This website uses cookies. Learn more via our web privacy policy. For questions, please email dataprivacy@columbusstate.edu.
Residency Programs - Columbus State University

{{ rssData.title }}

{{ rssData.description }}

Department of Art

Study art in a community of creative learners.

Residency Programs

Jared Ragland Photography

A Unique Model for Teaching, Production, and Outreach

Visiting Artists and Scholars Residency Program (VASRP) and Summer River Fellow

The Visiting Artist and Scholar Residency Program and the Summer River Fellow brings prominent studio artists, art historians, art critics, and curators to CSU's Department of Art for long or short term residencies. Residents interact with students and faculty, lead workshops related to their disciplines, and give public lectures on their work. They may offer a seminar on a topic within their area of expertise, mount exhibitions, or work with students and faculty on collaborative projects. Our residents are provided with an apartment within one block from their studio in the newly renovated Seaboard Depot Art Studios, and the Corn Center for the Visual Arts. Residents pursue their own research and creative production, and invariably find their visit to Columbus's thriving arts community to be a positive, productive, and enjoyable experience. This highly successful program, now in its sixth year, has been made possible through the generous support of the Mildred Miller Fort Foundation, the Norman S. and Emmy Lou P. Illges Foundation, the CSU Friends of Art, and many others.

Jared Ragland

Jared Ragland (MFA, Tulane University) is a fine art and documentary photographer and former White House photo editor. Utilizing a range of photographic tactics including reportage and historical processes, filmmaking and bookmaking, and image/text relationships, his visual practice critically confronts issues of identity, marginalization, and history of place through social science, literary, and historical research methodologies. Jared’s work has been exhibited internationally, with recent shows at The Front (New Orleans, La.), Candela Books + Gallery (Richmond, Va.), the In/Out Transylvania Foto Festival (Cluj, Romania), Birmingham Museum of Art SHIFT space (Birmingham, Ala.), The National Geographic Society (Washington, D.C.), and the Royal Geographic Society (London, UK). He has produced three artist books under his collaborative publishing platform, One Day Projects, which can be found in collections including the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, Birmingham Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, and the Phoenix Art Museum. Jared’s photographs have been featured by The New Yorker, New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair Italia, Forbes, and The Oxford American, and his visual ethnographic research has been published in more than a dozen social science textbooks and high-impact journals, including the first photographs to ever be published in the flagship social sciences journal, Criminology. His first film, Some Million Miles, (co-directed with Adam Forrester) received the Reel South Short Award at the 2019 Sidewalk Film Festival and is currently distributed by PBS.

Two Types of Residency Programs

Visiting Artists and Scholars Residency Program

The Visiting Artist and Scholar Residency Program and Summer River Fellow Residency Program bring prominent studio artists, art historians, art critics, and curators to CSU's Department of Art. VASRP residencies are typically 4 weeks in length and Summer Fellow residencies are typically 2-4 weeks, although additional time is negotiable. Both VASRP and Summer River Fellows receive research stipends based on the type and length of their residency.

Past VASRP Archive

Columbus State University Department of Art is pleased to announce our 2015 River Fellow Artist in Residence, Namwon Choi. Namwon residency begins June 1 to July 31. Join us for her lecture in partnership with the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries at the Mildred L Terry Library, Tuesday, June 2nd at 5:30 pm.

Namwon Choi was born in Seoul, Korea. She received her BFA and MFA in Oriental Painting from the Hongik University in Seoul, Korea in 2002 and MFA in Drawing, Painting and Printmaking at Georgia State University in 2014. Choi's uses self-portraiture as a process of structuring or composing a true view of herself with evidences of her existence. She describes a fuller view of herself by assembling her skin paintings, records of her existential journey, with studio objects. This attempt is to negotiate her placement as an artist between tradition and non-tradition, modern and contemporary on a planar as well as an extensive dimensional space. In 2014, Choi had her second solo exhibition, Ventricle, at the XChange Galley in Atlanta, GA followed by her first solo show, A Part of a whole, at the Welch Gallery, Atlanta. She was awarded Creative Community Housing Project Artist in Residence from The Creative Project, Atlanta, GA and Walthall Artist Fellowship, WonderRoot Arts Center, Atlanta, GA. She was recently a Visiting Assistant Professor in painting at Tennessee Technical University.

February 28 - March 11
Archive, 2013, From "Fabrics of Socialism" series
Digital color print, 40 x 50 in

Vesna Pavlović is our 2015 Visiting Artist and Scholar in Residence. Vesna obtained her MFA degree in Visual arts from Columbia University. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Vanderbilt University where she teaches photography and digital media. She has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Museum of History of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Her work is included in major private and public art collections, Phillips Collection and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington DC, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia, among others. While in the program Vesna will be working with the students in the Department and giving a public lecture.

