Chairs
Professor of Art
University of Montana, B.F.A., San Francisco State University, M.F.A.
Kelly Connole teaches all aspects of ceramics at Carleton. Her courses focus on the balance of skill building, creativity, community-based work, including the Empty Bowls Project. A storyteller by nature, Connole uses clay to examine relationships between humans, their environment, and other creatures. Her work has been exhibited nationally and has been recognized with numerous awards including a McKnight Ceramic Residency two McKnight Fellowships, a MN State Arts Board grant, and a Jerome Foundation Project Grant. She served on the board of directors for Northern Clay Center, a Minneapolis non-profit arts organization committed to advancement of the ceramic arts, for several years and has curated numerous exhibitions for the Clay Center. Her work is featured in an episode of MN Original.
Chair of Art and Art History
The Ohio State University, BA ; Northwestern University, MA and PhD
Jessica Keating is Associate Professor of Art History at Carleton College. Professor Keating’s research and teaching addresses the history of art in early modern Europe, focusing particularly on the intertwined histories of collecting; technology; cultural contact and exchange; and empire and sovereignty. Her book, Animating Empire: Automata, the Holy Roman Empire and the Early Modern World (Penn State University Press, 2018) explores the religious and political histories of six clockwork automata that were produced and collected in the Holy Roman Empire during the second half of the sixteenth century. Currently she is working on the question of how the Kunstkammer of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (r. 1576-1612) represented sovereignty. She is also in the process of completing a short book, Impossible Nature: The World of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, which is forthcoming with Reaktion Books.
Faculty
Grinnell College, B.A., The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, M.A., University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D.
Ross Elfline offers courses in the history of art and architecture since World War II. His research focuses on Radical Architecture practices in Italy, Austria, Britain and America in the 1960s and 70s. His current book project considers the intersection of architecture and performance in America in the late 1960s and 70s. His additional research interests include conceptual art in America and Europe; the history and theory of the neo-avantgarde; sound art; queer art; and community-based art and design practices. His research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
Johnathan W. Hardy holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. His research combines cutting edge digital technologies with traditional art historical and archaeological inquiry to explore the hidden depths of Western Asian visual culture. His main research area focuses on the art and architecture of the Sasanian Empire (224 – 650 CE) and its religious minorities. His current book project examines the interconnected network of stamp seal iconography in the Sasanian era, answering the question, “how does one express their cultural identity through a restricted iconographic repertoire?”
Carleton College, B.A., University of Tennessee, M.F.A.
Jade Hoyer teaches courses on printmaking and observational drawing. She is a multimedia artist who has exhibited her work internationally and has been recognized by organizations such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Minnesota State Art Board. Her work is part of collections at the Museum at Texas Tech University’s artist printmaker research collection and the Museu da Gravura de Curitiba, Brazil.
Professor of Art History
Williams College, B.A., M.A., Yale University, Ph.D.
Baird Jarman teaches courses on the architecture and visual culture of the United States and Europe, especially during the long nineteenth century. His course topics range from Print Culture and Photo History to Modern Architecture and Urban Planning. His current research focuses especially on political caricature in the U.S. during the Gilded Age, but extends to other aspects of popular media such as Progressive-Era mural painting, early animation, book illustration, and pictorial reportage of the Civil War. He leads the Carleton off-campus studies program Architectural Studies in Europe in alternate years. He is also currently the director of the Humanities Center at Carleton.
Carleton College, B.A., Illinois State University, M.F.A.
Eleanor Jensen teaches drawing and printmaking courses, directs the South Pacific Studio Art OCS program, and founded a drawing club on campus. Her studio work references specific elements of ways we study the natural world, as well as broader concepts – how we perceive the natural environment and deepen our understanding of the places in which we live. She is interested in interdisciplinary collaboration, which has generated two Mellon Funded Public Works projects, a Muirhead Fund for the Arts and Sciences Collaboration course focused on tallgrass prairie, and an artist residency at the Sagehen Creek Field Station, University of California – Berkeley.
