Boliou News: The Art & Art History Newsletter

News from Faculty and Staff

Jessica Keating, Associate Professor of Art History, Department Chair
The 2024-2025 academic year was a very exciting one. Not only did I teach a new course on the history of the nude, but I also took a group of six majors to Chicago on a field trip. As part of ARTH 298: The History of Art History the field trip exposed students to a number of art historical resources in Chicago. We spent an entire day in storage and in the Ryerson Reading Room at the Art Institute of Chicago, and another afternoon in Special Collections at the Newberry Library. The students also met with curator Alison Fisher from the Art Institute and Deputy Director of Academic Engagement, Jill Bugajksi. At the Newberry the students had a coffee with Director of The Center for Renaissance Studies, Lia Markey. This field trip was made possible by a generous anonymous benefactor of the department. We hope to be able to more field trips like this one in the future. 
With regard to research, I spent a portion of year editing my manuscript Impossible Nature: The World of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Reaktion Books, 2026), and writing an article on Daniel Fröschl was the imperial miniature painter and imperial antiquarian at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. 
In other news, I got engaged, and am thrilled to report that I will be marrying Professor Larry Cooper in a very small ceremony on Crete this coming summer. 

Kelly Connole, Professor of Art, Associate Department Chair
It’s an odd year and that means a beautiful fall term immersed in the Arts of the Japanese Tea Ceremony.  Professor Ryor and I have a fantastic group of 14 students shaping clay in magical ways as they study all things related to tea.  Student workers keep the studio welcoming and well-functioning– this term with a focus on using clay from the Arboretum.   We are happy to have Mariko Bolton ‘25 as our Educational Associate for the year– Mari brings a lot of joy and community organizing to the department.  
We celebrated the 21st  Empty bowls at Carleton last spring with a huge community meal and a record 1100 beautiful handmade bowls.  Since 2004, we’ve raised over $190,000 for the Northfield food shelf.  This project remains such a treasured event for our campus community.
Please stop in to visit next time you’re in Northfield. I’m always eager to catch up!

Baird Jarman, Professor of Art History
Greetings from Boliou and the Weitz, where I continue to split my time as I finish a three-year stint as the director of the Humanities Center. Though it has cut into my time and teaching with Art & Art History, the Humanities Center work has been very fulfilling. Last year the center’s advisory board and I largely concerned ourselves with advocating for, and imagining the possible architectural program of, a suite of interdisciplinary humanities spaces. This culminated with a formal vision for a new center that was endorsed by the college trustees in the spring. As the new 2025 Campus Facilities Plan describes, “One of the two high priorities … is the construction of a connection between Leighton and the Library, which would provide a home for the Humanities Center as well as needed additional program space for campus events. This project will also involve a renovation of Leighton, which will be an opportunity to modernize some of Leighton’s classrooms while also providing more breakout and student study spaces.” We are delighted that the trustees and the administration share our belief that this would be an important and timely addition to campus, and I am excited and hopeful for such planning to proceed further in the coming years. (The other major priorities for facilities planning, by the way, for those who might be curious, are a variety of new athletic/recreation facilities, “a new sustainability center between Gould Library and Lyman Lakes,” and significant renovations to Willis Hall). I hope to cross paths with many of you at Reunion this June!

