Alumni Stories

MFA alum Ellen Donnelly (’16) will exhibit Call Me Rabbit, an immersive video installation, at Actual Size in Los Angeles, CA from December 15 to January 19. The New York-based artist’s first solo exhibition uses imagery, audio, and rhetoric from wellness culture, online marketing, and social media to create an anxious but intriguing landscape to consider our place as individuals and the way we define ourselves as such.

MFA alum Travis Sharp just published his artist’s book! one plus one is two ones (Recreational Resources, 2018) is a mass-produced handmade book about fake math and infinity, hand-written (in part an homage to Hanne Darboven's hand-written alternative mathematics conceptual art projects) & scanned & reproduced in an unlimited edition via CreateSpace. The work also includes many of Sharp’s drawings of hashtags and a procedural erasure of his Twitter feed via Fibonacci, patron saint of Twitter infinity.

Alum Ismaila Maidadi has been a tremendous asset to Workforce Snohomish since joining the organization as Service Delivery Program Manager in 2017. Thus far, Maidadi’s largest contribution has been leading the National Dislocated Worker Grant and Rapid Response initiative which assists dislocated aerospace employees and their families. ​Maidadi immigrated to America from ...

MFA alum Natalie Singer (’16) is thrilled to be recognized among 35 authors over age 35 who published their first book this year. 35 over 35 is an alternative to the publishing industry’s fixation on youth, acknowledging that few authors find early success. Singer’s memoir California Calling: A Self-Interrogation was published last March by Hawthorne Books. Says Singer ...

On November 8, IAS alum Kristopher Dane presented his doctoral research “Does building geometry affect active shooter outcomes?” at the SecureWorld Expo in Seattle. His research discusses how current building standards for protective design focus on a “fortress” approach that does not effectively protect against contemporary attack vectors such as active shooters.  Furthermore, these standards provide little guidance to private building owners whose facilities are increasingly targeted by “active shooters.” His findings show that overall building geometry has an effect on ...