Meet Our
Foundations Faculty
Associate Professor and Chair of Foundations
Foundations, Visual Studies
Nichola Kinch
- Email: nmkinch@temple.edu
- Phone: 215-896-4197
- Office: Tyler 210R
- Website: www.nicholakinch.com
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 has developed an approach to teaching that stems from...- Read More
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, 1994Image...
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Associate Professor of Instruction
Foundations, Painting
Simona Mihaela Josan
- Email: sjosan@temple.edu
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 the remote rural areas of her grandparents’...
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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
ON LEAVE, SPRING 2023
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...
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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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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...- Read More
Assistant 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 Professor
Foundations
Asher W. Barkley
- Email: abarkley@temple.edu
MFA, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
BFA, East Carolina University

Adjunct Professor
Foundations
Shawn Beeks
- Email: s.beeks@temple.edu
- Website: www.slapstikskateboardart.com
Shawn Beeks is a Philadelphia-based narrative artist whose ink drawings and oil paintings depict the worst of times in the best light. His interests in human behavior, storytelling and cats have produced comic books, fine art exhibitions and a skateboard company founded in 1996.
MFA, University of the Arts
BFA, University of Georgia

Adjunct Professor
Foundations
Erin Boyle
- Email: erboyle@temple.edu
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 Professor
Foundations
Blake Bradford
- Email: blake.bradford@temple.edu
- Website: www.linkedin.com/in/blake-bradford-5877096
Blake Bradford is a Philadelphia-based writer, educator and cultural advocate. His work addresses race, access, inclusion and how public institutions engage and serve the public. Recent publications and presentations include 2020’s “Just Being,” co-authored with Dr. Risham Majeed for Art Journal Open; “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now: African American Artists in Philadelphia since 1940” published in the 2019 Routledge Companion to African American Art History, and “Who’s Not in the Picture,” presented by Frick Collection in 2019.
MA, University of Texas at Austin
BA, Williams College

Adjunct Professor
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 Professor
Foundations
Amanda D'Amico
- Email: amanda.damico@temple.edu
- Website: www.tinyrevolutionarypress.com
Amanda D'Amico is a book artist who has been collected and exhibited nationally. She serves on the boards of the Philadelphia Center for the Book and The Soapbox: Community Print Shop & Zine Library. She is the vice co-chair of events for the College Book Art Association and is an artist member of the Impractical Laborers in Service of the Speculative Arts.
MFA, University of the Arts
BA, Sarah Lawrence College

Adjunct Professor
Foundations, Sculpture
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 Professor
Foundations
Kathleen Eastwood
- Email: kathleen.eastwood@temple.edu
- Website: www.kathleeneastwood.com
Kathleen Eastwood is a Philadelpiha-based artist who makes paintings, drawings and installations that investigate intergenerational memory.
MFA, The San Francisco Art Institute
BFA, University of the Arts

Adjunct Professor
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 Professor
Foundations
Hiroe Hanazono
- Email: hiroe.hanazono@temple.edu
Hiroe Hanazono is a Philadelphia-based ceramic artist whose minimal aesthetic designs enrich the dining experience. Her obsession with food drives her to investigate how people dine and influences the work she creates to become pedestals for food.
MFA, Ohio University
BA, California State University Hayward

Adjunct Professor
Foundations
Darla Jackson
- Email: darla.jackson@temple.edu
- Website: www.darlajacksonsculpture.com
Darla Jackson's sculpture is an exploration of human emotions, using anthropomorphism of animals and symbolism to create "emotional portraiture." She received John S. and James L. Knight Arts Challenge Grants in both 2011 and 2013, and used them to create the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, a membership based community sculpture studio.
BFA, Moore College of Art & Design

Adjunct Professor
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 Professor
Foundations
Adam Lovitz
- Email: tug89356@temple.edu
- Website: www.adamlovitz.com
Adam Lovitz is a Philadelphia-based artist interested in the entropy found in both natural and urban decay. Through his paintings and mixed-media assemblages, he works an artwork towards an embodiment of terrestrial relic, licked with daily rumination.
MFA, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
BFA, University of Delaware

Adjunct Professor
Foundations
Yvonne Lung
- Email: yvonnel@temple.edu
- Website: www.yvonnelung.com
Yvonne Lung is an Asian-American interdisciplinary artist with work ranging from sculpture, performance and video to social practice. Her 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.
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
MFA, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
BFA, Texas Tech University

Adjunct Professor
Foundations
Kara M'shinda
- Email: kara.mshinda@temple.edu
- Website: www.karamshinda.com
Kara Mshinda is a visual anthropologist and collage artist whose work examines sociocultural identity, consumerism and alterity in print media. Mshinda is a gallery member of Philly Art Collective, an artist-run cooperative that promotes visual and performance art events in the Greater Philadelphia area.
MA, Temple University
BA, University of Akron
Adjunct Professor
Foundations, Painting
Sarah Roche
- Email: roches@temple.edu
MFA, University of Pennsylvania
BFA, Moore College of Art & Design
Adjunct Professor
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 Professor
Foundations
Colleen McCubbin Stepanic
- Email: stepanic@temple.edu
- Website: www.colleenmccubbinstepanic.com
Colleen McCubbin Stepanic creates physical forms from painted canvas. She is interested in the parallels between geological processes and human experiences, linking the ways in which the earth and life events are both respectively built up, saved and destroyed.
MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
BFA, University of Dayton

Adjunct Professor
Foundations
Rebecca Tennenbaum
- Email: tuk41616@temple.edu
- Website: www.rebeccatennenbaum.com
Rebecca Tennenbaum rebrands her sculptures and smart devices as "Conscious Objects," blurring the lines between magic and technology to imagine machines that are here to better the self.
MFA, University of Pennsylvania
MAT, University of the Arts
BFA, University of the Arts
Adjunct Professor
Foundations
Thomas Vance
- Email: tvance@temple.edu
MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
BFA, Cleveland Institute of Art
Adjunct Professor
Foundations
Ricky Yanas
- Email: richard.yanas@temple.edu
- Website: www.rickyyanas.com
Ricky Yanas is a Texas-born artist, educator and curator living in Philadelphia. Working within a pragmatic tradition of problem finding, he aims to create intersectional spaces of inquiry and mutual engagement through art making and art thinking.
MFA, University of Texas at Austin
BFA, University of Texas at San Antonio