Meet Our
Studio Technicians
Ceramics Studio Technician
Ceramics
Donte J. Moore
- Email: donte.moore@temple.edu
- Phone: 717-977-8987
Donte J. Moore is an artist living in Philadelphia with primary concentrations in ceramics and drawing. Donte received his MFA from the University of Delaware in 2019 and is currently the ceramic studio technician at Tyler School of Art.
Donte focuses his work on humans and machines. His futuristic work thoughtfully questions the loss of humanity, heart, and soul from the objects that exist around us. Moore has exhibited work at Penn State University, Baltimore Clayworks, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, The Delaware Contemporary, and internationally at Heit Berlin, Germany.
Fibers and Material Studies Studio Technician
Fibers and Material Studies
Katie Kaplan
- Email: catherine.kaplan@temple.edu
- Website: http://katiekaplanstudio.com
Katie Kaplan is a visual artist born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, currently living and working in Philadelphia. In her multi-disciplinary practice, she has a focus on exploring printmaking at the intersection of sculpture, fiber arts, installation and video. She has shown work nationally in solo and group exhibitions at galleries, community spaces, and print shops. She is a professional teaching artist and community artist, work that is intrinsic to her practice as a whole.
Foundations Program Technician
Foundations
Kedrick McKenzie
- Email: kedrick.mckenzie@temple.edu
- Office: B50B
Kedrick McKenzie’s work is an inquiry of what lies underneath layers and layers of frontiers. Growing up on the West Coast, where, as Joan Didion puts it, “boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension,” McKenzie has said his work originates from the act of questioning his assumptions about the place he calls home and the stories told about it. By combining quotidian craft practices with ephemeral materials, he challenges the slippery and subjective ways that histories are recorded and recounted. His practice revolves around the uneasy combination of the care and individuality imbedded in craft traditions with the extractive practices and consumer culture that built his homeland. The result is a research-led practice that suggests new stories about place, identity, and history.
Glass Studio Technician
Glass
Andrew Mahaffie
- Email: andrew.mahaffie@temple.edu
- Phone: 202-360-9171
- Office: 120B
- Website: andrewmahaffie.com
Andrew Mahaffie is a visual artist from Washington DC, currently living and working in Philadelphia PA. Andrew graduated with a BFA in Glass from Tulane University and has since worked in the glass community up and down the east coast, including spending time at STARworks Center for Creative Enterprises, and Penland School of Craft. Andrew's work takes a playful and inquisitive approach to glassmaking exploring different traditional and modern techniques of blowing, sculpting, casting, and coldworking.
Manager of Greenhouse Education and Research Complex
Landscape Architecture and Horticulture
Benjamin J. Snyder
- Email: benjamin.snyder@temple.edu
- Phone: (267) 468-8180
- Website: http://tyler.temple.edu/greenhouse
As manager of the Greenhouse Education and Research Complex at Temple University Ambler, Benjamin Snyder oversees the use and care of various educational horticulture features, including a tropical greenhouse collection, organic food production garden and seasonal outdoor displays. His primary interests focus on controlled environment horticulture, including plant production and ex situ plant conservation in an educational setting.
B.S. Horticulture, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM Studio Technician/Tyler Facilities Technician
Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM
Brad Lunsford
- Email: mjcc.tech@temple.edu
- Office: Suite 220
Brad is a Philadelphia-based craftsperson specializing in computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing in concert with traditional woodworking and metalsmithing. Their work focuses on fabricating objects that make sounds and documenting the process through sound recording and audio collage.
Painting Studio Technician/Administrative Specialist
Painting
lydon frank lettuce
- Email: lydon.lettuce@temple.edu
- Website: lydonfranklettuce.com
lydon frank lettuce is an artist, writer, and all-around goon from rural Pennsylvania. They plant poems in your garden and dig diagrams into the sand. They wrestle with the knotted garden hose of language and press your semantic satiation up against the wall. They hold an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from Parsons, the New School. They are always speaking frankly.
Assistant Department and Program Coordinator of Photography
Photography
Jille Mandel
- Email: jmandel@temple.edu
- Phone: 215.777.9225
BFA, Photography, Tyler School of Art and Architecture
Special Interests in photography, visual arts, illustration, and supporting art students through their education.
Sculpture Studio Technician
Sculpture
Paolo Mentasti
- Email: paolo.mentasti@temple.edu
Paolo Mentasti was born and raised on a plane flying between Sao Paulo, Bogota, and Mexico City. He earned his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2020 and his MFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in 2023.
Mentasti’s artwork examines the untimeliness of contemporary life, borrowing archaeology as a method to enter the present and the future. Mentasti works as a forger of a proleptic archaeological record composed of artifacts, traces, and tools produced for future interpretations. Using ceramics and other archaeological mediums, he cites the past and present, invokes the future, and dresses fictions in the cloak of history.