Stephen Mohring, Professor of Art
Happy day after the full moon here in Northfield with clear skies and only the very first chills of autumn peeking around the corners of the late evening.  While the warming climate has its perks for our heating bill, it is scary to still have the AC on in my car.  We are also (very sadly) seeing the all too real effects of global warming in the sawmill, with a growing wood-hungry insect population being able to overwinter in the not-cold-enough storage shed.  If anyone is sporting a wood-kiln or shipping container they are no longer using, please give me a call!
This term I have a blissfully small Table class just finishing up their treasure containers, and a vigorously large (and vigorously active) Intro Sculpture class now in the middle of their first critique.  The basement of Boliou is sporting more plaster dust than it has in several years!  
Speaking of dust, we are all recovering from a very busy summer of repairs in Boliou and the faculty studios, with updates to our thermostats, wifi, drainage, and (most intrusively for me) the dust collection system in the woodshop. These did not go off without a hitch, sadly keeping some of us more active in Boliou than we were planning on over the summer.  Many Kudos to Andrea and Kelly for their help keeping our building in working order and getting our shops and art-yard back in shape just in time to start the term. 
An upside to all that chaos is that we are now much more environmentally sustainable in the woodshop, with the new dust filters being robust enough to return healthy air back into the building, instead of exhausting the conditioned air outside.  It is a noisy marvel to behold, so Please feel free to ask for a tour if you find yourself in town.  
Best wishes for a peaceful winter and well attended special elections this November.

Katie Ryor, Tanaka Memorial Professor of International Understanding and Art History
I was on sabbatical for the entire 2024-25 academic year during which I was conducting research for my book project, Scopic Regimes of Botany and Cosmology in Chinese Painting of the Ming Dynasty.  It examines new developments in one of the three major genres of Chinese painting, the “bird-and-flower” genre and connects these paintings to contemporary studies of the botanical world, which were related to a renewed interest in pharmacopeia, advances in horticultural knowledge, and the function of the garden as a place for understanding fundamental principles of the universe. 
I had an extremely busy year, starting with a research trip and conference presentation in Singapore and Indonesia in July, followed by participation in a Rare Book School course at Princeton on books of the Ming dynasty.  During the fall, I received a Senior Hart Smithsonian Fellowship at the National Museum of Asian Art.  I was in residence in DC for the month of October and presented my work at the University of Pennsylvania. Afterwards, I traveled to Taiwan, Hong and Japan during November, followed by another brief stint in DC in December.  I presented at the CAA conference in NYC in February and the ASIANetwork conference in San Antonio in March.  The month of April was mostly spent travelling in China.  Finally, I was invited to be part of a Chinese Plant Humanities initiative and gave a paper at the workshop at the University of Virginia at the end of May.  Needless to say, after the relentless pace of travel, I spent the last stage of my sabbatical this past summer entirely in Northfield.

Dave Bailey ’85 (Philosophy,) Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art History
This fall I’ve been honored to return to Boliou as a Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art History, filling in for a portion of Ross Efline’s well-deserved sabbatical. It is an incredible gift to return as a teacher to this space where so many of my own formative learning experiences happened. I am grateful to the entire department for an exceedingly warm welcome, and to Jessica for her courage in inviting me to develop courses based in very recent and experimental practices. It’s been a great challenge but my mantra has been a phrase Ray Jacobson and I used to say to each other when pouring bronze or facing any tough or decisive step: “Let’s give it a go!”. I utter them and channel that energy each day as I clean a few stray leaves off his fountain (looking better than ever, btw) before heading inside. 
Both courses have an ecological focus and a strong interdisciplinary bent. “Invisible from Space” asks how art, perhaps more fruitfully than science, can help shift humans’ self-perceptions of our place in, and responsibilities within, complex ecosystems. It can lead to some tough reckonings, but the students seem eager for a place to speak candidly about planetary predicaments. And there have been moments of levity: in the course of researching I came across remnants of a 1958 proposal for a third college in Northfield, to be housed in a fleet of Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes out in the Arb. David Lefkowitz is the perfect artist and colleague to consider the ramifications of this parallel world-that-wasn’t. “Cultivating the Future” explores the confluence of art practices, plant knowledges and experimental pedagogy.  Before the snow flies we look forward to field days on the Carleton farm and in the Arb. 
Happy to report the students in both classes have been curious, open and full of intrepid, iconoclastic spirit. A cold day last week found many of them—some fully clothed and others ‘improvising’—submerged to their shoulders in duckweed and to their knees in Mississippi mud as we participated as invited allies in the Prairie Island Dakota Community’s annual harvest of Psincinca, aka “(musk)rat potatoes”. Dale Haworth’s Greece seminar of 1982 was my introduction to the power of place-based learning. It was something of a conversion experience for me, so I was thrilled to be able to contribute even in a small way to that important legacy. It’s one that Fred, Kelly and others have since made into a hallmark of the department. 
Was a joy to attend the opening of Tim Lloyd’s fantastic retrospective at the Northfield Arts Guild, and see the fruits of decades of his creativity and skill. Be sure to check it out if you are in the (relative) neighborhood. I’ll be heading back to Los Angeles before I know it, and will resume studio projects and teaching as adjunct faculty in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance. 
Greetings to all who have shared company in this remarkable place.

