Camtastic Newsletter November 2025

MFA Grad Show for Fall 2025

by Mark Stoffel, College of Arts and Media

The event “Untitled” was hosted from Oct. 20-24 at the Surplus Gallery of the “Glove Factory”, a grand exhibit space perfectly suited for a show of this nature. According to the organizer and curator of the exhibition, Professor Pattie Chalmers, all disciplines were represented here: Ceramics, glass, blacksmithing, metalsmithing, sculpture, painting, drawing and design. 

“It is the first time we’ve done this and it is like a survey of what everybody is doing in the studio at the beginning of the year,” said Chalmers, adding, “We’re doing it instead of open studios with the idea that people can see the finished pieces in a formal setting.” 

And people really wanted to see those finished pieces. In particular, Friday’s closing reception drew numerous of the community’s supporters of art, as well as many of the student artist’s friends and families.

Among the many exhibition pieces – nearly 80 in total – third-year MFA painting student Shannon Borg presented a 4 x 8 feet painting entitled “Compass,” a colorful and vibrant oil painting inspired by the connection between our ancestors and the natural elements – earth, air, fire, water, wood, metal, light and void. “Our ancestors brought us where we are,” Borg said. “I like to think about the elements and the places they came from, all represented in the colors of this painting”. 

Andy Hill, a first-year MFA student in ceramics, offered a piece that also earned a lot of attention at the exhibit – a sculpture called “Cowboy Killers,” referencing the cowboy image embraced by the cigarette brand Marlboro, and inspired by his grandfather, who a life-long tobacco addict, thought of himself as a modern-day cowboy.

Ryan Mell, a third-year MFA glass artist, had several impressive works of art to offer, such as an RA-15 automatic rifle made from glass. “I think glass is a unique material because it kind of contradicts itself,” Mell said. “It's fragile, yet really strong. It obscures and reveals. So, there's a really interesting dialogue that can go along with it. I use it a lot to talk about issues or societal things, or personal things, that are seen too taboo to bring up. But not talking about them doesn't make them go away. Sometimes the only way that you can make them resolve is by creating a dialogue around that, in my case through glass art.” 

First-year MFA Ryan Freund showcased a ladder with rungs made from pairs of shaking hands, a magnificent piece entitled “Handshake #4”. “The way I made this is I cast myself shaking hands with another artist and then created a rubber mold of that for the wax casting process,” Freund said. “This piece is kind of talking about how you can use different types of business relationships to sort of ascend. But one thing that you can't really see from the front of the ladder is the index finger upon the wrist on the backside as an indication of a hidden hierarchy within each deal. So, this is like a system of deals built as a tool of ascension, but it's kind of an underbelly, I guess you could say.”

Bowen Beaty practiced architectural metalsmithing for seven years before he decided to take the artistic route and come to SIU as an MFA student in metalsmithing. “What brought me here was three of the people that I looked up to in the craft, and it turned out they came here to get their MFA at SIU,” Beaty said. Now, in his second year, he exhibited five original pieces, and in each of them, the ease at which Beaty manipulates metal is clearly visible – thanks in part to his extended tenure as a craftsman in the industry.

Sarah Spirek earned her BFA in painting at the University of Kentucky before she joined the SIU MFA program to study painting this year. She contributed four paintings to the show. “Yeah, so these are just four studies of the light moving across my bedroom window. I did them as sort of an exploration on how to evolve my application of paint onto a surface and looking really closely at how to exaggerate certain color relationships,” she said.

Spirek has no regrets in joining SIU: “We have a really nice working space here in which we're surrounded by lots of other students and faculty. Yeah, I'm very happy.” 

“Untitled” was a win-win for all involved – the MFA students were given an apt forum to show off their work, while the greater community was able to see the vast talent of the artists and the dazzling diversity of the exhibits. They witnessed firsthand that the SIU School of Art and Design among the nation's leading schools. 

Finally, for the many folks who chose to move to Carbondale to escape the city - but still miss cultural offerings like art exhibitions – it was a breath of fresh air and proof that you can sometimes have it both ways. 

In case you missed it - the next MFA show is expected to take place in the Spring Semester of 2026.