Carleton College, B.A., University of Illinois, Chicago, M.F.A
David Lefkowitz teaches painting, drawing and the Jr. Seminar: Critical Issues in Contemporary Art. In his own work, Lefkowitz combines Western traditions of representational oil painting with the flotsam and jetsam of consumer culture to draw attention to the complex relations between image and object, past and present, and nature and culture. His work can be found in the collections of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Miami Art Museum, and The Langen Foundation in Neuss, Germany. He is represented in Chicago by the Carrie Secrist Gallery.
Exploded View: David Lefkowitz (solo exhibition)
David Lefkowitz (Personal site)
Stephen Mohring teaches sculpture, woodworking, and interactive electronic art at Carleton. He runs the college’s sawmill program, which he developed in collaboration with the Arboretum to produce sustainably harvested lumber for the art department. From 1998 to 2018, Stephen also served as a resident set designer for Ten Thousand Things Theater, the Twin Cities-based company that brings lively, intelligent theater to incarcerated, unhoused, and marginalized audiences.
Prior to joining Carleton’s faculty in 1998, Stephen taught at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI; the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland; and the College of Visual Art in St. Paul, MN. He helped to found and then for years directed The Soap Factory, a leading Twin Cities nonprofit supporting emerging artists. Stephen graduated from Amherst College in 1986 with a BA in Studio Art and earned an MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1991.
Mohring’s artistic work hinges on his fascination with the visceral nature of traditional, well-crafted materials. At its core, this work is a meditation on the transformation of raw material into sculptural object. His sculptures use wood that has been locally sourced, personally milled, and crafted primarily with hand tools.
Amira Pualwan received an MFA in Printmaking from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, and a BA in Studio Art from Wheaton College (MA). She has completed residencies at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Women’s Studio Workshop Beisinghoff Residency, among others.
Artist’s website
Vanessa Reubendale is an art historian and educator, specializing in twentieth-century American art, focusing on performance, intermedia, and questions of artistic labor. In her scholarship, she has aimed to find creative and surprising connections between dance, popular culture, politics, and the visual arts in order to think differently about the art historical canon. Inclusivity and thinking across disciplines are central to both her scholarship and teaching, which integrate methodologies from art history, American studies, and dance theory.
University of Virginia, B.A., New York University, M.A., Ph.D.
Kathleen Ryor teaches courses on Asian art history and the Introduction to Art History. Her primary area of research is Chinese painting of the late Ming dynasty. Her other research and teaching interests include interactions between different modes of representation in the Ming and Qing periods, Chinese gardens, 20th-century Chinese art and Japanese prints. Her position was sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. She is currently a board member of the Society for Ming Studies.
Danny Saathoff teaches metalsmithing which focuses on jewelry-based design skills in fabrication and casting. He is both a jewelry designer and a sculptor. Because of this, his work ranges from the very small and intimate to the very large and substantial but always focusing on craftsmanship and detail. Danny is a founding member and former Board Chair of the Minnesota Jewelry Arts Guild. He is the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant and has work in numerous private and public collections including a major commission for the Minneapolis/ St. Paul Airport where he created 24 zeppelin style lightships that fly through the terminal. His jewelry has been exhibited nationally and sold in galleries across the country.
Carleton College, B.A., Bowling Green State University, M.F.A.
Juliane Shibata is a ceramic artist and educator based in Northfield, MN. Her work is informed by the Japanese concept of mujō (mutability and impermanence) as well as the Pattern & Decoration movement. Juliane draws viewers to her work through the rhythm of repeated forms that visually energize the space around them. Her temporary installations in unexpected spaces draw attention to both the nature of our own existence in relation to the constructed environment and to traces of activity in and around the architecture we encounter.
Recent grants of hers include a 2026 Forecast Public Art Mid-Career Project Grant, a 2026 Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, a 2025 Center for Craft Teaching Artist Cohort Grant, and a 2021 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists. Juliane received the Tile Heritage Prix Primo award at the 23rd Annual San Angelo National Ceramic Competition and first place in the 62nd Arrowhead Regional Biennial. She has been a resident artist at Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville, VA; Art Omi in Ghent, NY; The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China; Starworks Center in Star, NC; and the College of Biological Sciences Conservatory at the University of Minnesota. Her installations have been commissioned by, among others, Abbott Northwestern Hospital and the Four Seasons Hotel Minneapolis. Works of hers belong to the permanent collections of Northern Arizona University’s Art Museum, the Brown-Forman Corporation, the Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College, and the Francis Greenburger Collection.
