New Art and Design Faculty and Staff

The Art and Design Department is pleased to welcome Laura Krifka to the studio art concentration faculty and Wesley Carr as our new studio art technician. 

Laura Krifka

For the 2018-19 academic year, the Art and Design Department would like to introduce a new addition to our faculty in the studio art concentration with a specialty in painting: Laura Krifka. Krifka (Art and Design, 2008) grew up in Los Angeles and received a Master in Fine Arts from the University of Santa Barbara in 2010. She has worked across disciplines in drawing, sculpture and video with a primary focus in painting. Krifka dissects the way power and identity are constructed in visual culture. She is interested in how the language of art history has blended with film and photography, dissolving distinctions between high and low and making visual factuality tenuous. She is represented by Bravinlee Programs in New York, and has exhibited as part of LA Louver’s Rouge Wave Program in Los Angeles. She has shown across the U.S. in both solo and group exhibitions as well as in internationally recognized fairs. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. She was the recipient of the Davyd-Whaley Artist Teacher Grant in 2017. Her work has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Art Week LA and Art Pulse Magazine. Her work can be viewed at www.laurakrifka.com.

Wesley Carr

With the retirement of Dave Deering last year, the department is pleased to announce the addition of Wesley Carr as our new instructional support technician II (aka studio art technician). Carr was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has a background in glassblowing, metal fabrication, and woodworking. He has a BFA in sculpture from Alfred University and has a passion for making things that explore ideas around self-sufficiency and craft. When he is not making things, he is outside climbing rocks or mountain biking.