Fred Hagstrom, Rae Schupack Nathan Professor of Art, Emeritus
In February I will lead my second alumni tour to New Zealand. Both of the tours sold out in just a few days after being announced.  I hope to build upon what I learned through leading student tours there to make a good trip for alumni.  And, for my part, it is fun to have way to interact with Carleton folks.  I get a bit of that living in New Mexico, but this will be an opportunity to meet new people.
We like our life in New Mexico.  I manage to go hiking 2-3 days per week, and it feels like there are always new things to see.  I also venture out to see a bit more of the southwest, and have enjoyed going to Utah to visit national parks.  I have been able to keep up a studio practice. My recent book was a profile of six Vietnam war veterans, 50 years after the end of the war. My dealer for artist’s books closed her business, so two former students and good friends Heather O’Hara and Amadeo Lasansky developed a personal website for me.  Amadeo helped me with the photo part, and Heather constructed the site.  The site shows book works, prints as well as sketchbooks from my hiking days….  Fredhagstrom.com
New Mexico has such a deep history and cultural diversity.  We have rekindled our interest in small town baseball by discovering the pueblo baseball league.  We go every Sunday during the season. The pueblo folks are very kinds to us.  We seem to be the only non-pueblo folks in the stands.  There are 19 pueblos in New Mexico.  We also enjoy hoop dancing, and Santa Fe seems to be a major center in this.  We donated to a local foundation that teaches hoop dancing to the kids.  It is both an athletic as well as very beautiful form of dance, practiced by folks of many ages, but particularly popular with young folks.
Last February I was able to join the Carleton off campus program in Australia. This allowed me to see the Asia Pacific Triennial, and also to have some days on the Great Barrier Reef. I snorkeled over two large groupers- I did not know I would have the chance to do that again. I enjoyed the chance to meet with Carleton students again. I recently did a talk about Frank Shigemura and Carleton’s legacy of helping Japanese American students during the war for the alumni network. And I will go to Philadelphia for an exhibit of three artists who were held in camp, giving a short tour of an exhibit to alumni and talking about Carleton during the war. The Shigemura story remains one of the most important things I take from my time at Carleton- along with my opportunity to have led trips abroad for students.
If any of you feel like getting in touch, I would look forward to that. I remember so many of you, and feel very lucky to have met so many good people and having done so many things together.


