Faculty Bios
Ann Christenson
Christenson Home Page 
Momently
Ceramics professor Ann Christenson joined the WSU faculty in 1990 and coordinates the University's highly acclaimed ceramics program. Her work has been exhibited across the United States, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Russia. Most recently her work was featured in exhibits at Gallery 128 in New York City and in the Foshan-Nanfeng Invitational Exhibition in the People's Republic of China.
Maria DePrano
M.Deprano
Maria DePrano received her Ph.D. from UCLA. She joined the faculty at WSU in Fall 2005 where she is an assistant professor of Pre-Modern Western art history. Her research interests focus on the depiction of women in Italian Renaissance art, portraiture, and the intersection of humanism and women's life passage rituals in objects commissioned in honor of women. Her research has been supported by the WSU CLA Initiation and Completion Grant, the Fulbright Commission, and the UCLA Dickson fund. Professor DePrano offers courses on the Art of Ancient Greece and Rome, Renaissance Art of Europe and the Art of the Middle Ages in Europe. In addition, she teaches the introductory survey of art history from prehistory to the contemporary period.
Michelle Forsyth
mforsyth,com
michelleforsyth,com
Born in Vancouver BC in 1972, Michelle Forsyth holds an MFA from Rutgers University and a BFA from the University of Victoria. In the studio, she is most concerned with the visceral qualities of the hand-made and the power it holds to counter the potential dehumanization of rapidly transmitted, and publicly consumed images of spectacle. Her work is represented by The Hogar Collection (Brooklyn, NY); Third Avenue Gallery (Vancouver, BC); Zaum Projects (Lisbon, Portugal); and The Lorinda Knight Gallery (Spokane, WA). She recently received second prize in the William and Dorothy Yeck Award for Young Painters Competition at Miami University in Oxford, OH and in the fall of 2008 her work will be included in the forthcoming book, Carte Blanche, Vol. 2 - Painting, a survey and showcase of the current state of Canadian Painting. She has taught courses at Pratt Institute (New York, NY); Brooklyn College (Brooklyn, NY) and Raritan Valley Community College (Sommerville, NJ). She has been at WSU since 2002 and currently teaches courses in painting and drawing as well as a graduate seminar.
Douglas Gast
noprogram.org
While typically digital or electronic in nature, work of Douglas Gast involves the identification and activation of the inherent elements of the media which stands to best serve his chosen message. The role of his art is twofold: It strives to clarify the very definition of art while concurrently utilizing the fundamental properties of the media to construct idea systems. These idea systems are designed to be thought through, instead of thought of, and ultimately call into question some typical (albeit, unacceptable) socio-political situation or structure (malady).
Douglas's projects take the form of videos, films, images, websites, sculptures, performances, books and installations. They have been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally in places like Chicago, Seattle, Cincinnati, Nashville, Austin, Madison and NYC as well as Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Canada.
Kevin Haas
Accumulated
The work of Kevin Haas explores aspects of memory, movement, and presence within the urban landscape. His prints, photographs and drawings slow and scrutinize the transitions and changes in the built environment. Haas earned his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Indiana University where he studied printmaking and digital media. Since 1995 his work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the US and in Canada. He has been included in exhibits at Critical Line Gallery in Tacoma, the Jundt Museum in Spokane, and was a member of the Shift Collaborative Studio and Gallery in Seattle. He is a recipient of both the Artist Trust Fellowship and GAP grants. In 2006 he chaired the College Art Association panel titled ‘Convergent Theories: Printmaking, Photography and Digital Media” focusing on the interrelationships between these media. His work can be seen at the Lorinda Knight Gallery in Spokane.
Carol Ivory
Ivory.Home
Carol Ivory has degrees from Fordham University (BA), New York University (MA), and the University of Washington (MA and Ph.D.). An art historian, she has been at WSU since 1992. She teaches courses on Asian, Native American, and Pacific Island art. She currently serves as Chair of the Department of Fine Arts.