Sarah Hobbs is a Columbus native who lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She received her BFA in Art History and her MFA in Photography, University of Georgia, Athens, GA. Hobbs constructs psychological space that explores the human psyche. She relishes the idea that we are all beautifully flawed. Hobbs explores human behaviors and compulsions in clinical subjects and believes that tendencies toward one issue or another are present in everyone. The settings are always in actual spaces as opposed to a studio. The domestic setting places the scene in reality while the situation created is an elaborate exaggeration. The space represents a thought process, a feeling, or a subconscious drive. The 2011 Artadia Grant Awardee, Hobbs work is in the collections of: Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Sir Elton John Collection, Knoxville Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston). While at CSU, Sarah is creating an installation at the McCullers Center and exhibiting her new works at the Seaboard Depot ArtLab Gallery.

Jiha Moon is one of our 2014 Course Program Artist. Moon is known for combining traditional Asian landscape-painting techniques with American Modern and Pop art influences, Moon's colorful compositions blur the lines between East and West to speak to the cultural pluralism of contemporary society. Jiha lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. Jiha received a MA and MFA from the University of Iowa in Iowa City (2001/02); a MFA from Ewha University in Seoul, Korea (1999); and a BFA from Korea University in Seoul (1996). Jiha's work is in the collection of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA; Smithsonian Institute, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Asia Society and Museum, New York, NY; Neuberger Berman Art Collection, New York, NY; and UBS Collection, New York, NY. While in the program, Moon is going to work closely with the Advanced Painting class.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in this law office on Christmas Eve, 1865.
The historical marker reads, "Ku Klux Klan organized in this law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones, December 24, 1865.

Congratulations to Jessica Ingram for her recent exhibition at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN

A Civil Rights Memorial by Jessica Ingram

A Civil Rights Memorial is a collection of 30 photographs, taken by Jessica Ingram, of marked and unmarked locations that hold historical significance for the Civil Rights movement. Ingram travelled across the American South, capturing the present day appearance of sites where Civil Rights era atrocities, Klan activities, and slave trade occurred. From the site of the Neshoba County killings in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to Ringold, Georgia where Mattie Green was killed in her home by a bomb in 1960, the exhibit remembers well known and forgotten events associated with the Civil Rights movement. With these images, Ingram provides captions with historical information she gathered from interviews of family members and local people. While a majority of the images remember the violence associated with the Civil Rights movement, others highlight its successes. One photograph is of Koinonia Farms, an interracial community that withstood firebombing, night riding, Klan intimidation, and economic boycotts, during the Civil Rights movement, and still exists today.

CSU Department of Art is pleased to welcome our Spring Semester Visiting Scholar, Dr. Laura Amrhein. A Virginia native, Dr. Amrheim received her masters and doctorate degrees in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. Dr. Amrhein is an associate professor in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Arkansas. For the last five years, she has conducted research, delivered papers before international professional organizations, and taught students onsite in 11 countries. Last year, Dr. Amrhein and a colleague from University of Arkansas led a contingent of students to the Yucatan and Chiapas, two Mexican states where the Mayan culture can be examined significantly. Her study of classic Maya iconography is pending publication by the University Press of Colorado, and a chapter published last year resulted in invitations to participate in numerous conferences around the world. Laura has received fourteen grants to support her research, including awards from the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies. She was recently awarded a grant to support her research in New Delhi, India, which focused on Indian environmental artists and their impact on global awareness.

In fall 2012, the students and faculty of CSU's Department of Art were proud to welcome internationally renowned sculptor and installation artist Blaine de Saint Croix to the RiverPark campus for a short-term residency. A Boston native, Blaine received his BFA at Massachusetts College of Art and his MFA in Sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. His sculptures, drawings, and installations have been exhibited across the country and around the world, including venues in New York, Los Angeles, London, Lithuania, and Tokyo. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies. Most notable of these are the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Scholarship, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture. Blaine is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

Columbus State University Department of Art welcomed Claire Zitzow as the 2012 Summer River Fellow. Zitzow was born and raised near Richmond, Virginia and attended Virginia Commonwealth University where she studied sculpture and intercultural urban studies. In 2011 Claire participated at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and in 2005 she received a grant to explore and research the nitrate factories, abandoned miners' housing, and battlefields in the Atacama Desert of Chile. She has exhibited at the Andrews Gallery in San Diego, the Cheekwood Museum in Tennessee, the Thompson Gallery in Massachusetts, and the Curfman Gallery in Colorado. She continues to explore environments that occupy abstract and distant spaces in our social psyche.

