2022-2023 FELLOWS

Tea Youn

Mentor: Hasan Elahi

TeaYoun (Phonetically, TaeYun: “Tea” as in “Taylor” & “Youn” as in “Sun”) is currently a Professor and Department Chair of the Foundation Program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA, with considerable years of experience working alongside diverse teams in organizations.

She is originally from South Korea and has a varied background in education; she received academic degrees in S. Korea, Japan, and the U.S. She has been developing her leadership and management skills to embark on transnational education, emphasize the importance of understanding global perspectives in the first-year program curriculum, and focus on helping the team bring out the best in students.

TeaYoun's augmented accomplishments as department chair have been balancing numerous administrative roles such as supporting and managing faculty and staff, bridging departments and the campus community, and strategic planning. She wishes to make continuous improvements in strengthening the alignment between institution culture and identifying remaining blind spots, and prompt necessary changes, including promoting efficient and more unbiassed policies and processes and collaborating within and outside of the current organization.

 

Justin Sutters
Mentor: Colin Blakely

Dr. Justin Sutters has been the Director of the Masters of Art in Teaching (MAT) program in Art Education since 2016 and also is the current Director of Graduate Studies, including the MFA program, in the School of Art at George Mason University. He just completed at two-year faculty fellow position as the Co-Chair of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) towards SACSCOC Accreditation and a member of the Reaffirmation Leadership Team (RLT) in the Provosts Office. He is currently an elected member of the Research Commission of the National Art Education Association (NAEA) and has served as the School of Art Liaison on the Mason Community Arts Academy board of directors since 2016. As of August 2022, Dr. Sutters will serve as the Assistant Dean of Research and Assessment in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at George Mason University. 

 

Mina Cheon
Mentor: Paige Williams

Mina Cheon (천민정) was born in Seoul, South Korea; lives and works in Baltimore, New York, and Seoul. She received her PhD in Philosophy of Media and Communications from the European Graduate School, European University for Interdisciplinary Studies, Switzerland; MFA in Imaging Digital Arts from UMBC: An Honors University in Maryland; MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting, MICA; and BFA in Painting from Ewha Womans University (EWHA), Seoul, Korea. Cheon is a Full-time Professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and currently serving as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies; was a visiting professor and lecturer at EWHA and a mentor of Art-Uni-On, a global mentorship network by Hyundai Co. and the Seoul National University College of Fine Arts. Awarded the 2010 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Unity Week Award at MICA for her efforts promoting cultural diversity within and beyond her college, she has been teaching in FYE, interactive media, art history, and humanistic studies since 2004, and directed the MICA Korea summer abroad exchange program between 2004-2007, an intercultural and interdisciplinary art and design program in partnership with different universities of Korea including Hongik University, Korean University of Arts, and EWHA. She continued and advanced international art and design education at EWHA’s art and design, and global affairs departments for the next decade after during the summers. Mina Cheon is the author of Shamanism + Cyberspace (Atropos Press, 2009), was a contributor for ArtUS, Wolgan Misool, New York Arts Magazine, Artist Organized Art, and served on the Board of Directors of the New Media Caucus of the College Art Association, was Associate Editor of the academic journal Media-N where she contributed critical essays covering SeMA Mediacity Seoul Biennale 2016 and the Venice Biennale 2017.  As an artist, Mina Cheon is a new media artist and global activist best known for her “Polipop” art (political pop art) and has exhibited internationally, including at the Inaugural Asia Society Triennial 2020-2021, Busan Biennale 2018, American University Museum, Sungkok Art Museum and her work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Smith College Museum of Art, and Seoul Museum of Art. Mina Cheon is represented by the Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York.

 

Monika Meler
Mentor: Lauren Lake

Monika Meler serves as Head of the Department of Art & Design and Associate Professor of Art/Printmaking at VSU. Previously, Meler served as the Foundations Art Coordinator and Head of Graduate Studies in Art at the University of Saint Francis. She earned her B.F.A. from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD). She continued her studies at Purdue University, where she earned an M.A., followed with an M.F.A from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. While at Tyler, she spent a year studying in Rome, Italy.