Dr. Ivory's research focuses on the art, history, and culture of the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. She is the author of numerous articles and essays on the Marquesas in a variety of international publications. She is Past-President of the Pacific Arts Association, an international professional organization, and at WSU is an advisor to the Pacific Islander's Club.
A recent project is an exhibition, Adorning the World, Art of the Marquesas Islands, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York May 2005-January 2006. She is currently working on an exhibition with the Art Centre Basel, Gauguin and Polynesia: South Pacific Encounters, which will open in three European venues in 2009-2010. She has received numerous fellowships, including a Senior Fellowship and Summer Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and a research grant from the American Philosophical Society.
Marianne Kinkel
Marianne Kinkel joined the WSU faculty in 2003. She received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the art and visual culture of the United States. Her current interests include 20th century sculpture, cartography, museum displays, and theories of race. Dr. Kinkel is completing a book that examines the social life of Malvina Hoffman's Races of Mankind sculptures. She has received various grants to support her research including a Smithsonian Pre-doctoral Fellowship and Library Research Grants from the Getty Research Institute. Dr. Kinkel teaches the survey of world art courses as well as special topic seminars for undergraduate and graduate students.
Nickolus Meisel
Nickolus.Meisel
Nickolus Meisel's work raises questions about perception and reality through material and context. By engaging with ordinary materials, he provokes existential concerns that manifest via installation and site specificity. He sees these investigations as cultural excavations into the perceptions of our everyday life, the objects we live with and the space we navigate and hopes these derivations can lead us much closer to who we are.
In 2002 Nik Meisel was added to Seattle's Roster of Emerging Public Artists and has since completed commissions in the Chinatown International District of Seattle and the City of Edmonds, Washington. He actively shows his work nationally and internationally. Meisel received his BFA from Kansas State University in 2000 and his MFA from Washington State University in 2002. He teaches Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Sculpture.
Io Palmer
iopalmer.com
serveandproject.com
Io Palmer received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA and an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson. She has been a teacher and educator for a variety of centers and schools throughout the country. Most recently, Io was Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, GA.
Her research extends to understand and draw inspiration from the patterns of language and dialogue, both internal and external. Through depictions of cleaning products, hair and various other forms, she creates work that reacts to society and the imprints it leaves on individuals and community. A mixed media artist, she combines traditional and new media elements to talk about race, privlidge and art.
Chris Watts
CjWatts.Home
For the past thirty years, Chris Watts has been working with systematically based art involving the incorporation of numbers in grids, sequences and color. The work has evolved from monochromatic pattern images, that used numerical locations and loading systems in grids, to the inclusion of a color code system influenced by esoteric ideas found in the Cabbala, Anthroposophy, and Theosophy. The additional layering of mystically inclined color on top of numerical marks, located within the gridded image field, reveals unexpected geometrical relationships. It is also hoped that the process of discovery experienced by the viewer will draw the individual into a contemplative state where other imaginations take over.
Ann Christenson
Blue Teddy Ceramic
34" x25" x 25"
2003
Michelle Forsyth
September 17, 1949
paper, gouache, felt, beads and pins mounted on archival panel
26 x 39 inch image, 30 x 43 inch frame
2008
Douglas Gast
This Is The Line You Should Not Cross Installation
Kevin Haas
Perimeer 03 (detail)Pigment print and photolithograh on paper
20 x 30" 2005
Carol Ivory
Marquessan tiki, private collection
Nik Meisel
Multiple Stride Piece (detail)Mixed Media Installation
15' x 50' x 25' Gallery 1078
Chico CA, 2006
Io Palmer
Untitled, from the Brooms and Brushes Series5x9' , graphite on paper, 2007
Chris Watts
Grid 33 x 33, 7-Up, 3,6,7,9, acrylic on paperKara Matsunaga, BFA 2004
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