Foundations Faculty

Meet Our

Foundations Faculty

  •
    Associate Professor and Chair of Foundations
    Ceramics

    Chad D. Curtis

    • Email: chad.curtis@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-777-9167
    • Office: Tyler 210F
    • Website: www.chaddcurtis.com

    • ON LEAVE, SPRING 2024

      Chad Curtis is an artist and educator who is motivated by politics of the environment, land use, climate change and the evolution of these relationships over time. Visually, Curtis’s work references traditional notions of the sublime landscape and monumental beauty such as vast open spaces, the horizon, trees and mountains. These landscapes represent the very same desires that helped fuel the westward expansion and Manifest Destiny of the United States. In similar ways, digital technology is fueling a worldwide expansion with an equally...

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  •
    Associate Professor and Program Head of Painting
    Painting

    Gerard Brown

    • Email: gbrown@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-777-9713
    • Office: Tyler 210U

    • Gerard Brown is interested in secrets. His creative and scholarly work, which encompasses studio processes such as painting, drawing, printmaking and other forms, examines the use of writing to camouflage and conceal messages in the public sphere.
       
      As a writer, Brown has contributed essays to Ceramics: Art & Perception, Philadelphia Weekly and Juxtapoz, among other magazines. He is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Visual Art Criticism. He has organized exhibits for the Levy Gallery at Moore College of Art & Design...

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  •
    Assistant Professor of Instruction
    Foundations, Photography

    Sam Fritch

    • Email: sfritch@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-777-9000
    • Website: www.samfritchphoto.com

    • Sam Fritch is a photographer whose work seeks to explore the essence of diverse groups, from gun owners to community gardeners to Tyler’s transgender community. This concept extends into his commercial photography business, where he captures the faces, atmosphere and creative work of local schools, businesses and designers in the greater Philadelphia area as they promote themselves in various print and web publications.
       
      MFA, Photography, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, 1997
      BFA, Related Arts, Kutztown University, 1994

       

      Image...
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  •
    Associate Professor of Instruction
    Foundations, Painting

    Simona Mihaela Josan

    • Email: sjosan@temple.edu

    • ON LEAVE, FALL 2023

      Simona Josan is an immigrant artist whose research interests concern ideas of displacement and memory. Her work often deals with the creation and fetishism of objects that are stand-ins for past experiences and function as material storytelling. She is interested in the role that nostalgia plays in creating a present identity.

      Currently, Josan is working on a series of drawings that attempt to document her memories of having lived in two seemingly incongruous spaces: the concrete apartment buildings of pre-1989 communist Romania and...

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  •
    Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
    Foundations, Visual Studies

    Nichola Kinch

    • Email: nmkinch@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-896-4197
    • Office: Tyler 210R
    • Website: www.nicholakinch.com

    • ON LEAVE, SPRING 2024

      Nichola Kinch is an artist whose creative production is propelled by technical investigations that span pre-photographic practices to computer aided design and manufacturing. Her practice  centers on the creation of objects and installations that explore image production as a metaphor for a variety of fictional constructs.
       
      Kinch’s commitment to learning new processes is uniquely aligned with her interest in innovative curriculum development in the areas of foundation studies and interdisciplinary practice. She...

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  •
    Associate Professor of Visual Studies
    Visual Studies, Art History

    Leah Modigliani, PhD

    • Email: lmodigliani@temple.edu
    • Office: Tyler 201B
    • Website: www.leahmodigliani.net

    • Leah Modigliani is Associate Professor of Visual Studies at Tyler School of Art and Architecture. She is an artist and scholar with transdisciplinary engagements informed by fine arts, art history, critical geography, urban studies, and politics. Modigliani’s work represents the liberatory potential (right to the city) and neoliberal revanchism (displacement, punitive laws) of urban experience. In artwork she has dwelled upon eviction ("How long can we tolerate this? An incomplete record from 1933-1999," 2016-2017); cities destroyed by war ("The City in Her...