Artist’s website
Xavier Tavera has had a passion for portraiture for most of his life as a way to engage with people and their stories. Tavera’s work oscillates between documentary and the imagined with the sole purpose of telling a story. After moving from Mexico City to the United States, Tavera has devoted himself to tell the stories of the Latin American diaspora, often recontextualizing with the purpose of providing visibility and fair representation.
Tavera has shown his work extensively in the Twin Cities, nationally and internationally including Germany, Scotland, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece and China. His work is part of the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Plains Art Museum, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minnesota History Center, Ramsey County Historical Society, the Weisman Art Museum and the National Museum of Mexican Art. He is a recipient of the McKnight fellowship, Jerome Travel award, State Arts Board, and Bronica scholarship.
Artist’s website
Staff
Indiana University, B.A., M.A., M.L.S, University of Minnesota, Ph.D.
Kate has worked as a librarian in a variety of settings. In her current role as Visual Resources Manager, she supports art faculty and students by providing image research support and specialized visual arts resources.
Emeriti Faculty
Senior Lecturer in Studio Art, Emeritus
University of Nebraska, Kearney, BFA; Hunter College, MFA
Dan Bruggeman teaches observational and figure drawing. His own work reflects an interest in the portrayal of natures complexity and the challenge of presenting a whole comprised of parts belonging to different dimensions. Bruggeman has recently exhibited his paintings and dioramas at Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis and Bridgewater, Lustberg, Blumenfeld Gallery in New York. His work can be found in public and private collections including The Minnesota Historical Society. He has also received McKnight, NEA and Minnesota State Arts Board fellowships.
Hamline University, B.A., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, M.F.A.
Fred Hagstrom teaches printmaking, drawing, art and narrative, and artist’s books. After earning his B.A. from Hamline University, he studied with S.W. Hayter at Atelier 17, Paris. He works in a wide variety of media, with an emphasis on intaglio and woodblock prints. Examples of his work can be found in the Groveland Gallery, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Walker Art Center, and he has exhibited in national and international competitive exhibitions. He has also received McKnight and Blandin Foundation Fellowships.
Alison Kettering retired in 2014 from many years teaching Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture. She has published books and articles on Rembrandt, Dutch pastoral art, and the drawings and paintings by 17th-century artist Gerard ter Borch. An article on Dutch images of men at work appeared in the Art Bulletin (2007); other articles include one on “Rembrandt and the Male Nude” (2011); still lifes in Dutch genre paintings (2016); Rembrandt’s Portrait of Dirck van Os in the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (2017); Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox in the Louvre (2019); amateur women watercolorists; and Goltzius’s chalk portrait drawings.
From 2008-2021, she was Editor in Chief of JHNA, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (jhna.org) an open-access, refereed online journal, and is now Past Editor in Chief.
Kent State University, B.F.A, Rochester Institute of Technology, M.F.A.
Tim Lloyd taught metalsmithing,ceramics,observational and field drawing for 40 years before retiring in 2004. Working with silver, copper, bronze, and gold, he made jewelry and small containers whose textured surfaces often are inspired by landscapes, erosion patterns and plant forms. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be seen in the Smithsonian Institution. He is represented by the Raymond Avenue Gallery in St Paul MN. In June 1998 he received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Minnesota Crafts Council. He continues his work in his home studio.
University of Minnesota, B.F.A., Cranbrook Academy of Art, M.F.A.
Linda Rossi teaches photography, digital photography and the Junior Seminar Critical Issues in Contemporary Art. Her work is primarily in large-scale photo installation including video and sculpture to illuminate both historical and current issues. She has received numerous Jerome, McKnight and Minnesota State Arts grants. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Strogonvo Palace, Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran.
Her work can be viewed in the permanent collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.