Alison M. Kettering, William R. Kenan Professor of Art History, Emerita
2025 has been an exciting year intellectually.  In February, I gave a lecture on “Old Age in Art,” which, though drawn primarily from Early Modern art, included a number of modern and contemporary women artists who have challenged stereotypes, prejudice, and bias (think Alice Neel and Joan Semmel).  In May, my article on the mezzotint portraits by Irish-English printmaker Thomas Frye was published.  In September, I presented a lecture even further outside my specialty: “Western American Landscapes, Manifest Destiny, and Controversy,” which focused on Albert Bierstadt and related late 19^th-century painters whose works are now in the Seattle Art Museum.  Baird Jarman was hugely instrumental in alerting me to the revisionist scholarship around these landscapes, by which I mean scholars’ rejection of the celebratory interpretations pervasive earlier.  This revisionism led to a full-out culture war in the 1990s, with ramifications for today’s political climate in which anything countering (white) American exceptionalism ideology is threatened with defunding or cancellation. 
One of the highpoints this year was a visit to Santa Fe where I had lunch at Karen Beall’s beautiful house, joined by Fred Hagstrom who had made the trip from Albuquerque where he now lives.  While there, Fred and I marveled at the art collection that Karen and Dale had assembled. That leads me to thank Fred for introducing me to watercolor sketching. I continue to join the Bainbridge chapter of Urban Sketchers every chance I get.
While I am doing well personally, the country, the world, the planet are not.  I just heard a lecture on where all our birds have gone.  The lecturer warned that by the time a baby born today reaches old age, the bird population worldwide might be completely decimated unless we take immediate action.
But I want to end on a more cheerful note.  Do read the new memoir by Jonathan Capehart (Pol.Sci.’89, now PBS and MSNBC pundit), Yet Here I Am, where in Ch. 7, he gives an account of how his life changed after taking an art history course his senior year: “[It] helped me see a world of beauty in things all around me, and everything came alive.  I started looking at pictures with an eye for composition and light, for what is seen and not seen in the frame.  I saw architecture where I had once simply seen buildings…..”

Tim Lloyd, Class of 1941 Professor of Art and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus
This year has been a busy one for me, I haven’t traveled much but have spent a considerable amount of time working on two exhibits of new as well as uncovering older work. The new work was recently exhibited at Raymond Avenue Gallery in St. Paul, a gallery I’ve been showing at for over 40 years. That work is related to looking at life preservation through memory. It consisted of driftwood I’ve collected from Lake Superior at my cabin, preserving it with gold and copper leaf, I’ve coupled it with gold and silver reinventions of driftwood into wall pieces and wearables titled “Persistance of Memory”.
On the heals of that show, I was invited to have an exhibit here in Northfield at the Arts Guild Gallery, another gallery I’ve had a long history with. This show, “WORK, so far”, consists of work dating back the, yikes, 50’s, you might call it a retrospective. It just opened and will be up until November.

River Rossi, Professor of Art, Emerita
Retirement is a new world and I’m making the best of it! For example- I am now able to lie on the ground for hours with my grand daughter and grandson pointing at birds and clouds and laughing until our stomachs ache. Hmmm maybe its not a new world… I remember doing this with some of you during our class time, but with a camera.
Myles, (whom many of you met on our arb walks) and I are still working on our natural history book. We will complete it next year. Chris Kratt ’92 whom Myles mentored is writing the forward for our book. He and his brother Martin have co-created Kratt’s Creatures and other internationally recognized PBS children’s programs centered on wildlife and their habitats.
For the book I’m focused on illustrating the essays written by Myles- how to best present the images in an intimate and respectful manner. I’m designing it more as an artist book than a textbook. I received a SEMAC artist grant to support some of the book’s editing.
My son Simeon, whom many of you know moved the Loon distillery downtown into the old Newspaper office- they now serve pizza from home ground organic wheat and cooked in their oven from Italy. When you are in town let me know and we can meet up there!
I have travelled to the island off Venezuela, Granada and to London and Wales where I spent 6 weeks traveling with family and friends. Professor Ross Elfine and I met at a pub in London near my sister’s home- which was great fun!
I wish you all the best and I’m so happy to be in touch with many of you!
Love,
River

The Department of Art & Art History would like to mention the passing of Nancy Soth on October 8, 2025. Nancy, along with her late husband Lauren Soth (Professor of Art History, Emeritus,) hosted many gatherings for students and faculty.

