Michelle Grabner is an artist, writer, and curator, and Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is in major museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago and Walker Art Center. She co-runs The Suburban (Milwaukee) and The Poor Farm (Little Wolf, WI), and is a 2025 Mary L. Nohl Fellow.
The heart and soul of many film productions lie within the Art & Production Design departments. From set design, to costuming to props, these departments allow for other worlds to be introduced, sustained and transported in any film. As a key component within the pre-production process it is essential that young filmmakers know how to approach art in their films. Join us at SPECIAL FEATURES to learn more about props & wardrobe budgets, sourcing & shopping, and process / mood boards. Local filmmakers and artists, Kara Mulrooney & Amanda Tollefson, will lead us in a workshop offering their expertise and backgrounds working on films with high concept art, commercial products and indie film work. If you interested in art and production design departments, this Special Features is for you!
Xuan Ye blends art, music, and technology through improvisation and computation to create software, installations, and performances that explore dissonance and meaning. Their work has appeared at MOCA Toronto, Venice Architecture Biennale, UCCA Shanghai, MUTEK Montreal, and more.
Wes Larsen is an assistant professor of design at UWM. His work spans graphic art, performance, writing and publishing, focusing on obfuscation and irreverence to explore meaning. He uses diverse print and media methods and previously ran the indie design studio Tocco in Fort Worth, Texas.
Linda Fleming, born 1945 in Pittsburgh, is a renowned sculptor and educator. Location is vital to her work which comes from three studios: a geodesic dome at Libre artist community in Colorado, Wall Spring in Nevada’s Smoke Creek Desert, and The Brewery in Benicia, CA, where she creates most of her large-scale sculptures.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s photography explores the studio as a performative space, focusing on intimate, creative exchanges. His work has been shown at the Studio Museum Harlem, MoMA, and MCA Chicago. He won the 2017 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant and lives in Los Angeles.
Camila Rosa (b. 1988) is a Brooklyn-based Brazilian illustrator and artist known for vibrant art exploring feminism, social justice, and Latin women’s representation. Using bright colors and strong narratives, she challenges stereotypes and promotes inclusivity and equality.
J Taran Diamond is a Baltimore-based metalsmith and educator. She has completed residencies at Arrowmont and Baltimore Jewelry Center, where she’s a Teaching Fellow. Outside of the studio, Diamond is an advocate for Black people in the fields of craft and academia and works to help achieve equity and accessibility within those fields.
Oaxaca-based printmakers Conhg Lopez and Enrique Gijon exhibit nationally and internationally. Gijon directs Taller de Artes Plásticas Rufino Tamayo, while Lopez works from a studio at Milwaukee’s House of RAD.
South Carolina-based painter Todd McDonald has exhibited widely, including in Denmark’s Velux International Painting Exhibition, Redux Contemporary, and the Gardiner Art Gallery. He is Associate Professor and Head of Painting at Clemson University.
The Wind Band Conducting Symposium will focus on enhancing conducting, score study, and wind band teaching. Conducting participants will conduct the UWM Wind Ensemble or Symphony Band while receiving feedback from the conducting faculty. Session topics also include conducting pedagogy, rehearsal techniques, and musicianship. Attendees may participate as either a Conducting Participant or an Observing Auditor. Conducting participants will also have the opportunity to conduct one of the large wind bands in concert at the end of the symposium.
Rory King is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary designer, creative director, writer, and educator. He’s collaborated with artists, architects, curators, designers, musicians and brands like Sony Music, Vox Media, and 2×4, and taught design at Pratt Institute and Wayne State University.
Steve Teeple (aka Teeps) is a Los Angeles-based digital artist specializing in 3D character development and printing, digital sculpting and art, visual development, and illustration. He’s worked across games, fashion, music, TV, and film, collaborating with artists like The Weekend and Billie Eilish. He graduated from UWM in Interdisciplinary Arts & Technology.
Monika Plioplyte is a Chicago-based artist born in Lithuania. Her work draws on Baltic folklore, female archetypes, personal rituals, and the uncanny. She collages paper, photographs, and other materials into narrative structures that explore the past, the transmission of information, gender, and states of "in-betweenness" as they relate to her immigrant experience.
Born in West Texas, Kill Joy explores global mythology and ancient symbols through printmaking, murals, bookmaking, and puppetry. Based in Houston, she has created community murals worldwide.
Tomiko Jones is an Associate Professor at UW-Madison whose photography and multidisciplinary installations explore social, cultural, and geopolitical transitions – considering the twin crises of too much and too little amid climate change. Narratives unfold in sculptural video installations and fictional photographs.
Cynthia Brinich-Langlois explores altered topographies, cartographic systems of ordering space, and metaphorical interpretations of ecological systems through prints, books, and video. She’s exhibited widely and held residencies at Elsewhere and Ucross. She teaches Printmaking & Book Arts at UWM.
MFA candidates Corrigan Eckert and Jack Lehtinen explore philosophical questions facing the human race and their connection to the world around them. Eckert focuses on place-based art’s role in community and land stewardship, while Lehtinen critiques AI by contrasting machine-made works with hands-on print and papermaking.