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  •
    Associate Professor of Instruction
    Foundations

    Buy Shaver

    • Email: buy.shaver@temple.edu
    • Phone: 267-201-2662
    • Office: Tyler 230G
    • Website: www.buyshaverart.com

    • Buy Shaver is a multi-disciplinary, installation-based artist with a visual arts background that includes Eastern and Western painting, graphic design, illustration and exhibition design. 

      Shaver primarily works site-specifically, often painting directly on walls to create both temporal and commissioned art. His work floats between both abstract compositions and text-based installations that appear simple and seemingly familiar, yet the content and context allow for multiple interpretations, allowing his work to be simultaneously direct yet oddly illusive.

      Shaver...

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  •
    Associate Professor
    Foundations, Painting, Visual Studies

    Samantha Simpson

    • Email: samantha.simpson@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-777-9151
    • Office: Tyler 230C
    • Website: www.samanthasimpson.com

    • Samantha Simpson makes paintings and drawings that reference cartooning, 14th century woodcuts and the history of modernist painting. Her recent pieces specifically address the uneasy juxtaposition of the everyday and the political.

      Simpson’s work has been shown nationally and internationally and has been included in solo and two-person exhibitions at Firecat Projects; Gallery Joe; Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center; Tufts University; the Lawndale Art Center in Houston; Slugfest Printmaking Workshop in Austin, Texas and Gallerie Michael Rasche in Fribourg, Germany. Her art has...

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  •
    Professor and Dean Emeritus of Temple University Rome
    Foundations

    Kim D. Strommen

    • Email: strommen@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-777-9000
    • Office: Tyler 230F

    • Kim Strommen is an artist, educator and arts administrator who has worked with mixed media to produce art with associations to craft and painting. His works have included wall hangings, woven metal sculpture and architecturally scaled environments.
       
      Strommen resided in Italy for over 20 years while serving as the dean of Temple University’s Rome Campus and as a member of the steering committee of the Association of American College and University Programs in Italy.
       
      His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally to include the Palazzo...

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  •
    Associate Professor and Curriculum Coordinator
    Community Arts Practices

    Billy Yalowitz, EdD

    • Email: yalowitz@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-432-6366
    • Office: Tyler B87

    • Billy Yalowitz is a playwright, director and community arts practitioner whose interdisciplinary performance works draw from public history and chronicle grassroots movements for self-determination. As the founder and co-director of Tyler’s Community Arts Practices program, he has collaborated with neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia to create a body of performances and media installations that have helped to organize communities around a range of social justice initiatives.
       
      Yalowitz’s critically-acclaimed performances have been presented off-Broadway, toured Israel...

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  •
    Associate Professor of Instruction
    Foundations

    Jennifer Zarro

    • Email: jennifer.zarro@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-777-9700
    • Office: Tyler 230

    • Jennifer Zarro teaches a General Education race and diversity course, which draws on historic and contemporary art of the Americas. Her dissertation research focused on prints, maps and the culture of geography in late 18th century Philadelphia. A lifelong resident of this city, Jennifer is an avid fan of Philadelphia art and historic bookbinding. She is currently working on a research project about a 19th century Irish immigrant who arrived in Philadelphia in the early 1820s.
       
      PhD, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 2007
      MA, Temple University, 1999

      ...

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  • Adjunct Assistant Professor
    Foundations

    Asher W. Barkley

    • Email: abarkley@temple.edu

    • MFA, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
      BFA, East Carolina University

  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Shawn Beeks

    • Email: s.beeks@temple.edu
    • Website: www.slapstikskateboardart.com

    • Shawn Beeks is a teaching artist and entrepreneur making drawings and paintings reflecting his research in crime and psychology. The founder and director of Slapstik Skateboard Art, Shawn is experienced in art logistics, curating, public relations, social media, and mentoring artists of various ages and backgrounds.  