Ian Johnston is an architect turned sculptor based in Nelson, BC. Since the mid nineties he has been pursuing an interest in ceramic and more recently large-scale installations that often include ceramic. Johnston studied architecture at Algonquin College, and Carleton University in Ottawa and with the University of Toronto at Paris, France. Prior to opening his Nelson studio in 1996 he spent five years working at the Bauhaus Academy in post Berlin Wall East Germany. At the Bauhaus, together with two architects, he developed and facilitated a series of workshops around themes of urban renewal and public intervention in a tumultuous time of cultural transformation. His recent body of work Refuse Culture: Archaeology of Consumption examines our relationship with the environment in a series of installations using ceramic and mixed media appealing to multiple senses of the viewer.

While in the program in the spring, Ian is teaching a special topics course “Process and Invention – An exploration of exploration.” The objective of the course is to heighten the students' awareness of their own creative process and to focus on the potential that each step and decision has in revealing opportunity. This class is an interdisciplinary studio that from sculpture, installation, and expanded media.

Dawn Black was born in Louisiana where she received a BFA from Louisiana State University. She earned both MA and MFA, specializing in Painting and Sculpture, from the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History. In 2000, she spent the summer exploring Venice, Italy while making prints at Scoula di Graphica, a printmaking studio on the Grand Canal. She has had solo exhibitions at Get This! Gallery (Atlanta, Georgia), Curator's Office (Washington DC), and Kunstoffice (Berlin, Germany).Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and art fairs, notably: Scope and Pulse Art Fairs (Miami Beach, FL), CUNY Lehman Gallery (Bronx, NY), School 33 (Baltimore, MD), and Florida State University Museum of Art (Tallahassee, FL).

Dawn Black's work examines the practice of masquerade and its role in relation to conceptions of identity and power by depicting scenes of figures meticulously drawn in gouache, watercolor, and ink on paper. The figures in her work are selected from various sources, societies and time periods and are composed to create tableaux influenced by the ideas of James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, and mythmaking in general.

While in the program, Dawn Black will be giving a lecture about her practice and teaching a workshop with the Narrative Illustration students. She is coming to the Department of Art in October and staying for three weeks.

Liz Rodda is a multimedia artist working primarily with video and sound. She received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in the Studio for Interrelated Media program. Liz has exhibited work nationally and internationally. Recent exhibition venues include Dumbo Art Center, NY, 808 Gallery, Boston, Anthology Film Archives, NY, Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin, Germany and Oriel Mwaldan, Cardigan, UK. Liz is currently an Assistant Professor of Media/Video Art at the University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History.

Liz Rodda's work is about the intangible nature of desire and how it often shares the same mental space as futility. Taking the legacies of minimalism and conceptualism as departure points, she applies a slightly off-balance logic to consider both small, everyday revelations alongside galactic, otherworldly concepts. Many of her projects negotiate seemingly polar ideas such as possibility and impossibility, success and failure as well as irony and sincerity. She is interested in how we structure our world and determine what is valuable and worth pursuing. She will be joining us as our second visiting artist in resident in November of 2011. Along with lecturing, she will be giving a workshop to our students in the department.

Frank Poor received his BFA from Georgia State University and MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Professor Poor teaches at Rhode Island College and has taught at Rhode Island School of Art and Design, University of Connecticut, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and Brandeis University. Recent solo exhibitions include “Enon Cemetery Project,” at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 2009, “Frank Poor / Shadows and Signs,” at Coastal Carolina University in 2007 and “Frank Poor /Time Memory and the Poetic Impulse,” at Salve Regina University in 2005. A body of work was also included in the 2006 DeCordova Annual Exhibition; groups show held at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and curated by Nick Capasso and Rachel Rosenfield Lafo. Frank's work was featured in Sculpture Magazine, Artscope, and Art Papers.

Frank Poor reconstructs his memory of the past through his sculptures. This spring semester Professor Frank Poor is teaching a special topics course, “Memory Mapping,” a multi-disciplinary course focusing on the conceptual connection between memory and object making.

Kristy Deetz works in painting, encaustic, and book making. Her encaustic and oil paintings revise traditional images of drapery and still life and explore how image and process reveal and conceal substance and spirit. Carved wooden reliefs painted with encaustic, her “book” series are visual metaphors of the book form and autobiographical explorations. Deetz is an associate professor and Chair of the Art Discipline at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, received her MFA in painting and drawing from The Ohio State University. She is joining the Department of Art in February of 2011. While in the program, Kristy will be presenting a lecture and teaching an encaustic workshop. Her extensive exhibition record includes competitive, invitational, and solo exhibitions throughout the United States.

