Tyler Blog

Joni Baumgarten, Sasha Eisenman, Laura Toran, Josh Caplan and Abdullah Al-Amin
July 25, 2024

Temple faculty hope to save PennDOT’s plants from deadly road salt

Author: Jordan Cameron

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Temple and Villanova was commissioned by PennDOT in 2017 to research and monitor bioretention basins—small green spaces filled with a variety of flowering plants, grasses and trees—along I-95 to help improve their design. These basins become filled with deicing salt used to treat roads in the winter, which is detrimental to the health of the plant life. The Temple group includes Josh Caplan, an associate professor of horticulture at Tyler, and Sasha Eisenman, chair of Tyler’s Architecture and Environmental Design Department.  Read More

July 22, 2024

Envisioning a Therapeutic Career Path Through Fieldwork

Author: Wanda Motley Odom

Art therapy major Paloma Collins (BA ’24) had never worked with elderly adults before, so she didn’t know what to expect when she started fieldwork as part of her capstone studies with residents of the older adult community at Wesley Enhanced Living at Stapeley in Philadelphia.“I learned to ask a lot of questions,” reflected Collins, who was instrumental in helping residents design and craft a four-foot by eight-foot sensory mural on the memory care floor in a hallway where residents pass by to get to their apartments or seek out activities. She described the project as “born of conversations,” spending time getting to know about the residents, their lives and capabilities, and what gave them feelings of calm, comfort and security. Read More

Cover of Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex by Jeffrey Nesbit
July 18, 2024

Assistant Professor of Architecture Publishes New Book on NASA's Infrastructural History

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

Tyler Professor of Architecture Jeffrey S. Nesbit has published a new book that examines the 20th-century American rocket launch complex at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure, and aerospace history. Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex (Routledge, 2024) surveys the architectural histories and aesthetic considerations that helped to develop America’s public image of early space exploration. Read More

Derek Resse, PBJ
July 16, 2024

MFA Student Curates Show about ‘Myth’ of American Dream

Author: Jordan Cameron

Natalia Purchiaroni, a second-year MFA candidate in Photography, had never curated an art exhibition before having the idea for what would become The Myth of the American Dream, now on view in the Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery this July.Over the last 10 years, Purchiaroni has observed more and more people—across all political affiliations—begin to ask questions about how much the American government protects and serves its citizens. She has noticed that an increasingly large number of conversations with peers, family members, and even in professional and academic settings, center around the state of the nation and the anxieties about it.  Read More

June 17, 2024

Altered Books: A Practice in Art Therapy

Author: Wanda Motley Odom

Art Therapy major Valerie Ramos’s book In Bloom is an explosion of mixed media, tissue paper, newsprint, patterned craft paper, felted snippets, tinsel scalloped doilies, and stiffened netting. The book’s assemblages of multicolored pages are so full that they sit up like wings when fully open, which seems apropos as the center of the book coyly resembles a swallowtail butterfly, with puffy wings of mauve and pink and purple and blue and silver.  Read More

June 6, 2024

Tyler Ceramics Alum Named Resident Artist at The Clay Studio

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

Bradford Davis (MFA '24), an alum of Tyler's Ceramics program, will join The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, one of the nation's oldest and most respected centers for ceramics, as a Resident Artist this fall. The residency program offers the top emerging ceramic talent in the U.S. and abroad the space, time, and resources to develop their artwork and their professional lives.Davis is an award-winning multimedia artist who uses ceramics to express his emotions and responses to his traumas and life experiences. As a retired Army Artillery Officer, his journey of healing feeds his creative research.  Read More

Judith Schaechter and her biophilic dome project in progress.
June 4, 2024

Adjunct Professor Judith Schaechter Featured in WHYY News

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

Tyler Glass Adjunct Professor Judith Schaechter was recently profiled by WHYY News about her role as the current artist-in-residence at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, which explores the biological basis of aesthetic experiences. Schaechter's residency project is a stained-glass dome that speaks to the concept of biophilia— the human tendency to seek deep connections with nature. Read more. Image: Judith Schaechter and her biophilic dome project in progress. Photo credit: Kimberly Paynter/WHYY Read More

L–R: Grace Lenart, Chandler Kennedie McLaurin, Frankie Napoli
May 24, 2024

Golden Owls: Three Grads Reflect on Ambler Campus

Author: Jordan Cameron

Students in the Landscape Architecture and Horticulture programs make their way to the Temple Ambler Campus to do some of the most important hands-on learning of their time at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.  Read More

Nghi To
May 22, 2024

Tyler GAID Alum Selected for Chronicle Books Design Fellowship

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

Nghi To, a 2024 graduate of Tyler’s MFA program in Graphic & Interactive Design (GAID), has been selected for a prestigious Chronicle Books Design Fellowship, awarded by the independent book publisher to talented, emerging designers.   Chronicle Books is a San Francisco-based publisher and distributor of illustrated books, gifts, toys, and games for children and adults. To is one of three early-career designers chosen among a high volume of applicants for this year’s cohort of the publisher’s competitive design fellowship program. The fellowship runs from July 9, 2024, through June 27, 2025.  Read More

May 22, 2024

CARAS Grant Winner Shines Light on His Heritage Through Art

Author: Wanda Motley Odom

In December 2022, Printmaking major Eliezer Lompo (BFA ’25) was fortunate enough to travel to his parents’ country of origin, Burkina Faso in West Africa, and explore various aspects of the culture and heritage of Gourmantche tribe that they are a part of.“As a second-generation immigrant, it has always been difficult to establish a strong connection with my culture” living in the United States as he found that very few artistic depictions of the Gourma people and their culture exist,” Lompo said recently.“One of my biggest ambitions is to visually document the Gourmantche culture. Depictions of historical, mythological events, portraits of important figures, and native landscapes are what I plan to incorporate over a series of prints and paintings.” Read More