      MFA, University of the Arts
      BFA, University of Georgia
       

  • Adjunct Assistant Professor
    Foundations

    Erin Boyle

    • Email: erboyle@temple.edu
    • Website: https://www.erinroseboyle.com

    • Erin Rose Boyle creates sculpture and installations that feature details achieved through her inventive use of uncommon art materials and techniques. She believes that her best work happens when it involves experimentation and play and provides students with a strong foundation in 3-D design while teaching them to look at art from a different perspective.

      MFA, University of the Arts
      BFA, Syracuse University

  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Matthew Colaizzo

    • Email: matthew.colaizzo@temple.edu
    • Website: www.matthewcolaizzo.com

    • Matthew Colaizzo makes mixed-media drawings and prints that examine our relationship to the landscape, with ideas about land accessibility and natural history. He is also self-employed as a fine art picture framer, specializing in conservation techniques and working with selected artists and galleries in Philadelphia.

      MFA, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
      BFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University

  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Rob D'Amico

    • Email: rjd243@temple.edu

    • Rob D’Amico is an accomplished sculptor, metal fabricator and educator living and working in Philadelphia. D’Amico has 20 years of professional experience making prototypes, architectural elements, custom furniture and artistic commissions for artists, architects and designers in Philadelphia and New York City.

      MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
      BS, New York University

  • Adjunct Assistant Professor
    Painting

    Carmel Dor

    • Email: carmeldor@temple.edu
    • Website: http://www.carmeldor.com

    • Carmel Dor (they/them) is a Philadelphia-based artist, educator, and poet. Through paintings, sculptures, and zines, Dor untangles the quality of time in moments where decisions have no known precedent, and one must build their own framework. How does time grow, shrink, or transform during different stages of change? What are the qualities of memory, futurity, and presence throughout a transition? Their work honors the liminal space where experience informs and reforms the self. 

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    Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Leigh Dotey

    • Email: leigh.dotey@temple.edu

    • Leigh Dotey is a designer and fabricator of furniture, objects and lighting. Their work exists predominantly in the functional realm, focusing on the inherent qualities of the material and leaning in to the human interaction that takes place in our built environments.


      BFA Sheridan College Craft and Design. Ontario, Canada
       

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  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Amy Haavik-Mackinnon

    • Email: aehaavik@temple.edu

    • Amy Haavik-MacKinnon specializes in modern and contemporary art history. Her research interests include sociohistorical perspectives on art, art and identity and art and social responsibility.

      PhD, Bryn Mawr College
      MA, Bryn Mawr College
      MA, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
      BA, Vassar College

  • Adjunct Associate Professor
    Art Education

    Jessica Kirker, PhD

    • Email: jessica.kirker@temple.edu

    • Jessica Kirker’s publications and research interests stem from her more than 20 years of teaching experience, drawing attention to intersections of race and gender in the classroom, exploring privilege, teacher identity and education for social justice.

      PhD, Pennsylvania State University
      MSEd, Gwynedd Mercy College
      MEd, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
      BSEd, Pennsylvania State University

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    Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Lisa Jungmin Lee

    • Email: tuj40343@temple.edu
    • Phone: 267-624-6752

    • Lisa Jungmin Lee is a print-based artist in Philadelphia. Lisa is fascinated by urban structures and the architectural elements that she discovers while exploring around the city. Her work incorporates lines as a primary visual language to deliver her interests in blurring the relationship between an image of imagined space and reality. 

       MFA, Tyler school of Art & Architecture, Philadelphia, PA
       BFA, Hongik University, School of Fine Arts, Seoul, South Korea
       

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  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations, Painting

    Alicia Link

    • Email: alicia.link@temple.edu
    • Website: www.alicia-link.com

    • Alicia Link’s work offers a type of expanded painting that manifests itself across disciplines. Using fantasy and humor to explore the relationship between loss, love and the body, she often lingers in a space that draws attention to the invisibility of trauma.

      MFA, University of Texas at Austin
      BFA, Boston University

  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Yvonne Lung

    • Email: yvonnel@temple.edu
    • Office: 230O
    • Website: www.yvonnelung.com

    • Yvonne Lung is an Asian-American social practice artist whose work is about social change through interaction, learning what we have in common by using her heritage as a vehicle to address shared experiences despite cultural differences.