Columbus State University Department of Art is pleased to announce resident artist, Deborah Aschheim's fall term participation to the program. Deborah Aschheim makes installations based on invisible networks of perception and thought. Her recent work exploring the subject of memory has led her to collaborate with musicians and neuroscientists on projects that are an equal mix of science and poetry. Her recent exhibitions include “Nostalgia for the Future” at the Armory Center in Pasadena, CA and Edward Cella Gallery, LA; “Deborah Aschheim + Lisa Mezzacappa: Earworms” at the Pasadena Museum, "Deborah Aschheim: Reconsider " at Laumeier Sculpture Park, Saint Louis, MO (2008); "The Lining of Forgetting" at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC (2008), and "On Memory" at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, PA (2006-7). Aschheim has been commissioned to make data-driven public artworks for the Los Angeles Police Department, for the San Jose International Airport and for the Sacramento Public Library. She has created outdoor installations for the Wellcome Trust in London, UK, and for Beelden Buiten 2003: Fractals, in Tielt, Belgium.

Aschheim holds a BA in Anthropology from Brown University and an MFA from the University of Washington. She has received fellowships from the City of Los Angeles, the Pasadena Arts Commission, the Durfee Foundation, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She has been artist-in-residence at Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain; at Headlands in Marin, California; at Hallwalls in Buffalo, NY, at the Bemis Center in Omaha, NE and at the Roswell Museum and Art Center in New Mexico. She is currently the inaugural Hellman Visiting Artist in Memory and Aging in the Department of Neurology at the University of California San Francisco medical school. While in the program, Deborah is teaching a workshop for two weeks on Memory Mapping.

CSU Department of Art is pleased to announce our 2010 fall semester resident scholar, Shannon Fitzgerald. Shannon is coming from Oklahoma City where she has recently served as the Lead Mentor for the Oklahoma Art Writing & Curatorial Fellowship Program and is an independent writer and curator. While at CSU, Shannon is teaching a special topic course, Contemporary African Art & Art of the African Diaspora.

Shannon received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and a MA in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. She has served as Chief Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. Among her numerous curated exhibitions are "Staging: Janieta Eyre, Julie Moos, Zwelethu Mthethwa," "A Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad," "Brandon Anschultz: Transmission/ Destination" for the Center of Creative Arts and "Our Commodity: Juan William Chávez, Sarah Frost," Leslie Mutchler for the Regional Arts Commission.

Shannon Fitzgerald is giving a lecture, “Contemporary African Art & Art of the African Diaspora,” August 31 at 7:15 pm, Carpenters Hall, Room 117. Carpenters Hall is located at 4 Ninth Street (Corner of 9th and Broadway).

Fitzgerald will present work of contemporary African artists from diverse experiences and locations—both in and outside of Africa--whose practices engage in multiple narratives exploring the social, political, and cultural shifts and situations of contemporary Africa and what that means in an increasingly complex global world.

Public programming in the CSU Department of Art is made possible by the support of the Illges Foundation, the Fort Foundation, CSU Student Activity Fees, and Friends of Art.

  • several car bumpers on a wall
  • several people with weapons and two people wearing flag outfits
  • a gallery exhibit with three TVs displaying people
  • an art exhibit made of sticks
  • a painting of three people

Summer River Fellows Program

The Summer River Fellows Program brings in recent MFA graduates from top art programs to work in CSU's Department of Art each summer. The program provides each fellow with a 2-4 week residency, which includes studio space, lab facilities, housing, and a stipend. In return, the fellows work with students and faculty, and give public lectures and workshops. The goal of the Summer River Fellows Program is to assist young artists in their professional development while adding value to our program and the arts culture of Columbus.

For VASRP and Summer River Fellows applications, contact Hannah Israel, Gallery Director and VASRP Coordinator

Past Summer River Fellow Archive

Amy Flemming, Summer River Fellow Resident Artist 2010

Joshua Greer, Summer River Fellow Resident Artist 2010

Mathew Zefeldt, Summer River Fellow Resident Artist 2011

Claire Zitzow, Summer River Fellow Resident Artist 2012

Celine Browning, Summer River Fellow Resident Artist 2014

  • white fabric with a small boat on it
  • a hanging art exhibit made of wood

Ask Cody

Ask Cody