeating and overlapping the figures, to…

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April 22–25

Opening reception: April 24

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  • profile image of Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson

    Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson

    MFA Student

    Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson: - missed an email - forgot the impulse comes first, then a reason follows - overthought the invitation - pointed a projector at the sky and a shooting star appeared - invited people to touch a cold hard lump - experienced…Artist Statement I was raised in rural Appalachian Maryland. My childhood was full of secluded observation: marking the changes in the forest and sky, regularly asking animist spirits for world peace and to help me make friends. While the second…

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  • profile image of Daniel Gottschalk

    Daniel Gottschalk

    MFA Student

    Daniel Gottschalk is a metalsmith and sculptor from Roselle Park, New Jersey. His work bridges jewelry, sculpture, and object-making, often drawing inspiration from time spent outdoors and moments of solitude in nature. Using bones, metal, wood,…Artist Statement This work explores human behavior, ritual, and material culture under conditions of isolation. Imagine living secluded from society, where habits, tools, and adornments would shift. What objects would you create to survive,…

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  • profile image of Zoe Nguyen

    Tram (Zoe) Nguyen

    MFA Student

    A Saigon native now based in Philadelphia, Trâm (Zoe) Nguyễn is a graphic designer and photographer working across print, digital, and interactive media. She earned her BFA from SUNY Plattsburgh and is currently a Master’s candidate and Graduate…Artist Statement As a designer, the center of my practice is a concern with access and comprehension. I focus on how everyday design shapes who feels confident, confused, included, or excluded. Growing up using both Vietnamese and English made me…

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  • profile image of Jess Santana

    Jess Santana

    MFA Student

    Jess Santana is an interdisciplinary artist from Northern New Jersey whose works explores the life and connection of living beings, commonly focusing on the similar treatment of “disposable” animals to those with chronic illnesses. She strives to…Artist Statement I create works to help actualize my thoughts on relationships and how standards of treatment are determined. Since childhood, I have found myself to be someone who cares deeply for the objects and creatures around me,…

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