      Co-founder of Practice Gallery in Philadelphia, she has had several artist residencies, including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Many Mini Residency, Art Omi International Artist Residency, and the Asian Arts Initiative’s Social Practice Lab Artist-in-Residence. She has received the Leeway Foundation’s Art and Change Grant twice, two Velocity Fund awards, Fleisher Art Memorial’s Wind Challenge Prize, and a Jackpot Grant by the Nevada Arts Council.

      In addition to teaching at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, she is the operations manager at Asian Americans United, an AAPI social justice non-profit organization working for the AAPI community in the Philadelphia region. She has also worked as a Mandarin interpreter for the U.S. immigration court and U.S. Department of Homeland Security on the East Coast. She is the co-captain of the Philadelphia Chinatown Dragon Boat Team, which she has been a member of since 2009, and a founding member of Radical Asian American Womxn’s Collective (RAAWC).

      Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
      MFA, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
      BFA, Texas Tech University

  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Kedrick McKenzie

    • Email: kedrick.mckenzie@temple.edu

    • 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.

       
      MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University 
      BFA, San José State University   
       

  • Adjunct Assistant Professor
    Foundations

    Kara M'shinda

    • Email: kara.mshinda@temple.edu
    • Website: www.karamshinda.com

    • Kara Mshinda is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in photography and visual anthropology. Mshinda is best known for using collage, print media, and lo-fi photography to develop visual narratives about identity, place, memory, and ephemera in daily life. Her artwork has been shown at Drexel University’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Commonweal, Rush Arts Philadelphia, Mana Contemporary in Chicago, Schau Fenster in Berlin, and La Nao Galería in Mexico City. She is an awardee of the 2023 Wind Challenge Exhibition, an annual juried competition at Fleisher Art Memorial.  She serves as Fellowship Director at Da Vinci Art Alliance and is a member of the Arts Committee at William Way LGBT Community Center and the artist-run gallery collective Tiger Strikes Asteroid. 

      MA, Temple University
      BA, University of Akron

  • Adjunct Associate Professor
    Foundations, Painting

    Sarah Roche

    • Email: roches@temple.edu

    • MFA, University of Pennsylvania
      BFA, Moore College of Art & Design

  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Dustin Sparks

    • Email: dustin.sparks@temple.edu

    • Dustin Sparks is a multi-disciplinary artist who works in painting, sculpture, installation, video and performance.

      MFA, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
      BFA, Ohio University

  • Adjunct Instructor

    Matthew Speedy

    • Email: matthew.speedy@temple.edu
    • Website: http://www.matthewspeedy.com

    • Matthew Speedy is an artist and educator working in Philadelphia. His work is concerned with depictions of labor in science fiction, ongoing ecological crises, and how to productively worry about the future. Incorporating a multitude of materials, his work uses humor and absurdity to engage anxieties and trivialities.

      MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture 
      BID, Pratt Institute 

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    Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Sean Starowitz

    • Email: sean.starowitz@temple.edu
    • Website: https://www.sean-starowitz.com/

    • Sean M. Starowitz has worked in a variety of community-based contexts, spanning more than a decade of socially engaged art practice. He uses archival research and public memory as material to reframe our current understanding of natural history and political imaginaries.

      MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University 
      BFA, Kansas City Art Institute 
       

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  • Adjunct Instructor
    Foundations

    Thomas Vance

    • Email: tvance@temple.edu

    • MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
      BFA, Cleveland Institute of Art

  • Adjunct Associate Professor
    Painting, Foundations

    Lauren A. Whearty

    • Email: whearty@temple.edu
    • Website: www.laurenwhearty.com

    • Lauren Whearty is a Philadelphia-based painter, curator and teacher. She is also a co-director of an artist-run curatorial collective, Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, NY. Whearty's paintings investigate personal identity through memory, lived experience, the familiar objects of everyday life, a love of color and the material processes of painting and drawing which bring them all together. 

      MFA, Ohio State University
      BFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University