News from Alumni

Donna Dennis ‘64
Wonderful things continue to flow over from 2024 when Walker Mimms profiled me in The New York Times, I had a solo show of early work at Jamian Juliano-Villani and Billy Grant’s remarkable O’Flaherty’s in New York, had my book of journal excerpts from 1969-1982 “Writing Toward Dawn”, published by Bamberger Books, launched at Karma and reviewed by Sarah Douglas of Art News, “Donna Dennis’s Newly Published Diaries Provide A Rare Glimpse Into A Heady Time of Change for Women Artists”. In 2024 I also showed “Deep Station” (1981-1985) at Max Levai’s The Ranch on Montauk. At 83 I feel so fortunate in my hard-won life as an artist, that my early work is being recognized as newly exciting and relevant and that I’m still full-tilt at it. I share this with my classmate John Hanson whose films are again getting wonderfully well-deserved attention and is at work on his first novel.
This year, 2025, in New York Art Critics Association ‘zine, Best of 2024, both Randy Kennedy and Noah Dillon chose my O’Flaherty’s show as one of 10 best and in another venue Andrew Russeth called my show at The Ranch one of the best he’d seen world-wide in 2024. As the result of the O’Flaherty’s show, my “Two Stories with Porch” (1977-79) was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum, New York and my “Tourist Cabin Porch (Maine)” (1976) by the
Buffalo AKG Art Museum. In May, I was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Coming up is a two-person exhibition at Springs Projects in Brooklyn in December with my former student from SUNY Purchase, video artist and sculptor Tommy Hartung, and early next year a solo exhibition at Max Levai’s 61 Lispenard in NYC. In fall 2026 I will install a new temporary sculpture in Times Square dedicated to and inspired by the legendary Times Square lighting designer Douglas Leigh.

Stephen Smith ‘70
Currently I am doing part-time consulting work on a Mellon Foundation grant to Spartanburg County (SC) Public Libraries, to help support the development of a mobile memory lab and a county-wide local history digitization project. (I retired as Coordinator for Local History and Special Collections for the library system several years ago.) I still enjoy studying art history; currently I am learning about the history of Black Mountain (NC) College, and its innovative curriculum, students and faculty, led by Josef and Anni Albers in its earliest phase. I’m enjoying the outdoors, and I volunteer for water quality testing locally. There is much to explore. South Carolina, and the Blue Ridge Mountains, contain fascinating geological features and a diverse population of native plants and animals. Our region continues to recover from the severe environmental damage caused by Hurricane Helene a year ago.

Bob Keller ’71
I’ve been serving as the President of the Robbin Gallery in Robbinsdale Minnesota. The gallery has been in operation since 1979, and is located in the old public library. We are a completely volunteer organization with the mission to promote the work of local artists.  I’ve also been using my time to do what I always wanted to do, paint. Over the last three years I’ve been doing mostly abstract paintings and have participated in several shows around the Twin Cities. 

I have had this print by Susan Bertram ’68 (pictured left) with me since my freshman year when I traded her one of my prints for it. As a freshman, I was honored that a talented senior art major wanted one of my pieces. It’s been hung prominently wherever I’ve lived. I just discovered she was a Robbinsdale High School alumna, she probably went to the library where the gallery is now. I haven’t been able to contact Susan, I’d love to let her know I’ve treasured it and kept it with me all these years.

Jeffery Howe ‘73
This year I curated an exhibition of Belgian 19th century landscapes which opened on Sept. 2 at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College. It is titled “A Fresh Vision: Landscape Painting in Belgium after Romanticism; The School of Tervuren in an International Context.”
All the labels and texts can be found on the exhibition’s page on the McMullen Museum’s website.  
I am also preparing a large exhibition on Belgian Symbolist art for the McMullen Museum in the fall of 2026, and continuing to revise a book on the Belgian artist Fernand Khnopff.
In May I traveled in Tuscany for pleasure, and in October will travel to Belgium for both pleasure and work. I am enjoying the opportunity to devote myself to research.

