Reception: BFA Thesis Exhibition

Event Details

Opening Thursday April 16, in the Schneider Hall Galleries, the Hite Institute of Art + Design is excited to invite you to our Spring 2026 BFA Thesis Exhibition.  Presenting the work of 13 students graduating with a degree in Fine Arts, The BFA Thesis Exhibition demonstrates the department’s vast range of disciplines while offering each candidate an opportunity to present a completed body of work to the public.

This semester, participating students include: Faith Cipriani, Logan Jancerak, Iza Mccloud, David Sierra, Grace Andrews-Huffman, Cheyenne Elder, Mia Langford, Bekah Newsome, Calista White, Ellie Caudill, Haylie Fitzgibbon, Cierra Marquardt, and Meg Schoon. Each student’s work highlights their technical skill and showcases their individual areas of interest.

The Spring BFA Thesis Exhibition will be on view in the Schneider Hall Galleries between April 16-30, with an opening reception on Thursday April 16 from 5-7 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. Please join us.

About the Artists:

Grace Andrews-Huffman is an aspiring tattoo artist working primarily with colored pencils and pen and ink. She is currently working on a series of drawings that follow historical and traditional tattoo designs and combining those designs with fine art concepts. The purpose of her work is to prove and allow those to consider tattoos being included in the fine arts while also explaining the history of tattoos.

Ellie Caudill is an acrylic painter working with the realistic figure to express personal identity. Their work features self-portraits and representations of loved ones combined with an imagined, cartoon, version of themself to represent the inner-self interacting with the world.

Faith Cipriani is a disabled queer artist whose work makes space for people to connect and unlearn implicit biases. Using handprinted designs, fabric, and fiber skills like crochet, her sculptural works take what’s hard to understand in people with unique lives and offers a perspective that is direct, yet colorful and playful. Her work balances the tricky and bizarre aspects of being human with the wonders of being curious that all people share.

Cheyenne Elder is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the deification of the feminine and expands on contemporary issues at the forefront of fundamentalist politics. Their art employs the usage of anthropomorphic composite figures to portray female biblical figures and critique the stories that surround them, conscious of the connection between biblical narrative and the vilification of women.

Haylie Fitzgibbon is a mixed media artist whose art specializes in combining relief printmaking and colored pencil drawing. Her body of work focuses on the theme of ecofeminism and the emotions women carry through their bodies and the land.

Logan Jancerak explores how transgender individuals see their bodies through euphoria and dysphoria while also questioning the ways the trans body is seen and objectified. Through charcoal drawings and acetate prints, the works share the inner feelings of transgender people and challenges viewers to examine their relationship to and the ways they think about transgender people and their bodies.

Mia Langford uses paint to capture the act of looking and analyzing an object. Her work subtly expresses personal narratives, while focusing on texture, color, and light. She searches for sparkling moments within everyday life and urges viewers to take a closer look at scenes through her lens.

Cierra Marquardt is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring multiple experimental approaches to traditional artistic practices. Their current work focuses on using rotting fruit as a metaphor to discuss societal change with a focus on how the cycle of decay brings about new life. 

Bekah Newsome is an Appalachian printmaker and potter who makes decorated vessels and relief prints with imagery of flora, fauna and fungi from the region. Their work focuses on the semblance of life that remains after death, a reflection on mortality and passage of time in a cathartic manner. Through the use of delicate line work and carving details, they highlight the fragility of life and relief of death.

Meg Schoon utilizes mixed media on cloth in a continuing series to reflect upon her travels on the Aegean Sea and her immersion into the beautiful islands of Greece. 

David Sierra is an oil painter whose large-scale figurative works explore human connection and memory through everyday experiences. His body of work centers on moments of togetherness—images that invite viewers to slow down and sustain attention. Rather than directing toward a fixed interpretation, the paintings offer atmospheres, postures, and shared spaces that remain open, intimate, and quietly reflective.

Calista R White is a multi-media artist who works primarily with glass and sculpture to analyze cultural behaviors and expectations under stress. She works with cycles of judgement, shame, and altruism — representing the body to present a circus of performers stretching and pulling themselves to extremes, intentionally or not.