Monika has exhibited her work extensively in group, juried, and solo exhibitions. She has completed residencies at Zygote Press in Cleveland, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, Emmanuel College in Boston, Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Connecticut, Frans Masereel Center in Belgium, Cork Printmakers in Ireland, and Women’s Studio Workshop in New York. Solo Exhibits include Yours, Mine, and Ours at Wabash College in Indiana, The Color of Distance and Desire at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts, The Center That Cannot Hold at Frontier Space in Montana, and The Distance Between at the Limerick Printmakers Gallery in Ireland.

 

V. Kim Martinez
Mentor: Charlie Kanwischer

V. Kim Martinez is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Utah.

She received her terminal degree from  the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, she is serving as the Chair of the Department of Art & Art History. Her research concerns visual communication that investigates societal structures that shift/fluctuate between the positive and the negative, the concrete and the abstract, based on direct experience with the challenges of specific locations and situations. Her research record includes over 170 curatorial regional, national, and international exhibitions, and she is the recipient of multiple grants. In 2002, she envisioned a community mural course to provide students with real-world experience in creating and proposing public art in the form of mural designs. Her commitment to innovation and exploration of teaching methodologies are exemplified by an interdisciplinary undergraduate experience at the University of Utah’s Taft -Nicholson Center in Centennial Valley, Montana. The immersive residency incorporates intellectual growth, experimental painting techniques, and an introduction to the ecology of landscapes to foster the development of unexpected ways of ideating the rugged terrain of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to impact students’ conceptual, formal, and sustainability processes. Martinez is the recipient of the College of Fine Arts Faculty Excellence Award, the University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center “Professors Off-Campus Project,” and the “Distinguished Innovation and Impact Award. Her commitment to university shared governance reflects her past memberships in the University Academic Senate and Executive Committees. Service to the local community includes multiple arts organization board of directors and gubernatorial appointments to the Department of Corrections and the Utah Correctional Industries Advisory Councils.

 

Darren Lee (dee) Miller
Mentor: Karen Oremus

Dee Miller is an artist, educator, curator, and writer, originally from Endwell, NY, whose work employs community-engaged, trans-disciplinary collaboration and anti-racist, anti-heterosexist advocacy to center the experiences and “subjugated knowledges” of individuals from marginalized identities.  They were invited to serve as Chair of Photography and Associate Professor at the Columbus College of Art & Design in 2019.

Dee incorporates a number of innovative strategies into their pedagogy to lead undergraduates and MFA candidates to teach themselves to learn, enabling student autonomy and accountability. They use discussion-based sessions for building cultural literacies and expanding critical capacities. This approach helps emerging artists use their own life experiences to create meaningful content, and it requires the use of techniques from facilitated intergroup dialogue to support equitable and inclusive learning spaces.

Dee has curated exhibitions that include works by leading contemporary artists such as Zanele Muholi, Stephanie Syjuco, Yasumasa Morimura, Kara Walker, Alfredo Jaar, James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, Jess Dugan, Vanessa German, Brendan Fernandes, Alisha Wormsley, Clarissa Sligh, Helen Zughaib, Andrea Chung, Dawit Petros, and many others, as well as residency and installation projects with international artists. Their writing has been featured in Papersafe, Rice, Sisyphus Magazine, and in numerous exhibition catalogs.

In 2019-20 Dee was awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship to conduct a community art project, Palavras na Minha Boca, at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Bauru, Brazil. Their teaching, curatorial work, and artwork have been recognized through numerous residencies, exhibitions, and acquisitions.

Before joining CCAD, Dee served as Director and Curator of the Art Galleries at Allegheny College, Meadville, PA. Prior to this, they were Program Director for the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts, a non-profit community arts center in Blue Mountain Lake, NY. Dee is a member of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) and the College Art Association (CAA), and served as co-chair of CAA's national Queer & Trans Caucus for Art from 2010-12. They are frequently invited to lecture about their own work, and curate or jury contemporary art and photography exhibitions.

Dee Miller  received an M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and hold a B.F.A. in Photography and Printmaking from The School of Art & Design at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, obtained also through study at Manchester Metropolitan University in the U.K. They live and work in Columbus, OH and San Juan, Puerto Rico.