Floyd Martin ‘73
Though officially retired, Floyd continues to enjoy classroom teaching. For LifeQuest, a program for mostly retired people, he has taught this year two short courses on Baroque Art and on English Country Houses. This fall at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, he is teaching a Creative Arts course in the university’s honors program, and a course on late 19th and early 20th century European art in the art program. He also continues to play flute in the Arkansas Symphony’s Community Orchestra and lead a Youth Handbell Choir at Christ Episcopal Church. In January his daughter, who lives in Omaha, married a woman with five children, wonderfully increasing the extended family.

Beverly Naidus ‘75
I am the official artist in residence at the Seattle Public Library this fall 2025, leading a program in Art as Medicine for Catastrophic and Transformative Times. I was also a resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute writing and doing interactive, public art pieces in February & March and will return in late October for my 3rd session. By the end of the year, my Substack, Gravity Humming, will feature my fractured memoir interspersed with creative emergent strategies and in my next open studio, I am selling off all of my 5 decades of work to raise funds for Project Hope Palestine and World Kitchen. It’s a pay-what-you-can or what-you-wish fundraiser. I will sell work to people out of town via a live stream.

Philip Lange ‘78
I am having a one person photo show in Perry New York. The opening is Oct 11. The images are large wall books. Most are of reflection in windows from many locations over the last year of work . Please email me if you are interested in seeing the work. The exhibition will be at the Wyoming Arts Council in Perry, New York.

Chris Grace ‘87
In March, Katy and I visited our daughter in Rome, while she was on an off-campus program there. We saw the spectacular Caravaggio show, among other things, and introduced her to our old stomping grounds in Umbria, including Assisi and Perugia, where we lived for a year in the ’90’s. Then it was south, for a lovely week in Naples.
I’m still in the picture framing game; look for A Street Frames products at your favorite local frame shop and on the walls of select galleries and museums!

Nat Case ‘88
Ingrid ’90 and I have been down at Carleton a lot this year. Our son Roo graduated with a double major in dance and computer science (w00t!) and we have been working as a team on a book-length history of the Arb, for which I’ve been making maps and interpretive signs for 30 years (half my lifetime). We had fun walking through the senior show, including Sasha Rapacz’s delightful visual puns… which reminded me of David Lefkowitz’s senior show, which was part of why I decided to become a major. Interviewing and reading the interviews others have done in the Arb project really brought home how this kind of thing—not only learning how to do stuff, but how to imagine what what you might be able to do—is a really key part of how Carleton works. It’s like a big web of “Hunh, you mean you can actually DO that?”

Kristin Tollefson ‘89
In 2023, I spent five months in Slovakia on a Fulbright Fellowship to study drotárstvo, the tradition of woven wirework practiced by itinerant tinkers near Czech Republic and Poland. I’m now working on a Tacoma Artist’s Initiative Project grant developing wearable art that celebrates the aging body, and preparing for two exhibitions of my own work (Port Townsend and Seattle). I’d love to connect with anyone who might be interested in learning more or co-conspiring. You can find me at KLTollefson@gmail.com.

Jennifer Yorke ‘95
I am delighted to be a 2025 artist-in-residence at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, the only museum in North America devoted to surgery. The residency will culminate in a solo exhibition at the museum from April 10 through July 5, 2026.

Ethan Murrow ‘98
A new public mural commissioned by the Sun Valley Museum of Art examines the history of parachuting beavers into the Idaho mountains to restore wetlands (true story!). Solo show openings: September ‘25 at Winston Wächter Fine Art Seattle and February ‘26 at Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire Paris. New limited edition lithographs with D+S Editions France will be published this winter

Molly Kent ‘06
My art business, Hello Junco, is in its second year. I had a successful solo show of original watercolors over the summer, and this Fall I’m venturing into the world of in-person vending at art festivals and craft shows. Wish me luck!

