School Notes: School of Art
November/December 2022

Assistant directors for two graduate disciplines

Faculty members Maria de Los Angeles ’15MFA and Sandra Burns ’01MFA have been appointed as the assistant directors of graduate study in painting/printmaking and sculpture, respectively. Both de Los Angeles and Burns are alums of their programs and will work closely with students as both faculty and vital administrators.

In her new role, Maria de Los Angeles, critic in painting/printmaking, will work alongside the program’s director of graduate studies Meleko Mokgosi to lead the painting program at the Yale School of Art. Formerly the graduate coordinator in sculpture after first joining the faculty in 2011, Sandra Burns will continue her longtime commitment to the department as its first assistant director, leading alongside director of graduate study, Aki Sasamoto.

Four MFA alums return to New Haven as postgraduate fellows

This semester, the Yale School of Art is welcoming four MFA program alums back to New Haven as postgraduate fellows, through both new and continuing partnerships across campus.

In collaboration with the Schools of Environment and Architecture, Victoria Martinez ’20MFA and Daniel Pizarro ’12MFA will serve as the School of Art’s first Climate Engagement Fellows. Martinez will create a mural, funded by a Planetary Solutions grant, using special surface-cooling paints in a New Haven neighborhood that gets especially hot in the summertime. Pizarro will support the project as the first communications design fellow for the Climate Engagement through Art in Cities initiative.

Newly graduated alum of the photography program Brian Orozco ’22MFA is the inaugural Fredric Roberts Photography Workshops Fellow, and will establish a summer 2023 high school photography workshop in New Haven based upon the Roberts global workshops. Alvin Ashiatey ’22MFA will work in the Blended Reality Lab as the inaugural SoA/CCAM/Blended Reality Lab Postgraduate Fellow—a role developed in collaboration with the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media. Using augmented reality, virtual reality, and machine learning, CCAM’s Blended Reality project incubates new projects that layer real and virtual worlds.