Paul Taylor ‘00
My big news is I got married this August to my partner Tammy Chang! We met just before the pandemic and being with Tammy has made my life immeasurably better. She is a Capoerista, movement instructor, holistic nutrition expert, and generally amazing human being. What else? I curated my first exhibition in the spring. Titled “Drawn” it showed the work of 13 artists that include drawing in their practice, and happened at 120710 Art, a really wonderful space in Berkeley. I’m still in Oakland, making art and furniture. Look me up if you happen to be in the vicinity! 

Anne Hillman ‘01
After about 15 years in journalism, I decided to switch careers. I recently finished my Masters of Social Work and am a behavioral health clinician in rural Alaska. And my art history background was recently very useful with a client! I live in Anchorage with my wife and too many pets.

Sarah Moore ‘01
2025 has been about placemaking and exploration in a lot of ways for me. I completed an extensive home renovation project I’d been planning for some time, largely to once again have some dedicated home studio space. Toward the end of that project, an artist friend who has shown for many years at the art festival I run made a gift to me of two weaving looms that he was no longer using. It was an uncommonly generous gift, and so my years-long interest in fiber arts continues and deepens. I’m feeling especially creatively driven lately, moreso than I have been in many years, and I keep being drawn back to a project Stephen Mohring gave us in Advanced Sculpture class – to sculpt a gerund. This prompt is informing a body of work I’m developing in my head and in writing right now and hope to actually start constructing and working on soon. In the meantime, I’ll keep working at my day job running art festivals in Chattanooga, TN, sitting on various nonprofit boards in my community, attending as many concerts as I can, taking care of two silly cats, etc. etc. Hope to see other ’01 art/art history majors (and our professors!) at reunion next summer!

Kira Woodmansee ‘03
On Valentine’s Day 2025, I released my first print publication as an art director: the second edition of Tales from The Floating Vagabond. When I founded the Experimental Role-Playing Laboratory at Carleton in 2002, I had no idea I would end up the steward of this fun and funky cult roleplaying game. Two years after the E.R.P.L. in which my then-roommate introduced me to Vagabond, I met the creator of the game itself, Lee Garvin. Lee was a seasoned game designer, but he took a chance on me fresh out of Carleton with an art major. Over the years, Lee became a friend as well as one of my favorite clients, and my illustrations appear his games Dravakor and The Noble Wild in addition to Vagabond.
In 2013, Lee ran a Kickstarter to fund a second edition of Tales from The Floating Vagabond. Sadly, only a few months after successfully raising the money, my friend became very ill. His health never recovered, and he died in 2019 with the game less than half finished. I and three of his other friends joined forces to complete what Lee had started. They named me Art Director, and I grew into the role over four years of dedicated volunteer work. My teammates wrote. I did just about everything else, from graphic design and building the website to learning the ins and outs of US intellectual property law to laying out the entire 150+ page game book myself. We published the PDF version at the end of 2023 and hit our final goal – seeing the book back in print – a little over a year later. For more about the game and its history, check out, visit the Floating Vagabond RPG website.
I love the variety and challenge being an art director entails. I get to use the illustration skills I honed under David Lefkowitz, the technical expertise required by my job at the CMC, and the design skills I taught myself. This spring, I rebranded my studio, to reflect my focus on using art, design, and technology to help people achieve their creative dreams.

Percy So ‘06
This fall marks the 15th year of being a paper and book artist. I recently finished a project to replicate a scroll and a springback binding for the Hong Kong Legislative Council. Currently, I’m working on book art pieces for an exhibition opening spring of 2026. I recently took on an eight year old student who stumbled upon bookbinding on his own after reading an article about it. After all of the classes we have had, he has gone home to make more books! I’m very excited to see where this interest in bookbinding takes him.

Carrie DeBacker ‘08
My husband Tom and I look forward to welcoming our 2nd daughter in August 2025! My firstborn, Silvie, is three years old and creative and expressive as they come. Outside of working at Zillow (8+ years now), Silvie and I are currently working on a coloring book collaboration involving rainbow monsters.

Leah Justin-Jinich ‘12
I defended my dissertation in Japanese art history in August. In November, I will graduate with a PhD from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. This long journey began with Professor Katie Ryor’s wonderful classes, as well as the department sponsoring Professor Keiji Shinohara from Wesleyan University in 2012 to come teach Japanese woodblock printing techniques. I am so grateful, and look back fondly on my time in the department learning both art history and studio art. I’m looking forward to more opportunities to combine studio art with my research!

Stephanie S.E. Lee ‘16
After spending my ABD years in Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, and Ann Arbor, I was happy to be back in Chicago as the 2024-2025 Graduate fellow at Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art. Over the past year, I learned a lot about how a university museum operates and got to co-curate an exhibition centering Helen Frankenthaler’s lithographs. “Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper” will open September 17, 2025 and run through December 14, 2025. If you happen to swing by Evanston, please let me know what you think of the show! This May, I took part in the Clark’s Afro-Eurasian Origins of Print traveling seminar in Korea. The even mix of Asianists and Europeanists made for meaty conversations and the vibes were very print nerd summer camp. A highlight for me was getting asked to do a collection’s presentation at Seoul National University’s Kyujanggak Institute, which included me getting government permission to bring out several objects. It really makes you appreciate the sometimes automated American model of requesting rare books and maps through Aeon.
For 2025-2027, I’ll be in New York as a Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan. I’m ecstatic to be working on a range of curatorial projects there, and, delightfully, under the mentorship of a fellow Carleton Art History alum!

Emily Kampa ‘17
This past winter, I was honored to be selected as one of CSP’s Graphic Arts Workshop Residence Awardees. I spent six wonderful weeks in the GAW studio in San Francisco, CA etching, carving, and printing on their beautiful presses. I created a series of etched copper plates exploring reproductive rights and healthcare, which became a therapeutic and timely project for November 2024. This summer, I was thrilled to learn that one of these prints was selected for a printmaking-specific show at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, CA. The exhibition, Expanding the Field: New Ideas in and Beyond Print, will be on view until January 11, 2026.

Avery Davis ‘20
After four years of working at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, I was proud to be a part of “Break Room,” MCAD’s Staff Exhibition! My large charcoal portrait (pictured right) from 2020 was one of the pieces that never got to be shown as the ’20 Senior Show was virtual due to Covid-19, so it felt great to finally see it up with other talented artists’ work.

Sophie Rogers ‘21
I’m in my second year of a printmaking MFA at the University of lowa, where I teach undergraduate classes in drawing and printmaking. I think about all I learned from Dan, Fred and Eleanor and try to pass on their generosity, skill and patience. I recently gave a talk at the North American Hand Papermakers conference in Minneapolis and had a solo show here in lowa City. I keep joking that people should come do a residency at the SRCFTB (Sophie Rogers Center for the Book) to make some collaborative prints/paper/books. I’ll be here another year and a half, so stop by to make something or say hello! feel lucky to be close to people who spent a lot of time in the print shop senior year… put together a risograph printed calendar every year, and the designs friends from Carleton make are always my favorites.

Star Song ‘21
1. I got my Art History M.A. degree from Bryn Mawr College.
2. I will join the University of Michigan’s Art History program in September.
3. I presented at the Association for Art History (AAH) Conference 2025. (University of York, York, United Kingdom) Paper title: “Chang Dai-chien’s Method of Adapting Abstraction to Tradition: A Case Study on Chang Dai-chien’s Cloudy Mountains in the Style of Splashed Ink.”
4. I presented at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Conference 2025. (Columbus, OH) Paper title: “A Reconstructed Archaism: Re-evaluating Zhao Mengfu’s The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu.”

Rylyn Monahan ‘23
Hello! After graduating with my Masters in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign this past spring, I am now in Philadelphia with my (now!) fiancé Chris (also class of ‘23) working as the Collection Services Specialist at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library. I am happy to be surrounded by both books and art every day!